Hey! Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help!
Blacksmithing is one of those things that a lot of people get wrong because they don't realize it stuck around past the advent of the assembly line. Here's a list of some common misconceptions I see and what to do instead!
Not all blacksmiths are gigantic terrifying muscly guys with beards and deep voices. I am 5'8, skinny as a twig, have the muscle mass of wet bread, and exist on Tumblr. Anybody who is strong enough to pick up a hammer and understands fire safety can be a blacksmith.
You can make more than just swords with blacksmithing. Though swords are undeniably practical, they're not the only things that can be made. I've made candle holders, wall hooks, kebab skewers, fire pokers, and more. Look up things other people have made, it's really amazing what can be done.
"Red-hot" is actually not that hot by blacksmith terms. when heated up, the metal goes from black, to red, to orange, to yellow, to white. (for temperature reference, I got a second degree burn from picking up a piece of metal on black heat) The ideal color to work with the metal is yellow. White is not ideal at all, because the metal starts sparking and gets all weird and lumpy when it cools. (At no point in this process does the metal get even close to melting. It gets soft enough to work with, but I have never once seen metal become a liquid.)
Blacksmithing takes fucking forever. Not even taking into account starting the forge, selecting and preparing metal, etc. etc. it takes me around an hour to make one (1) fancy skewer. The metals blacksmiths work with heat up and cool down incredibly fast. When the forge is going good, it only takes like 20 seconds to get your metal hot enough to work with, but it takes about the same time for it to cool down, sometimes even less.
As long as you are careful, it is actually stupidly easy to not get hurt while blacksmithing. When I picked up this hobby I was like "okay, cool! I'm gonna make stuff, and I'm gonna end up in the hospital at some point!" Thus far, the latter has yet to occur. I've been doing this for nearly a year. I have earned myself a new scar from the aforementioned second degree burn, and one singe mark on my jeans. I don't even wear gloves half the time. Literally just eye protection, common sense, and fast reflexes and you'll probably be fine. (Accidents still happen of course, but I have found adequate safety weirdly easy to achieve with this hobby)
A forge is not a fire. The forge is the thing blacksmiths put their metal in to heat it up. It starts as a small fire, usually with newspaper or something else that's relatively small and burns easily, which we then put in the forge itself, which is sort of a fireplace-esque thing (there's a lot of different types of forge, look into it and try to figure out what sort of forge would make the most sense for the context you're writing about) and we cover it with coal, which then catches fire and heats up. The forge gets really hot, and sometimes really bright. Sometimes when I stare at the forge for too long it's like staring into the sun. The forge is also not a waterfall of lava, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.
Welding and blacksmithing are not the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand, but you cannot connected two pieces of metal with traditional blacksmithing alone. There is something called forge welding, where you heat your metal, sprinkle borax (or the in-universe equivalent) on it to prevent the metal from oxidizing/being non-weldable, and hammer the pieces together very quickly. Forge welding also sends sparks flying everywhere, and if you're working in a small space with other blacksmiths, you usually want to announce that you're welding before you do, so that everyone in a five-foot radius can get out of that five-foot radius. You also cannot just stuck some random pebbles into the forge and get a decent piece of metal that you can actually make something with, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.
Anvils are really fucking heavy. Nothing else to add here.
Making jewelry is not a blacksmithing thing unless you want jewelry made of steel. And it will be very ugly if you try. Blacksmithing wasn't invented to make small things.
If there's anything here I didn't mention, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.
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yes, doctors suck, but also "the medical ethics and patient interaction training doctors receive reinforces ableism" and "the hyper competitive medical school application process roots out the poor, the disabled, and those who would diversify the field" and "anti-establishment sentiment gets applications rejected and promotions requests denied, weeding out the doctors on our side" and "the gruesome nature of the job and the complete lack of mental health support for medical practitioners breeds apathy towards patients" and "insurance companies often define treatment solely on a cost-analysis basis" and "doctors take on such overwhelming student loan debt they have no choice but to pursue high paying jobs at the expense of their morals" are all also true
none of this absolves doctors of the truly horrendous things they say and do to patients, but it's important to acknowledge that rather than every doctor being coincidentally a bad person, there is something specific about this field and career path that gives rise to such high prevalence of ableist attitudes
and I WILL elaborate happily
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the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
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the absolute audacity of these kids in this episode alone is insane like annabeth just casually pickpocketing hermes, the god of thieves, and percy immediately rear ending said god’s fucking car into multiple concrete walls oh my god i love these terrors
and then grover was just happy to be there
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the amount of trans people i see who are scared to identify as straight is mind boggling. like people who will explicitly say that they are scared to identify as straight. i can only amount it to the growing preceived divide between being straight and being queer, where people arent learning that you CAN be both if youre trans. and ive experienced a lot of hostility just for being an opinionated straight trans guy on this app. like i dont care if you dont think this is a "real problem," i do. i think queer people should be free to feel comfortable in their identity, and if that identity is het-leaning, heterosapphic, het-dyke, hetgay, queerhet, transhet, or literally just straight and heterosexual, they should be free to
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the "all customer service people are trained by management to be illiterate apes you can never get any resolutions by design dont be mean about it" crowd would faint to know there is a guy at my bank RIGHT NOW attempting to resolve an issue that would normally take a week
see. i tried to order food (having nothing of note in the house, and too much pain currently to get down 3 flights of stairs about it) and the payment failed on just eat's end.
but it went through fine on my bank's end, so the funds are tied up in "pending"... for a week. my available balance is now 95p so i can't just do it again
the bank cannot typically do anything about this until the normal time frame for collection passes and they funds just release automatically. just eat have zero contactable customer service
but it is for FOOD and there's no more MONEY and i am a DISABLED CUSTOMER so BY FUCKING GOD not on zeeshan's watch
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i hate that bad backs aren't viewed as a disability. i hate that "Every back is a bad back" mentality. i hate minimizing back pain by encouraging people to "just take a tylenol". i hate that people who throw out their backs regularly are told to "just sleep it off" or even worse "just exercise, it loosens things up." i hate when people say "my mom has a bad back and she just powers through it."
let people with bad backs be disabled and talk about how much pain we are in, and how much of a disability living with a weak, broken, eroded, degenerative, or paralyzed spine is. let us talk about the horrors and dangers of spinal surgeries. listen to us when we talk about the limited options for pain management and how it is an absolute nightmare to get treated for back pain and receive medication that actually works.
having a bad back is a disability. being in back pain all the time is not trivial. having back pain so bad you can't sit or stand is serious. feeling shooting pain into your legs is a big deal. feeling like no matter how much you stretch or take medicine your back never seems to feel better is a genuine medical issue. listen to disabled people and stop dismissing our pain.
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