Steel Accord

You can still ask, it is Christmas. That time when people try to spring for something meaningful to the other person. Even if it's normally something they wouldn't do for (understandable) practical reasons.

In terms of a physical item, weird to say but I think I’d like a pair of nunchaku. I find myself pantomiming the moves for them all the time despite never having held any. Just item number two on my list of Kung Fu weapons after my staff.

Many places, I'm naturally an idealist and optimistic . . . I think, family have called me a cynic in the past so maybe I don't quite have a good read on my own thoughts as conveyed by my actions. To name one source of hope though, I find a lot of hope in history. As much as I try not to judge people and the modern world, as it would go against the very thing I'm about to say is wrong with it (how paradoxical) there is an ill I find very common among those I take the most serious issue with. That being an unawareness or inability to empathize with history, even as recent as a decade prior to one's birth. The most egregious example of this was also the genesis of my ire with this phenomenon. In high school one of my peers asked, with total unknowing seriousness "did they have sex back then?" No joke. That didn't just end with him though, the same idea followed me. All the time I hear and read people complaining and despairing about the state of the world, how bad it is, how things are going to end soon. Acting as if those very same complaints have not been made by people just like them for literally thousands of years yet we're still here trucking along. Actually doing better than our ancestors. When, if you do know history, you can compare it to your present. In which case the present ALWAYS comes up better than the past! The Dark Ages, the Black Death, the Antebellum South, the Reign of Terror, the crimes of Qin Shi Huang, Caligula, and others. To which the obvious (and many times repeated to me) criticism is to point to any headline and say how bad things are now. My point being that things aren't any worse than they've ever been and that the problems we predict likely won't be the problems our descendants face because history almost never plays out like how people living in it think it's going to go. Just to use one example, the Soviet Union. Prior and during the Cold War, even if the conflict didn't escalate to the end of the world, the only time where I agree it was a serious possibility, people were certain that they'd be staring down the barrel of a constant Soviet threat. Then it totally collapsed. Cold War won and the looser lost so badly they fractured into successor states. Likewise in the 80's there was a huge boom of Japanaphobia because of their rising economy and co-opting of Western businesses. Thinking was that Japan would boom and economically bankrupt the rest of the world. Seems pretty silly now in hindsight doesn't it? By the way, this is all coming from a millennial. 90's kid. I was alive for none of what I'm describing so I'm not being swayed by nostalgia or having personally survived trying times. That's the thing with history and where I find hope though. If you read into it as living, understanding that these were events that people just like you lived through, you begin to live not just outside of yourself, but even the scale of your own lifetime. That people came before you and will come after you. Any problems that you or even others have now are thrown into sharp relief, it becomes easier to discern what's a true problem and what are the same problems that people have always had. Soapbox prophets, doomsayers, experts, scholars, people have been predicting the end of the world since it began and they've always been wrong. The only time I took such a prediction seriously is when it confessed that we won't know when the world will end. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah." ~Matthew 24:35-37 That's where I find hope. Faith validated by the evidence of history. It's impossible to know what will come in my own life or beyond it. What's wrong with the world and what's right with it have both always been there and will continue to be there. While humanity as a whole has been on a steady incline since united Egypt, China, and Rome. Why do I believe that pattern will persist when others haven't? Easier to believe a trend with setbacks still on going on for thousands of years.

I'm looking for someone to play Thor and his extended cast in a crossover with another Marvel superhero, the Immortal Iron Fist. The overall plot idea is there's a fighting tournament of various realms but up to this point Asgard has never been invited. So being Asgard, they storm in (almost literally) and demand participation. So Iron Fist and Thor fight the other's respective supporting characters and eventually each other. In Thor's case, Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg, and Lady Sif. Meanwhile Loki is conspiring with another villain to claim the tournament's ultimate prize, control of all the realms competing in it. So Thor and Iron Fist team up to stop the bad guys. It should be noted that this is meant to be the comics, not the MCU. If you know only the movie's that's not a problem because the character's are largely the same in both versions. Just the tone and certain plot elements are a little different. Biggest of all, in the comics, Thor and the other's status as the genuine figures of myth isn't in question. And if you don't know anything about Iron Fist and his mythos, good. Makes the surprise and clash more authentic.

Been really diving into Jedi: Fallen Order. God it’s been too long since I’ve got to really escape into that fantasy of being a Jedi. What’s more is, even though you don’t have as much choice in terms of Jedi or Sith or even what gender and species you play, I think that’s to the game’s strength. Maybe it’s just me. I’ve grown so sick of the anti-organizational, gray-Jedi, moral equivalency bullshit of the community. Cal is a Jedi, no bones about it, who trusts in the Force and resists the Dark Side, and he wants to restore the Jedi Order. I don’t need as much choice in this game because he’s already doing everything I would want to do. Beyond that, the lightsaber combat is just everything I’ve always wanted out of a SW game. Balancing the right amount of challenge that it’s not too easy but making you feel powerful by overcoming the numbers and harder bosses.

Is that game why you’d want to own those specific weapons?

In a reaction to my old post, definitely a conservative. Small government, free market, patriotic, personally of faith, there’s nothing new under the sun, etc.

I’d go even more old school with a single action revolver. “Six bullets, more than enough to kill anything that moves.” Well certainly you can talk about the subject all you want right? And please see that thread if you’re feeling that lost.

It’s considered a rare collectors item. Used by a number of forces outside the U.S. and U.K. spheres, including both Germans and Russians. It has the rep of a bad guy weapon. Like a sidearm version of the AK family. It was also the basis for Han Solo’s blaster, again, the weapon’s normal association with bad guys further emphasizing his anti-hero status.

Winchester or Henry lever-action rifle. What can I say? I’m old school.

Not really a gun. And launching a nuclear weapon is actually a complicated multi step process.