starakex

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I've ordered my first batch of die-cut stickers! It's super humbling to have my digital art in physical form... Planning to give 'em out at the next furmeet while wearing Nullref!

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New lil project underway! Fur is absolutely hell to get right now (I'll never forgive most of the good fur suppliers being based in the USA 😭), so I'm stash busting my fleece pile and making a Shadow Kigurumi for those moments where a costume is fun but actually wearing one is too much effort. So far I've got the main body done, and I'm attaching the back quills and tail this week before moving on to the chest tuft. (or maybe the hood first?) Got to do some appliqués again with the red stripes, so that's fun!

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Retinal Screen Burn

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Y'all don't know how HAPPY I am it's finally over 10°C outside. My arms are absorbing sunlight at long last...

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Neocities Website Launch!

Between the projected unknown future death of this here website and my absolute dread at losing the history built on this blog (and, well, the dread of also having to start over on another, shitter Social Media Platform full of "Whimsical" Ads and "Helpful" Algorithms), I just spent the last two weeks building a website over on Neocities! You can find what is essentially an archive of all the crafts I've made since I started cosplaying in 2010 over at starakex.neocities.org. (There's a lot of costumes on it that never had a proper coverage on this blog!)

Going back on an HTML journey was kind of healing, to be honest, even if I'm rusty as all shit. I've spent a lot of time on modern internet platforms and even if I avoided a lot of the worse offenders... I still kind of lost my human touch. I don't want to think of the bits I post about myself online as "content", anymore. We're not meant to be consumed in a chain. I'm still adding to the neocities website; I've got a very empty blog section to futureproof my ability to yap online, a couple unrelated pages that aren't just costumes and stuff, and I'm hoping to add a page with some of my OCs in the future. But it's currently in a solid v1.0 with all craft projects covered alongside some photography and collecting hobby stuff! I love being able to keep a complete backup of the site locally, so if Neocities croaks I can just... Take everything and host somewhere else. It makes me feel safer, to have a slew of options. As for the social media part, well, I intend to stick around here until the website explodes. If it comes down to it, I'll probably open an account somewhere else on one of the least hostile options. Nothing's jumped at me yet as the right candidate; Tumblr's got that crumb of user-experience control nobody else has matched in a long while. I love seeing posts exclusively from my follow-list, the chronological feed, the tag blacklisting, how human interactions between users are, and the trove of browser extensions to customize as needed... As grumpy as I am about modern web though, I still enjoy interacting with people on the internet, so I'll try to compromise on a good-ish platform in the event of hellsite death. Hope you enjoy the website! It's been fun to go back through my costuming journey while making it.

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It's Majora's Mask's anniversary today! I love that game so damn much... 25 years later and I'm still just as obsessed lol

Photo by sps.cosplay.photography on IG

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Happy fursuit friday! I made an ultra-long tongue for Nullref and re-made her short tongue so it'd stop poking out awkwardly.

Her long (well, the mid-sized one now) is still my favorite general look, though!

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I've got a terrible field of view while wearing Sonic and I'm not a fan of surprise collisions, so I drew up and assembled a little reminder badge so people can tell at a glance that I will, in fact, not see the children before accidentally barrelling into them.

If it can prevent a single person from knocking me on my ass (or at least make them laugh, honestly), I'm happy with it.

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I went to an exhibition on costume balls of Canada in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Match made in heaven, obviously, considering the hobbies showcased on this blog. I love costumes! And while I'll probably gush about other elements that are mirrored in today's event-based costume hobbies like Cosplay, Fursuiting, Historical Reenactment, LARPing, and so many I'll forget, something hit me looking at these costumes. A lot of them were dancing the line between being cheaply made (costumes were meant to be worn only a few times, so not made to be durable) and very opulent (costume balls were meant to be events of high society, for what it's worth). But there's something humbling in seeing these century-old costumes, fragile and damaged, and seeing the parallels in the very same costumes we make today.

This is a dress worn by Virginie Faucher at Montréal's Historical Ball of 1898 (Source: Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870–1927). It's very pretty, covered in a lot of embellishments. But you can tell between the original photography of the dress worn at the event and the photo of the dress nowadays that it sustained a lot of damage from aging... but also wear and tear!

While I was looking at it more closely in person, it just hit me. More than a hundred years later, we're worrying about vinyl peeling and cracking, creases from EVA foam pieces bending, hot glue failing and losing parts at the con. I see the missing sequins, the deteriorated metallic threads, and the dirtied hems. Things just stay the same, really, though this dress was kept and preserved despite the damage while hundreds were lost to time, thrown away when the damage was too severe. Maybe we don't need to fear our costumes aging. Dissapointed, maybe, when ketchup lands unceremoniously on your uniform, or a seam pops on your coat, or the fur starts matting on your fursuit. But maybe they're all just the signs of an event well enjoyed. Worth repairing, modifying, and re-wearing, but not to be regretted for moving along with time.

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bro you didn't even knock

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Picked my coasters up to dust them while scrubbing the house and felt like sharing them! A set of four ceramic tile coasters I painted up in 2018, based on MH4/MHGen monster icons of Tetsucabra, Zamtrios, Astalos and Great Jaggi.

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Prey Drive

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palindrome

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Fasciation

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Pulling out da charcoal brushes

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Hello gamers I love. Wilds Photo by sps.cosplay.photography on IG