ninjago is everything. it’s anime. it’s a comic book. it’s star wars. it’s fantasy. it’s atla. it’s a superhero story. it’s a ghost story haunted by a morality system so deterministic it can’t be escaped even in death. it’s also got literal ghosts. it’s got enough worldbuilding to fill entire books but also a timeline so broken it’s retconned its own most important scenes out of existence. gravity is a manipulatable element. so is the concept of shape. sentient androids exist alongside sapient snakes and skeletons and genies and dragons and everything. it’s got a multiverse that carries the corpses of the shows it’s outlasted. it’s terrible. it’s beautiful. it’s been in continuous production for over a decade. it’s the most frustrating experience of my life. it’s so, so much fun.

August: Day 25

Adventures

Spent way too long at the library

Checked out a book that was so old and hadn't been checked out for so long that it was no longer in the library's computer system

Enjoyed an hour of silence at home resting in the peace of the wind outside and the sunlight and shadows of trees flickering on the floor

Read poetry under a tree in the sunset

Writing

Read part of Ruta Sepetys' book on writing

Wrestled with the desire to write a personal, meaningful novel while having no idea what project could fill that need

Hey, what kind of costuming do you do? I'm obsessed with the corsets you've posted, they honestly look immaculate and I love the period inspiration. are you a historical costumer?

Hello!

Thank you so much, I'm so glad you like them! I've been wanting to make a ribbon corset for years, so finally making two has been very pleasing.

I broadly call myself a cosplayer as much as I call myself anything. I have a lot of feelings about the various labels people use and the forms of gatekeeping and snobbery that come from each. Really costume, in whatever form you may approach it, is an art form.

I have been working as a professional costumier in the UK film industry (tho not right now, thank you US studios for your greed) for the last 13 years. I’ve only been making for myself since 2017. I approach all of my projects the same way I approach my work - and have been so lucky to observe incredible designers working: I always end up falling into research holes and drag in historicsim, art, pop culture, and all sorts into my projects. But at the heart of it all, for me, is exploring character and narrative. Painting and sculpting characters out of fabric.

This is largely why I refer to my personal work as cosplay for ease: because I'm making characters or using character, theme or story as a leaping off point. See my little star warsy inspired jacket, and The Madwoman. The Saddest Girl In The World works as a standalone piece in this vein, but is also part of a bigger, whole costume that I started uuhhhhh a year ago. I want everything I make to stand on its own and express something.

Left to right: - Numa, Star Wars Rebels - I closely referenced the French Resistance in my research and making, but this is a true and true 'accurate' cosplay. - Olivier Mira Armstrong, Fullmetal Alchmist - also an 'accurate' cosplay, but I did deep research in historical tailoring, Japanese tailoring, and World War II military tailoring and created the entire costume using historical techniques. I won two competitions with this costume! - Princess Zelda, Breath of the Wild - an example of me building from the skin out. This is an accurately historical turn-of-the-century combination set made using historical handkerchief and insertion techniques and entirely handsewn. However I infused it with character and story by constructing the main body of the combinations of triangles, and piecing it together with three point needlework (more triangles), for a total Triforce infusion. There is a full set of similarly triforcey companion undergarments.

It's all fake and in space; it's all poetry. I'm playing. With costume. So I guess I'm a cosplayer, but when you're playing the limit is your imagination.

so i was back subbing at the elementary school today. i had fourth and fifth grade lunch monitoring duties.

i may have mentioned this last may or june or so, but there was this one fourth grade class they put me in several times when that was not on my schedule. from my understanding the main teacher was having some health problems so she would sometimes have unplanned absences or have to leave abruptly. but this class had like a reputation.

because there was like, a pretty identifiable group of like six or seven boys who were all varying degrees of troublesome. i actually do well w the kind of troublesome boys that other educators often have a bias against. it very much bothers me how many boys people just kind of give up on, and so young. it causes so many problems down the road but that's another rant for another day.

and yeah, these boys definitely earned the reputation they gave their class. there was one day i had to send four different boys down to the principal before lunchtime. and im pretty gentle, but when you're the only adult in the room like that... it's impossible to win. you can be kind or you can be cutthroat but everything about the environment is working against you. and most of the time i didn't even have like a para assisting me. awful awful awful.

but anyway on lunch duty today i was talking to them again, because they're fifth graders now. they were all asking me like "do you remember me? do you remember my name? do you remember MY name?" that sort of thing. and i was like "yes, you're ____, you're ____," and they were like, a little shocked but also like. kid it's only been a couple months.

and then i was like. wait a minute. do you guys remember MY name?

and none of them did. LOOOOOL

I don't want to brag or sound too optimistic about it, but after three weeks of training at a private college, I think my lessons with this one particular immigrant student (who has serious motivational problems lemme tell ya) are finally starting to get through and there's been improvement.

Only slight improvement so far but I have spotted some, so maybe not all hope is lost yet.

Remains to be seen I guess.

sending laser beams to my professor with my mind. kenneth you said midterm grades would b up by this afternoon. it is officially TONIGHT and guess what? kenneth i would love to not be clenching my teeth in my sleep tonight. kenneth i will be sending you a bill in the mail. yes i know its probably a TAs responsibility but i blame you personally. i hate school

ethel cain is like one of those old ladies who comes into the barnes and noble once a month to buy 75+ harlequin romances with her pension check

I’m about to get really excited about a niche thing I’ve posted about maybe like three times ever so just. be aware

good morbing btwwwww ^____^

to everyone boosting tht post know that i love u sm

We had a class last week and the prof came in today to take a look at the books we had out for her class on her own time, and she said the most lovely thing: "Working here [rare books and special collections] must be like working in a jewellery shop"

I've never been so delighted by a description in my LIFE

when i was a kid i used to write stories about dr. katz, a 6 foot tall cat man who was a paediatrician. but he’d always eat all his patients. he ate children. i never explained how he kept his job, considering all the dead children. anyways, i’d always draw him wearing an old fashioned nurse uniforms, like in cartoons. that wasn’t to imply crossdressing was some creepy lunatic thing, i just found it more fun to draw a nurse’s uniform than some regular doctor uniform

KEKEKEKEKEkdfnsldflsafnldsf.

garza.

garza, girl.

i have. i have bad news about ur havoc co then.

>: D

not to be a total cunt but the way some non-artists are behaving about ai art is so very revealing. acting like artistic skills are some kind of privilege that needs to be levelled? it’s so entitled it’s wild

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?