aCrawlingChaos @a-crawling-chaos - Tumblr Blog

SLOOPIS🗣🗣🗣

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years. These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing. They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it. It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face. Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing. And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc. NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres. What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female. I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one. They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO. If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone. Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered. I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all. I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole. That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three. And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming. People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries. And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart. This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)

armoredsuperheavy

In 2018 I developed a method to bind fanfiction into hardback books. Like penwiper, I was also literally working in my kitchen by myself and trying things out. This solo work was a meditative experience that allowed me to think deeply about the implications of what I was creating and what my ethics and philosophy should be. I got around to the idea that the knowledge I was building should be spread far and wide, so that together, many of us fans could bind all the wonderful fics that made our lives better in a million tiny ways, and wherever possible, create a copy to give to the authors themselves. In 2019 I wrote How to Make a Book From An AO3 Page, a free manual for how to format and bind fanfic, as a gift to fandom as a whole. It took off during the 2020 lockdown and has been going strong ever since.

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

ArmoredSuperHeavy, March 2026

zakutari

wobble gif for her

txttletale

its so fucking funny that nuclear waste is such a contentious topic. like yeah those damn nuclear advocates need to figure out somewhere reasonable to put that nuclear waste. for now we will be sticking with coal power because it puts its waste products safe and sound In Our Lungs, where they cannot hurt anybody,

mc-cookies

coal byproducts also give people cancer en masse is the thing though. coal smoke is a carcinogen that contributes to lung cancer, and ash and other waste products can also contain significant amounts of uranium and thorium, so coal as a power source can totally expose people to ionizing radiation as well.

mangonetics

The thing is that for every hazard of nuclear waste, pretty much the worst case scenario is that it might do something that coal power is already doing. You could aerosolize nuclear waste and just spray it out of a chimney and it would have less environmental and health impacts than coal because you’d only be spraying like a gram of it for every billion tons of coal smoke for the same amount of power.

afriendofblahaj

Im already pretty vocal about my advocation and belief in nuclear power and I have been for years, but I saw something a few weeks ago that just

It so perfectly sums up everything that’s wrong, but also it’s incredibly horrifying

So, basically, someone not very involved in nuclear science but still discussing it posed the question “could we retrofit coal power plants to be nuclear power plants?”. And on the face, this is a fairly good idea actually. Coal and nuclear power both generate electricity the same way (heated water turns to steam which turns a turbine) so you would only need to do some modifications, making new nuclear reactors much cheaper, and killing coal plants.

Well, someone actually involved in the nuclear industry (I think they were a researcher but I might be misremmebering) responded to the question with (paraphrased from memory)

“that’s something many of us have proposed in the past, and unfortunately we can’t do that, because coal plants currently have much higher radiation levels than the EPA allowed a nuclear plant to be operated at. And cleaning up the site would cost more than just building a new plant in an uncontaminated site.”

It’s fucking wild

Not only is coal so much more dangerous in so many other ways, but the very thing people worry about with nuclear power is higher because coal isn’t regulated at all.

yesiscandyskiller

Can't stop thinking that if Jax transitioned inside the circus, she'd be Regina George 2.0 🩵🤍🩷

🟢 Commissions Open!!

sandersstudies

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

wifegideonnav

the emotion i just experienced is kind of indescribable

wifegideonnav

the funniest part of this post to me is that the reblog:like ratio is nearly 1:1. nobody’s just liking everyone who sees this video goes yeah i gotta inflict it on as many people as possible

bardically-uninspired

i don’t like the way my clothes fit and i don’t like the way i sound when silence comes

pterribledinosaurdrawings

how it feels to message a friend who's having Problems that you can't do anything to help with.

thegreatgoatby

some more jax abstraction hair expressions

buttered-milky

Stratt’s “villain monologue” in the book explaining what she is about to do to Grace before sending up into space just rends me. In a metatextual context, the monologue is there so we, the readers, understand exactly how and why Grace woke up in space with no recent memories to explain this. In the context of the character’s experiences, however, I see it as Stratt giving one last act of compassion to Grace. She didn’t need to meet him in his cell to explain the amnestic drug. Grace’s internal monologue actually addresses how such a thing would typically be a waste of time from Stratt’s perspective—that he isn’t owed this. But to her, he is. That is her friend, and she is doing him one last favor making sure that when he gets all his memories back, there is as little unexplained as possible. She is dulling the edge of the pain. Grace won’t have to fret up in space if the coma damaged his brain that badly, won’t have to wonder if there is just one last little thing out of reach or have the feeling of a black hole in his memory with no explanation for it. He won’t because Stratt tells him she’s going to give him amnestics even though she doesn’t have to do this. And then she calls him Grace, the last time she speaks to him—not Dr Grace as she had been in that entire conversation—because he is her friend and she doesn’t want this even if she knows it is necessary.

ventismfsblog

cohoyotee

Couldn't decide between the mouths so I went with both. She's so pretty. They could never make me hate you, Jax. 💜💛

jojo-cha

The pinnacle, the pinnacle, the pinnacle, the pinnacle, the pinnacle, the pinnacle, the pinnacle.

How'd you say it goes again?

"Keep the enemy at arm's length, not a step closer." "Close enemies get punched. In the nose, and the gut."

They handed me your boots, you left me your knife. The boots too wide to fill, too tight to put on. The knife too sharp at the handle, the blade too blunt.

No one can wear those. We still did, to spite ourselves. No thanks to you, your game has learned to hunt.

And I'm pretty good at it.

Private Thrashing Corpse, Sir! My weak parts: discarded, Sir! The rest: all barbed wire, Sir! All nose bridges caved in, Sir! I stabbed my own mother, Sir! Later, I stabbed myself! Yes, the knife was dull, outright shoddy. But I was strong! And how I bled!

Your blood is still fresh! Do you recognize it?

...

Me neither. You'd have to squint. Even then—

Yeah, I like the night sky better anyway. Not that you'd even care to know.

I'm giving it back to you now. No need to thank me.

Here you go.

Sir.