#gremble is a dude

[abeautifulblog]

thoughts on the Barbie movie

Finally got around to seeing the Barbie movie -- I think some of its messaging could have been clearer, but on the whole it was a lot of fun, and one of the most visually-innovative things I've seen onscreen in ages. So much stuff these days bills itself as "deconstruction," when more often than not it's just a mean-spirited mockery of something the writers don't actually understand. The Barbie movie is deconstruction done right, by people who are deeply in the know about the material (which in this case equals the entire Barbie mythos/ideology), and love it anyway, warts and all. Good deconstruction is both a critique and a love letter.

The theme that the movie understands and communicates most clearly is about the impossible, contradictory directives that are constantly put on women -- "you need to be assertive, but you mustn't be a bitch", etc -- and how unfair it is that half the population isn't given the same respect and the same chance at success. Barbieland flips the script so that the Kens are the empty-headed ornaments while Barbies run the world (which I suspect is what made a lot of men so viscerally uncomfortable with the movie), but that's also eventually recognized to be just as unfair as the Real World where patriarchy reigns.

What's a lot muddier is the messaging around how exactly men participate in the patriarchal oppression of women, and how the patriarchy harms them too. Because patriarchy is a pyramid scheme -- and not all men are on the top of that pyramid, nor can they all be. It convinces men to strive for an unattainable ideal of masculinity (not unlike the unattainable ideal that Barbie represents for femininity, actually!) and then penalizes those who fall short for not being "man enough," and paints it as a personal failing, not one that's baked into the system.

A lot of the gags around Ken Discovers Toxic Masculinity legitimately had me in stitches, because oh my god, too true, but then it didn't really offer any conclusions about it. Granted, this is the Barbie Movie not the Ken Movie, and he already gets more of a character arc than female love interests usually do, so I'm not going to rend my garments all "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MENNNNS??"..... but if you're not going to follow through on toxic masculinity, then maybe better to leave that particular can of worms unopened. There's more than enough for feminism to talk about without it.

Personally, I would have preferred if Ken weren't an antagonist -- if he'd just been the supportive himbo boyfriend who cheerfully follows Barbie on her journey of self-discovery, and backs her every play, and has never had a mean thought in his empty head, which is kind of what the promo materials led me to expect -- but that would have been an entirely different plot. (Possibly one in which Ken encounters the real world and finds that the men there think he should tone down his self-expression (for coming off as too GAY) and be less of a simp for his girlfriend, and he's like, Wow that sounds terrible actually, no thank you!)

In any case, I don't envy the women who are now having uncomfortable conversations with their husbands and boyfriends who got mad about the movie and went on the offensive. Because this is not a movie that softshoes its message to coddle to men's fee-fees -- its male characters are largely mocked and/or marginalized, and I imagine that a lot of men who saw it, and who haven't ever examined their privilege, came out of it feeling personally attacked, and reflexively wanted to attack it in turn and reject everything it's saying.

To which I'm like… y'all need to sit with your feelings for a minute. Remember that one movie taking the piss out of men does not actually make a single dent in the power and privilege that men enjoy in the real world. And then think about the fact that media BY men (which is most of it) routinely treats women the same way -- frivolous and sidelined, ornaments and sex objects. And the fact that we consider that the normal way of things -- that women are expected to watch themselves being portrayed like that and enjoy it.

(A line that I think should have gotten more weight is at the end when Barbie says, "I want to be the one doing the making, not the thing being made," because it's such a clear, straightforward articulation of the subject vs. object distinction.)

Storytelling-wise (to put on my nerd-for-narrative hat), the third act of the movie runs into difficulty with the fact that this is not about human characters, but about anthropomorphized archetypes of femininity and masculinity -- and how do you write a narratively satisfying "ending" for things that don't actually end? And how do you do that within the context of not just a doll world, but the Barbie world, with a gender-unequal status quo that isn't actually going to change either? With the conflicts they set up, I'm not sure there was a wholly satisfactory way to end it.

But anyway, none of that detracted from my enjoyment of the movie -- it's fun, heartfelt, thought-provoking, a continuous source of pleasure and novelty for the eyeballs, and consistently hilarious. Definitely worth the watch.

(And if you want some feminist-themed media that does do a complex exploration of how the patriarchy fucks men over too, even the men who think they're winning at it, I recommend Agent Carter, it is so so good. (The first season, anyway. 😑) There are five notable male characters in it, and the only one having a good time is the one who's declined to buy into society's narrow idea of what constitutes acceptable masculinity.)

[sweettooth-87]

Me a believer (not exactly a Christian idk what it's called) walked into a Protestant church: why don't you also adore the woman who literally got told by a pigeon "ey yo you're preggo by God and your kid will die when he's 30 something, betrayed by a dude named Judas Iscariot. Also said kid is totally going to be a grembling because he'll be able to turn water into wine and bread into fish. So watch out for that. Also he'll be able to make the dead come back to life. Just a heads up. BYEEEE"

Like can you imagine that. Tbh I'm sure the reason we jump from Jesus broth to his thirties is because his childhood was basically him running around causing mischief with his powers. Also he has two dad's and a mother. Can we talk about the representation such a progressive family in Roman times?

Me, Catholic, walking into a Protestant church with no depictions of Mary: where’s my mom

[armory-rasa]

Leatherworking with gremble: the Anders brigandine

Alright, Anders fans -- let's talk brigandine.

PART I: SEWING

So most of the other Anders cosplays I've seen have done a quilted effect for his coat, which can also come out looking quite nice, but when I look at his outfit, I see brigandine. Brigandine is an armoring technique in the subset called "coat of plates" because it consists of small plates -- metal or heavy leather -- riveted to a garment of leather or heavy fabric. Since that's more in line with my skillset anyway, and considering that I've been hoarding scrap leather like some scrap-leather-hoarding dragon for just such an occasion, brigandine it was.

If Anders' coat is indeed meant to be brigandine, then it wasn't rendered right because it doesn't have enough rivets -- each rectangular plate needs 4 rivets (one in each corner) to attach it to the coat. 

It distresses me when I can't be screen-accurate, and distresses me even more when I can't be accurate because their costume doesn't actually make sense, but such is life.

**

So the first step is to make the coat that will form the backing onto which you rivet your plates. It's pretty basic; I took the pattern from a coat I'd done for an unfinished Thrall cosplay, which I believe had itself been adapted from an inquisitor coat. Original:

Pattern laid out:

Sorry I can't give you something printable, but it's just too big for that. =/ (Not to mention that you'll be adjusting it to fit you anyway.) You shouldn't have too much trouble drafting your own though, and it is a very forgiving pattern.

The piece in the foreground is the front, and the further-away piece is the back. The front looks considerably bigger, but only because I fold the center edges over like three times. Remember that the edges are not actually supposed to meet in the front -- he's got that line of O-rings over his chest, so you're going to be leaving like 3"~4" of space down the center. I think I might also have wound up dropping the neckline a bit, I'm not sure.

It's also worth noting that the hem on this pattern makes a pretty dramatic dip in the front -- rather than being the same length all around, it's shorter in the back and comes to a point in the front. This is not accurate to what Anders wears in-game, his coat is indeed all squared off, but guess what looks better? And guess what gremble cares about more?

Anyway, cut out your fabric:

I used a black microsuede, because I bought a metric fuckton of microsuede when Hancock was going out of business and it was cheaper than dirt, and now I have microsuede for days (weeks. years) and I use it for anything I can. However, you can use any material that is (A) sturdy and (B) fray-resistant. You're going to be putting rivets through it later, so tight, sturdy weaves are your friend.

And even if you can put the back pieces on a fold, cut 'em apart anyway, because we want to put a vent in the back:

Sew the seam down the center back, stopping about 12~14" from the bottom, and crossing over that point a couple times with like your buttonhole function to make the endpoint strong. Seriously, that point is going to have a lot of stress put on it later, you want it to hold.

Fold your seams over:

Stitch your seams down:

And yeah, there's where you can tell that I'm not actually all that good at sewing. Parallel, what is parallel?

Anyway, keep going and attach the front pieces to the back pieces along the sides. I can't remember if I did the same seam as above, or if I did flat felled seams for these. It doesn't really matter, either way:

But considering that I then felt the need to document how to make flat felled seams on the shoulders:

So now you get to try on the coat and make sure that it's not completely off base:

Is good to me.

Next I edged the neckline and the armholes with bias tape. Goddamn do I hate bias tape.

But it makes it pretty tidy:

Alright, now it's time to do the center-front edges. We are making them VERY THICK AND VERY STIFF. I have seen too many Anders costumes where the weight of the O-rings drags down the edges of the coat, it is not a good look, but it's pretty easy to avoid if you plan ahead. So when I was making my coat I (1) folded the edge over twice (2) ironed some interfacing into it and (3) sandwiched a strip of felt into it. And I'm still not sure it was enough -- if I had it to do over again, I'd probably work a strip of 5-6 oz veg-tan in there instead. Truly, I don't think it's possible to make this part TOO stiff, while on the flip side, it's not going to look sexy if your coat is sagging under the weight of the O-rings.

So here is my felt and interfacing, both of which were 1" wide:

Iron on the interfacing:

Fold the felt into the edge:

Pin it, check how much of a gap it leaves down your front:

(This coat, for the record, is not the slightest bit adjustable. You make it, and then you don't gain or lose weight, ever.)

If the sizing is all good, then sew it down.

Time for your O-rings -- three of them are attached to the coat, the fourth one is on the belt, but needs to be spaced proportionally to the other three. Here is the spacing that worked for me (a 5'10" dude):

Test, 1, 2, 3...

You can see how the O-rings are too heavy for the straps holding them up, with more of their weight on the bottom instead of being distributed evenly -- that is okay. For this test I just snipped off some lengths of the bias tape I'd used on the neck & arms, so it's very thin fabric, but for the final version I use Legit Actualfax Leather (tm) and it is sturdy enough to hold the rings correctly.

Okay, time to put the gold edging down the center.

Full disclosure: I HATE bias tape. Like, everyone who knows me has at some point accidentally let themselves get cornered into having to listen to me rant about bias tape, how I hate it, let me count the ways. I get why it's used in cosplay so much -- so many costumes for the small-screen, be it anime or panels in a comic book, where you don't have much space for detail, add visual interest to a costume by putting contrast edging on it -- which, irl, is achieved with bias tape. But look the fuck around you, how many people have bias tape on their clothes?? Fuckin none, is the answer. So when I see bias tape, it feels strikingly cartoonish. It looks like cosplay; it doesn't look like something that anyone would ever actually wear out and about.

...and then there's Anders with his fucking gold bias tape down the center of his fucking coat, and all over the edges of his cute lil bolero jacket.

Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Anyway, I wound up doing gold piping on the jacket--

--because it looks so much less shit than bias tape, but there really was no choice but to do a very wide band of gold fabric for the edging of the coat. This is, strictly speaking, not bias tape since I didn't do it on the bias -- it was wide enough that I thought bias tape might pull weird, and straight enough that I could get away with doing it on the grain, so I did. Oh yeah, and I put interfacing on it to keep it smooth, so I guess the center edges actually have THREE layers of interfacing to keep them sturdy:

Ignore the plates -- I will explain how to do the plates later, but I am encouraging you to do as I say not as I do and put the gold edging on it now, not after you've already riveted the plates, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT PUT THIS STEP OFF UNTIL YOU'VE ALREADY PUT THE PLATES ON IT.

If you can incorporate the gold-edging step into the hemming-the-edges step you can probably make something tidier than what I came up with. I did a zigzag stitch along the edge to keep it from fraying and then tucked it under and stitched it down by hand, but it was not fast, and the underside is not pretty, so I am not exactly holding this up as the definitive way to do it.

And when it was done, I hated it. It looked like cheap shit, just like all things made of bias tape. So gross, why oh why did I try to make it look like the screencaps instead of doing something more realistic, o god I hate bias tape so much.

Luckily, it turns out that when you pile on the rest of the costume, the bias tape on the coat looks less awful. ‘ “It looks less awful now,” I said grudgingly’ is pretty much the story of this cosplay.

PART II: LEATHER

So now that you've got the garment that's going to be your backing, you need to figure out how the leather plates are supposed to fit. I sized mine based on the screencaps, assuming Anders was my height (5'10"), so the top 7 rows came out to 3.75" L x ~2.5" W and the bottom two rows are 4.5" L x ~2.5" W. (I can't tell what width they were supposed to be, but they come out to about two and five-eighths inches.) Since some of the pieces have to get trimmed to fit around curves, I started by making a bunch rectangles out of graph paper and pinning them where the plates are going to end up:

TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS STEP. You will need it later when you've got your plates all done and you're trying to remember how to arrange them.

I did the front half from beginning to end, and then went back and did the back half later, but it would probably be easier to do it all in one go. I just didn't have proof that it would work as intended, so I was holding off on doing the whole thing.

This is my box of scrap leather that I'd been saving for a rainy day, and since it was literally flooding in Sacramento during this project, I decided to take that for a sign. The coat uses 90 plates of leather, all told, and I managed to get 79 of them out of this box, yay.

This is veg-tan leather in the 8~10 oz range, and you can't really tell once it's all put together, but I was using the werrrrst shit for this project, we're talking the dregs and weird ends that got rejected for everything else. Lumpy leather will mess up your tooling and won't shape well, but guess what, we're not tooling or shaping here! :D

(I think it turned into a false economy, because it was pretty time-consuming to find & fit the scrap leather to the pattern pieces, whereas it's insanely quick to cut strips of rectangles out of a full hide, but hey.)

Tracing the pattern onto the plates. Don't do this, make your pattern out of cardstock, graph paper is too bendy. If you're using a pen/sharpie, trace it onto the BACK of the leather, because we're not beveling the edges down and you don't want pen lines along the edges of your plates.

Edge rounding tool, you can get 'em at Tandy and they will save you so much time and heartbreak:

Time to DYE. I like Angelus alcohol-based dyes, they are versatile and inexpensive and waterproof. Water based dyes will run if they get wet; oil based dyes will bleed and ooze oil onto everything they touch, forever. Alcohol based dyes are great, but Fiebings (the Tandy alcohol-based brand) is prohibited under California's chemical laws so I buy Angelus instead. (And they send me weird swag, it's great.) Dilute it like 1:3 or 1:5 with acetone for dip dyeing:

(Okay so the color I used for this project can't really be replicated, because I went nuts one day and bought a 3 oz bottle of every shade of brown Angelus had, like 15 different colors, made a bunch of test swatches, and went, "Huh, the only one I really like is the dark brown." So I dumped the rest of them all together in a tub and added about three quarts of acetone. Pro-tip: your tubs for dip dyeing HAVE TO be hermetically sealed, because alcohol really really likes to evaporate, it will escape through the crevices and leave you with sludge. Granted, I think I can reconstitute this sludge with more acetone.)

Also note how all my pieces are different colors -- that's the range that natural, undyed veg-tan leather can come in. And they WILL take the dye differently, so if you have a project (not necessarily this one) where the pieces need to match in color, you HAVE TO cut them from the same hide, and ideally dye them at the same time.

So here's them all freshly dyed:

Apparently I didn't take a picture after they'd dried, but they looked awwwwfulllll. Sure enough, the different leathers had wound up different colors, weird and blotchy. Some of them I gave another dunk in the dye bath to make them darker, but mostly I just crossed my fingers and forged ahead.

Good news, they will look much better after you put a clear topcoat on them:

50/50 mix of resolene (which you can buy at Tandy) and water. I've messed with other topcoats before, but this is your best bet. It dries quite water-resistant; one coat will leave you with a matte finish and if you want it shinier you can add more coats.

They will also look better after you add lines along the edges. I forget what this tool is called, but you want one, it is invaluable, lets you put lines parallel to the edges of your leather very quickly and very neatly. The lines I did were 3/8" from the edge:

And now you have also conveniently marked where to punch your rivet holes:

Lay 'em out (I was eyeballing this, not measuring it):

With a gel pen or something, mark where the holes are:

I debated whether I wanted to use small or medium rivet caps, went with medium. These are what's called double-cap rivets, because there is a cap on both ends so it looks clean and finished on both sides of the project, but rapid rivets (the ones where the post end does not have a cap) would work fine here. Tandy sells rivets in lengths XS, S, M, and L -- the post length you need for this is S, but you can mix and match the posts and the caps, so I paired small posts with medium caps, which I felt were better proportioned for this project.

Use a burnishing awl to poke holes in your fabric, wide enough that you can push a rivet through. You will break some threads doing this, which is why you want your base fabric to be fray-resistant:

Add plate:

Add rivet cap:

Grab your rivet setter, apply hammer:

Yessssssss:

That was the point when I said, awww yeah, son, this might actually work. I'd been kinda iffy about it til then.

Alright, doing the rest of it. Here's where the patterning for the plates gets weird, because the coat is not a tube, it's narrower at the chest than at the hem, so some of them are going get cut at angles along the side seam. You can see that I labeled the plates this time because the assembly was getting kind of crazy, but it wound up not mattering because the acetone in the dye bath stripped off my labels. ;_;

So I labeled them again when they came out of the dye:

And repeated the same process as above. Aww yeah:

By the way, I did not make boots for this costume; I bought those boots in Harajuku like ten years ago and they turned out to be one of the best investments I ever made, because I wear them all the time and they blend seamlessly into so many costumes -- including Anders.

Anyway, you're not done yet, time to put the O-rings on it. I cut some tabs out of 5 oz leather and cut stitching grooves about 1/8" from the edge. That is the same tool I used above for creasing the lines along the edges of the plates, you just swap out the head to carve a groove instead of leaving a crease. Also I should have cut the grooves before I dip-dyed them, because I wound up having to go back and put dye in the grooves:

Mark your stitching holes (rolling wheel is great) and punch your stitching holes:

Punch your rivet holes:

I clipped the corners on the underside of the tabs so they wouldn't be poking my chest.

Same MO as attaching rivets to the coat, use your burnishing awl to poke a hole through the front edge and attach your tabs. (Hearkening back to the picture waaaay above, where I measured where you want to attach your O-rings.) While I'm stitching, I hold it in place with a brad, not the actual rivet. Stitching:

This is waxed nylon cord, by the way -- you can buy it at Tandy, or you could probably substitute dental floss, it’s about the same weight.

So one side of tabs is stitched & riveted shut and holds the O-rings, the other side consists of snaps so that they can come on and off the O-rings easily.

I hate snaps almost as much as I hate bias tape, but sometimes they're unavoidable. At Tandy, you have the option of glove snaps, segma snaps, or line 20/line 24 snaps -- they are all terrible, but glove snaps are your best bet for this operation. Segma snaps and the line 20/24 snaps are too heavy-duty for putting in fabric, they will slide sideways when you try to set them and you will have to pull REALLY HARD on them to make them release, and you'll end up stretching your fabric out of shape. Glove snaps will also slide when you try to set them, because all snaps are assholes, but once you get them installed they will work well.

(Except for when it popped off the morning of PAX, and I was out of town so I didn't have access to my workshop, and we had to swing by Tandy with me in my Anders costume to buy a new bag of snaps and beg use of their tools to set it. It took like fifteen minutes of swearing, because snaps are assholes, but I did make some kid's morning ("IT'S A WIZARD!!!") so there's that.)

Snaps:

Bias tape, looking less awful once the O-rings are added:

Here is a picture that better demonstrates how the rings are attached:

You’ll need medium-length posts for the rivets holding the O-rings on.

There are also a couple tabs lower down that are purely decorative. Initially I was going to skip those, but the other story of this costume is me going, "Eh, good enough. .........NO, NOT GOOD ENOUGH, MUST BE PERFECT" so I added them later. I'm glad I did, because anything to break up that line of stupid bias tape is a plus:

And more random rings on the sides:

Technically those should be O-rings, not D-rings, but I have a gratuitous number of brass D-rings just kicking around, so I used them instead of buying more O-rings.

The rings you can buy from Tandy -- solid brass, they look and feel great. The top three are 1.5" interior diameter, the rings on the belt are 2".

**

And I think that's it. Happy Anders'ing!

(And the glamour shot)

[closedspeciesteahouse]

dude if you cant see the palette/design is way too similar to be a coincidence then youre the one whos smoking something. Not only is the same colors but they also copied the pattern and location but just kinda "inverted" it. Also I assume the watermark is from the artist so its not a desing from gremble

[abeautifulblog]

yo gremble, what is it about fenris that you like so much? I'm curious to hear about your thoughts on him (and very excited for your ofmd adventures and favorite side characters)

I mean, he's hot and smart and low-key really funny, what's not to like? :P But...

Fenris, for those of you who aren't familiar with Dragon Age 2, is a runaway elven slave who used to belong to a mage who tortured him with excruciating magical experiments (and is also implied to have raped him).

But what gets me is how hard Fenris tries, even when the odds seem impossible, how he doesn't stop trying.

No one saved Fenris. He ran away, and then ran away again when the first time didn't take, and since then has been fighting an exhausting, never-ending battle against the slavers that his former master won't stop sending to try to recapture him.

Fenris, as a character, is so angry, and he has every right to be. He has been singled out for so much abuse and so much cruelty, has been hounded and terrorized for as long as he can remember. He is angry, and bitter, but he is trying so hard not to drown in it. Not for some bullshit "forgive those who have wronged you" reasons, but because he recognizes that ultimately, he doesn't want to live like this. He doesn't want to be the person that that constant, unrelenting anger would turn him into.

He doesn't want revenge, he just wants them to leave him alone so he can start figuring out how to make a life for himself. He wants to be happy, and he has the self-awareness to recognize that he can't do that by holding onto his anger and bitterness. He wants to care about people, wants to be able to trust people again. Even though a mage!Hawke (and especially a male mage!Hawke) is everything he has every reason to hate and fear, he knows that's on him, not you. He makes himself give you a chance, never holds it against you what other mages have done.

And he's fucked up about what freedom and self-determination and intimacy mean, they are all concepts he is having to build for himself from scratch, but he is putting one foot in front of the other and trying, every damn day, to get better. For his own sake, because he recognizes that he deserves to have a life beyond what he suffered in the past.

So yeah, that's why I love Fenris. :)

[abeautifulblog]

Tiddies Wot I Have Dodged in TW3

Yennefer

Triss

Keira Metz

That Skelliger woman who vowed to marry the man who could defeat her in single combat

(Could have sworn there was another one-off in the main game??)

Syanna

Shani

And also that one time I clicked on the madame at the Passiflower and she immediately started lining up ladies for me, and I was like, “ER, AWKWARD—it's just that your map icon says you're a bartender, and I was wondering if you had any mandrake cordial?”

[abeautifulblog]

My contribution to the discourse.

[abeautifulblog]

If i may ask (for fanfic reason): Geralt has some down time and nothing to do and no plans to move away from a cabin for about 4 days in a row. he has access to a large washtub and standard repair kit. I thought it'd be like him to take the chance and clean/repair as much as possible, but i was gonna have him dunk the armor, which i think is a nono? if we are talking about armor such as netflix season 1 geralt or in general mostly-leather-armor, how would you suggest he go about cleaning it? TY!

(Don't know if you saw this post -- it touches on some of the issues with repairing Geralt's armor, but I can talk more specifically about cleaning it here.)

So the season 1 armor is *definitely a no-go* for soaking in water, never mind that the first time we see him in it he's fighting a kikimora completely underwater. The type of leather that's made with is chrome tan (aka garment leather), which makes it very anachronistic for a medieval-ish setting. I'm not entirely sure how it's constructed, but it looks like a padded gambeson made of thin garment leather, the same stuff you make modern motorcycle jackets out of:

Cleaning it involves:

Getting a damp cloth and wiping off whatever gunk is stuck to the surface (ideally before said gunk dries). If gunk is in the crevices, he can probably use one of Roach's brushes to work it out.

Laying it open to let it air out if it's gotten stinky from smoke/B.O./etc. (It may take a long time, weeks or more, to fully lose a particularly pungent scent.)

If it did get fully soaked, propping it up with some kind of frame so that it dries in roughly the shape of your body. Then, before you wear it, rubbing it down with some kind of oil/wax/cream (in a fantasy setting, probably neatsfoot oil) to soften it and keep it from cracking when it bends, and working the leather in your hands to make it supple again. Chrome-tanned leather getting fully soaked is a pain in the ass to recover from, it's not supposed to get wet, and it's going to be slightly stiff and uncomfortable for a long time thereafter.

And the same is true for most of the leather armor sets he wears in TW3 as well.

His season 2 armor is a completely different beast, because rather than being made of layers of thin leather sewn into a garment, it is plates of heavy veg-tan leather, wet-molded into shape and riveted together:

This is the majority of the kind of leatherworking I do -- I don't work with chrome tan or sewing (which is why I never made the season 1 armor), I make costume armor out of heavy veg-tan because that's the stuff that you can shape and do all the decorative tooling on, and part of the process does involve soaking it in water, because that's what makes it pliable.

And it is as historically-accurate as World of Warcraft.

When you've seen historical dudes wearing ab armor, it's been made of metal, not leather. Leather is padding, but it is not going to stop any stabbing weapons or projectiles, which is why IRL people have wound up favoring metal armor or mail when possible.

If season 2 Geralt got dumped in a lake, his veg-tan armor would immediately* soak up all the water and become a flabby, shapeless mess. He would have to manually redo the shaping as it dried, which would probably take 12+ hours.

(*slowed perhaps if the leather had been very thoroughly waxed, to impede absorption.)

In conclusion, regardless of the season or media, Geralt has no business going swimming in his armor as much as he does. :)

(gremble in geralt's armor, btw)

[abeautifulblog]

Is Gremble for gremlin?

It is not; it is from the following story:

So one time I was at a gay bar in Japan, making out with a hot Chinese dude who went by Ki. (Who turned out to be, like, 45 years old? And I was 21? But he didn't look it, so whatever.) And we were having a grand old time, until his boyfriend called and he had to go home.

(Ironically, he later broke up with that boyfriend for "talking to other guys on the internet." To which I was like -- lol, you goddamn hypocrite, you were making out with gaijin half your age in ni-choume.)

Anyway, so he calls me, months later, out of the blue, sounding -- no joke -- like the automated text reader from one of those old-school Macintoshes. After greetings are dispensed with (try to do his lines in the mechanical-text-reader voice):

Him: "So. Are still alone?"

Me: "Uhm. By 'alone,' do you mean 'single'?"

Him: "Yes."

Me: "Yes..."

Him: "Oh. Good."

Me: "That's not the word I would use for it."

After a few minutes of this, the awkwardness is reaching critical mass and I just want to get him the hell off the phone. So I say:

Me: "Well, it was great talking to you, but I gotta go now! I'll see you later, Ki."

Him: "I'll see you later--. .............."

And there's this catch, this hitch, this hella-awkward silence that he had so obviously meant to fill with my name.

Me: "...Did you forget my name?"

Him: "Nuh-uh."

Me: "..."

Him: "...........Gremble."

I think you'll find it's 'Gabriel.'

More to the point, How did you even call me? What am I in your phone as??

--

Years later I was back in the states and I related that story to my coworkers at Half-Price Books, and overnight that became my name at work. At one point the manager was like, "Why does everyone call you Gremble?" Me: "Uh." [glances at nearby customers] "I'll tell you later." And I never did get around to telling him, but my Halloween stocking at work still wound up reading "Gremble."

And that is the story of how I got my nickname.

--

"...wait a minute," my friend said. "I think the salient point of this story is: Halloween stocking??"

--

THE END.

[abeautifulblog]

gremble watches a hexer: episode 2

In which Geralt touches titties -- much to the chagrin of gremble, who was trying to watch this in the laundromat.

🤦‍♂️

tl;dr: Geralt goes through the latter stages of witcher training, and navigates a bunch of tedious witcher politics. He is the SPESHUL BOY whose peers all resent him for being so cool and special. 

Ultimately I think this episode was valuable for contextualizing Geralt and his ideology, and showing what it means to be a witcher -- and I think TWN would have benefited from doing that too -- but it was pretty slow and I’d recommend skipping it and starting with episode 3, where things do actually pick up.

*

Girls?? Whomst???

*

Geralt punches a dude in the face for disrespecting women, very good. 👍

...Except now that's the lead-in to witchers needing to be able to control their emotions, and Geralt manifestly having problems with that. Yes, good, establishing the pressures that shaped his personality, and subsequent interpersonal relationships.

*

Oh dear, naked chick. I feel like I should not be watching this part in the laundromat. I'll come back to this scene.

*

I skipped ahead, but now I lack context for the duel (?) that appears to be happening now, between Geralt and a... girl witcher?

They appear to be wielding shinai, and fighting with kendo moves. o_O

Man, she's even wearing kendo pants, what even.

What the hell is this. Some combination of bad choreography and cringey sexism. What is this supposed to prove, that Geralt is so superior that this girl isn't even a challenge?

*

I'm not sure I buy this characterization of Geralt as the one who ~challenges authority.~ The impression I've always gotten was that he was Vesemir's favorite, the teacher's pet, who followed the rules to his detriment.

They're also setting Geralt up to be uniquely insightful when it comes to how2witcher, vs an establishment that is hidebound to the point of being idiotic. It's a very Mercedes Lackey, YA sort of plot, and unnecessary within the larger context of Geralt's story.

*

lol were the witcher trainees supposed to be so cloistered that they literally don't know what women are??

I mean, I kinda support that idea, and it has occurred to me before—that boys who came to the keep young might have literally never seen a woman before.

And I know this is supposed to signal how SUPER MACHO AND MANLY THEY ARE, but I'm just snickering over gay that’s gonna be.

*

Yeah, this episode is kind of tedious because it's like ~oh no~! If Geralt doesn't shape up, they're not going to make him a witcher!! But like, uhm. There's no actual suspense in that.

*

Oh no, are they plotting for Geralt to meet with an “”ACCIDENT”” in training????

I hate to say it, but there's no suspense in that either.

*

Although I do like that as a punishment for witchers—being made to stand on a stump for twenty four hours—when their higher pain tolerance and enhanced healing make traditional corporal punishment kind of ineffectual.

*

Okay, I get that they have to flesh out his backstory, but the content they're inventing for this isn't... exactly... relevant to Geralt's future.

*

Oh, the other witcher trainees resent Geralt because he's so SPECIAL, and so much BETTER than them.

Yeah this is a Mercedes Lackey plot.

*

I can't tell these old men apart. ;_;

*

Oh god the heterosexuality.

*

I like how they really have characterized the witchers as practically an order of monks—entirely isolated in a culture that is very, very removed from the mainstream, with little understanding or contact with the outside world.

It does strike me as possibly a recipe for disaster to send witchers out into the real world without any idea of what’s out there though.

*

...it didn't make sense in context either.

(They said asexual, but I’m pretty sure they meant “sterile.” These translations are dubious sometimes.)

*

The chick is naked again and I am Uncomfortable.

GERALT IS NAKED TOO, AND VESEMIR IS NARRATING, I AM VERY UNCOMFORTABLE.

Oh god this is excruciatingly heteronormative, man + woman = sex, and sex = love, obvs.

(Or it could be a translation issue; they seem to be conflating “witchers can’t make babies” (true) = “witchers can’t love” (debatable) = “witchers can’t have sex” (demonstrably untrue))

Halp. He is touching tits and I am still in the laundromat. >_<

*

Oh no, two different old men who I thought were the same old man are now onscreen together. 😱

...I'm assuming that Vesemir is the one who didn't just die.

*

Is Eskel not in this version? Because Geralt is currently graduating alongside Gascaden and Clovis and no one else.

*

lol oh the fight choreography is so bad in this show.

*

Interesting that they have Geralt put to the Trial of the Sword in this one—as far as I know it doesn't get much play in any of the canons, but it is an optional final “trial” that the masters at Kaer Morhen can choose to invoke as basically a sanctioned execution. That this witcher candidate passed every other test, but for whatever reason, they do not want him released into the world. So the candidate is put in a duel that he is set up to fail, against an opponent that far outmatches him.

That they're doing this to Geralt for ~questioning the received wisdom~ is a bit much, feels like cheap drama. But the concept of the Trial of the Sword is rather fascinating, and we've avidly discussed it in groupchat before.

*

It makes for a bit of a slow start to have the story start with Geralt's birth and then progress through his childhood & youth chronologically, but I do really like what this version has done to show what it means to be a witcher. To be part of an order with that weight of history and tradition, to be raised to a single purpose. Even when there are internecine conflicts, everyone there believes in what they're doing, they believe that what they're doing is the right course for the order.

TWN Geralt is so entirely divorced of context—we have no idea what he was taught in his witcher training, what kind of ideology he was brought up to believe. When he acts, we don't know if he's acting in accordance with the rules he was taught, or in opposition to them.

*

Up next: Geralt sets out on the Path, and meets Humans!

[abeautifulblog]

Hey gremble - do you have any thoughts and feelings about heartstopper?

I've seen gifsets, it looks cute?

tbh though, gay media whose story is About Being Gay has never been my jam, and Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood aside, fiction set in middle-class suburbia tends to bore me to tears.

SF/F is my genre of choice -- I want my dudes to be having fantastical high-stakes adventures and getting their gay on. It's what drew me to both yaoi and fanfic when I discovered them in undergrad -- a massive treasure trove of stories where the queer romance was completely taken for granted. That it would be foregrounded, lavished with as much time and attention as any straight romance, but the story was allowed to do something else as well. It wasn't being forced to expend all its energy justifying the romance.

...which may or may not be relevant to Heartstopper. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As I said, I haven't watched it, I'm just gauging from what I've seen in gifs.

So I suppose my answer would be: it looks good for what it is, but what it is is not gremble's jam. This is not an objective judgment on the show or anyone who likes it, just that I know what I like, and high school romance ain't it.

[abeautifulblog]

Do you ever write female characters?

I mean... yeah?

*Gestures around at my works*

I don't often write romances involving women, because I am a man who is attracted almost exclusively to other men, but the majority of important relationships in my life have been friendships with women, and that's reflected in my writing.

If all you've read of mine is SOSH, where the framing is very tightly on the main pairing, to the exclusion of all else, then you might have gotten the wrong impression, but in basically... everything else I've written... male-female friendships are fundamental to the protagonist's emotional life.

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood started as a Robert-&-Mary fic, not a Robert/Gene fic; Geralt in For the Asking gets more dialogue with Yennefer than he does with anyone else in the story, even though Jaskier's the love interest.

Friendship is important to me -- it's important that romance isn't the be-all and end-all of relationships, and that it doesn't replace the need for friends. I think that's a message that could stand to be louder in modern media.

So yeah, even though I'm a queer dude who writes queer dudes, women are an integral part of that world, and I endeavor to give my female characters complexity and emotional weight and a life of their own, even if they're rarely my main characters.

(And I guess if y'all really want to see gremble write a female protagonist, I can toss the unfinished Dredd fic up on gdocs or something. Though I warn you, it stops on a cliffhanger. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

[abeautifulblog]

Do you have preferred pronouns?

he/him, thanks. 👍 I am a gay dude.

(gremble's face, iff'n you were curious)

[abeautifulblog]

gremble watches a witcher, ep 4

- Aw yiss, I now love Jaskier. His dynamic with Geralt is the good shit. 👌

- Going into this, I had no idea how much canon backed up the shipping or whether the slashfans were just mashing ken dolls together, but goddamn, Jaskier really could not have been more obvious with “maybe you’ll find someone who wants you,” could he. o_O

- (Or even if Jaskier was queer as a three-dollar bard, I was expecting hcav’s performance to actively undermine any attempts at shipping them -- but he doesn’t, actually. Deny it all you like, bb, you are inordinately fond of that bard, and literally everyone can tell.)

- Introducing Geralt “In my defense, I knew it was a bad idea even at the time” of Rivia

- Are we all just not talking about the guy named Mousesack?

- (And the fact that he’s a total fox? And one of the vanishingly few people that Geralt lets himself care about?)

- Man, Eist is such a legit dude. Calanthe is, ah, problematique, but that’s part of her charm.

- Ciri’s sections are still the part that drags. Should have cut some minutes from that and given Jaskier more comedy. (This show’s allocation of screen time is one of its consistent weaknesses so far.)

- I wanna cosplay Jaskier’s outfit from this episode o.o

- Did not realize Pavetta was a monsterfucker! I hope she’s cool with her monster turning into a handsome knight. =/

- My hand to god, I am not just being a slashfan when I say that I really, really think Yennefer needs a friend more than she needs a romance.

[abeautifulblog]

gremble on a date

me: Yeah, I’m not much of a gamer, I only play rpgs that will let me be gay.

dude: Oh! Then have you heard of that, uhm, that dating sim...

me: [waits for it]

dude: The one with the gay dads.

me: [like a normal person, and not like someone who has two years and 100k words sunk into an epic ddads fic] Yeah, I’ve played Dream Daddy. [then, casually] So who was your favorite dad? ...Be aware that there are six right answers and one wrong answer.

dude: The Satanist? Is he the wrong answer?

me: ...He’s not a Satanist, but yes.

[abeautifulblog]

gremble my dude real talk thank you so much for making mary such an integral part of A Beautiful Day. she's amazing and wonderful and 100% my favorite ddadds character, and it makes me happy beyond belief to see that someone else out there really Gets It. (tbh i keep half considering writing a pure id fixit of her taking control of her life and kicking josephs sociopathic ass to the curb, but reading her glee over fucking with him and seeing her bff happy tides me over (for now))

Yay!

Honestly, when I started writing thisfic, Gene was a non-entity and Robert&Mary was the relationship thatI cared about. Because—oh man. I'm a gay man, and most of theimportant relationships in my life are friendships with women, andyet friendship is still something that is staggeringlyunder-represented in fiction. (Friendship of any variety,because I think it would do equally as much good to show M-M/F-M/F-Ffriendships, but it always just seems to turn into... either romanceor nothing worth mentioning.)

And then Gene did develop into his owncharacter, of course, and I'm very fond of him now, but all thatmeans is that there's suddenly more going on in Robert's life, notthat Mary's portion of it means less.

So yeah, I've felt intermittentlyguilty for not living up to the Robert&Mary tag more, becauseit's not a coincidence that this fic is tagged as such, but it’s still something I’m going to keep up with (in fact, the next chapter has some good meaty Robert-and-Mary bits), and the final installment definitely keeps an eye on her future as well.

(Also: both of the devs have said that Mary is their favorite character, so you are in good company. ;D ;D)