Since today’s technically the last day of the competition and we’re getting last-minute entries, we’ve decided to extend the deadline for submissions a little. The extended deadline is now 15:00 UTC, Saturday, March 11.
(For those in the US, that’s 07:00 Pacific 10:00 Eastern, just for reference.)
We know how crazy things can get when deadlines loom. Hopefully this will give everyone a chance to put those finishing touches on and give us some brilliant subs!
Well, specifically, jewelry-making. I’ve been doing this for about four years now, mostly for the fun and challenge, sometimes for profit. (Haha. Okay, always for profit. Shakespeare got to get paid.)
I generally use prefab chain, but occasionally I’ll make bits of my own with 16- to 18-gauge aluminum or copper wire. It bends well but isn’t too flexible to wear, and it comes in lots of fun colors–I like red/brown/yellow tones, so that’s what’s displayed here. Jump rings, usually used to attach clasps or ornaments to chain, can be linked to make chains in their own right.
It's only slightly more complicated than building a sentry.
The bracelet–I didn’t make the bracelet base itself, but I had the fun of attaching all the shiny bits. It’s good busy work for me: having my hands occupied seems to free my brain up. Having thinking time is always useful!
We’ve known each other for sixteen years and have been friends for most of them. We’ve had real influence on each other’s lives. In that time, we’ve only been in two fandoms together. (TF2 is the second. We’ll let you wonder about the first.) We have OCs, and they mean the world to us, but more than that, the TF2 community has been instrumental to our mental health.
Because sometimes when things get bad, we spam each other with every piece of TF2 art we can get our hands on, and this was something we did before either one of us had even made a Tumblr account. The multitude of TF2 fic and the quality of the writing, that really made us think, because y’all are writing from experience too.
[Ugg] Like that time Red wanted to go back to school to get a Master’s, and whenever she got down, I’d pull out a character to cheer her up. Sometimes it’s Scout and his improbable persistence, sometimes it’s Heavy and his PhD in Russian Literature. Other circumstances got in the way so it didn’t happen, but she gave it her all, no regrets.
[Red] Or times when Ugg has had to deal with social obligations (because ew humans and your weird rules about interacting) and family members being unpleasant. Sometimes the best antidote for social anxiety is a sarcastic Frenchman whose wardrobe is supplied by monk tailors and whose je ne sais quoi is infinite.
[Ugg] Despite its abundant silliness, when it comes to serious matters, the TF2 community is incredible, and that’s influenced the way we wrote our OCs. No one but Red has ever heard about some of these characters, but an OC based on an OC based on a canon character ended up saving my life multiple times. They’ve helped me work through panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, and I’m stronger and better prepared to live with my conditions for it.
[Red] In a lot of ways, my TF2 OCs are more family than my actual family. I have some nasty physical ailments to go with my intracranial quirks (oh hey, “intracranial” is actually a word!), and it’s just…it’s been an invaluable therapy tool/angst reliever to have these people in my head, to help me work out my limits and fears and frustrations. My face-to-face interactions with people are necessarily limited (see: ew humans), and I’m kind of naturally a loner, but having “friends in the computer,” as my mom puts it, has been the most amazing support network ever. No matter what time of day it is, I can turn to this fandom and find something that helps.
That’s a part of why we’re doing this. Your incredible works --art, writing, videos, crafts-- both past and present, have literally helped shape our psyches. We’re not BNFs in this community; far from it. We don’t have names anyone would recognize. Still, we want you to know that what you do matters, and we hope our little contribution makes life a little easier for someone else, as it has for us.
This has not stopped me from trying. In 10th grade, my English teacher took off a bit with some health issues, and Mrs. J, her substitute, knitted. I know because she brought her work to school with her. We’d have reading or an essay, some kind of busy work, and she’d sit there and knit. She was really fast and it was fascinating. Metal knitting needles make happy little clicky noises.
I tried learning by watching, and later, learning from books (that worked for crochet…). A few years later I was a librarian, and Mrs. P, another retired teacher, was a regular customer. Bless the woman, she came in and gave me free lessons, and it just didn’t stick. My right hand literally does not know what my left is doing. But hey, I can crochet like a fiend, so it’s all good.
I say all this because it’s totally canon that Sniper knits. That sort of raises questions (where does he get yarn? Is there a Mann Co. craft store? Does he make it himself? From what?), but it’s freakin’ adorable.
Rock on, knitwits! I’m totally not jealous of you!
For @abelard-tullus who originally asked, and for anyone else: SFM should be images only, not animation, for the sake of fairness. I'll be amending the original comp post in a bit to specify this. The two of us are temporarily in vastly different time zones, and trying to confer on something right away is somewhat chaotic! We apologize for the undue confusion this caused.
When deciding on the list of games, we tried to find games we had both played, even if weren’t really into the fandoms. Somehow in that long discussion, we both ended up thinking “Cool, you can judge Borderlands, I’ve heard a lot about it but haven’t played it”. As we were preparing new posts, we realized neither one had played it. Lesson learned: just because you trust each other’s judgement, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double-check!
So the new game is Affairs of the Court: Choice of Romance, and we’ve updated the rules accordingly. If you haven’t played it, click the link! You can probably finish it a few times in one day. It’s a bit unconventional because there’s no official art, but the world is quite vivid, so you’ve got more freedom there. The rest of the rules are the same; stick to the canon characters (in both worlds!) and you’re good to go.
Please accept our most embarrassed apologies. We hope you understand this was simply the result of our experience with running competitions: none whatsoever.
Did you already have a Borderlands piece in progress? Please get in touch with us here on Tumblr or via email: uggredzomb at gmail dot com
