ok every time I see this post I find it necessary to point out Jesus was a carpenter like he legit would’ve used the fuck outta a nail gun
Gonna say a little something while I’m making these posts with all these DAMN NOTES:
You can totally like the Imperium. Oh yeah, it’s a horrible, terrible, no good very bad place to live. You can call it fascist and awful, and hell in many cases in-setting you’d be damn right. Doesn’t mean you can’t disconnect reality from fiction and still super fucking enjoy something so dark, gritty and downright doofy. Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong, yo: there are real shit fascist dicks in the fandom, but the statement “I like the Imperium,” says absolutely nothing about a person’s political beliefs or values. So, hey, why not get to know someone before throwing the first stone ya goober? Throw the stone at a Nazi when ya see a Nazi, don’t throw it at an edgy nerd because they think it’s silly funny as hell to blow up a planet because it’s tainted by bad space magic.
Again, you can enjoy something fictional without it saying something about you. Don’t let folks shame you over that, or tell you that you’re something you ain’t because they can’t disconnect themselves from reality to enjoy a dumb ass dark setting made for teens to throw money at.
Genocide is bad. Duh. Fascism is bad. Duh. Hey, guess what? Fiction that? It ain’t nothing. Do you need your hand held every minute to enjoy something, or do you need to be reminded every second that fiction is fiction?
Heck, Y’all. Have a good gosh-darn time a bit, huh? Let your hair down! Laugh a little. The world sucks right now, sit down and laugh at a fake world that’s worse even in its best days, yeah? You worry me sometimes, I feel like you need a hug. Everything’s out to get you, it seems like, and that sucks, homie. Have a beer, I hope things get better. Orks are funny, right?
And that’s all I have to say about that one too, if you can believe it.
To be fair, the only part of the Imperium we often see is the dysfunctional militaristic bureaucracy with little regard for individual human lives because we’re looking at them on a galactic scale and also the only thing people like to write about is the grim darkness of the far future. Most humans in the Imperium probably live on peaceful agri worlds that aren’t really even aware of the scale of the Imperium and live perfectly happy lives (at least until they accidentally dig up Necrons or something, but you can’t really blame the Imperium for that). For every planetary fortress that’s constantly at war with some alien threat, there’s at least a handful of backwater worlds that nobody is interested in because they have little to no strategic value of any kind.
Yeah sure, the office politics of the High Lords on Terra are pretty questionable, but the average Imperial citizen probably doesn’t even know they exist or care. Some planets offer recruits to the Imperial Guard, but some are devoted to agriculture or factory work or any number of other vital tasks to keep an empire running that doesn’t involve living in the trenches of World War One times a trillion. The only time grimdark even affects them is if some really nasty aliens show up, and again you can’t really fault the Imperium for that. The only reason this isn’t represented more in the fluff is because nobody plays a wargame to hear about a planet of peaceful farmers minding their own business when there’s a galaxy full of hostile alien threats to fight.
And at the end of the day it’s just fiction, fiction loosely based on the Roman Empire. You know what happened after Rome collapsed? The Dark Ages. Would you say that the average Roman citizen was better off after the empire collapsed? Probably not. They just wanted to live in a society with a relative amount of comfort and be safe from the barbarians outside trying to tear all their shit down, and that’s probably how the average citizen in the Imperium of Man feels as well.
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash. This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.
I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.
Super important
Tldr: The reason clothes never “looked right on you” is because models and celebrities always had their clothes tailored to fit them perfectly.
This is so important. If something doesn’t fit you perfectly, the problem is the clothes, not you.
Dark Souls - Estus
The Dark Souls series is, in my opinion, one of the greatest to ever be created. (Although at the time of writing this I’m in the middle of a lover’s spat with Dark Souls 2 - we’re currently not talking due to the Royal Rat Authority… ) I love Dark Souls because it captures the essence of why I fell in love with video games to begin with; the challenge, the sense of mystery, exploration and discovery. I’d been wanting to do a post for Estus for quite a while, and ‘lo, with the revival of Gourmet Gaming, comes the very revival of the soul.
Click ‘Read More’ for the full recipe!
“You’re not my Dad!”
Hahahahaha
“I’m in a tank and your not” is probably the best argument ever.
MUSICAL NOTATION, AS DESCRIBED BY CATS
(I would have liked to crop some of these gifs (like the accent ones) to make them more accurate but alas, I lack the skills.)
i never knew i needed this in my life until now
Merry: we’ve been conducting an ongoing study to see what Legolas will and will not eat
Pippin: grass? yes!
Merry: moss? yes!!
Pippin: leaves? Ohh, yes!
Merry: bootlaces? Strange but true!
Pippin: worms? Sometimes!
Merry: Rocks? Nah
Pippin: twigs? usually!
Merry: Pippin’s cooking? Inconclusive!
Faramir: how did you… test this
Merry: you just hand him stuff and say ‘this is for you’ and if he eats it, he eats it
Faramir: …….I don’t know how to feel about this
Aragorn: IS THAT WHERE ALL MY SPARE BOOTLACES WENT
Pippin: well what did you need so many spare bootlaces for anyway
Aragorn: in case… the ones in my boots…. break!!!
Pippin: !!!!!ohhh!!!
Merry: aha!
Faramir: how could you not know that
Pippin: pff you expect me to know how boots work? *walks away*
Legolas: when I ate them, I did not know they were your bootlaces. I thought they were leathery and inferior worms.
Aragorn: so you didn’t even enjoy them
Aragorn: why did you eat them ALL if you didn’t enjoy them
Legolas: Merry and Pippin seemed to like it when I ate the gifts they gave me so usually I ate them
Merry: *slamming his fist down upon the table* you’ve COMPROMISED our test results!!
Gimli, from a distance:
Merry, yelling back: WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT ARE YOU A SCIENTIST
Gimli: YES