Rain Makes Applesauce

I know I'm talking silly talk

[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!)  

[penwiper]

Media: I have made an article about science.

Scientists: You've ruined a perfectly good research finding is what you've done. Look at it. It's got alarmism.

[mostlydeadlanguages]

Cuneiform Cookies for the New Year

A few weeks ago, a friend linked me to a blog post about making cuneiform cookies.  I loved the idea, and I thought I could get slightly more authentic results.  Here’s what I did, with plenty of pictures below the cut!

Keep reading

[penwiper]

CUNEIFORM COOKIES!

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

DO YOU LIKE STAR WARS??

Dear ffseminem,

I DO LIKE STAR WARS.

I was a tremendous fan of the original trilogy (I’ve written before about how I try in my own novels to capture the feeling of this one scene), completely disinterested in the newer three (they did not do any of the things that I liked about the original trilogy), and was passively interested in the existence of The Force Awakens. 

I saw TFA on opening day, and it rewarded my optimism by giving me nearly everything I loved about the original trilogy, plus some things I loved that the first three lacked. I left the theater quite happy. To my jaded and cynical amazement, I found myself actually dreaming of tie-fighters two days later.

Once I climbed onto the internet, however, that happiness turned to sand in my bra. In a fit of frustration I unfollowed 42 accounts on Twitter and 11 on Tumblr. Their crime: excessive posting of Poe gifs. No. That was not really their crime. Their crime was: excessive posting of Finn gifs. No. That was not really the reason, either.

The reason why I’m frustrated with much of the dialog I’ve seen about TFA online is because we have, for the first time, been given a really incredible heroine who does not fall into the Tomb Raider-leather-pants-wearing-mentor-to-the-ordinary-dude mold, and yet, all of these folks I followed were posting 90% Poe/Finn gifs and fanart and screenshots, 10% links to academic articles about how great it was that Rey existed. These were feminists I really looked up to, critical thinkers and savage speakers of a better world. And yet: I had just seen a movie that was overwhelmingly focused on a woman, and I was once again looking at a feed full of men whose arcs were vastly less emphasized by the actual movie. The conversation was not about Rey. The conversation was about whether or not Poe and Finn would hook up in some distant future, and even if they didn’t, talking about how hot it was to imagine anyway.

These accounts twisted themselves in circles to defend why it was fine to talk about and post about the men more. Acrobatics like that normally place you as an Olympic hopeful.

Here’s what I wanted, really. I wanted just one of them to say it out loud:

“Academically, I’m really pleased that we got a character like Rey, because I’ve been demanding characters like her in movies like this for years. But I have to admit that because of the cultural cess that I grew up in, a cultural snotpocket that shits on the accomplishments and values of women in all sorts of subtle ways, I find myself more emotionally invested and excited by the men in this movie despite myself. I’m noting this bias now and remaining optimistic that more movies like this will mean that this bias of mine becomes less true each year.”

But none of them did. So I set fire to my follow list and moved on. 

Which is to say, I really liked TFA and I think everyone who likes any of the Star Wars movies should go see it and continue to show with our almighty buck that movies like this are what we want to see. I’m now more than passively interested in the next movie. I just simply can’t read anything about it online, or I want to throw a droid through a wall. Now that I know these things about myself, I am fine.

urs,

Stiefvater

[penwiper]

Tremendously on point, as always. 

[barefootdramaturg]

For some reason, it never occurred to me that Project Gutenberg would have public domain old cookbooks. This is BRILLIANT. There’s a 1953 cranberry recipe pamphlet and a suffrage cookbook from 1915 and a translation of Apicus’s guide to food in Imperial Rome and a whole bunch of other fascinating old cookbooks, many pre-1800. Treasure trove!

[optimysticals]

I love you for sharing this!!!

[ferrific]

For more old cookbooks, Michigan State University has 76 of their historical cookbooks scanned and searchable at Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project.

[hsavinien]

For even older recipes, check out Gode Cookery.  They list medieval and Renaissance cooking instructions and translate the recipes for you into measurable amounts and all.

[runecestershire]

I have have have to mention Miss Leslie. I learned so much about cooking from that book, even if a lot of it is outdated.

Also, Forme of Cury is great fun, if you can muddle through the Middle English (Gode Cookery has translations and adaptions of some of the recipes from this).

[sarkos]

I’ll always take an opportunity to remind people of Barkham Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, which also contains recipes

[questionableadvice]

~ Cottage Economy,  William Cobbett, 1833

[penwiper]

The road to ruin is paved with empty teacups.

[video-hall-of-fame]

[dozmuffinxc]

I AM DYING HERE.

[superattacku]

The popular delivery service Kuroneko Yamato released an adorable video showing customers how to assemble their new compact shipping boxes, using an adorable black kitty. He’s gotta send that tuna to his friend somehow, right?

[site-3-deactivated20241221]

What a talented kitty

[itscolossal]

A Drought in Mexico Uncovers a 400-Year-Old Colonial Church in the Middle of Reservoir / Photos by David von Blohn

[tkingfisher]

Toad Words

            Frogs fall out of my mouth when I talk. Toads, too.

            It used to be a problem.

            There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.

            So I got frogs. It happens.

            “You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”

            I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.

            Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.

            Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.

I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening.  I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.

            Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.

            Toads are masters of it.

            I learned one day that the amphibians are going extinct all over the world, that some of them are vanishing. You go to ponds that should be full of frogs and find them silent. There are a hundred things responsible—fungus and pesticides and acid rain.

            When I heard this, I cried “What!?” so loudly that an adult African bullfrog fell from my lips and I had to catch it. It weighed as much as a small cat. I took it to the pet store and spun them a lie in writing about my cousin going off to college and leaving the frog behind.

            I brooded about frogs for weeks after that, and then eventually, I decided to do something about it.

            I cannot fix the things that kill them. It would take an army of fairy godmothers, and mine retired long ago. Now she goes on long cruises and spreads her wings out across the deck chairs.

            But I can make more.

            I had to get a field guide at first. It was a long process. Say a word and catch it, check the field marks. Most words turn to bronze frogs if I am not paying attention.

            Poison arrow frogs make my lips go numb. I can only do a few of those a day. I go through a lot of chapstick.  

            It is a holding action I am fighting, nothing more. I go to vernal pools and whisper sonnets that turn into wood frogs. I say the words squeak and squill and spring peepers skitter away into the trees. They begin singing almost the moment they emerge.

            I read long legal documents to a growing audience of Fowler’s toads, who blink their goggling eyes up at me. (I wish I could do salamanders. I would read Clive Barker novels aloud and seed the streams with efts and hellbenders. I would fly to Mexico and read love poems in another language to restore the axolotl. Alas, it’s frogs and toads and nothing more. We make do.)

            The woods behind my house are full of singing. The neighbors either learn to love it or move away.

            My sister—the one who speaks gold and diamonds—funds my travels. She speaks less than I do, but for me and my amphibian friends, she will vomit rubies and sapphires. I am grateful.

            I am practicing reading modernist revolutionary poetry aloud. My accent is atrocious. Still, a day will come when the Panamanian golden frog will tumble from my lips, and I will catch it and hold it, and whatever word I spoke, I’ll say again and again, until I stand at the center of a sea of yellow skins, and make from my curse at last a cloth of gold.

Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…

[the-real-seebs]

!.

You know how if you go through years and years of “best science fiction short stories”, every so often you find some short story you’ve never heard of before, but it’s just amazing and brilliant and leaves you wondering why you never read stories with that plot before? This is one of those.

Seriously, wow.

[jumpingjacktrash]

this made me smile.

i’m still smiling.

[waluwadjet2-deactivated20180727]

@seapup

[penwiper]

I read this a few years ago and it’s really stuck with me. 

[penwiper]

It just occurred to me that Scheherazade was basically the original clickbaiter.

"You won't believe what Ali Baba finds in his 40 jars!"

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

space video game where u come across an alien civilization and they don’t immediately speak/learn English For Your Benefit

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

in fact everything sounds confusing and garbled and the subtitles are all boxes and squiggles to you, the player, until doing enough interaction and missions for them results in their word sounds becoming more pronounced as a language and the subtitles slowly become English for you, the player, to read because you, the character, are learning the language

[penwiper]

There’s actually a game like this! It’s little flash game, not a big fancy console game, but it’s delightful and very fun to play.  You’re a crash-landed alien and have to figure out words from their context until you learn enough to ask for the help you need.  Tork.

[awesome-picz]

Pics Of Birds Cuddling Together For Warmth Will Melt Your Heart

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

i’m so happy right now

[the-library-and-step-on-it]

I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay - cold, expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed by the world into the attempt to hook a husband. Never mind! well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them after all. Do not, therefore, be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-heartened; do not too harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity.

Charlotte Brontë writing to a friend who had been kind to a man she thought was married, only to have him fall in love with her because he thought she was flirting (letter dated April 2, 1845). (via feu-pale)

[politicsprose]

mood

[aproperbower]

http://www.gigiembrechts.com/a-genuine-draft-blog/2015/5/7/photographing-the-horse-fishermen-of-belgium

[penwiper]

Horse Fishermen of Belgium

[lisa-rayner-deactivated20151211]

(via Kate Davies Designs: Anne Eunson’s artistry)

Amazing hand knitted Shetland lace garden fence

“This beautiful and imaginative creation is the work of Anne Eunson of Hamnavoe, Burra [Shetland Islands, Scotland]. Anne loves lace knitting, and how better to express that affection than by completely wrapping one’s garden up in Shetland lace? The fence is fashioned from strong black twine (the kind used to make fishing nets) and Anne knitted it up on specially adapted curtain poles. It took her about three weeks to knit enough lace to surround her front garden, using a 23 stitch repeat of a familiar Shetland lace pattern.”

Wow. What an inspiring combination of fiber arts AND gardening.