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trials of a fucking cyberwitch over here

this red-faced old fuck with a louisiana police ballcap comes in for an open-book open-notes open-laptop essay exam for a history course, the kind of test where you can basically write the essay beforehand and copy it down into a blue book. except he made special arrangements so that, using one of our laptops, he could just attach his pre-written essay to an email and send it to the testing center email address so that we could then forward it, in an official capacity, to the professor.

picture the incredulity on his face when i inform him, with infinite patience, that if he is on our computers, he cannot attach a file that only exists on his computer’s hard drive to an email. because it is not on our computers. i ask him if he emailed it to himself. “yes”

it is not in his campus mail. “maybe it’s in my hotmail, how do i open up the hotmail?” i tell him he types in hotmail.com into a new tab. i show him how to open a new tab. he types “HOTGMAIL.CLOM”

i tell him he typed an extra g and l in there. he clicks between the t and the g and hits backspace.

HOGMAIL.CLOM

i have to excuse myself ostensibly to help other testers so that i don’t burst out laughing right then and there. it’s not in his hotmail. it’s not in his aol. every time he feels he has something significant to say to me or wants my attention, he touches my arm. finally he shows me the binder he brought, with a printed-out copy of the essay inside. i say fuck it, we’ll take it (in so many words), oh but the professor doesn’t want it with holes, well fine, we’ll just scan the damn thing and send you on our way

he’s gone now and i’m still losing my shit over HOGMAIL.CLOM

#hogmail dot clom!!!! #one of the first Tumblr posts I really remember

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While I'm Gloranthaposting ...

During our lockdown-era Glorantha campaign, our GM, Chris K. suggested we put together an entry for the God Learners podcast's competition to make some sort of Glorantha-related audio product. Weirdos that we were, we (Chris, myself, and Liesl R.) decided to make an in-universe guided meditation for the Lunar Empire - over a frantic couple of weeks before the deadline, and with the assistance of Tim H. (on psychedelic guitar), we put something together. And we won!

As context - in the Glorantha universe, the Lunar Empire are a hyper-syncretic, hyper-imperialist anatagonist faction who seek to bind the world into their semi-egalitarian empire, beneath the Red Moon. Depending on who you ask, they are either an empire of decadent fools who perform mass human sacrifice out of a misguided belief that you can reach a peaceful compromise with the corrosive forces of primordial Chaos, or they are progressive mystics who teach tolerance, mutual understanding, and transcendence, that we are all us. Probably both.

For the art, the only coloured paint I used was cadmium-free scarlet, an uncompromising, suffocatingly rich fire-red-orange. The whole image - and the overwhelmingly RED light, with only a cold night sky behind it - is meant to mirror the heady and overpowering nature of Lunar transcendent philosophy.

#glorantha #heroquest #runequest #sedenya #we are all us #gouache

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A commission I did for a Glorantha book, part of the Jonstown Compendium of fan work.

For those not familiar with Glorantha (you might know it as the setting for King of Dragon Pass), it's a bronze-age fantasy setting written by Greg Stafford, an anthropologist. There's some bits that are a bit 'hmmm', but overall - it's a fresh and enthralling take on the fantasy genre, driven by a genuine interest in how ritual works in Bronze Age societies (I've heard it described as 'as Tolkien was to linguistics, Stafford was to mythology).

The paintings here intend to showcase one of the rituals in question, with a hero being anointed and girded to assume a mythic role (specifically Humakt, deity of swords and truth and death!)- around her, her masked clan-members prepare her for her transit into the mythic realm, while above her, Humakt himself wields/blesses the blade that she takes up. The second painting was for the back cover - it shows a devotee of Eurmal, trickster and storyteller, entertaining a couple of children and inducting them into the clan's mythic cycle, while their hunting cat (an alynx - Gloranthan cultures tend to favour cats where Earth ones would dogs) looks on.

Both paintings were done in gouache, early in the pandemic. I wanted to capture a sense of genuine mystery and weird spiritual power, and also to present a female Humakti in a role that many character artists have usually shown a traditional male warriors. It's also one of my (too rare! I should get back to this!) experiments with light and darkness in a painting.

#glorantha #runequest #humakt #heroquesting #eurmal #gouache #fantasy art

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Legos!!!

For a friend (@cyanoferret)'s combined Christmas/Birthday gift, I made the iconic characters from the Sailor-Moon-inspired tabletop RPG that they've been designing. Because they're individual minifigures, rather than a full set - and because I come from the 40k miniatures tradition - I ended up painting them / sculpting onto them (Lego is a strange and unfamiliar land - does that make them MOCs?)

The box (it had to be given in a box, for the bit)!

The party!

This next character is a 'punk catgirl' type of character - hard-bitten, a little on the edge, cool and Void-Queen-May-Care. Cloak is a modified Batman cloak, bell is a de-winged Golden Snitch, and the hair/ears are sculpted onto the bandana.

Next up, we have a more 'familiar' Magical Girl type character, in the Sailor Moon model. Due to the mini I used, she's ended up a bit more like a businesswoman? Based on a Hagrid body, with a sculpted mantle, and a staff made out of Loki's helmet's horns (the only suitably crisp 'crescent' I could find). The coat is meant to be 'mother of pearl' coloured - I couldn't do the full opalescence on a flat matt plane, but figured that the glints of white/purple/green do the job OK.

Upsetting robot fairy. I've always been struck by the fact that the character in question is rendered more realistically, so I ended up using a Bellview character for the moulded face and more 'human' proportions - I think it worked?

Horrible/lovely space alien disguised as a traditional Sailor Moon type character. The armour and legs are from Atlantis, the head is a modded Groot (with a spray of Milliput 'eyes'), and the mask is a Toy Story Wendy head that I sawed down to fit (VERY disturbing to do).

Sailor ... Sun, I guess? Carrying a big fusion reactor hammer. This one was the first I did, and the gold is (imitation) gold leaf). It's a bit scratched in places, but it's worth it for how much it glows, more than gold paint could ever do. As the leader, she's also the tallest - since she has the Hagrid 'coat' body, normal legs, and a bit of extra height on her neck where I rebuilt the epaulettes.

In all but a few cases, where I had to sculpt the model together, they remain perfectly 'functional' lego figures, too - hands can grip objects, they can stand on blocks, bend at the legs, rotate heads, etc.

All in all, it was super fun to do (I was shocked at how cheap and more-ish Bricklink is, especially when you're just getting a few common bits and don't care about the colours), and the painting worked really well - separate them up into individual pieces, superglue them onto a wooden stick, prime them, paint them (I used gouache because it was what I had to hand and what I'm used to), but acrylic would work too), and then give them a ton of matt plastikote sprays. It gives a kind of satiny- finish once you're on the third spray, but for everything other than the grips on weapons etc., it's pretty robust.

#lego #magical girls #mocs #painting #tabletop #we are so back #minifigures

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Wow. It's been a while since I posted much here - but I have a ton of arts and crafts to post, while I've been away? Going to be posting some of what I've been working on in my absence from the 'blr.

#xie posts

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Tuesday last will go down as the greatest chase day I’ve had so far. I had three low precipitation classic super cells in a row, slowly raking across the prairie letting me make time lapses (check my insta for that) and just generally make pictures at a pace not fueled by fear of death. It’s sometimes hard to believe these beautiful monsters exist in the world. that I lived most my life and had no idea they roamed the same prairie I did. life is funny like that. 

Probably also worth noting we rolled over the 15k follower mark. A notable feat indeed for something so niche as photos, basically, of prairie light. So thanks. I’m not going to do anything to mark it. No print giveaways this time. It’s a lot of work and right now I’m struggling to keep up to the world in general so lets just agree it’s neat and soldier on ツ 

#deep carbon thoughts #sky #pretty colours #sungazey

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#sungazey #deep carbon thoughts

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Industrial Metal Objects Cross-Stitched With Fragile Flowers and Butterfly Designs

#deep carbon thoughts #industrial decay #inspiration

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DnD headcanon: Fire Genasi - the kind heavily touched by Inferno, who have hair made of heat and flickering light - use metal salts to dye their hair. Chlorides of sodium, barium, and calcium give a conventional golden or blonde look, but rowdy teen planetouched dye their hair magenta with lithium, or chartreuse with boric acid. On formal occasions - weddings, religious ceremonies, state galas - they limn their hairlines with finely ground magnesium, to place sun-bright sparkles in their hair.

Specific details of colours here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_test

#gif warning #fire #flame tests #pretty colours #stormsbreadth #siroc is 100% going to find alchemist workshop run off to dye her hair if we go to a fancy ball or social event #genasi #fire genasi #dnd

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Photos of my character - If Only You Would - from a recent LARP I attended - Regenesis Event 4, held at Smallwood. Photography by @tomgarnett, mask and claw patterns by Wintercroft (have posted the WiPs before!).

Very pleased with how this character came out, and came across in these photos. I won’t go into the details of the character - suffice to say that much terrifying ‘be not afraid’ behaviour, nuclear politics, and dramatic martyrdom went down - but I do have to say a few things about the kit design. IOYW was a very non-binary character who channelled a lot of ethereal/angelic imagery.

I tried to convey that a lot through the kit making choices - the skirt suit is a lovely fitted pattern, but it’s made out of hessian; the ‘buttons’ on the jacket are actually glass teddy bear eyes; the cloak is a long poem by @deathbyvalentine (who is an amazing writer you should check out). Same with makeup - harsh white contouring, with gold leaf ‘lipstick’ and tears. All of it was designed to give the sense of something otherworldly but also somewhat disturbing. Best of all was the mask/claws combo - though they were uncomfortable and difficult to manoeuver/see things out of, they did a fantastic job giving me a ‘halo’ the concealed my face, broke up my silhouette, and basically made it harder to see the wearer as a person (instead making them look like a weird visitation).

Basically, a character design meant to explore and evoke themes of dehumanisation, angels, dissonance/uncanniness, and non-binary identity; I’m not happy with a lot of photos of myself because dysphoria/self image stuff, but really like the way that this character kind of transcended a lot of that, and how the photos follow zir story. IOYW was a really useful exploration of non-binary identity for me, and I am so glad zie had a suitably explosive narrative arc!

#larp #costume #girls with wings #regenesis #sungazey #angels

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Tweet by @donni, ‘Shoot for the Moon. Stab for the stars. Poison the Sun. It’s time to kill space‘. https://twitter.com/donni/status/1104939183813156864

@robin-redbreast this feels like a very you mood

#hwbm #sungazey

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Bionic arm for B., for his character in Death Unto Darkness, a Warhammer 40k LARP, after his hand got blown off by a daemonhost.

Card pattern, faced in copper foil; aluminium insulation tape over foam for the edging; millput statuary. Whole thing mounted on a glove with latexed/foam bones. Armour template by David Guyton, skull template by Wintercroft, rest by me.

So - some context as to why this character has a small reliquary instead of a hand. In March 2018, I ran a small event for a 40k LARP set at a spiritual retreat, where one of the rooms was set up as a small museum of devotional artefacts. Among these was a preserved hand of a saint, pride of place among the reliquaries. B. took rather a shine to one of the Sorors running the retreat, and impressed her with his devotion; as such, when his character lost his hand, he put in a request to bear the relic of the saint in its place. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, and set to work making it!

This came together like a dream. The slightly rippling from the copper gives a rather beautiful liquid appearance, and the statuary (angels weeping! tearing off their faces! panels full of bones) came out really nicely. I also find this sort of style of fingers - foam on a regular glove liner, linked together with ‘wires’ (Tulip Metallic fabric paint) - looks really pretty, especially in motion. Also, the patterns really worked well on this (scaling down the Wintercroft mask went really well!). All in all - as an object, as a collection of different craft techniques, as a set of materials, as a hefty bionic arm that looks more like a holy artefact than a machine - I’m really happy with this. May be one of my favourite projects ever.

#larp #props #death unto darkness #bionics #arm #wintercroft #david guyton #warhammer 40k

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An eypiece for M, for his character in Death Unto Darkness, a Warhammer 40k LARP.

So, M. plays a Tempestus Scion character in DuD, and wanted a bionic eye/scouter to both replace one of the eyes his character lost at an event in July, and also to provide up-to-the-minute targeting data, power level readouts, and control for his servo skull (which is adorable, I will see if I can find a photo). So, following some discussion, and some comparisons with my earlier eyepiece here, I decided to make him something similar. The eyepiece itself is made from dichroic (new word! shiny and reflecting different colours from different angles) plastic (again, cut up cheap ski mask), latexed/varnished foam, bit of copper mesh on the grill, and some LEDs.

Not much to say about this one - simple, but effective visuals for a simple but effective character. The black and red are simple #classic40kLook, but I feel that the golds and oranges from the visor complicate it a little - they’re also practically invisible from the inside, while the simple round ‘wing’ shape means it rests very comfortably on your cheekbones. There’s a beautiful ‘glow’ from inside the copper control mesh control box, too, which I enjoy.

#larp #props #death unto darkness #dbz #wow I haven't updated this blog for a bit #warhammer 40k

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To return to later!

A one dollar, one page, one-to-many player game about archiving your Pilot’s memories.

You are an assistive AI for a deceased pilot, whose mech is falling into the atmosphere and soon will be completely destroyed. Save what you can in your black box, but know a great deal will be lost, no matter what decisions you make.

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Text reads: ‘Monsters are considered opposite in gender to both male and female human units, but the same gender as other monsters.’

#about me #same

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it’s weird to be upset by the mild weather but I am. There’s been little fog. No hoarfrost and things are mostly brown and dead. Every picture relies on light right now which limits the possibilities for shooting. the snows will come soon. the hoarfrost and fog and depths of winter. Then I’ll wish for warm again. this is how it goes. 

#sungazey #sunsets #pretty colours

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Minimalism of Morning by Aeromast

#landscapes #pretty colours #sky #sungazey #also thank you for this v trans pride landscape