I know it’s really hard to be hopeful right now, and I’ve shared a couple big-picture articles about “hey, people are doing things, people are fighting back, but legal and political shit takes time.” But if you want some small hope, some personal experiences of things changing, I can tell you about my FB timeline right now as someone who comes from a conservative Christian, southern background (and who typically avoids FB at all costs unless I’m looking to buy something on Marketplace).
People are angry. Trump voters are angry. About government layoffs that impacted people who they KNOW were performing their jobs with distinction, about the removal of support for their disabled kids in their schools, about the halt of cancer research, about food prices and recalls and the spread of disease, concerns about national parks’ longevity for future generations, about the suspension of aid.
People are angry. The same people that voted for Trump, or stayed silent about their political leanings until this point, are posting videos of Trump and Elon and calling them liars. They’re posting videos of impacted workers talking about the important, widely overlooked, jobs they do that contribute to the underlying foundation of American’s health and safety. I’ve seen reposts of Methodist, Baptist, and Catholic church statements condemning Trump’s actions and reminding him of the “moral imperative to assist those in need” that all humans should have regardless of faith.
People are angry and they’re saying “this isn’t what I voted for,” or, if they were of the quieter minority in these deeply republican communities, they’re saying, “Hey, look what you voted for. Look what you’ve done.”
This is a big deal. People are angry. And while I wish that this recognition could have come sooner, it reassuring to see that people are, at least, admitting that shit is on fire. Recognition is the first step.
I’ve found out recently that there are antivax conspiracy theorists who are recognizing that this is a hostile coup. They’re… mixing weird conspiracy theory speculations in with the things that are verifiably happening, but they can see this shit too, and they are ready to fight it with all the fearful gusto they’ve been fighting medical care.
This is a good time to remember that people cannot be neatly categorized. This is a good time to make alliances with people who are not your friends, but who are against fascism. That’s a lot of people.
This is a good time to remember that people cannot be neatly categorized. This is a good time to make alliances with people who are not your friends, but who are against fascism. That’s a lot of people.
or you can use this for any other plush or if you wanna make a whole new plush entirely or whatever
disclaimer im not a professional in any sense of the word and theres anything technical im doing wrong or you think you can do it better by all means dont hold back
Things you’ll need
sewing machine unless youre really dedicated but doing it by hand is gonna be an agonizing feat i promise. I just used a straight stitch for everything
Fabrics: for the main body i suggest a minky or something soft, for the inner lining something in the same color as the main body and ideally with some stretch, and anything black for the legs. Less than a yard of each will do
if youre using minky or anything furry get a lint roller. Trust me
stuffing, i used polyfil
threads that match your fabrics
good fabric scissors
sewing needle for hand sewing/fixes
karkat plush (optional)
Heres the pattern i came up with! They are numbered for your convenience and pieces with the same numbers are going to be part of the same row of segments. cut everything out on the black lines (Make sure when you’re printing to fit the image to the page size.) on the left we have the belly pieces, the right is the main body, and we have the foot in between
Im using a relatively thin minky fabric, im sure you can use whatever but something with some fluffiness kinda helps to mask any imperfections in the sewing. When drawing out your patterns keep in mind what direction your fibers settle in and try to keep it consistent
On the wrong side of the fabric measure out at least a half inch seam allowance around each piece of the pattern, i used a centimeter and that worked but had me sweatin a bit.
For the main body pieces fold your fabric in half before you cut so you can have 2 of each segment that are mirrored to each other, i also extended all of the #1 pieces an additional centimeter/half inch at the top so we can fold them over at the very end. I highly suggest numbering the insides of all the cut pieces, especially in a way where you will remember what direction they are each meant to sit
After you’ve numbered all your pieces, set them aside and start making your feet!
Each of the 6 legs is made of two pieces, but i because i only had a swatch of the black minky i made up for the rest with some random black scrap fabric from an old project. Try to keep your fabric consistent if you can lol
I didnt give these pieces any more seam allowance on the fabric but i recommend adding a centimeter or half inch to the base of it to extend the length and have some more wiggle room
like so
Instead of cutting out 12 individual pieces and struggling to stitch them all together i started with 6, then pinning each piece real tight with the right/furry side down onto my secondary fabric, and slowly stitching around the shape real close to the edges- DO NOT CLOSE THE FLAT SIDE as we are going to stuff the feet through here
Now cut the shape out of the fabric and repeat till you have 6 feet
Now flip those bad boys inside out, stuff up, and if you wanna you can match them to their best pairs
now grab a pair of feeties and your #1 pieces and line them up, in this picture my belly #1 piece is shorter bc i forgot to add the extra centimeter and i recut that once i realized. Line those sides up with the right/furry parts touching and with the feet in between, flip it around to make sure everything's sitting the way you want it
Note. i didnt realize until later but i sewed my feet in upside down. save yourself the time it takes to fix it and dont make the same mistake
Straight stitch these layers together and repeat with the next two segments our good friends #2 & #3
Repeat this for the #2 and #3 sections but NOT THE #4, that part doesnt need feet! just line those edges up right/furry sides together and sew
the secret to the squish of the suit is making this inner lining from another fabric and stuffing it! I used what i had leftover from a stretchy red fabric for a kanaya skirt. For this we need to make a new pattern for each section, making sure it follows the curve of the round edge but the piece itself is shorter, almost like youre removing the seam allowance you added. Mine is a centimeter shorter on the top and on the bottom and reaches to the middle
Make one of these for each numbered segment,you only need to make half the pattern and you can fold your fabric in half on a crease and you end up with one symmetrical piece (bars)
Now you need to pin these pieces right on top of the wrong side of your numbered furry sections and line up the straight edges like so (disclaimer for LOTS OF SCARY NEEDLES !!)
Admittedly i didnt estimate how long these pieces needed to be very accurately and overshot it a bit, if you start pinning it from the middle and continue outwards on either side thatll ensure its not too lose and you can cut off any excess after
The only exception is piece #1, if you recall we gave this #1 section extra seam allowance. This is so we can sew down that excess at the neck later and hide any of the inside that might show once its all put together. Do not connect the top edge to the inner lining! Since i added an extra centimeter earlier im gonna leave that hanging and pin + sew down the inner lining a centimeter lower than the top edge. LEAVE THE CURVED EDGES OPEN! DONT SEW THEM TOGETHER! those stay open to stuff
Straight stitch the lined up edges together
Now you have all these skinned pieces of little freak and we need to connect all these segments together making sure to sew UNDER the existing stitches so we dont see those on the outside when its all put together
Inside looks like a bit of a mess but thats fine bc its not the part that matters
Now stuff it! you might need a stick or pencil or something long and thin to get stuffing into the middle bits
Now thats its stuffed you can finally close those curved edges. Try not to sew over a thick mound of stuffing, push it in a little further to give yourself some space and you can fluff it back out after everythings closed. I cut off that excess lining fabric after sewing
Ough… they filleted my boy…
Finally, match up all the edges and lines and HAND SEW them right sides together. You will destroy your machine trying to work around that stuffing i promise. You also have an excuse to get up from your work desk and sew on a couch or smth. I used a standard backstitch for a tight finish and again, make sure you sew under any existing stitches so they arent visible on the outside!
Speaking of the outside, once you stitch everything together you can very gently flip this sucker inside out
This is @hatamonu’s cat Cocaina, aka Coco. Her perfectly square figure made it into my grub files somehow so shes essential to the tutorial
Check the fit and all thats left to do is roughly baste stitch down that excess neck fabric onto the stuffed lining and youre set! I gave the thread slight tugs as i went to tighten the opening a bit put dont tighten it too much
tadaaaaa
It fits pretty snug but starts to slip a bit with motion. Heres a bounce test
If you do shake your baby make sure to safety pin the plush to the suit so he doesnt prematurely shed his exosekeleton
Now spread that baby fever and show your baby to the world
pics from the ALA 2025 homestuck meetup and supplied by para.dox.cos
Tysm for coming along this ride with me especially if you followed the prototype journey on twitter, much thanks to my more sewing savvy friend for the solution to my grub dilemma and for helping me design and build my dolorosa cosplay <3 much love and hopefully many more homestuck cosplays and meetups to come in the future!
Yeeeeaaaah, in the last month or so I went through most of Karkat’s logs, collecting various insults and other quotes from him. Mostly for people to use as inspiration for their own Karkat insults, whether it be for fanfics or roleplaying, or for anyone who just wants to laugh at some of the hilarious things he ends up saying.
EDIT: Alright, well, I updated it now with a bunch of the newer Karkat logs! Supposing anyone’s interested.
My Incredibly Inept Procedure for the Word Clouds and Text Analysis
Although you may not give a hoot about how I make these word clouds and do some shallow analysis, I feel obliged to tell you what I’m doing. It’s not very technical but it goes on for a while.
never in all of my years would i have expected to characterize a company’s rebrand as “actively hostile” and “potentially endangering lives” yet here we are
for context, that X sign is dangerously bright, directly faces an entire apartment complex, and to top it all off it fucking strobes
how to never stop being totally not okay: a guide to emotional repression for idiots in love with other idiots (by dirk strider)
alternatively titled: baby, are you existential dread? cuz you make me deeply uncomfortable in ways i don’t care to think about (the john egbert life story)
Summary: How Dirk Strider stole a car, learned to drive, and got a boyfriend (in that order).
(a late birthday dirkjohn road trip fic for my friend lou @vanillacorpse @centercharter! happy birthday, lou!)
Mind players will often use weapons not based around brute force, but more around strategy. Think knives (like Annabeth from the Percy Jackson Books) or things like spike traps. Weapons that require planning to really do anything effective at all.
Mind players will also use weapons that give them an advantage of any sort. Whether it be something that gives them a longer melee range or something that will allow them to immobilize a foe. Still not based around brute force, but with an advantage nonetheless.
And of course, some mind players may have the gift of telepathy. Simply because of the relations that telepathy and mind powers have in common media such as comic books and whatnot.
Weapon Themes
Trickery is also an important part of the Mind Player’s arsenal, so weapons will tend to reflect that. Think about Terezi’s cane that doubled as a sword. Canes tend to be used by those who have trouble moving on their own, tricking enemies into attacking what they think is a weaker opponent, until the blade is revealed. Trickery like this forces the enemy to improvise. Where once they thought they were about to fight a physically weak person with a blunt weapon, they now have to fight a perfectly physically fit person with a weapon that can cut them to shreds.
My own choice of the staff (often with magical functions) also reflects this. Enemies will approach where I can see them, not expecting me to attack from a distance, because a staff cannot normally kill from a large distance, but when it can shoot lightning, distance doesn’t matter as much, leaving a befuddled enemy dead and me alive.
Another common theme for mind weapons to have is a reference to academic things. Mind players will often use weapons featuring barrages of numbers and equations, melting the focus of any enemy that had to suffer through high school calculus or through the lectures of a physics teacher who doesn’t know how to make his class fun or easy to understand.
You may find a mind player bombarding people with pages from their favorite books or with quotes from classic or modern literature, even making words appear in the air that solidify into stone, giving whole new meaning to the phrase “written in stone”.
Finally, mind players will often play around with weaponry that have random chance elements or possibilities of different effects during their attacks. Remember Terezi with her coin, making her attack decisions based on if it was heads or tails? This is definitely a key feature in many mind player weapons. Whether it be a sword that can only be used 50% of the time, or some type of weapon that does damage based on gambling (I.e. dice (even though that’s also a light player thing but whatever)), chance and luck, or the figment thereof, are parts of mind player arsenals.
it’s june 2 and i’m too busy cycling through the news on twitter to draw but in celebration, here’s that time i distilled on why i think jake is gay and brain ghost dirk is a blatantly loud manifestation of that desire, with some annexed text passages and panel analysis (some not pictured above!)
plus if you’ve accompanied or liked my vrisrezi|dirkjake parallel chart a couple of months ago, or the jake as a gender mimic one, some fun stuff re: the blue ladies under the cut!
full imgur image: https://imgur.com/a/OrHEAtl
thxs for reading remember stonewall gave us rights through riots against police violence :) love u
John and Jade talk a lot like each other: look carefully. His most distinctive word is “Jade.”
Jade’s most distinctive word is “John.”
Rose speaks the most diversely of the betas. Her most distinctive word is “session.”
Dave curses the fifth most of any character. Unsurprisingly, his most distinctive word is “shit.”
The longer version
John’s lexical density (a rough measure of word diversity and thus vocabulary) is 8.9%, which is low for his corpus size of 34,000 words—he’s the second biggest talker in Homestuck after Karkat with 39,000 words. His cursing rate is 0.41%, which is low, and he prefers to use “shit.”
Jade’s LD is 10.6% from nearly 19,000 words, which is low. Compare John and Jade’s clouds and you’ll see the similarity in their speech. Her cursing rate is 0.12%, which is very low.
Rose’s LD is , 17.0% from about 21,000 words, which is higher than expected.. Her cursing rate is 0.16%, which is very low.
Dave’s LD is 12.6% from about 33,000 words, which is about average for this corpus size. He says the third most of any character in the web comic after John. If it’s not obvious, Dave’s cursing rate is very high at 2.27%. His lexical weapon of choice is f*ck, making up 40% of all his 758 verbal bombs so far.
All of the dialog was compiled as one big corpus to which each character was compared to using AntConc. The top five were chosen, ignoring any common or interjective words.
John’s most distinctive words are Jade, dad, Rose, Vriska, and guess.
Jade’s are John, password, woof, Bec, and frog. I usually prefer to remove onomatopoeic words but “woof” was too cute to not include. Most of the woofs come from the time she chased Jaspersprite down the hallway on the ship.
Rose’s are session, Kanaya, grist, question, and null. Three of them all refer to some part of Sburb: the kids’s session, grist of various sorts, and a null session.
Dave’s most distinctive words are shit, f*cking, f*ck, dude, and f*ckin. This makes it very apparent how much more he curses than the other betas.
Excluding John’s own cloud, John is the most frequently mentioned character in all of the other beta kids’ dialog.
aaaa i haven’t posted in forever and i probably still won’t for a while cause life reasons, but here’s some really rad statistics someone else figured out!
why is there no comic sans font @verymememuchimpresswow - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
