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[saurotitan]

The Marsh's Story

The weather's nice enough, so why not go for a walk? I've got just the place picked out.

A year or two back I wrote a post about national parks. It was a halfway decent piece of work, but I’m not upset if you don’t remember it. If you do remember it, you might recall that I spent a sizable portion of that post talking about somewhere that isn’t a national park. What can I say, I don’t have a lot of experience with actual national parks and I had to make do with what I actually knew.…

[saurotitan]

Mechanical and/or enchanted exoskeletons in fantasy would allow for everyone to be happy in some scenarios, but if wheelchairs are needed why not give it robot legs?

Worldbuilders: Listen to Disabled Folks

Let me talk about a thing, that I have brought up in the past, but that really keeps coming up whenever I consume media in fantasy and scifi: Folks really, really do not consider the needs of disabled people. And that sucks.

I will say it once again: A world in which all disabilities are cured either by magic or some scifi technology is inherently ableistic. Not all disabled people do want to be cured, especially given that "disability" is usually defined as "a body that functions differently from what is considered the norm of society". But here is the thing: "Different" is not inherently bad. And erasing bodies that are different easily leads to all other sorts of eugenics.

So, first take-away: Do not erase disabilities.

But that brings me to the second part: Consider what disabled people actually need and how they might use it.

One very typical example of this is, that in a lot of Scifi media you will find a variety of fancy SciFi wheelchairs. Those might hover or have all other sorts of special abilities. But... When you look at the design, they are actually super bad for folks reliant on a wheelchair.

Maybe the chair part is designed in a way that would actually be super uncomfortable for a disabled person to sit on. Maybe the way that it is being controlled would actually take away control from the disabled person. Stuff like that.

And stuff like that can be used for all sorts of technological or magical means used to help disabled people in those worlds. Often designed by ablebodied people to make a world in which other people's disability does not inconvenience abled people. And that... folks, that's not it.

All of this by the way goes extra for Solarpunk/Lunarpunk worlds. Because folks, if your world does not make room for disabled people, then it is not very Solarpunk to me.

[saurotitan]

You know how there was that debate a while back about people with disabilities in fantasy worlds? How everyone complained that dungeons wouldn't be handicap accessible? Why did no one raise the obvious solution of enchanted leg armor or mobility chairs with all-terrain war forged spider legs? We already have some of the tech in real life.

It adds flavor to a character and lets any artificers in your party have something to tinker with during long rests. At higher levels your party could customize the mobility gear to shoot fire or climb walls or whatever.

[saurotitan]

My Mom is Great

My mom is pretty cool, and I'd like to tell you why.

It’s no secret that I love my mom. Some would say that makes me a mama’s boy, which is a kind of odd thing to pick on someone about if you actually think about it. Sure there are quite a few people who don’t get along great with their parents, but isn’t it still the ideal we should hope for? Making fun of someone for having a close relationship with their mother is like shaming someone for making…

[saurotitan]

Gus is very polite, and thus no one cares when he shows up to the family reunion and eats the potato salad

look it's all very simple. Luz has 2 moms and 3 siblings who are not each other's siblings. Hunter has a mom and a dad who don't know each other and an evil uncle who is also kind of his dad and his younger brother. King has a mom & a dad who is also his mom and the country he lives in. Hunter is technically Eda and Lilith's biological ancestor. Eberwolf is there. what is not clicking.

[saurotitan]

Echoes of Earlier Times

It's Star Wars Day, but instead I'm going to write about podcasts. This feels like I'm letting someone down, I just don't know who.

Not very long ago, in a library far, far away, an old man asked me what a podcast was. It wasn’t the first time I’ve had to answer a technical question about modern concepts on the job, especially for this particular patron, and I doubt it’ll be the last. As a librarian and a person under the age of fifty I’m often called on to clarify how the thinking machines of the 21st century do their job.…

[saurotitan]

Spicy Food: Fear, Fun, and Tradition

What we eat varies, and what we like to eat varies even more. Today I'll talk about spicy food.

Everyone who’s ever been alive and who ever will be is going to have different opinions. No two people are the same, so why should their likes and dislikes be any less varied? Some people like warm weather, some people prefer snow. Some people like to dress in bright colors, some people prefer lighter shades or some form of gothic black. Some people sleep on top of their covers with several fans…

[saurotitan]

We've all been there. For me, it's DLC for games and fountain pen cartridges... and books... and my cane (because it's a thing I need and the secondhand one was straight out of a nursing home...)

.... I may just have a problem with spending money.

[saurotitan]

Local megafaunal workers were downsized, so the North American ecosystem has to outsource to other continents. She's not escaping, she's moonlighting as a mammoth. Good for her

Viola the circus elephant didn't escape, she politely removed herself from an uncomfortable situation. role model to us all

[saurotitan]

How to Find a Filter

I'm not the best at saying the right thing at the right time, but I've learned a thing or two over the years. Now I'm going to share some of that wisdom as well as some stories from my childhood.

I’ve never been very good at keeping my mouth shut. Shocking, I know, especially to those of you who’ve had the pleasure of meeting me in person, but it’s the truth. No matter how hard I try there’s always a part of me that thinks my thoughts are the most important thing in the world and that I need to share them with everybody. Even if it’s a conversation relating to a topic I know very little…

[saurotitan]

Once again, this man creates something beautiful.

[saurotitan]

This right here is how I feel when writing. "It's just one chapter" I say. "You're only a few pages away from finishing this one" I say. Then I look up, it's several hours later, my ongoing plot threads might need to be scrapped unless a very specific thing was invented before the plot takes place, and I have three new world-building entries to add when I publish it online. Creativity is hard to stop once you get the ball rolling because you want it to be as good for everyone else as you see it in your head.

I'm going to simplify things, I say

Not every story post requires india ink and a bunch of furniture and background designs, I remind myself

This one will just be some simple character drawings, I decide.

Me, now, standing over a set of blueprints and my inking set like

Anyway, it's five pages and Caleb's room is an octagon now

[saurotitan]

Gonna go out on a limb and guess you just had a birthday and feel this yourself

[saurotitan]

Loving Thy Neighbor & Being Worthy of Love

A good neighbor is worth their weight in gold. They are someone you can rely on, who has your back, and will occasionally be willing to put up with your stupid mistakes when they get out of hand. Everyone knows that much from years of sitcoms like Home Improvement, The Andy Griffith Show, and Full House, but in the real world we have to remember that a relationship like that can’t be a one way…

[saurotitan]

Soup Supper Stereotypes

Human beings are by nature social creatures. Some of us are less social than others, but even the individuals who don’t feel the call of the crowds do poorly if cut off entirely from human contact for long periods of time. Human beings also love food, although if that comes as a shock to you I don’t know how you’ve survived long enough to figure out how to read or use the internet to find this…

[saurotitan]

This is genius

i know there’s a lot of talk about mandroid/silas but please consider this law enforcement club/polycule

ultimately if it came down to it, Dave BotBots would win in a fight by sheer Rube Goldberg improbable bad luck looney toons shenanigans. Simmons would be fully capable of murdering TFP Megatron with his bare hands. Schloder would get along famously with Sumdac in oblivious solidarity. Fowler would have the BotBots mall packed up and moved to a secure location within like two hours. Fanzone would be the one stuck watching the collective of children and be miserable about it but he’s also the only one who would be even capable of babysitting the lot of them so he’s the best choice.

[saurotitan]

Y'see, I grew up with Jar Jar being a thing because episode one came out before I was a cognizant human. All this hate for the guy feels unearned. He was the victim in a galaxy-spanning scheme, thrust into a position he could not hope to perform adequately in, and then had to watch as his actions were used to destroy the lives of his friends and kill countless innocents. He couldn't fight back in the political sphere since he wasn't savvy enough, and even if he did raise concerns about the Empire his past as a friend of the Jedi could be used to justify charges of treason against him. He was a nonhuman in a galaxy where the Empire's racism meant only human-looking species had a chance at political power, and the technology of the Gungans was organic - can you imagine what Imperial-era environmental standards probably did to their society?

Weep for the Gungans, and mourn the greatest victim of them all, the man who was tricked into burning the galaxy.

Jar Jar's father tries to kill himself because his son is such a fuck up

I'm not joking, that is literally what is happening here