Kelly:ย But what if I freeze out there, in front of everybody?
Barbie:ย Youโve just gotta find the courage to try.
โ๐ธโ๐ธโ๐ธโ๐ธ
Clara: me
Best Nutcracker: @no-other-username-was-free
Amazing photography: @beerenlos
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I have to say some things about this cosplay so long text incoming.๐
I started ballet when I was 4 because I was obsessed with the nutcracker ballet.
The story, the costumes, the music, the dancing. I was absolutely in love.
25 years later not much has changed.
I stopped dancing when I was 17 because I was stressed out with school and it took me way too long to get back into ballet class because of the whole nonbinary-thing.
I still feel uncomfy cosplaying female characters because it feels like that means I wouldn't be "trans enough". (Which is stupid but hard to get out of my head.)
Considering all this I was kinda scared that I wouldn't be "good enough" to cosplay Clara.
But I got so many compliments from people who love the movie. Even my ballet teacher was impressed with our costumes.
And the cherry on top were the wonderful pics the amazing @beerenlos took.
good morning blu!!! you know a whole lot about everything so do you have any mistakes that people make in medicine in like media and stuff??? -leafanon
G'day leafanon, and yes I do!
WARNING: DISCUSSION OF GORE AND MEDICAL GORE INBOUND. ALSO INCLUDES PICTURES OF BLOOD IN SYRINGES.
DEAR AUTHORS/ARTISTS/ANIMATORS
GUNSHOT WOUNDS (GSW) ARE NOT INSTANT KILLS. No, not even if you're shot in the chest. Unless that round completely obliterates the spinal cord (unlikely as it's very small and hard to hit) your victim is going to stay alive and conscious anywhere from half a minute (direct shot to the heart) to an hour or longer (shallow wound to the lung). KNOW YOUR ANATOMY AND DO RESEARCH ON GSWs TO THAT ANATOMY. KNOW WHAT THAT ROUND PENETRATES, WATCH VIDEOS ON HOW MUCH DAMAGE THAT ROUND DOES TO BALLISTIC DUMMIES, AND HOW PENETRATION AFFECTS THE BODY.
YOUR CHARACTER WILL NOT SHRUG OFF A GUTSHOT. Gutshots absolutely suck and are fatal when left untreated. A shot to the pelvis will buckle you--you will not take a shot to the pelvis and stay standing. A gutshot will usually kill within 12 hours, but sometimes it may take days depending on what was hit, where, and how deeply the bullet penetrated. Also on that note, A GUTSHOT FUCKING HURTS AND IS ARGUABLY THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO DIE BY BULLET. If it rips through your stomach you're going to die within a few hours as your stomach acid will gradually eat through your internal organs and burn them. It'll feel like a fire from the inside-out. This, coupled with heightened emotions due to adrenaline, will break even the most stoic character. If the bullet pierces the intestine the wound like leak faeces into your abdominal cavity. You will know this has happened by the smell alone.
Also on that note: WHILE A GUTSHOT WILL KILL YOU, A GUTSTAB PROBABLY WON'T. Knives move a lot slower than bullets and have much less kinetic energy on impact. When you're stabbed in the stomach with a knife it's actually pretty rare for the blade to perforate your bowels, as usually the bowels will move aside as the knife passes through. The most dangerous part of a gutstab is removing the knife, the subsequent bleeding, and the risk of infection by foreign bacteria entering the wound (either from the knife itself or just entering the open wound from the surrounding environment).
WHEN SOMEONE IS SHOT IN THE HEAD THEY DO NOT JUST DROP. They fall and extend their limbs, arch their neck back, go slack-jawed, tip their toes down, and they will start twitching. Depending on where they were shot, they may exhibit decorticate posturing indicative of brain damage (even though they're most definitely dead once the bullet pierces their skull). The bottom posture with the wrists curled is most common. If someone was running when they were shot, they will fall and their legs will continue kicking for a few seconds before their body exhibits decorticate posturing. They will release this ungodly sigh that will haunt any character who's never heard that sound before.
Also on that note: YOU CAN STOP INVOLUNTARY MUSCLE SPASMS BY HITTING THE CORRECT PART OF THE BRAIN. Make a T-shape from the outside of your left eye socket to your right, and then down the bridge of your nose to your upper lip. That's the T-zone, which is what police and military snipers aim for in hostage situations. A headshot causes involuntary muscle spasms and when your target has a firearm or knife on someone, that could mean they hurt the hostage by a simple twitch of their arm or trigger finger. A shot to the T-zone causes flaccid paralysis as a result of taking out the medulla oblongata, an organ what connects the brain to the spinal cord, and renders the body completely paralysed. The target will drop and will not experience spasms or decorticate posturing. Snipers call this an apricot, named for the shape of the medulla, and IT IS AN INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT SHOT TO MAKE. I can shoot kangaroos at 1200yd but I've never gotten an apricot.
A DEFIBRILLATOR WILL NOT RESTART A STOPPED HEART. Nothing but a fuckton of epinephrine, a fuckton more chest compressions, and a metric fuckton of luck will restart a stopped heart. Defibrillators are for correcting or preventing an arrhythmia, which is an abnormal heartbeat (too slow, too fact, skipping beats, etc). IT WILL NOT RESTART A HEART IN ASYSTOLE. In fact, defibrillators work by actually forcibly stopped the heart so that when it resumes beating, it does so on a normal rhythm.
DO NOT MOVE WITH AN ARROW WOUND. You have a razor blade on a stick in your body and the more you move, the more you're ripping yourself apart. Your character is not going to be walking around with ten arrows in them as that amount of pain is crippling, not unless they have a constant IV supply of Enough Morphine To Kill An Elephant.
DO NOT HAVE YOUR CHARACTER REMOVE A KNIFE UNLESS THEY'RE PREPARED FOR MASSIVE BLEEDING. When you're stabbed, the muscles clamp down around the knife and the blade acts as a "plug" that seals the wound shut. Stab wounds with the weapon intact will often have very little if any bleeding. THAT WILL CHANGE ONCE YOU PULL OUT THE WEAPON.
FOR ARTISTS AND ANIMATORS: RECOGNISE WHAT KIND OF BLOOD YOUR CHARACTER IS SHEDDING. Superficial blood from a flesh wound is dark. After a few minutes, blood starts coagulating and turning a dark maroon colour. YOU WILL NOT SEE BRIGHT RED BLOOD IN THE ENVIRONMENT UNLESS SOMEONE IS ACTIVELY BLEEDING. If your character has been shot in the heart, lung, or artery, THEY WILL BLEED ARTERIAL BLOOD. Arterial blood is bright red due to being freshly-oxygenated to the point that it almost appears pink. The two syringes on the right have deoxygenated venous blood that was travelling back to the heart when it was drawn. The three syringes on the right have freshly-oxygenated arterial blood.
IF YOUR CHARACTER HAS BEEN SHOT/STABBED IN THE CHEST AND THE OTHER CHARACTERS DON'T KNOW WHAT WAS HIT, CHECK THE BULLET WOUND. LUNG SHOTS WILL BUBBLE.
THINGS VOID THEIR BOWELS WHEN THEY DIE. You'll know when something's dead by the smell.
CRUSHING INJURIES TO THE EXTREMITIES CAN KILL. When someone is pinned under rubble by a limb, that limb can form blood clots. Once the person is freed, those clots can loosen and then travel through the arteries until it clogs one (arterial thrombosis). The primary concern in victims of crush injuries after they're freed is strokes. The second killer is traumatic rhabdomyolysis, or muscle breakdown. This releases toxic muscle components into the circulatory system that can poison the body. This poisoning is called crush syndrome.
A MODERN ECG DOES NOT "BEEEEEEP" WHEN A HEART GOES INTO ASYSTOLE (FLATLINE. IT WILL ANNOUNCE. ECGs made before 2000 typically had a continuous beep to announce a disconnect from the heart (either the patient is in asystole or the ECG's lead detached from the skin or the machine itself). ECGs made after 2005 will say something along the lines of "check patient/no pulse detected" on repeat. If your scene occurs somewhere between 2000 and 2005 when announcing ECGs were being implemented then what you choose is your discretion.
STOP HAVING YOUR CHARACTER CAUTERISE WOUNDS THAT DON'T NEED IT. Cauterisation is a last-ditch, life-or-death treatment. It burns the wound (obviously) and leaves you incredibly prone to infection in that wound. IT IS NOT A TREATMENT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY. I know that having some badass Rambo type dump gunpowder into a wound and light it up with a match is really cool but it's a terrible idea and does far more damage than what it's supposed to fix.
Most of you are probably already aware of this but IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SUCK VENOM OUT OF A BITE. It's injected and immediately disperses into the tissue around it. You can't suck venom out of a bite wound. If you want to help a snakebite victim, keep the bite wound below the heart so that gravity helps with keeping the venom localised to the wound. Apply a cool compress. Get a marker and make a ring around the bite mark so you can track inflammation and redness. Every hour after the bite, apply another ring along the edge of the redness. Get the victim to the hospital ASAP. Also, it's antivenin, not antivenom. Professionals say antivenin.
If I think of anything else I'll add it later.
As always, if you have questions or something feel free to send me an ask!
The bare-legged / hot-pants look was fairly common, since the whole point about being a Landsknecht (or Reislaufer, their Swiss equivalent) was to look outrageous.
Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcutsโฆ
โฆthough in 1905 a book called โGeschichte des Kostรผmsโ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.
If they look excessively gaudy, theyโre not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schรถn, and itโs fair to assume he was representing what he saw.
In short - or in shorts - those reenactor costumes are spot on. :->
Something mentioned nowhere in this post that I have just learned from googling: these guys were not Ye Olde Medieval Dandies. They were 15th-16th century mercenaries. Pretty hardcore, too. They were exempt from sumptuary laws (ie the rules that said you couldnโt wear certain colours or cloth or styles) and apparently their response to that was technicolour thotpants.
Do you have tutorials for men's clothing? Something that doesn't flatter body shape?
Also do you have any tips on how to make vests from existing vests?
Or any simple masculine clothing for beginners to make? (I have a sewing machine but suck at trying to figure out what I can do as a beginner)
Masculine sewing patterns
As mentioned before, I'm not very experienced with masculine styles. That said, it has always struck me as weird how few tutorials or patterns you'll find for them. Sewing and fashion are not gendered activities. Everyone wears clothes, after all!
Some resources for menswear:
Freesewing.org: free customisable sewing patterns, great for basics (shirts, t-shirts, underwear, pants,...)
Mood Fabrics: masculine and unisex patterns
AllFreeSewing: collection of menswear patterns and tutorials
Lekala: free patterns for a hoodie, a shirt, and pants
Men's underwear: collection of free masculine underwear patterns
Unisex pyjama pants: beginner-friendly project
Free t-shirt pattern: basic pattern in 9 sizes
10 simple shirts: free shirt patterns
Waistcoat: free waistcoat pattern
Vest pattern: guide to drafting a custom vest pattern
Archive.com: great for finding vintage sewing patterns, e.g. this 1920s menswear book, these 1970s guides on jackets and knitwear, this 1990's guide on designing vests, or this 1890s guide on male underwear.
Random resources:
Ravelry: knitting patterns, has a filter for menswear
Stylish D: tailoring for guys
The Sewcialist: guide to sewing plus-size menswear
Copy existing garment: how to draft a pattern for a garment you already own without having to take it apart - great option if you can't find any patterns that suit you!
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