it's ya boi @cosmicpaladintaka - Tumblr Blog

can you imagine being a parent in the pokemon world and your kid comes home with one of those straight up basically human pokemon. i know those motherfuckers can talk.

its morning. i see my childs Throh getting some oj from the fridge. 'morning', i say. he doesnt catch himself in time and says 'morning' back. he freezes and we both stare at each other knowingly. 'throh,' he says, but its too fucking late

enki2

androdragynous

[ID: A tweet by TylerAlterman:

"In the middle of a "forcing party" where friends and I are forcing one another to do the things that we've been avoiding.

So far: [bullet list] A passport has been filed for; An inbox has been zero'd; A personal website has been created; & more.

I recommend this format!"]

anathemaegg

call that attending an Executive Function

frontmansdefender

RIP to the legend

silvermoon424

This goose fucking rocks and had a crazy life!

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.

penwiper

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!)

pellaeas

Hang on a minute. I recognize the name “penwiper”. Let me check– Ok, yeah, I’ve heard of this person.

OP also invented armsocks.

Y'all might have noticed that your friendly community moderator has been slacking a bit lately. No updates. No organizing. What the heck was

OP I have been thinking about YOUR IMPACT since 2011. Do you know what you did for Homestuck lmao

manasaysay

Another example of a foundational internet text that millions of people don’t know was so influential.

ode-on-a-grecian-butt

forlornmuskeg

dambiex

the problem with parents is that they are undiagnosed

catsbeaversandducks

"no"

By yuki_illust19

angelnumber27

Jeremy’s at it again girls

gaytanic-panic

hballegro

Attacked by very sudden torrential downpour and went to check the weather radar and then remembered this image

goldensunset

per my last desperate howl at the heavens,

viralfrog

iwashimo-oimo

260329 / 修正

bellasauruss

Here's another mini comic of a beautiful glimpse into a world with people animals

azulcrescent

Sarcastic and Ironic

So often its the latter that im automatically sus nowadays lol

meatdiaz

absolutely hate it when the pleasurable activity procrastination hits. i’m going to do something fun that brings me joy but not yet. yeah, not yet. not yet. maybe i shouldn’t do it at all, it’s not that fun

yurimom

MY FRIEND IS FINDING OUT THAT HES COLORBLIND AND WE’RE ALL HELPING HIM THROUGH IT LMAOOOOOO

yurimom

UPDATE WE HAVE TWO COLORBLIND BITCHEZ IN THE SERVER

yurimom

what the fuck is going on

alwaysabeautifullife

On the last one Deuteranomaly and Protanomaly are identical though

azzandra

What I’m getting from this is that there are a lot more colorblind people in the world than even colorblind people know.

sheepolypse

Share to save [shame] a friend

waywardmorgann-deactivated20240

WAIT! DEUTERANOMALY AND PROTANOMALY IS THE SAME! IT’S THE FUCKING SAME! WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT?????

audliminal

The deuteranomaly and protanomaly ones are very similar but they are different. The purple section ranges out a little farther to the right in the protanomaly one. Not seeing the difference between might not indicate color blindness but rather difficulty with color differentiation.