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featherbreak · 10 months

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Camilla Hect's sworddaggerknives: an exhaustingly comprehensive weapons inventory

(alternate title: "In Which Tamsyn Muir Tries to Kill Cosplayers with Imaginary Weapons", or "How to Consult a Swordfighter for the Fight Scenes but Not Give Nearly As Much of a Fuck About the Implements Used")

Written in hopes that this will either spare other Cam cosplayers some misery, or bring them to the commiseration station --

Gideon The Ninth - Canaan House Cam: In Which We Meet the Weapons Nerd of the Sixth

When we first encounter Camilla Hect, she's using a somewhat traditional sword + offhand combo against Gideon:

Gideon The Ninth, chapter 12, bold emphasis mine, italics canon -

She dropped the wedge of sculpture with a clonk, drew her sword from its shabby scabbard before the wedge had bounced once, and advanced. Gideon, neurons blaring, drew her own. She slid her hand into her ebon gauntlet—the grey-cloaked girl let the flashlight fall, drew a knife with a liquid whisper from a holder across one shoulder—and their blades met high above their heads as the cavalier leapt, metal on metal ringing all around the chamber. ... Blow after lightning blow rattled her defences, each one coming down like an industrial crush press, the short offhand knife targeting the guard of Gideon’s blade. ... her opponent dropped as though shot, crouched, kicked her dagger up into her hand, and did a handspring backward down the stairs.

Anime physics aside, we have also immediately established Tamsyn Muir's love of using "dagger" and "knife" interchangeably. The sword is described as a rapier a paragraph later, at least:

Gideon was stronger; the girl’s arm was buckling—she brought up her rapier to harass Gideon’s blocking arm ...

We get a closer look at it in the duel against the Second:

Gideon The Ninth, chapter 23, emphasis mine -

The rapier looked, like Gideon’s, maybe a million years old. It was the first time she had seen it in a good light, and here it looked as though it had never been designed to take an edge blow; the blade was light and delicate as a cobweb. The offhand looked like Camilla’s whole House had gone searching down the back of the sofa for weapons. They had come up with what looked more like a long hunting or hacking knife than a duelling dagger: thick, meaty, cross-guarded, with a single sharpened edge. The whole effect was sadly amateurish.

We quickly learn that she can still deliver a drubbing with this combo. However, it is not clear whether her offhand in this duel is the same knife as the one she fought Gideon with - which is described as a "short offhand knife" compared to the "long" knife against Marta - and we can call that into question more confidently once we learn that Cam is PACKING LOTS OF STEEL:

Gideon The Ninth, chapter 27, emphasis mine -

There was no question about whether or not Camilla inhabited the horrible cot attached to the end, cavalier-style. It sagged beneath assorted weapons and tins of metal polish.

Gideon, being a weapons nerd herself, calls Cam on her setup bluff partly by elaborating on Cam's pile o' pointies:

“So, hey. What do you really use when you’re not pretending the rapier’s your main wield? Two short blades of equal length, or one blade and one baton?” Her keen eyes narrowed into black-lined slits. “How did I mess up?” she asked, eventually. “You drew your rapier and your dagger at the same time. And you’re ambidextrous. You keep cutting like both your blades are curved. Also, there’s six swords and a nightstick on your bed.” “Should’ve tidied my mess,” admitted Camilla. “Two blades. Double-edged.”

Gideon refers to Cam's offhand in the duel with the Second as a dagger here, too, despite having previously observed that it looked more like a knife. She also refers to all the blades on Cam's bed as "swords", but it's clearly a mix of blade types. Gideon is only as consistent or reliable a narrator as Tamsyn is; her terminology is equally laissez-faire.

Cam, meanwhile, is not more specific when she describes her main wields: they're just "blades." We finally meet them when shit hits the fan later on, but they are confounding:

Gideon The Ninth, chapter 32, emphasis mine -

With only the faintest liquid whisper of metal on sheath, Camilla drew her swords. Gideon had never had the opportunity to study Camilla’s two short swords before: they were more like very long daggers, slightly curved at each end, wholly utilitarian.

So Gideon's observation that Cam cuts as if the blades are curved seems to hold water, but Cam specifically only identifies her blades as double-edged - which is much less common on curved blades longer than a few inches. In the same breath, they're implied to be shorter than short swords, but remarkable enough to call "very long" for daggers, which also means they're longer than the "knife" length in which having double edges is relatively common without making tradeoffs in durability/blade structure.

(This is where my brain broke.)

To add insult to injury, for the rest of the chapter, Tamsyn calls them knives:

Gideon The Ninth, chapter 36, emphasis mine -

She crashed into her from the side, her two knives flashing like signal lamps in the sunlit hall. ... Camilla Hect off the leash was like light moving across water. She punched her knives into the Lyctor’s guard over and over and over.

Well, mostly. That would be too easy. Here's the lone exception:

Camilla slumped next to her, swords crossed over her knees.

SWORDS AGAIN?

We also see Cam with a single knife. It's unclear if it's one of her main dual wields or another one she had stashed:

Camilla, as she’d seen from above, had caught up with Cytherea the First. She had one hand in the Lyctor’s singed curls, dragging her head back. The other hand pressed a knife against the smaller woman’s throat.

Whatever it is also is well-balanced enough to throw -

Her good arm was up behind her head, holding the blade of her knife. Gideon ducked. The knife whistled over the top of Gideon’s head in a flashing blur and buried itself in Cytherea’s upper back.

- which usually implies something shorter and less medieval dagger-y. Different knife? or more Anime Physics? We don't know.

In conclusion: Canaan House establishes Cam as Very Hot and Good At Pointy Objects. Who the fuck knows what they are, though.

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Harrow the Ninth - Random Planet Encounter Cam: Still Kickin'

At this point, Cam has been chugging along under the tender mercies of BoE, hauling her pulverised necro around, and comes face to face with a delightfully lobotomized Harrow. She's still dual wielding, although whether they're her Canaan House blades is doubtful, and they're described as knives all the way through:

Harrow The Ninth, chapter 32, emphasis mine -

... you were astonished by the speed with which Hect drew those big, balanced knives from each shoulder, and hurled herself at your skeleton like a stone from a sling. Her first sweep with the butt of a knife shattered the ribcage—it coalesced back; you now disdained skeletons not made of permanent ash. ... Camilla Hect sheathed her knives with as much speed and fury as she had unsheathed them, and she said: “No sudden moves.”

Still a badass, obviously. And "big" knives seems to imply they're still of a long-dagger/short-short-sword length as Gideon described. "Butt" instead of "hilt" or similar terminology seems to imply they're more pedestrian than daggers. What the hell does Harrow mean by calling them "balanced", though?

Who the fuck knows. That's all we get. Onward to:

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Nona the Ninth - New Rho Cam: More Badass & More Bonkers Than Ever

Cam is living her best worst best-given-the-circumstances guerrilla fighter rebel operative life. This means she's just...armed to the teeth all the goddamn time, and it's knives all the way down:

Nona The Ninth, chapter 2 -

... Camilla looked the person deep in their eyes and casually touched the hilt of the knife she kept down the waistband of her trousers, and then the person moved to the back of the queue.

Nona The Ninth, chapter 9 -

Camilla had been crouched down, wiping her knives on one of their jackets. ... Then she had equally normally set to putting her knives away – sticking them in the bands down her thighs, inside her trousers –

Nona The Ninth, chapter 12 -

Almost all of the knives Camilla had strapped to her got taken away, but not the very hidden knife, or at least the one hidden knife Nona knew about. There were probably more.

This could be because they're actually knives, or because Nona's vocabulary only goes so far, and her narration - backed by Tamsyn's established lackadaisical approach to pointy objects - is too simple for disambiguation.

To hint at this: when upon prepping for the final mission(s) of the book, Cam empties out the hidden armory, and Nona goes so far as to compare two of her blades to kitchen or filleting knives:

Nona The Ninth, chapter 22, emphasis mine -

Pash said, “Your people... that obsession with swords.” “We are our swords,” said Camilla. She shrugged on a criss-cross halter of black plastic straps and clipped it tight across the front of her chest, and then she opened a box and took out two long, plain knives, the type of thing they used to chop up fish at the market. All of Cam’s secret knife stash, Nona thought, numb with anticipation.

Cam seems to only say "swords" to mirror Pash philosophically, not to describe her weapons, but it's worth noting.

A detail that is mentioned once and then never brought up again, though, is that she's carrying at least four blades into the fight. Earlier in that chapter:

Camilla flipped open boxes and took out a belt, which she tied around her waist, and she secured a hook to the side of the belt. To this hook she reverently attached a long plain black scabbard, then a shorter plain black scabbard, and she tested the hilts in her hands.

So: two unseen blades of possibly different lengths - described only by the hilts, but stored in scabbards of two different lengths - in addition to "two long, plain knives" that are presumably stashed in the shoulder? back? chest? "criss-cross halter" holster situation. Or something.

Say it with me: WHO THE ACTUAL FUCK KNOWS.

Nona The Ninth, chapter 23, emphasis mine -

Just for shits and giggles, Tamsyn throws in the only use of "daggers" to describe Cam's weapons in the whole goddamn book right before the final duel with Ianthe:

The two uniformed soldier zombies knelt Camilla, roughly. They squeezed her wrists until, with an agonised hiss of breath, she dropped her daggers. They clattered softly on the carpet.

Her main dual wields of choice, this time, seem to be single-edged, likely the "fish knife" pair:

She mopped a little at her chest... she was bleeding freely and messily... and she picked up, from where they had fallen, her two long, plain, one-sided knives.

Even Ianthe agrees that they're knives:

“I didn’t mean to take anything to this planet I couldn’t replace,” said the Prince. “I shouldn’t have bothered. Why two knives?” “Shock and awe,” said Camilla.

And then Paul happens and my heart broke forever that brings us to the end of Camilla Hect As We Knew Her x Bladed Weapons OTP For Life is too short and love is too long.

So what's our takeaway on accurately portraying Camilla Hect, you might ask?

tl;dr: use whatever the fuck you want. go loud, Cams.

do not be like me and spend a cumulative 15-20 hours spread out over three weeks debating how to accurately portray her weapon shape because fanart seems to mostly depict her with daggers.

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as for me? I've finally gone with utilitarian but elegant hunting daggers (long, cross-guarded, single-edged, curved at the end) for Canaan House Cam and a scrappy pair of Bowie knives for New Rho Cam, after polling a bunch of Cam fans; votes were overwhelmingly in favor of curved blades being more important than double edges. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN.

with the utmost thanks and apologies to the patient & best beloved folks in the Library for responding to my Cam poll, and for emphasizing & reassuring me that cosplaying On Vibes is kosher and encouraged in this fandom

#double-edged blades that curve at the end and are longer than a dagger but shorter than a short sword? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE my head hurts #tazmuir's Final Fantasy fandom pedigree is REALLY SHOWING HERE #raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by tamsyn muir's approach to weapons #listen i know that any kind of realism is kind of besides the point in this damn series but could we get some CONSISTENCY #also who's going to write Cam using the nightstick?#insert magic stick joke here please and thank you #camilla hect #tlt cosplay #tlt meta #tlt canon analysis #the locked tomb #sixth house #the sixth house #camilla the sixth #the locked tomb meta #cosplay reference #the locked tomb cosplay #tlt cosplay reference #featherbreak rambles

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bones-n-bookles · 5 months

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When people show interest in my adhd rambling >>>>>>

#friend at work praising the dogs in Torch's pedigree after i showed him what ive been up to #i had a friend who complimented the coyotes i showed her #rip to that friendship she also wanted a laika from me someday #one of the first times i hung out with babe consisted of me rambling about laika while they encouraged me and asked questions #my brother was asking me about how laika hunt the last time we called #IT JUST MAKES ME SO HAPPY #idle rambling

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galaxythedragonshifter · 25 days

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I'm trying to get Thunder (Herobrine's horse) in Rival Stars horse racing and I'm in PAIN

I can't breed the right horse for the life of me-

#galaxy rambles #i have one horse that has all the markings I want #and a LOT of greys/blacks/whites in the pedigree #but I cant find a single grey to breed S'mores with to get a decent canon design for Thunder-#UGGGG #rival stars horse racing #herobrine #minecraft herobrine

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gar-a-ash · 1 month

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Thinking about working dogs and drive and how Reese was an insane high drive mess that was constantly on 24/7 and had super flashy obedience because he was that desperate for the YES and GOOD BOY that he would practically have a meltdown if he wasn't worked every waking moment vs Tassie who is probably the second chillest dog I have ever owned and only needs to be worked a couple hours a week but is otherwise content with frequent frisbee sessions and has equally flashy obedience with much less effort and is always ready to go at a word or motion but is also ready to settle down on command as well.

Just remembering that training Reese was always a battle where with Tassie it's an ebb and flow and we get the same results in such a shorter amount of time and she'd be considered a more medium drive dog. Also remembering reading a paper that linked drive to anxiety and thinking that high drive might not be in the dog's best interest if you can get the same results with lower drive.

Also thinking about all these training facilities and breeders hyping up the craziest dogs they own and constantly pushing for more and more insanity for the sake of... what?

#inspired by a trainer i did learn a lot from his videos #selling off tassies cousin because he wasnt crazy enough in favor of a more hyper dog #and the frequent video updates of the trainer shifting to his dog failing the same trials repeatedly instead of succeeding #all while going over pedigrees and explaining why he selects for crazy dogs #he hasnt been posting a lot recently since his dog failed the most recent trial #but i did go back and watch some of his older videos and there is a distinct shift #and believe me i used to be on team crazy drive #up until i was introduced to tassie and realized that the flashiness i wanted didnt have to come at the price of my peace and wellbeing #anyways just rambling

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mostly-tame · 5 months

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Aaaaaaaand that's all I've got on Dinah's pedigree!! :3c

#v pleased #tis now time for Torch to get dinner and a walk #idle rambling #i CAN technically go further back #this is going 5 gens back on dinah and i can go 10 gens back before i get any holes in her pedigree #but i wanna cover his other grandparents first lol #i dont have much on either grandfather unfortunately but may try to fix that talking to some people #i do have similar info on his other grandma tho >:]#aNYWAYS #walking and feeding Torch time

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jamestaylorswift · 9 months

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ibytam is superb in every way and we should talk about it more

#the girl in your bed has a fine pedigree!!#upper-crust circles!!#the book that just saved them that I hadn’t heard of!!#silver-spoon gated community!!#mr. superior thinking!!#I don’t have to be your shrink to know that you’ll never be happy!!#the love that you’re looking for was the love that you had!!#scared not to be hip scared to get old!!#your cool indie music concerts every week!!#your house with your organic shoes and your million dollar couch!!#oh my god she’s insane she wrote a song about me!!#I bet you think about me!!!!!!!!!!!!!#rambles

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phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing · 1 year

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Writing for me is basically a mix of “oh I want to talk about this”, “oh SOMEONE needs to talk about this”, and “here’s how I’m going to attempt breeding feelings in others that coincide with mine to make more friends”

#gotta be careful of pedigree so you don’t accidentally introduce unwanted implications into your idea #phoebe rambles

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blueskyheadleft010 · 1 year

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I got a doggie last month :)

He is also bigger than he is genetically supposed to be and enjoys trying to eat things he’s not supposed to.

It’s ok tho, he’s still a puppy and is learning.

I am still constantly baffled why he looks nothing like his siblings.

#sky rambles #I got a puppy #well actually #he’s a rescue #and very affectionate #but also a menace lol #he hates being alone #and also is allergic to chicken #which we discovered the hard way #:P #his siblings all have short hair and are smaller than him #he has long hair and is massive for his pedigree

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malusienki · 18 days

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i found the most mecore ass post on instagram today

(source)

#pedigree is a bit of an iffy dog food brand but that aside #THIS SOUNDS SO SILLY. oh man imagine #yeah ok i’ll tag it as ->#dog rambles

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softgrungeprophet · 18 days

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might fuck around and draw the boys with some catsonas later

#just regular domestic cats obviously not Pedigreed but kaine's cat equivalent probably has a sprinkle of maine coon #you know just to be massive #black cat for peter and ben imo — i mean i guess ben's cat should be orange but it's not like he's a NATURAL blonde lmao #maybe i'll make it an orange tabby anyway #peter's cat probably a secret black tabby that's only visible in sunlight #kaine's is a torbie for obvious reasons #nadia rambles #why black cat for peter? 1) he has very dark hair in silver age and in my AU 2) black cat bad luck 3) felicia would think it's funny #...omg i forgot about felicia's cats again #she HAS CATS #not these cats but she has like six cats #i should draw felicia and her cats too

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wachi-delectrico · 1 month

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Debería seguir mis sueños (hacer un emprendimiento de galletitas para perros)

#no sé por qué pero siempre tuve la idea de hacer eso especificamente #en vez de darles premios de Pedigree (formulados por expertos en nutrición canina y con estrictos controles de calidad)#dales premios de Un Chabón En Internet (formulado por Un Chabón En Internet)#rambling #español

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bambirosedoll · 5 months

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Wut doez it mean?

It means bambi is a troll of the 1st order 💖

#pedigree #random ramblings

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cat-identifier · 10 months

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OH MY GOD FINALLY SOMEONE HAS A CHANCE OF DESCRIBING WHATEVER THE FUCK MY DEAR LILY HAS GOING ON

I love her so much and she is so weirdly and beautifully coloured??

(We adopted her from a local humane society; they had her breed listed as "Snowshoe" but we doubt that; she seems much more Ragdoll is anything.)

I have no damn clue where to even begin to describe her colouring or coat pattern, so, uh... help?

Phenotype: black tortoiseshell colorpoint longhair with <50% white

Just your normal tortie point! The color is more faded on her back because it's warmer there than her face, paws, and tail.

Breed: Likely random-bred

I've gone on rambles about this before but the gist of it is that if you don't know your cat's pedigree it's probably not a specific breed. And that's ok, because all cats are awesome!

Interesting Features: colorful and stunning ✨️

Truly an excellent cat!

#doing these out of order because it's easier on my ADHD haha #cat id #asks answered

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vague-humanoid · 1 month

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To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”

“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tan—the current Y Combinator CEO who’s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco—participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting “die slow motherfuckers” at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in “moderate” politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”

@karpad @quasi-normalcy @ubernegro

#cool and normal

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teasodium · 6 months

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Specific species Usagi!!

that i completely forgot to post here oops

had too many thoughts about different types of rabbits affecting character design and did too much research! like; what of gigantic Usagi!! what of absolute fluffball Usagi!!! SO i went down a rabbit rabbit hole hohoh

most devastating bit of knowledge i kept coming across though was recomendations for pet owners to get 2 or more rabbits cause they are social creatures and are happiest when living in pairs...

if you want more ramblings theres more sourced research on these 4 breeds below-

Belgian hare is an actual rabbit species! wild how names are like that. They're known as a 'fancy' breed cause they were purposely bred to look like a hare- not through crossbreeding rabbits n hares though. Unfortunately because of this pedigree-ness they're not the most... sturdy and hate humidity or heat. They're essentially made to look rugged and wild but are very much showponies but their speed is nothing to be sniffed at. Poor fellas are nervous lil guys but surprisingly intelligent and can be trained to walk on leashes. Very inch-a-resting to think about for Usagi if one wanted to show I suppose the side of him being the son of the village magistrate when growing up?

Little... little lionhead. Compact! Little bodies!! But big ears!!! Another Belgian origin that is believed to be a cross between Netherland Dwarf and Swiss Fox rabbits. So small they be, so much so to be considered a toy breed. They can have two types of manes: single mane (short, less bushy, gets outgrown) or double mane (vEry bushy n big, stays forever). Very very affectionate and high maintenance because of hair. Also quite smart and can be trained like the Belgian hare. The lionhead getting trained/raised by a lion... need I say more.

BIG! The Continental Giant rabbit (aka Conti) do be big. Very docile in nature and smart and bIG!! Apparently they can develop dog-like behaviour if handled as a baby. Prone to spinal injuries though because of BIG :( . Prone to wander with 'low activity levels.' They curious, they nooosy. Contis also are the rabbits with biggest ears!!! Unlike their cousins the Flemish Giant, Contis have more of a thick, dense fur that needs more careful grooming. Nothing of note to add to compare to Usagi lore other than it would be funny if he was huge sdfbkb-

Another big one but not as big but the English Lop Rabbit! Very pretty!! Loose ears that dangle with male ones being longer than female. Alas, fancy ears means its harder for them to be very active so they're easy going by nature. Also has the longest ears!!! This one I see less as Usagi cause of how active he be but, at the same time, it could lean hard into his nickname of 'longears' and make it more impressive how as a ronin his ears stay long. The breed's characterised as being so calm n curious that it is regarded as the 'god of the rabbit world.' Good for them.

Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

#my art #tibsart #miyamoto usagi #digital art #queer artist #rabbit #samurai rabbit #there are so many rabbit breeds my lord #i might go into more but who knows #this was done an age ago i just brain farted #character design #usagi yojimbo #rabbit hole #infodump

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