My embroidery of the Sera character card from Dragon Age Inquisition is now complete!

75 hours of work, 11.5x19.5 cm

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[Image description: An embroidered version of the Sera character selection card from Dragon Age Inquisition. She stands atop a slanted tree trunk with her bow held suggestively between her legs, looking at the Skyhold tower in the distance, where the tiny figure of the inquisitor is present in the window. Mountains and turrets make up the background behind her.]

Little thing i made for myself :)

Wanted to write stories, wrote a bunch, learned how to write. In that order.

Wanted to crochet toys, crocheted a bunch, learned to crochet. In that order.

Want to learn a language... try to learn that language... struggle and quit.

What's the "do" that comes before the "learn" in languages?

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

Prompt 183

There’s a loud snarling noise outside the window. 

Not that Jazz is concerned. She’s just also trying to study for med school and would appreciate some quiet. And preferred her brother not contracting rabies whenever he tried to square off with the local rogue or three who tried to use the alley. 

As he had put it, it was his alley, he’d claimed it for tinkering. Though perhaps she should maybe ask him to quiet down on his insisted territorialism, even if she understood it. She would also probably maul someone if they tried to enter their apartment flat. It came with the territory of being ecto contaminated, or as the rest of them were now calling it, with being a liminal. 

Once the more draconic aspects started to emerge well, one wasn’t just contaminated anymore after all. Hence the whole school-worth of them leaving Amity while all their parents waged war against the guys in white. Last she heard it was going well. 

Which meant she could focus on her studies as soon as- okay it wouldn’t be quiet, it seems the rest of the kids joined in on mauling the poor idiot who tried to steal their things from the alley. Damn…

Another bonus to learning a fiber art is being able to speak to others in a Lovecraftian language that nobody else understands...

...and also being able to read things like THIS:

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

Learn all these stitches from : https://www.embroidery.rocksea.org/stitch/running-stitch/

Sigil of House Tarth

Hand Embroidery

(Field; Bayeux stitch

Emblems; Split Stitch

Outline; Trailing Couch Stitch)

Bridget through a rainy screen. Only two days until her Gotcha Day! How do people celebrate other than posting kitten pictures?

Learning to sew 🪡

Today's embroidery project was a little cherry blossom tree, and the one that took me the longest to complete so far

happy secret samol!!

dawnbreak on cohost asked for a slice-of-life of thisbe tending to her plants, and i had such a good time working on this!

Life, as they say, finds a way 🌿 cotton and silk floss on linen, 2022.

I HAVE DONE IT I HAVE KNIT MY FIRST SOCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OVER THE MOON ABOUT IT !!!!!!