Looking Forward Facing Backward

Call me Fey, she/they pronouns are fine. My blog is a place I go to relax so expect video games, movies and tv shows, fandom in general, and reminders about various -isms I'm working on unlearning. Anon asks are currently on. I'm mostly a lurker though, so don't expect much communication.

[m1ssjess]

[readblogdescriptionandleave]

This feels appropriate for this blog

[kradeelav]

both drawn to life books are free to read on archive.org?? and downloadable as pdf???? what!! YO HOLY SHIT

a coworker yesterday was asking me about these behind my chair, and gun to my head, if you asked me what was the single best drawing book of all time -- it'd be these. there's a reason i keep them in irl arm's length.

not to toot my horn but i get a lot of comments about "believable life"/body language in my drawings, and i owe that to this book. Walt Stanchfield -the author- was one of the main mentors to a ton of the rennaisance era disney animators (Glen Keane, Musker, Deja, etc). this guy understands both the kinectic sense of how bodies move and squish/stretch, and how people "act", and composition/silhouette, and is honestly just a thoroughly decent dude.

some screenshots!

[writing-prompt-s]

You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.

[hermdoggydog]

Soon after you begin your quest, you encounter another man in a similar situation. You decide to join forces, as two mortal men stand a better chance at punching Zeus than one. Two villages over, you encounter a woman who had relations with Zeus and was left with a highly aggressive half-boar half-man offspring. She too feels your anger and offers to join your quest. By the time you reach Mount Olympus, you’ve amassed a large and formidable army of cuckolded/ravished mortals, demigods with daddy issues, mythical creatures with scores to settle, and a seamstress who you’re pretty sure is Hera in disguise. Zeus never stood a chance.

[lizluvscupcakes]

What I find best about this scenario is that the original wife probably expected to be murdered for her infidelity at worst or have her relationship with her husband ruined as he grew to resent her baby, at best.

Instead this man looked at his beloved and said, “who did it?”

And she replied “Zeus,” accepting he probably wouldn’t believe her.

And then he sighed, strapped his sandals back on and said, “I’ll be back before the baby is born.”

“Where are you-?”

“The lord of the sky came into my house, molested my wife in my bed and ate my food. I am going to settle the score.”

“Darling, he’ll kill you.”

“He may try, if he would like.”

[theriu]

You’re so right, that IS the best part.

[therealbeachfox]

I’m personally caught up on the seamstress.

“The pathway up Olympus is guarded by dozens of traps and perils strong enough to thwart even the Titans. How are we going to get past all of…” the shepherd boy with golden eagle feathers gestured uselessly at the slopes above them, particularly the herd of eight-legged goats snorting fire.

“There’s a way around,” Yiorgos said, though he was not specifically asked. But he had been the first to begin the march on Olympus, and so felt obligated to take the lead whenever possible, “In the stories there’‘s always a way around whatever obstacles the Gods place in our way.”

He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a question, but they had that lilt to them none-the-less. And even though he hadn’t meant it to be a question, much less a question directed at anyone specific, it was directed at one all the same. Just as the eagle-feathered shepherd boy’s had.

“Way I heard it,” a woman’s voice said. Rough with the Mycenaean Greek equivalent of a backwoods accent, and with the depth of a farmer’s wife who straps cattle to her back to carry to market, “there’s a back path. Hidden behind an invisible door that only one key in the world can open.”  Everyone’s eyes had turned to the broad older woman in heavy shawl sitting amidst supplies in the foremost cart. “Least, that’s what my grand-mammy always told me.” she added after a moment of dozens of eyes on her.

“Oh, we were so foolish!” That was Lydia, a lithe waif of a woman, many months pregnant, sitting opposite the seamstress in the wagon. “Of course there’d be a.. a quest. They’d keep such a key in the depths of Tartarus or in the golden chariot of Apollo, or, or-”

“Or”, the older woman cut her off in a voice both firm, but much gentler than she used on anyone else, “he’s like all husbands and has been promising to move the key someplace better for the past three thousand years but hasn’t gotten around to it.”  She gestured vaguely to the hillside, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was under, say, that bush right over there.”

It was. Of course. And everyone in the caravan agreed that it had been a very lucky and wise guess from the nameless woman and for the upteenth time since she first sat herself down in the front wagon and announced she was coming along with no further explanation, each and every last member very purposefully gave no further thought to the matter.

[theeclectickoalastudent]

Although they also made sure that she had the first choice of what they had prepared for meals, and the very best of their blankets. Because, of course, she reminded them of their mothers. Of course.

[hellallamerican]

transgender but in a problematic way that cant be sanitized by teens who are trying to reinvent the hayes code

[stele3]

Asexual but in a really gross way that approves of kink at pride and all sorts of problematic fiction.

[darkshrimpemotions]

Nonbinary but in a weird, loud, and playful way that might make assimilation at the expense of their own community harder for the cis gays.

[hachama]

Queer and unapologetic and taking up space with my queerness.

[brightlotusmoon]

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

This is so wrong, though. Because “Don’t sit down, never sit down,” is absolutely what some of the most productive adhders I know are living by, and it’s killing them. They burn out, their health breaks down, they lose the capacity to sleep a full night because their nervous systems have forgotten how to relax, they live with chronic systemic pain that doctors can’t find a source for.

If you want to live a productive life with adhd, forget about your productivity looking like a neurotypical’s. What you need are the brain engine primers, a habit of trusting yourself, and a phone timer. What I mean is, believe that you are capable of finding a way to do what you need to do. Let go of what neurotypical people tell you about life goals and five year plans and figure out what is important to you.

And then figure out what starts your engine. Not just one thing, ten or twenty things. Does a cup of coffee in the morning help your brain get in gear? Do you process better if you go on a walk? Do you feel more present in your body with a regular yoga class? Is there music you can play that gets you hyped?

And then ride the waves of your brain. Take ten or twenty minutes to do whatever is the next thing you need — a phone call or the vacuuming or a report — and then stop. (Unless you’re on a roll you want to ride; keep going then while it still feels good, unless it’s been an hour or two and you need to eat and pee and take a breather.) Put the task down. Set the damn phone timer for ten minutes or twenty. Get one of the calm-down things that puts you back in your body — a cup of tea, or a moment standing outside breathing deep, or a look at tumblr, or a snack.

Then when the timer goes off, pick a brain starter. Put the playlist on or pull your hair back or start pacing, and start the next damn thing. Or the same damn thing. And be proud of yourself. You are gorgeous and you’ve got this.

[brightlotusmoon]

You're so correct.

I've known so many people who assumed they were exceptions. They were for a while. Now one of them needs a new hip and another needs a knee replacement.

[headspace-hotel]

Thank god someone responded with this because I was about to be like "I am obligated to warn you, that you are going to be learning a very big lesson some time soon."

Your fancy human brain is very young. It thinks of ideas, yes! But you have in the very core of your being, a billions-of-years-old survival engine that ruthlessly keeps you alive.

You can be determined to live your life as though you are being hunted for sport, and you will either die, destroy your health, or this much more ancient part of you will save you, by making your body fall apart in very bizarre ways until you have no choice but to rest.

[foone]

I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)

[brightwanderer]

All of this. But also: you can use this information once you have it.

One of the biggest breakthroughs for me in living more comfortably with my adhd happened years before I was actually diagnosed, when I finally grasped the meta concept that my brain doesn’t understand time. That I could not trust myself to make estimates of how long something would take, especially “low value” tasks like commuting to work (I mean, it wouldn’t be FAIR for it to take more than, oh, five minutes, right?) or “high value” takes that absorb me (I reeeeallly want to work on that craft project, I can finish it up in five minutes and then do the other stuff, right?

So I started timing everything.

Seriously. I timed my journey to work from front door to desk, and I wrote that number down. It took a few goes, because I forgot to check the timer when I arrived the first couple of times, but once I had a number, I added ten minutes. Then I subtracted that total from the time I needed to arrive at work.

Then I wrote that new time down and said, “this is the time I need to leave the house to go to work”, and set an alarm every day for that time.

The alarm helped, but more than anything it was the act of doing the cold hard numbers calculation. Of looking at that time (8.20 AM if you’re wondering) written down and learning it like a New Fact, visualising it in my head: 8.20 is when I leave the house for work. Even if my brain is whispering that SURELY that’s too early.

Then I did the same thing for a bunch of other stuff. Other journeys. The washing up. Having breakfast. And over time I got two things out of it:

1. I amassed a little collection of Time Facts that I don’t have to think about any more because I’ve learned them by heart. I know what time to leave the house to get to the appointment because it’s maths I’ve already done, I just have to grab the appropriate number from my mental list.

2. I got better at estimating time in general, because I could compare known times to new ones (do I think this task takes as long as the washing up? Longer? Shorter?)

3. The combination of 1 and 2. slowly gave me back a sense of trust in myself. I didn’t have to be in waiting mode all the time because I knew that I had a concrete time when I had to leave for X, and I would often set an alarm for it, and that until then I could let go and get on with things.

It doesn’t work perfectly or fix everything. I am still very familiar with “can’t do anything because I have a thing at 3”. There are still times I get too absorbed or forget an alarm or drastically underestimate how long something takes. But overall, just having the basic self knowledge of “I can’t instinctively estimate time so I have to do it by recording hard data and memorising that” was a game-changer. I hope it helps someone else.

(And if it doesn’t, remember that you’re fighting against the current on this one, and it’s not your fault if you can’t get far upstream. This is a “here is something that worked for me” post, not an “anyone could get past this if they tried” post.)

[toastyglow]

I have a thing to get to but had to get this out real quick

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This is what "your emotions are valid" means.

It doesn't mean that any random shit you do is fine so long as you're angry or sad. It means that the anger and sadness is fine, attacking the emotion is pointless, and it's your behaviour in response to it that can help or harm.

[teaboot]

Once I spoke with a girl who told me a friend had invited her to a pool party, but she didn't want to go because the friend's mom had HIV.

I told her that this was a common concern, but HIV can't be transmitted by sharing a pool, and in fact HIV is such a weak virus that it can't even survive on a table for more than a few hours, and it can be killed entirely by bleach.

She asked me, "if you can kill HIV with bleach, why haven't we cured it yet?"

I told her, "because we can't put Bleach into people without killing them".

She said that this was interesting, but she still wasn't going to go.

(We did not become friends.)

The other day, I saw a group of teenage boys climbing all over an electrical box in town.

I walked over and asked if they were aware this was an electrocution risk.

One of them asked what I meant. I pointed to the large yellow image of a stick man with a lightning bolt through its chest and repeated, "it has an electrocution warning on it. Don't get blown up."

The kid laughed and said, "hey, play at your own risk, right?" And went back to his buddies.

I went back to what I was doing, but kept an eye out, and did notice that within the next five minutes, the whole group had removed themselves from the box and were now gathered several feet away from it.

I can't make people do things. I can inform, and support, but I cannot make their choices.

This is something that is hard to learn.

[the-same-as-never-before]

The second story is also a great example of the way people can seem completely resistant to what you say to them, but with a bit of time away from you they take it on board and act on it. I work in guidance and sometimes see this happening, but often you don’t get to know what lasting impact your words have on someone once they go their own way.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Well I would give a medieval peasant some spaghetti.

[what-even-is-thiss]

1. They don’t have forks. I would hand them a fork with it and see what they do.

2. They don’t have tomatoes. This is something they can never experience again

3. I would let them keep the plate because it’s a nice plate and I think they’d like it

[predatory-lesbians]

i love it when a post comes with its own FAQs

[good-fwiend-in-wome]

what the fuck do you mean they didn't have tomatoes

[what-even-is-thiss]

Tomatoes are not native to Afroeurasia and generally wouldn’t have been available on that continent before the Colombian exchange. When we refer to medieval peasants we’re usually referring to the poor of Europe and west Asia between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what we now call the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. A time before the so-called age of exploration and colonization brought food such as tomatoes, maize, and potatoes to Afroeurasia and domesticated animals such as pigs and chickens to the Americas. European cuisine of the poor and rich alike before the Colombian exchange would still have been tasty with their wide selection of game meat, herbs, vegetables, and grains, but tomatoes would not have been available to them and that’s why I want to give a medieval peasant a plate of Italian-American style spaghetti with marinara sauce just like dad used to make

[juh-was-deactivated19691231-dea]

wait so. italy? i guess it’s not called afroeurasitaly, but…so “italian” food used to not have tomatoes? until they came from the americas? and they they what, decided “hey let’s just rebuild our national identity around these tasty christmas tree ornaments”? centuries of italy were lasagna-free and i’m just supposed to accept this

[what-even-is-thiss]

They had lasagna. It just didn’t look like what we think of lasagna today. It was more like layers of flat noodles with spices and cheese on a plate that you ate with your hands rather than a baked dish.

If you look at ancient Roman food there’s certain things we’d recognize as “Italian” like olive oil or fermented fish sauce or cheese but the flavor profile is completely different and pasta isn’t anywhere to be found. They also had herbs and spices that have since become unpopular or even gone extinct.

A lot of things we view as unmovable and unchanging about certain culture’s cuisines are incredibly recent developments. Modern Indian cuisine for example can be traced back to a singular guy in the 16th century. And these days lard is considered to be integral to making tamales but that wasn’t used until the Spanish brought over pigs and cows.

Food culture is something that can change very rapidly. Sometimes within a single generation. People generally use what they have available and what’s available can change at a moment’s notice.

[ailius-suffers-through-art]

This feels like watching a clown get questioned by the crowd before they pull out a history textbook and proceed to whack the audience repeatedly with it

[what-even-is-thiss]

That sums up pretty well what it’s like to be me yeah

[costis]

All those posts that are like "your life doesn't really start til your 30s-40s-50s" are wonderful and important but they make me sad so. Positivity post for anyone who's not going to get there.

People who have been told they won't make it til their 20s, 30s, 40s, whenever. Another month, another year, another five years, another ten or twenty. People who have known since they were little, people who just found out. People who are getting worse faster or slower. People who are in treatments that might help, but cause so much other damage. People who treatment didn't work for people who can't afford treatment. People who are medically fragile and people who are housebound and people who are bedbound. People who are losing their independence and people who have never had it. People who never know which infection, which flare-up, which episode is going to be the last one. People who are in hospice, people who have planned their funerals and written their wills and got their DNR in order. People who have tried everything they can and people who are making themselves worse and people who are being neglected by doctors and caregivers. People with genetic diseases that have taken family members already. Cheers 🧃🧃

[littlebeesart]

Happy indigenous day!💛

These were created over the last year or so when i indigenized popular media✨

[feybeasts]

I’m still thinking about that “is OSHA regulations Cop Behavior” post. Like. You know who thinks regulations are for losers? People who build submersibles out of logitech gamepads and rejected carbon fibre. People who trust starlink as their only surface lifeline.

Do you wanna be like the fine film on the floor of the Atlantic that was once a billionaire? Is that the hill you’re really gonna die on?

We have an expression in my field- “Regulations Are Written In Blood”

People don’t have fucking safety standards as a power trip, we have them because somewhere in the past, NOT having those regulations killed or maimed someone.

A lot of laws out there are bullshit- safety regulations sure as fuck aren’t. I have the literal scars to prove it.

[dreamlostdevourer]

Please please please remember that bosses and CEOs hate safety regulations.

Doing things safely cuts into their profits and lets workers survive long enough to learn.

If you're ever irritated at how long it takes to be safe?

Remember your bosses hate it twice as much!

Then be even safer.

Safety regulations are there because businesses see workers as expendable.

[eosofspades]

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

[fierceawakening]

Is it okay to be allo and yet find this deeply relatable?

All my friends: BOOOOOOOOYS 💜💜💜💜💜❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥👀👀👀👀

Me: I mean, they’ve always existed.

Friends: You don’t want to immediately pounce on them?

Me: There are a couple I can think of who pouncing on sounds nice. But you sound enamored of all of them, and I am confused.

Friends: So you like girls?

Me: …also yes, but I’m not sure that’s the disconnect I’m having.

[appendingfic]

people on tv: *cannot pass up a single opportunity to have sex with a sexy new person*

me: ...i do not think it is all that hard not to have sex with someone

[the-haiku-bot]

me: …i do not think

it is all that hard not to

have sex with someone

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[chthonic-pain]

nobody warns you this but addiction happens without you noticing and one of the first things that it attacks is your ability to care. if you find yourself using recreational drugs every day, stop and take one day a week sober. if you struggle with this or if you don't see the point of the exercise, you are likely already addicted and you need help.

[chthonic-pain]

nobody ever taught me the warning signs for drug addiction, only that "it costs lots of money and destroys your life!!!1" which is not helpful if you can't recognize a developing addiction in yourself.

so here's some things to watch out for with recreational drug use:

planning your day around drugs e.g "i'll give myself an extra half hour before heading out so i can get high first"

rapidly switching emotions around drugs. you love them but you hate that you love them so much. you hate the way you feel on them but you hate being sober. feeling guilty after using even when you didn't give a crap beforehand.

caring less about spending money. if you are budgeting for drugs like they are food, you are likely prioritizing them more than is healthy.

getting high to do household chores and other unpleasant things because it would suck less and be more bearable on drugs

feeling anxious or restless while sober, not knowing what to do with oneself, feeling lost or ungrounded.

thinking about doing drugs constantly even while sober. maybe it's the first thing you think of when you wake up. maybe when you're bored or otherwise have free time, drugs are one of the first things you can think of to occupy yourself with.

going to work or school while under the influence, especially if it happens regularly and if you're seeing your performance suffer as a result.

the idea of taking a 'tolerance break' sounds good to you until it's actually break time, at which point you can come up with 20 very reasonable sounding points to explain why it wouldn't benefit you actually and you should just keep doing drugs regardless.

even if you succeed at quitting the drug, you keep your dealer's number on your phone "just in case"

you pretend to be sober when you aren't. you worry about other people noticing how much time you spend high. you make efforts to hide your drug use or minimize how much other people think you're using. you're scared of other people's judgement if they were to find out.

you have mood swings laced with self-hatred, regret, financial worries, and guilt. these mood swings are then very quickly wiped away by feelings of "but it doesn't matter, i can do what i want, and clearly i'm doing just fine while using drugs frequently". news flash, if you are rapidly switching between feeling numb-ok and hating yourself more than anything because of your drug use, you are mentally ill.

yes this applies to weed. weed is a drug and you can get addicted to it like any other substance. addiction is not the same as physical dependence; it is psychological and it can happen to anyone. you are not immune to addiction.

[agardenandlibrary]

Also alcohol.

[vinceaddams]

Any tips on learning to make buttonholes? I've been putting it off for.... *checks notes* like three years.... but better late than never and all that. I don't have any fancy machines so I gotta do it by hand but that seems right up your alley.

Thanks!

It IS up my alley, yes, I do most of my buttonholes by hand!

I'm actually part way through filming an 18th century buttonhole tutorial, but I expect it'll be a few more weeks before I finish that and put it on the youtubes, so in the meantime here's the very very short version. (The long version is looking like it'll probably be about 40 minutes maybe, judging by how much script I've written compared to my last video?)

Mark your line, a bit longer than your button is wide. I usually use a graphite mechanical pencil on light fabrics, and a light coloured pencil crayon on dark ones. (I have fabric pencils too, but they're much softer and leave a thicker line.) You may want to baste the layers together around all the marked buttonholes if you're working on something big and the layers are shifty and slippery. I'm not basting here because this is just a pants placket.

Do a little running stitch (or perhaps a running backstitch) in fine thread around the line at the width you want the finished buttonhole to be. This holds the layers of fabric together and acts as a nice little guide for when you do the buttonhole stitches.

Cut along the marked line using a buttonhole cutter, or a woodworking chisel. Glossy magazines are the best surface to put underneath your work as you push down, and you can give it a little tap with a rubber mallet if it's not going through all the way.

I'm aware that there are some people who cut their buttonholes open using seam rippers, and if any of them are reading this please know that that is abhorrent behaviour and I need you to stop it immediately. Stop it.

Go get a buttonhole cutter for 10 bucks and your life will be better for it. Or go to the nearest hardware store and get a little woodworking chisel. This includes machine buttonholes, use the buttonhole cutter on them too. If you continue to cut open buttonholes with a seam ripper after reading this you are personally responsible for at least 3 of the grey hairs on my head.

Do a whipstitch around the cut edges, to help prevent fraying while you work and to keep all those threads out of the way. (For my everyday shirts I usually do a machine buttonhole instead of this step, and then just hand stitch over it, because it's a bit faster and a lot sturdier on the thin fabrics.)

I like to mark out my button locations at this point, because I can mark them through the holes without the buttonhole stitches getting in the way.

For the actual buttonhole stitches it's really nice if you have silk buttonhole twist, but I usually use those little balls of DMC cotton pearl/perle because it's cheap and a good weight. NOT stranded embroidery floss, no separate strands! It's got to be one smooth twisted thing!

Here's a comparison pic between silk buttonhole twist (left) and cotton pearl (right). Both can make nice looking buttonholes, but the silk is a bit nicer to work with and the knots line up more smoothly.

I've actually only used the silk for one garment ever, but am going to try to do it more often on my nicer things. I find the cotton holds up well enough to daily wear though, despite being not ideal. The buttonholes are never the first part of my garments to wear out.

I cut a piece of about one arm's length more or less, depending on the size of buttonhole. For any hole longer than about 4cm I use 2 threads, one to do each side, because the end gets very frayed and scruffy by the time you've put it through the fabric that many times.

I wax about 2cm of the tip (Not the entire thread. I wax the outlining/overcasting thread but not the buttonhole thread itself.) to make it stick in the fabric better when I start off the thread. I don't tend to tie it, I just do a couple of stabstitches or backstitches and it holds well. (I'm generally very thorough with tying off my threads when it comes to hand sewing, but a buttonhole is basically a long row of knots, so it's pretty sturdy.)

Put the needle through underneath, with the tip coming up right along that little outline you sewed earlier. And I personally like to take the ends that are already in my hand and wrap them around the tip of the needle like so, but a lot of people loop the other end up around the other way, so here's a link to a buttonhole video with that method. Try both and see which one you prefer, the resulting knot is the same either way.

Sometimes I can pull the thread from the end near the needle and have the stitch look nice, but often I grab it closer to the base and give it a little wiggle to nestle it into place. This is more necessary with the cotton than it is with the silk.

The knot should be on top of the cut edge of the fabric, not in front of it.

You can put your stitches further apart than I do if you want, they'll still work if they've got little gaps in between them.

Keep going up that edge and when you get to the end you can either flip immediately to the other side and start back down again, or you can do a bar tack. (You can also fan out the stitches around the end if you want, but I don't like to anymore because I think the rectangular ends look nicer.)

Here's a bar tack vs. no bar tack sample. They just make it look more sharp, and they reinforce the ends.

For a bar tack to a few long stitches across the entire end.

And then do buttonhole stitches on top of those long stitches. I also like to snag a tiny bit of the fabric underneath.

Then stick the needle down into the fabric right where you ended that last stitch on the corner of the bar tack, so you don't pull that corner out of shape, and then just go back to making buttonhole stitches down the other side. Then do the second bar tack once you get back to the end.

To finish off my thread I make it sticky with a bit more beeswax, waxing it as close to the fabric as I can get, and then bring it through to the back and pull it underneath the stitches down one side and trim it off.

In my experience it stays put perfectly well this way without tying it off.

Voila! An beautiful buttonholes!

If you want keyhole ones you can clip or punch a little rounded bit at one end of the cut and fan your stitches out around that and only do the bar tack at one end, like I did on my 1830's dressing gown.

(I won't do that style in my video though, because they're not 18th century.)

Do samples before doing them on a garment! Do as many practice ones as you need to, it takes a while for them to get good! Mine did not look this nice 10 years ago.

Your first one will probably look pretty bad, but your hundredth will be much better!

[garaksapprentice]

This is hands down the best buttonhole tutorial I have ever seen, and as a nerdy little medieval-era living history person with a penchant for history-bounding, I've read a lot of them.

[vinceaddams]

Thank you!!

[toastyglow]

no one is obliged to like you and that is okay. this is why you mustn't put your self-worth in the hands of other people--you have no control over how they feel about you.

wanting your art to connect with others is the same: no one is obliged to interact with it and you have no control over whether they do or not. you must accept this. your mood can't be reliant on the decisions of others, let alone strangers--happy when you get engagement from them, sad when you get less.

I'm not saying it's selfish to want validation, attention, or connection. your feelings are real and I've FELT them. I still feel them. but other people have a choice of whether to give you those things or not, whether in everyday situations or online, and you have to accept that choice. the only thing you can control is you.

connecting, REALLY connecting with others, is about actively inserting yourself into communities you vibe with, learning the necessary skills (social or otherwise), being vulnerable, and a little luck. join a discord server or a local club. focus on specific artistic friendships. put your time and effort into those relationships, spend less time on social media, uncouple your self-esteem from your art and try your damnedest to make your own at home. that's all you can do.

[toastyglow]

I want to add that the reason why you see “big artists” saying this stuff is not because they’re getting all their emotional needs met and don’t remember what it was like to be insecure starting out.

it’s because once you get to a certain level of internet-popular, you start to realize that it’s Never Enough.  no matter how popular that one thing you made was, eventually it tapers off and you crash and you have to work for the next hit.  until you burn out.

that applies no matter how big or small your following is.  it never stops.  but it does get harder to deal with the more intense the highs are.  put less stock into it now so it has less power over you in the future.

[vintagegeekculture]

Do you know when "canon," like as a concept, became like a standard nerd thing?

The amazing thing aboutthe term “canon” is that it didn’t bubble up from the undifferentiated mass offandom (who actually knows who cameup with memes?). We know exactly and specifically where the word comes from when used in this context: anessay written by a Sherlock Holmes fan in 1911, who compared the wild andcrazy veneration that fanatical Holmes fans have for the original stories, to holy writ.Another name for the books assembled in the Bible was the canon, as opposed to other books that, for various reasons, wereleft out of the Bible and “didn’t count.” In other words, the term wasoriginally used ironically and in a self-deprecating way to talk about the almost religious intensity of Holmes fans. 

Part of the reason theterm canon caught on was because, even in the 1910s, the public was so mad forSherlock Holmes that there were all kinds of illegal imitators and non-ConanDoyle authors and knockoffs, and yes, there were even amateur works that were distributed by mail (what today we’d call “fanfiction,” some of which even survives today), so a crucial distinction began to arise between the stuffthat was “official” and the stuff that wasn’t. So, here we have the threethings that we need to even have the concept of canon as we define it: 1) a groupdedicated enough to actually care, who can communicate, 2) a necessarydistinction between “official” and not, particularly due to the presence of amateur works (what today we’d call fanfiction), 3) a long term property that couldsustain that devotion. 

Now, of the three, whichdo you think was the one that was absent from a lot of science fiction fandom’s first few decades? It’sactually 3. Canon only matters if it’s something other than just a singlestory, which the business model of the pulps discouraged. Like TV in the 1960s, every story had to be compartmentalized and serial storytelling was mostly discouraged.

One fandom, big from the 1930s to the 1960s was E.E. Smith’s space opera Lensman series. The Lensman stories were so popularthat it received 5 sequels, all of which were planned from the outset. Some Lensmanfanfiction from the 1940s is actually still available for reading. Part of the reason the Lensman stories were so popular is that it described a consistent world with consistent attributes: Inertialess Drives, aliens like Chickladorians, Vegians, Rigellians, pressor beams, space axes, Valerian Space Marines, superdreadnoughts, “the Hell Hole in Space,” the works. It was way easier to get sucked into this than it was with the usual “one and done.” Take for example, this amateur guide to the Lensman series, with art by Betty Jo Trimble.

Canon “policy” as we know it today, as a part of a corporate strategy, started with Star Trek: the Next Generation. Before that, there was no “multimedia property” big enough to necessitate it; Star Wars just didn’t care, which is why pre-Zahn “expanded universe” stories like the Marvel comics were so bonkers. There was no reason to believe that the Trek novels, including good ones by John M. Ford and Diane Duane, were anything else than totally official. Roddenberry, though, was deeply angry about losing control of the film series, and due to his illness (hidden from the public at the time), his canon policy was enforced by his overly zealous attorney. In Star Trek canon, for a long time, the only thing that counted was what was on screen. And not even that…the Star Trek animated series, for several decades, was decanonized. (It wasn’t until Deep Space 9 that animated references crept back in, and today, it’s as canon as everything else).

I don’t want to scare anyone, and this is hearsay, but I’ve heard from three people who were there that Next Generation writers, at least as long as Roddenberry and his attorney were around, were encouraged to not think of the original series as canon at all. References to Spock and even an episode that had an appearance by the Gorn were rewritten.

The Star Trek canon policy was so harsh and unexpected that rules were invented deliberately to kick out popular reference sources, like the rule that starships could only have even numbered nacelles, which meant much of the Franz Joseph guides, published in the millions and praised by Roddenberry and others as official, were vindictively decanonized. 

Star Wars canon is interesting because it was entirely created by the West End Roleplaying Game. It was the only major Star Wars product printed in the Star Wars Dark Age, the 5-6 years between 1986-1991 when all toy lines and comics were canceled and the fandom was effectively in a coma or dead. The Roleplaying Game was the first place that information was collected from diverse sources like the comics and novels. Every single Star Wars novelist read the West End game because it was the only time all this information was in one place. 

Marvel Comics canon is a very interesting example because it was a harbinger of things to come: superhero comics were one of the earliest places in geek culture where the “inmates started to run the asylum”…that is to say, fans produced the comics, guys like Roy Thomas (creator of the Vision and Ultron) who started off as a fanzine writer. Because of the back and forth in letters pages, there was an emphasis on everyone keeping it all together that didn’t exist at DC, which at last count, had 5 (!) totally contradictory versions of Atlantis.