thetruearchmagos
Fan of Worldbuilding, The Archmagos
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hey worldbuilders!!
i stumbled across this document from the US air force about the history of ranks! it's called "Why is the Colonel called Kernal"
great read! my favorite lines from the booklet were
anyhow it talks about how rank names came about. i found it interesting! maybe you will too!
#Neat-o#I've the occasional deep dive on these sorts of etymologies a few times before#But haven't seen this source I think#I'll give it a read when I get the time
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When people get a little too gung-ho about-
wait. cancel post. gung-ho cannot be English. where did that phrase come from? China?
ok, yes. gōnghé, which is…an abbreviation for “industrial cooperative”? Like it was just a term for a worker-run organization? A specific U.S. marine stationed in China interpreted it as a motivational slogan about teamwork, and as a commander he got his whole battalion using it, and other U.S. marines found those guys so exhausting that it migrated into English slang with the meaning “overly enthusiastic”.
That’s…wild. What was I talking about?
#Ahh the ol' asshole CO fucking things up for everyone so badly it passes into living memory#Of all the stories involving the USMC I've seen this is absolutely one of the more reasonable ones
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Considering how common 'Mecha' and 'military mech' stuff is here on Tumblr, you might think I'd like it. But, to be honest, I can't stand that stuff.
Half of it's just my seething dislike for mechs as the prototypical military machine in so much of military fiction without any consideration for how much they suck, which rubs me entirely the wrong way. But there's also the fact that none of them care about actually using those mechs in a reasonable, rational military context. Sod all this analysis of the human condition shit, if you're gonna make a story with a military setting I'd expect you to give half a damn about making the Military side of it mean something!
#Nerd posting#Not a real tag but it could be#I don't mean to offend the writers in question and the fun they're surely having#But goddammit the whole trope and 'genre' grates me
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YALL. Holly Black has a list of resources she's used for writing her books on the fair folk. I'm OBSESSED. I love her work and world building. it's so true to the heart of faeries
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By the way, recently got Minecraft, it works, tried to get Forge working, after far too long it finally worked, then tried to run Distant Horizons and ReTerraforged, and both of them broke apart.
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Ada fucking Lovelace was the daughter of Lord fucking Byron!??!?!
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Executive Decisions
Two hundred miles west of the Soviet city of Orel, four participants of the apocalypse were making a habit of ignoring each other.
Other crews of nuclear-armed B-52 Stratofortresses had a brotherly camaraderie, a resolute sense of duty, or at the very least a morbid kind of cordiality. It was a natural consequence of holding Armageddon aloft day in, day out. On board this plane, however, the occupants appeared to have ignored most of that nature. Silence seemed to fester in the fuselage’s spartan shadows. Fulton, the pilot, had received the go-ahead to drop their precious cargo a scant fifteen minutes ago, and had not spoken to the others since.
The cargo itself sat behind the wall of the crew compartment, nestled securely in the bomb bay. The four men working in the crew compartment made a point of not looking at the wall. They had a job to do and orders to follow.
After a moment, a voice broke through the tinny crackling of the aircraft’s communications unit and the muffled whine of the Stratofortress's engines.
“Second attempt at hailing Travis is down. Vandenburg and Edwards aren’t responding. Spokane, Detroit and Seattle are FUBAR,” said Hayes, the electronics officer. His broad Californian accent slowed his vowels, a relic of the surfer culture he’d grown up in. Sweat inundated his wispy ginger moustache. He spun in his chair to face Carsen, the aircraft commander.
“Sir, what do we do? I can’t receive further instruct—”
“The orders were clear,” Gilroy, the navigator, drawled superciliously. “The Russkies got the drop on us. Sure. Now we,” he waved an arm in the direction of the bomb bay, “get the drop on them. Simple.”
Carsen raised an eyebrow at the thickset Texan, who simply glared back.
“We have no way of knowing if our target has been changed,” replied Carsen, enunciating his words slowly and carefully. “Therefore, we must proceed under our original objective.”
Gilroy nodded with a barely concealed grin and turned back to his console. Hayes looked slightly punch-drunk.
“But, sir, if we don’t have communications from base, surely we could—”
The young man hesitated over his words, his brown eyes flickering around the cabin.
“—we could, you know, withhold the payload—”
He was immediately cut off by an anguished curse from Gilroy, who had burst out of his seat and was now jabbing his fingers in Hayes’ face.
“You shut your goddamn trap right now, Gingersnap. Shut the fuck up. The commies nuked us. They hit American soil. Those are American corpses, burning in the streets.”
Carsen opened his mouth to intervene, cringing at the brutal imagery, but Gilroy held up a callused, exertion-reddened palm before continuing.
“The whole point of your job, Hayes, is to strike back. If Americans are gonna live under the shadow of a mushroom cloud, I’m gonna make sure every damn Russian on the planet sees the same thing.”
“We don’t have to—”
Gilroy sprang into action, grabbing Hayes by the shoulders and leaning in until their foreheads were almost touching. The Texan’s chest heaved. A red pallor, like the colour of raw beef, spread across his face. His eyes were bloodshot at the corners, and the whites were a putrid-looking pale yellow.
“You fucking traitor! You college-boy asshole! I was on the beaches in Cuba while you were still buttoning your—”
“Sergeant Gilroy, that is enough!” Carsen bellowed, grabbing him by the shoulder and wrenching him backward. “You are a member of the United States Air Force, and it would do you well to act like it. Now sit. Back. Down.”
He levelled a withering glance at Hayes.
“We did not come all this way to suddenly develop a conscience, Corporal Hayes. Our duty is to America, and our orders are clear.”
Sufficiently cowed, Hayes nodded hastily and turned back to his station.
There were a few more minutes of deafening silence. By now, the city of Orel was visible from the windows, peeking through scarce wisps of cloud under the late-afternoon sun.
“It looks like Oakland from up here,” said Hayes to nobody in particular, and Carsen felt a pang of guilt, as well as a deeper twist of shame. He looked through the window. Hayes was right; from the air it looked like any American city. High-rises, schools, a river winding its way through the urban sprawl like a deep blue string. A church of elegant redbrick stood on the embankment; a stone cross stood dozens of feet high in its courtyard, almost equalling the church’s own roof.
“Spare the bomb.”
The words felt foreign on his lips. Hayes turned towards him in shock.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“I said, spare the bomb. There will be more anguish in the world today, but I want no part of it. My duty is to America, but my pledge is to God, and I will not send Russians to heaven knowing I will be weighted down to hell.”
He looked around the compartment. Hayes was staring at him, awed. Gilroy was studiously inspecting his console, not daring to look either of the other men in the eye. Carsen felt liberated, in a way. It was an odd sensation to have during of the end of the world, refusing your duty for your conscience, but despite that—
“Drop zone reached. Releasing payload,” came the sibilant hiss of Fulton’s voice over the intercom. For a moment, nobody moved, spoke or thought. It was as if the bomb had gone off next to them and they were frozen, the first frame of a grisly slide.
The bay doors whooshed open behind them, filling the cramped space with the rushing sound of buffeted wind. Squinting through the window as the B-52 banked away from Orel, Carsen thought he could see a tiny silver glint in the air, descending to Earth.
#Was looking through what Tumblr had to show me for 'military fictIon' and I'm glad I did#This is a gem pure and simple#In its brief paragraphs holds so much of what makes mil fic the field it is#Stunning and
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before the poll, a quick definition of terms:
"mutual" - you found this post from a mutual (on their blog or your dash)
"following" - you found this post from someone you're following, but who isn't following you
"random" - you found this by scrolling through someone's blog, who you don't follow. this includes people following you
"For You" - you found this on the For You page
"recommended" - you found this in a "Check out these blogs" popup, or a "recommended" post when looking at a different post
"other" - you found this post some other way. comment how?
"reblog ✅" - you're going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post
"reblog ❌" - you're NOT going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post
with that out of the way:
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Congratulations! You are now a Magic-User!!
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WIP Questionnaire
Thank you kindly for the Tag, @theprissythumbelina !
1. What is the first part of your WIP that you created?
Well, the Setting, probably, which as an answer works for just about any of the WIPs I could name. In theory you could argue Gustav and the Magician, individually and as a 'set' of sorts, technically predate my coming up with the 12 Worlds, but the form they took then has only passing resemblance to their current incarnation.
2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?
Ooo, well, I've been thinking I'd probably see about getting something original made, or making something myself as a side thing. I mean, I kinda envision a lot of my WIPs as serial animations in my head anyhow, so I've put more thought into this question than reality is ever likely to require.
3. What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?
Well... You know how big this list could be. I love all of them, and at any moment which forces / allows me to dig deeper into any single one of them makes me love them even more. Still, my final choice is an obvious one: Gustav Johann Schmidt, who's been in it since the very start, and who's voice has by now almost become my own whenever he comments on some facet of his world in the same way I would.
4. What other pieces of media do you think your fan base would share?
Hmm, well, I've always thought this would go down two tracks. First of all being the classic 'Techno Thriller' crowd, the sorts who like tanks going boom and spies under deep cover: I'd go with things like The Hunt For Red October and Red Storm Rising, both being stalwarts of the genre which have absolutely been personally inspiring. The second track goes down the wider book / writing community, or at least those looking for 'genre fiction' and all that, who might discover the 12 Worlds more on its fantastical or worldbuilding grounds than for its techno thriller nature: I don't really 'understand' what I'd mean by this cohort myself as much, but I guess it could include series like ASOIAF, possibly.
5. What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?
Well... If we're speaking in the past tense, as far as things that have already happened go I'd put forwards "making sure the worldbuilding exists and isn't utterly contradictory", since there's too little writing down so far to count for a big struggle. Dates are hard, and measuring things on the order of decades to a century leaves me with a lot of uncomfortable dead space on one hand, and a bunch of events clustered together on the other. Untangling this has to happen before the writing does, to me, and it's gonna be hellish.
6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!
Uhh... Technically, Snake In The Sandbox (Gustav's third and least brought up WIP) features two animals! One's a snake which literally scares G's shirt off when he finds it in his tent, and the other's some sort of desert lizard the 18th Corps adopts as its mascot.
7. How do your characters get around? (Ex. Trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)
Oh, probably their respective combat vehicles more than anything, though long distance stuff gets done by plane / aeroship, and getting between Worlds means ships for everyone. Non military types might get their own car, or plane.
8. What part of your WIP are you working on right now?
Technically brought this up already, but the answer's worldbuilding. It's always worldbuilding. Though within that category, I'm technically supposed to be writing up a piece on the UC' policy towards Goilac / Nouvoulouis pre SSAW, but... I have been having a lazy weekend.
9. What aspects (tropes, maybe) of your WIP do you think will draw people in?
Big flashy boom booms and cunning military tactics, strategy, and leadership on the one hand for sure, but I'd like to think the depth, history, and life that exists within the 12 Worlds might have some appeal to readers.
10. What are your hopes for your WIP?
Published novel, or really a few considering how many there are already for the 12 Worlds. Then... Well, I think I've got a few ideas in me for the Setting yet.
Anyone fancy a boardgame?
And that's that! Tagging @athenswrites @hessdalen-globe @caxycreations @sanguine-arena @vyuntspakhkite-l-darling @thatndginger and anyone who'd like to take part!
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in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off
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Fun fact, the first chief and founder of Mi6 did the same thing!
#That knife trick that is#Captain Sir Manfield Cummings if I recall#(haha. Haha)#I guess there's not much else to with a wooden leg than to stab it
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It’s odd how Athena is Zeus’s favorite but she doesn’t seem to like him back, not only did she participate in Hera’s coup against him but even in the Iliad she was upset with him.
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I don't know if this was obvious to everyone else, but I just realised that one of the reasons why the Hobbit is so effective as a children's book is that while Bilbo is an adult, the skills that make him a hero are all those of a child.
By human standards he's child-sized, which makes him unobtrusive and light on his feet. He can slip by unnoticed where bigger people can't.
He's good at playing games, and even cheats (successfully!) in a way that - let's face it - is not so different to how children try to cheat at games. He's polite in a way that's fully comprehensible to children (rather than, say, being able to perform courtly manners). He's quick-witted, but the trick of keeping the trolls talking is also one that would be achievable for a child.
He doesn't have magic powers, he's not a great fighter, and he's not some kind of Chosen One. There's not much that he does that couldn't be done by a ten-year-old, but the story shows just how valuable all those skills and traits are. It's very empowering.
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midwest transmasc t4t couple
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Me: I hate gossip
Also me:
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