Lucy.

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rules so broad they can be applied to almost anything and then they'll paint those rightfully opposed to these sorts of authoritarian overreach as supportive of the one reasonable rule - banning CSAM.

and as always, if you don't stand up for the piss-drinkers then the nazis will come for you too.

I am very used to being put down for my interests, but it always stings a bit when a safe space turns out not so safe.

Illustration of twelve bird friends, each labeled with a month from January to December

Your month, your bird friend!!

if only they read books instead of just the manuals that assume you'd also read all the other books, then maybe they'd know the difference between ancient Chinese military structure and modern Iranian administration.

or that Alexander didn't "cut the head off the snake" he replaced it.

when talking about decapitating leadership, sun tzu was talking about killing officers and generals so as to make an army less effective in battle. he was not talking about killing a civil leader and then throwing a tantrum like a baby when they immediately replace them.

the prince was written specifically for an italian monarch during the late medieval italian wars as a treatise on how to win a highly specific diplomatic game between France, Austria, the Papacy, and regional Italian lords.

and yet even it will warn of creating martyrs if you fucking read it.

not even a muslim thing, don't need to be weird about it like that.

it just turns out that if you actually read those books rather than pose for pictures with them to virtue signal to a bunch of teenagers then you realise these books aren't universal knowledge repositories.

like a genuine fuck you.

fascism is out here eating all of us and you're standing there saying "fuck all of y'all, I don't care enough to even participate or treat you with basic respect as peers".

embarrassing. your absence of skill is only matched by your absence of character and intellect.

I also have to say that if you're out here, during an era of increasing efforts to destroy art and artists by automation and theft, and saying you don't have to support your fellow artists because you're uniquely too good for them then I genuinely hope rats eat your fucking skull.

is it easy? no. but I still put in the work every day because I love it. I hate how bad I am at it, but I love it. I am happy to do the work because I love the medium and want to experience more.

get over yourself. it's not fascist for someone to call you a fucking poser, jesus fucking christ.

I really do get it, I have pretty bad depression and it can make doing the work hard on a day to day basis - like brutally hard, borderline impossible. but even so I accepted my passion was not in writing so I stopped pretending.

I found my actual passion, and am doing the work.

like I get the anxiety being deeply insecure about yourself can bring, but you still need to own your responsibilities. you can't just demand everyone else accepts your version of reality.

you sound like a fucking flat-earther.

don't be like that for fuck sake, accept you're wrong.

"I want to be an artist, but I refuse to do the basic amount of required. disagreeing with me is fascist."

fucking wild.

absolutely fucking zero notes, really speaks for itself.

and what's even worse is; what is the fucking point of creating something you don't love enough to be engaging with except out of hubris?

if you don't love reading then why are you writing? if you don't love writing enough to read then you clearly aren't suited for it.

why are you bothering?

is it gatekeeping? sure but why do you feel entitled to spaces made by those who put in the hard work to love what they do when you yourself refuse to even engage with what they make?

no, the idea you can just demand a place at the table without earning it is narcissistic and you should be excluded

fascist has an actual meaning and it's not just whatever the fuck you just want it to be to refer to people who are mean to you - maybe you'd know that if you fucking read a book.

you cannot be good at any art medium unless you actively engage with it, and if that upsets you then fuck off.

which also developed quite a bit over history. the bronze used in early bombards was a lot different to the brass used in the artillery of the napoleonic era, which allowed a lot of the progress of artillery over the eras.

people can feel free to stop saying that shit any time they want. it comes from literal imperialist talking points and is a polite way of saying "the europeans were more intelligent", in the same vein as all those other scientific racist nonsense arguments.

should probably also point out that the myth that Europeans had superior steel, production or techniques to the rest of the world is just that - a myth.

Europeans weren't actually technologically superior to anyone, except like literal nomadic tribes. that shit is just an imperialist justification.

I'm yet to find any evidence that the anecdote of scandinavian tribes using blood sacrifice to try and replicate noric steel is true, but I think we can agree the story itself is pretty metal.

and immediately following the collapse of the Western Empire, there was a lot of confusion over how steel was produced leading to a decline in its usage again until the high middle ages. which lead to some interesting religious cult happenings as people began trying to recreate the techniques.

it was not just a case of knowing how to make steel it was also a case of knowing how to use it, which is why despite common types of steel being known and used for almost as long as humans have had cities, it wasn't really used widely in Europe until the Roman Empire which used dozens of types.

this was also why swords were not just made of one type of steel - hard steel has a tendency to shatter under force, and so a hard steel edge is paired with a softer steel core or back to absorb the force and allow it to flex.

and this wasn't just about types of steel but also production techniques

brass (copper-zinc bronze) is more ductile than many steels ie: it resists cracking under pressure by being more flexible. an important property for guns because as mentioned they have a habit of exploding if they crack

hard steel is typically more brittle than copper/bronze, ie: not ideal for guns

this is correct, except I'll raise one correction.

early guns actually used bronze not steel, which I mention only to reinforce the point that bronze like steel is not a singular material but a family of materials and for a long time bronze was better for guns than steel for a variety of reasons.

an entire generation raised on the fanfic hetslop of a million twilight fans has emerged from their chrysalis half-formed and degenerate, convinced they are beautiful butterflies rather than incoherent narcissists demanding everyone else abide by their bleak fetish-fantasies of brooding 15yo boys.

if it's all in first person they can just pretend the character is them, which ultimately also leads to them getting very angry if you break from the expected formula as they would never act that way - they, as readers, have no agency.

empathizing with a character is intellectually beyond them.

they don't have nor want to learn empathy.

mystery solved.