Fabricated

(Source: saharaam)

Squee!!!

Never thought I’d be happy about grey carpet. But oh thank god the office green carpet is GONE!

liveactionroleplaying:

For every larp there is a different set of players, and with these players come their own styles, baggage, and mannerisms. The most common qualities have become our sub-culture stereotypes. They can range from good stereotypes to mostly harmless to game-breaking. These three stereotypes are a few of the most harmful to a well-functioning larp.

Check out the post here: http://www.larping.org/three-stereotypes-to-avoid/

While I’ve dealt with people from all 3 stereotypes, why the hell is “LARP Queen” written as only being female and only against other female players? Way to promote the “Beware of girls!” mentality. I have met plenty of males who fit that trope to a T. But instead of talking down other female players they do it to whomever they damn well please. Manipulating people for personal gain, regardless of your looks or gender, is a problem. It occurs just as much with one sex as the other. 

I swear. Everything I ever read on LARPing.org just ends up infuriating me. They seem to refuse to look past gender and social constructs and in turn reinforce false stereotypes.

So, this is what I walked away from the ren faire with. Needless to say, I’m pretty damn giddy about it.

And go figure, it fits perfectly! The only modification it needs is to replace the hook that’s about the fall off on the back and add one to the straps to turn it more halter-style. EEEEE! (Excited? Me? What?)

larpcouture:

Half the world is slowly marching towards summer; the other half is slowly sliding into winter. Every larper who doesn’t live in a desert probably needs their rain boots right about now!

The Wellington boot is the common ancestor of rubber rain boots in most of the world. The basic shape was made popular by the Duke of Wellington when he had a pair of Hessian boots altered around 1815. The Iron Duke was a military hero of the United Kingdom, and his style quickly spread amongst the wealthy young men of era (source).

The original Wellington boot was made of leather, but the industrial revolution was busy changing the face of Europe, and in 1850 this resulted in the rubber version of the boot. The leather version would see action in the American Civil War, while the rubbers would become a staple of trench warfare in World Wars I and II.

Nowadays they’re used in many parts of the world, in many contexts. Shown above is a clip from a gumboot dance, the modern child of a form of communication developed in South Africa by workers who were forbidden from speaking while working the mines (source). Think about that, when you’re crafting evil overlords for your adventurers to defeat, or when your characters are laboring under the rule of a tyrant- people have found ways to join together, in spite of terrible things. A boot that started as the fashion of foppish Englishmen became a symbol of oppression and freedom at the same time. Your characters will find their way to freedom- and in doing so, change the very meaning of things in your world.

Image Credit: Bootsa by Laura SA at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL, GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

“Every larper who doesn’t live in a desert probably needs their rain boots right about now!”

And then I remembered I live in a desert.