#+ probably hatband with feathers

[genderwizard]

wizard hat cowboy brim .. becoming

[intersexroadshow]

A.I. illustrators are still trippy.

I know a lot of visual artists are having a freakout about how quickly illustration AIs are improving. They’re worried they’ll be put out of work. Customers and patrons will just type a description of what they want into an AI app, and out will come the fulfillment of their desires.

As someone who has been using the MidJourney AI now for months, let me tell you that that day is not yet at hand.

Don’t get me wrong--the latest version of the MidJourney AI is amazing. It has a great sense of composition, is excellent at capturing stylistic vibes, and is capable of a photorealistic feel.

Ask it to produce something novel based on popular cultural figures, historical periods, and artistic styles, and it is gold. You want a painting of the Joker in the style of Rembrandt? You got  it!

But specify details that are less common, and the AI is just going to fudge it, in creative but often truly bizarre ways. So:

I asked MidJourney v4 to draw me an anthropomorphic cat version of Sherlock Holmes, in a Victorian street, smoking a pipe. This is probably the best image I got out of many rerolls and tweaks of the search, and a lot of it is great! The depth of field, the light, the fur textures, the Victorian feel. The steampunk detail of the top hat is a lot of fun. But. . . why is the smoke coming out of the hat, not the pipe? I suppose because the pipe entirely enclosed. . . not a very functional design. And look at the hand, eek. MidJourney is very agnostic as to the number of appendages a person or creature should have. And the text on the sign in the background--is that Cyrillic or Greek or the Roman alphabet?

Rerolling the search and hoping for a more plausible hand and pipe, I get this:

The clothing and setting are again excellent. But. . . what is up with the ears? Does the pipe end in a blob of solidified smoke? Of cotton wool? Of an abstract mouse sculpture? And oh ghods. . . the right hand. Does it have a dozen fingers? Let’s try again.

Ok, now the pipe is just a stick, and Sherlock the Cat holds some bizarre smoke-fuzz creature. Clearly we need to keep trying to tweak the prompt with descriptors of the pipe shape and how it is held. The result? 

Oh, better! Kind of. Our Sherlock-cat is now smoking a demitasse espresso cup, but the pose is right. Six fingers on the right hand and seven or eight on the left, but it feels like we are getting close. I like the detail of the mirroring quadrupedal cat in the corner of the image. Let’s try again!

This looks great initially. Then you notice that the quadruped cat in the corner is some kind of small eldrich horror. And Sherlock’s left ear and hat are a single item, with what appears to be a bonus third ear in the place of a feather in the hatband. And what is going on with the bicycles in the background? 

Once more unto the breach!

Great outfit here, and I love our Sherlock’s coloring. But. . . now the cat in the corner has morphed into something Sherlock is smoking. I presume that the AI was exposed to a few meerschaum pipe images, while tripping on the entirety of Google Images. And we get six fingers on the right hand and an earhat again. Are we getting any closer to a ten-fingered, pipe-smoking Victorian detective cat--an image that won’t make human viewers tilt their heads and feel vaguely woogy inside?

No. No we are not. What the heck! Sherlock smokes a cat tail, while a bonus tail frolics by itself on the Victorian cobblestones. Dare we try again?

Uh oh. MidJourney’s definitely gone Lovecraftian. 

Now instead of the pipe being a small cat, the corner-cat is a pipe.

The pipe is a tophat! The anthro Sherlock-cat and the corner quad-cat have merged into a single entity! The fur is a suit! And the entity’s eyes are multiplying. . .  

For sake of our sanity, it’s best to stop.

At least our journey has brought us some understanding. Illustration AIs are becoming better and better at doing what we want them to do. But they are also very, very high, and they insist on putting their own vision into what they produce. 

And that, in the end, is what makes them fun for me! But I don’t think they’re going to drive human artists to extinction any time soon. 

And remember, similar hand-wringing claims were made about the end of human artists when photography was invented. The camera did empower ordinary non-artists to generate all the self-portraits their hearts could desire. And artists were freed thereby to do other things.

[quietbluejay]

you may have noticed for both yvraine posts that this is not something you can really accomplish on a budget and also most likely without making it yourself

SO Cottagecore Yvraine

this is a bit more renfaire leaning than cottagecore lol

anyways

let's go with a black chemise

then this:

you could also get something with a bit more structure, this is just something I pulled because it's easy (this is also probably cheaper)

honestly i think you do need to diy the hip swags for this one, there's tutorials out there. You could technically just use a "corset" with double layered DIY hip swags with the bigger one being red, but tbh it's probably cheaper this way

white straw hat with a gold hatband and peacock feathers again not super cottagecore but it's not too out there

The alternative to the chemise is do a poofy black top (maybe a tunic) and then black leggings

also it doesn't need to be said but, gotta decorate the bodice of the dress

[strafethesesinners]

All of weather for Cooper please ☺️

Aaah of course! Thank you :3

🌩 lightning-are they scared of lightning?

Nope. Not at all.

💧random angst head canon

Cooper thinks that because he doesn’t have nightmares or panic attacks or anything like that, that means he isn’t traumatized by anything in his past. (He is incorrect).

❄️ snowflake-do people consider them cold? If so, what made them this way?

No, Cooper is actually very warm towards most people unless they give him a reason to act cold towards them.

🌪tornado-what is the biggest change you’ve ever made to them? How have they changed from their original version?

So he actually hasn’t gone through too many huge changes really. His story and character have just become more detailed and less vague, but still essentially the same. I made him a little less mean and less intelligent than he was originally. Probably the most significant changes have been to his appearance lol. He didn’t originally have the signature curls and he got bigger and got more tattoos (still more to come ideally.)

🌈 rainbow-what advice would they give to their younger self?

Probably to watch out for his ex boyfriend and just not get involved with him at all.

🔥fire-do they have any self destructive tendencies? What habits do they have that hinder them from becoming their best self?

🙂🙂🙂 he does in fact! Uh let’s see here: Probably the worst one is his tendency to avoid difficult conversations with people who are important to him. He has his reasons, historically telling the truth has led to the important person removing him from their life. But he makes things worse by continously avoiding confrontation. (I should note that this only applies to people he loves and respects. ) Cooper also tends to overindulge in things that aren’t good for him, like alcohol, drugs and smoking. He does manage to quit smoking for a bit in Montana cause it’s too cold to go outside all the time, but he starts again when the Reaping happens. He also definitely has a bit of adrenaline junky in him.  There’s more but I can’t think of them all now. 

☁️ CLOUD - a soft headcanon

I know I’ve mentioned before that Cooper likes to pick up feathers and flowers he likes and stick them in his hatband, but he will also pick up cool rocks and shells etc., although he usually ends up dropping those again when his pockets get full. Unless they’re really cool then he’ll put them somewhere in his room.

🌟 GLOWING STAR - what do they think about when they look at the night sky? is there someone they want to star gaze with?

Cooper has ADHD so looking up at the night sky at first he would think about: how clear the sky is in Hope County compared to other places he’s been, looking up at the stars lying in a truck bed driving through the desert, the people he was with then, but after a while (ok a few seconds) his thoughts are gonna drift to: what are stars made of and how do we know that, do all those stars have planets too, aliens, and then his brain is gonna focus either on any number of space based sci-fi movies he’s seen or try to puzzle out more existential or scientific questions (he has a lot of of those).

🌠 SHOOTING STAR - if they could make any wish with no repercussions, what wish would they make?

He would probably wish for his criminal charges to go away. It would just make things a lot easier for him.

☄️ COMET - what do people assume about them? are they right?

Well, people assume he’s an idiot which is partially right. He can be impulsive, reckless, absent-minded, and he’s not very educated. But! He’s not *quite* as stupid as people assume he is. A lot of people also assume he’s straight (he actually doesn’t wear his shorts too often) which is of course, incorrect. 

[doomspaniels]

~Devising with the DOOM Spaniels~

(part 3 of 3) (part 1 and part 2)

You can make a whole lot of variety from very little in the way of real craft supplies. We're still talking about dogs; decorative gear for them doesn't need to be very in-depth. If you have an idea in mind, you can generally scrounge up a lot of useful bits to create your vision.

Let's use the Steampunk Spaniels as an example. Yvaine is wearing a caped coat I made her, but any raincoat or dog coat would do. The scarf is mine, and the long ends are tucked under her belly strap. Tristan's morning coat tuxedo was an after-Halloween sale, but he could wear a dog coat and a scarf too. They've got gears safety-pinned in various places on scarf/tie/coat for fun.

I am going to abashedly admit that I bought the hats and the little metal gears. I originally intended to make the hats from paper and tape, and to draw/cut out gears from paper, but I just could not get my hands to cooperate. You can find easy howtos for hats and printable art for gears, though, if you have reasonably working hand-eye coordination :) You could also draw gears (or other decorations) directly on your props with markers or paint pens.

I did, however, make the goggles. I wanted small, round lenses: bottle caps! I painted them with paint pens; I wanted an antiqued silver look, so I painted them black, gold, and white, then messily scribbled over that with silver. The black looked best, incidentally. Then I glued gears to the front. (Again, you could draw, or cut gears from paper and glue those on.)

Some of the bottle caps (prescription pill bottles) had gaps in the sides, and for others I poked a hole in opposite sides. I threaded a string through the caps, looped it around the hat like a hatband (strung a few more gears on it for entertainment), and tied it. Then I glued the cord in place to hold the bottle caps at the front of the hats. (Thin flexible wire could work instead of string/cord, especially to support a hat that's a little less sturdy.)

Beads, feathers, patches made of cloth scraps, bits of sparkly costume jewelry could all be added to a hat like this for extra touches. Tape, glue, safety pins, flexible wire, or string can secure it in place.

I discussed using flexible wire (pipe cleaners, twisties, scrap wire) to make hat loops, and ponytail holders to make elastic chin straps, in part 1 and part 2.

That chain bracelet was clipped to another bottle cap hung at Tristan's lapel (for a pocketwatch), but it didn't show in any of the pics. Will have to do better making it visible :)

Yvaine's monocle is two pipe cleaners: one twisted together into a circle, with gears in it, and the other twisted into the loop and sticking out from it. The long piece just went under her ear and hooked around her collar, but it could have been attached to the hat, too.

Tristan is holding a telescope from a cheap pirate toy set. I used the same multiple-layer paint pen to get antiqued silver, and glued gears to one end. (Again, designs can be added with pen, paint pen, or cut-out paper.) If you want a telescope, you could probably make one with a paper towel tube. If you have something different in mind, you can probably find something shaped approximately right around the house somewhere.

All together, they're a pair of mad scientists whose steam-powered machines will take over the world.

[weaselle]

Dead Earth 3rd installment

Ringer had killed a couple men back in Quorum, and that was the problem. Quorum was pretty rough and tumble; those men he shot were mean and tough, and he figured it made him a real bad hombre.

He was tall and slim, and he fancied himself a gunfighter, wearing a pistol in a shoulder rig and another in a holster tucked into the back of his belt. Somewhere along the way he had joined up with Daily, a big beefy man who loved to hit things with his fists, and the two of them pretty much thought they were the toughest dudes to ever live. Geo, a smallish young man, was impressed by them, and latched onto the pair.

Breen only had two other crew members: Cee W., a copilot he’d met on a night the young man was fed up with his previous employer, and Hanah, an old ship hand who kept to herself, knew how to do her job and everyone else’s too. Breen’s ship The Grabbyelle was already warming it’s engines for take off by the time Ringer, Daily, and Geo showed up, late as usual.  

“They’re on, Cap’n” Hannah’s voice sounded in Breen’s ear.

“Lift it” Breen told Cee W.. Once they were on course, he turned over control to his copilot and called a crew meeting in the galley. Hex and Jackal would be there, Cee W. would listen in on the com.

_____________________________________________________________________

Breen did a double take as he entered the galley and saw Hex. She was wearing a kind of business suit in crimson and black, with plenty of gold jewelry, somehow managing to look like both a CEO and a pirate -- the pirate effect highlighted by the nine inch blade strapped to her left thigh and a long wool coat draped over her shoulders like a cloak. Jackal was beside her in similar if less flashy garb. His large foxy ears were plainly visible through a brimmed hat with two holes for them, but looked at first glance like they might be part of it, like feathers stuck in the hatband. Wearing a vest and no jacket, he had a sort of short staff slung across his back. It was the least number of visible weapons Breen had seen on them yet.

When Ringer and Daily came in trailing Geo behind them, Hex and Jackal had their interest right away. Ringer leaned insolently against a counter eyeballing Jackal, and Daily walked over and lewdly ran his eyes up and down Hex.

“Well well, Captain, what have you brought us?” Ringer said, looking at Jackals ears, then glancing at Hex. “Pets? Are they house trained?” Jackal’s eyes narrowed a little, and one ear flicked. “What do think Daily, she got a tail hidden away behind her? Aww, what am I sayin’, you probably don’t care if she’s human or not”

“Shut up, Ringer” Daily said flatly, leaving his eyes on Hex.

“You’re out of line, Ringer” said Breen, with more confidence than he felt, “You too, Daily, back off! Don’t be rude to our clients” Daily lingered a second, then moved to sit at the table with Hannah and Geo.

“Oh clients!” said Ringer, bowing sarcastically “So sorry, I didn’t realize.”  Suddenly ignoring Hex and Jackal, he dropped into a chair and faced Breen, who also sat.  “What’s the job?”

Before he could answer, Hex said “I’ve hired this ship and its crew to retrieve something of mine. A box my uncle left me.”

“We need a whole ship for that?” said Geo skeptically “Must be a big-ass box”

“Not so big,” said Hex, as Jackal brought her a mug of black caff and sat at the table, “it’s not the size, it’s the location. I hope you all are ready for a rough time -- we’re going down to the Old World.”

Well, they didn’t like to hear that, and with good reason. The Lunar Colonies had been established close to 200 years ago, and the Earth had been considered a dead and dangerous planet for most of that time. Oh, there were things living on it, but it mostly wasn’t a fit place for people to live. Some did anyway, such were the ways of humans, to claw existence from the barest chance of survival. They lived amid the wreckage left by a combination of environmental disaster and global warfare, an apocalyptic  wilderness considered uninhabitable by most of what was left of humanity. Many of those left on the planet were either genetically altered or cybernetically augmented, the progeny of laboratory creations during the last, war-torn decades of a fully populated Earth.

Called derogatory names like “grader” “shifter” “alter” and “mutie” (slurs short for upgraded, gene-shifted, altered, and mutant) people with cybernetic or genetic enhancements were not welcome in the lunar colonies. First generation Upgraded and Gene-shifted entities had been designed for war and terror, often mimicking horror story creatures such as vampires and zombies, or housing weaponry and programing for battle and assassination. Not just people, there were many human-created animals, some of which were quite intelligent. And there were micro-organisms and nanobots still swarming the planet, as well. When a last large-scale evacuation had finally been implemented, the Planetary Evacuation and Transfer Agency had screened for and denied entry to all Enhanced Beings, a policy meant to prevent “infecting” the supposed purity of the Lunar Colonies.

“I shoulda known a couple of damn shifters would try to get us down the well” said Daily, referring to the gravity well created by the planet. “Like hell I want to go there, full of vampires and borgs and nano-mites and who knows what.”

“That box of your uncle’s must have something worth a whole lot of money in it for you to hire a ship and land on that death rock,” mused Ringer. “What’s our share?”

Hex looked at him coldly “Whatever worth that box has is only valuable to me. There’s nothing in there for you. What you get is a working ship in operation, with its dock fees paid off and plenty of food and water, and your normal crew rates.”

Ringer scowled and looked over at Breen “That right, Captain? We working for zero percent of the haul? Doesn’t seem fair, that.”

“Can’t make money on a ship with empty tanks and unpaid dock fees, Ringer. I saw a chance and I took it. You’re getting paid your crew rate. Sometime in the next few hauls maybe we’ll find something that’ll earn you a nice bonus. Meanwhile, eat up, sleep tight, do your job, and draw your normal pay.”

“I don’t like it at all,” Ringer replied “and I know Daily and Geo don’t either. How ‘bout you, Hannah? You want to go down to Old Earth? Getting old to try that kind of environment, aren’t you? And I bet you don’t like to work a run and not get a percentage”

Hannah, never impressed by Ringer and his friends, shrugged “You ever shipped out on one of those big ol’ EA astroid miners? They charge you for room and board the whole time you’re on the ship, gotta pay it out of whatever you manage to mine while you’re out in The Black. If you don’t find enough ore to pay your bill, you don’t get to leave the ship when it docks, gotta head back out on the next run and hope your luck is better. Plenty of them miners never manage to get free, spend the rest of their lives working for that EA mining corp, never see a single kuai in their bank account. This here’s not my favorite deal, but it’s a deal, and a better one than I’ve had from some. Captain says we might get something extra later on, then I expect there’s a good chance of that, he ain’t lied to us yet.”

Hannah grinned nastily at the lanky troublemaker, “As for taking a trip down the well, you don’t worry me none with that talk, Ringer, what with you never even breathed the Old World air. You might be surprised to know I actually been down there before, an’ I ain’t so old I can’t go again. What’s more, I’m twice as likely to make it back as you are yourself, and that’s facts. That there planet eats up men think they’re tough like you, just plain eats ‘em right up; why, you oughta be scared more than you are, really.”

“Scared?” Ringer was outraged. “You keep talking, grannie,” Ringer bit out, “I’ll show you who’s tough”

“Alright, that’s enough,” said Breen, “In 52 hours we’ll be landing. It’s a dangerous world, but we’re just making a pick up, and taking off. No reason for everybody to get all wound up. Now you’ve heard the job, and that’s how it is. Everybody back to work. Hex, I’d like to speak to you on the bridge at your convenience” and with that, he walked out.

Daily stood up, looking at Hex, “How ‘bout it, lady, you want to come see me in my quarters when you’re done with the captain, I’ll show you a real man.”

“That’d be nice” said Hex, “I been looking for a real man since I got here.”

“Oh yeah?” said Daily, grinning lustily.

“Yeah,” said Hex, wryly, running her eyes slowly up and down Daily “and I haven’t seen one yet” and turned her back and left.

“Fucking bitch!” Daily exclaimed and leapt up to follow, but suddenly Jackal was face to face with him, fangs bared, staff out with the tip resting against Daily’s chest, stopping him. Ringer put his hand to his gun, but Jackal said “Daily dies if you do, Ringer. Daily, you better call off your buddy if you want to live. You know what a bangstick is?”

Off to one side, Hannah chuckled. “You boys sure went knocking on the wrong door. Better go easy there, Ringer. Bangstick is a compression gun, Daily, in case you don’t know. Just a pipe with a round loaded in, usually shotgun shell -- you jab it against anything and it hits the pin, fires the round. You’re mighty close to having a big hole right through you, boy.”

“That’s exactly right,” said Jackal “and your pal Ringer there could make me nervous, with his hand on his gun like that.”

“Let’s go, Ringer,” said Daily, slowly, “this is a bad start to a fight. We can pick a better time and finish it.”

“Anytime at all, cabronés,” said Jackal, as Ringer took his hand away from his holster and Daily backed away. “You try it anytime you want”.

Daily and Ringer left.

Hannah looked at Jackal. “You remind me of some folks. You ever ship with any of the Old Fleet?”

Jackal grinned at her and winked, touched the brim of his hat and left.

Hannah whistled soundlessly and looked across the table at Geo. “Kid, I never liked those two you hang out with, but you seem okay, so I’ll give you some good advice for free. If they go after these two, you just let them go and do it without you, I’d hate to see you killed. That there was a Galloglas, or I’m Queen of the Moon.”

Geo wrinkled his brow at her. “What in the diyu is a Galloglas?”

“You ever hear of the Old Fleet?” Geo shook his head at her. “The Council of Captains?” Geo shook his head again. “Well, you know how Sol Union got started?” Geo shrugged. “Por su madré, what all are they teaching people these days?” she said, “Well okay then, listen up, I guess this here is story time.”

“Back in the day, the Old Fleet was called the Station Supply Fleet, or the Service Fleet. A handful of giant ships created to service the seven space stations.

Life on these stations was secretive even back then, and from the beginning, their smaller populations tended to have a lot of brains and be in the top of their field. Then those folks raised a few generations of children who were certainly very, very smart, even if no one has ever proved they’ve been genetically enhanced to be extra intelligent, as rumor says.

Those stations, whole little worlds unto themselves, were busy developing goods and services in their areas of specialty -- those things they still produce, like robotics, medical research and narcotics, specialized food production, entertainment. But that wasn’t all they developed while floating around out in The Black. They also developed their own ways of life.

Sort of the same way, the Service Fleet was making their own cultures too. Most of those ships were crewed by several hundred men and women on back to back between-station journeys that could take three years or more each trip, and they naturally started their own way of living.

So anyway, it wasn’t long before the stations began to have differing opinions about what the law should be on-station. Different from each other, a bit, and very different than the governments that thought they controlled them.

More and more those opinions disagreed with the opinions of Earth and the Lunar colonies, and when one of those disagreements came to a head on Station Delta, the old Space Command  found out very quickly that one of the things all the stations had in common was an opinion that attempts at military boarding and take-over of a station would not be tolerated.

The long and short of it was, the few surviving members of the Lunar Military incursion team wound up reporting that yes, the extremely intelligent people of Station Delta had, in fact, thought to engineer quite well against armed intrusion. Planetary authorities were further caught with their pants down when the seven stations of Sol System immediately unionized and seceded en mass, announcing themselves an alliance of self-governing bodies. Looking back, they had to have been planning it for a while, secretive messages going back and forth in the dark for years. Anyway, that’s how Sol Union was born.

The days-old Sol Union then gave the Supply Fleet that serviced them an offer, which was simply: join us.

Now those ships relied heavily on those stations to supply and refuel. There was no way to land them on the Moon or on Old Earth, they were designed to dock with the stations. And I imagine a lot of those ships didn’t care for being ordered around by government folks who didn’t know what life in the Fleet was like, most of who’d never even served on board any ship at all.

On each ship of the Fleet, decisions were made about the Sol Union offer. On some ships, there were votes. On other ships arguments were more pointed. Explosive, even. Two ships were lost entirely.

In the end, the Council of Captains was formed (some of whom were very new to their captaincy indeed). They defined each ship as an autonomous entity, and unanimously offered an alliance with the Sol System Union, simultaneously offering Earth and the Lunar Colonies a peace-treaty with trade agreements. Once the Sol Union signed that alliance with the Council of Captains, there wasn't really any choice for Terran or Lunar governments; the station labs produced a lot of the best goods and technology: medical equipment and vaccines, personal electronics, as well as widely enjoyed arts and entertainment- that last bit was particularly tricky for Space Command to get around. It was extremely difficult to keep the support of the citizenry when the 'enemy' was so damned popular.

But mostly it was that the ships of the Fleet were almost all of the serious space-craft humanity had made up til then. There was no space navy, nor any kind of second fleet to provide shipping. In effect, the rebel Union, while refusing to trade any of their products with Terra, had agreed to sell to the Fleet, who was offering to sell those things to the Earth and Moon. And buy goods from them to sell to Sol Union, of course. Neither Terra nor Luna could afford to refuse, and indeed, the Delta Solar Treaty worked well for all concerned. Still does.

Now, one of those ships, the captain was a woman named Reilly Galloglas. Nobody is sure how or where, but her crew started buying or building smaller ships. They spread out some. Some of them turned Pirate. Some of them started raiding Earth, scavenging and selling black market goods. Some of them even left off shipping out and worked security for a station here and there, or started a business. Mostly they’re one big family, even if distantly related. They’ll adopt long time crew members, and I’ve heard tell some people marry into the family. But they never take in or keep anybody who doesn’t live up to their standards, born in or not. And there are three things you have to know about them Galloglas folk.

First, they’re honest and honorable, even if half of ‘em are criminals and pirates. I mean they might steal all your money, but they won’t lie about it, they’ll keep any promise they make, and they’ll only kill someone who’s armed and facing them. Second, they’re a hard, dangerous, deadly folk. They don’t run from a fight, you can believe it; there’s just no back up to ‘em. And third, they are loyal as fuck. They mostly handle their own business, but gods help anyone who backshoots one, or gets one too outgunned and they have to call for reinforcements.

I only ever heard one time it happened. ‘Bout sixty years ago, the Theta Station Mining Co. had a difficulty with one, and blew her ship up while she was on station talking to them about it. They musta figured to strand her there, or something. I don’t know if they realized that little ship had her husband and kids on it, but she sure made sure they knew it by the end. Every Galloglas near got involved, and that right there is why there’s only six stations left in Sol Union. The rest of them stations looked at shrapnel left where the station had been, checked their options, and allowed as how Theta had fucked up and got what they deserved. They sorta buried the whole story and moved on quick. They surely didn’t want to push the issue with that Galloglas crew. I reckon if it came to it, they’d all of them show up, and I don’t see how there could be less than 500 of them Galloglases, maybe two or three times that number, a bunch of ‘em with their own ships, and every one a demon in a fight.”

Son,” Hannah looked into Geo’s eyes, “you take an old lady’s advice, tell your friends to lay off - them two are a lot more trouble than Ringer and Daily can handle”

“I will Hannah, thanks” said Geo. And a couple hours later, he did.

But the problem was, Ringer had killed a couple men back in rough and tumble Quorum, and he figured it made him a real tough guy.

[glowingskull]

Resources for mask builders

It's getting to be that time of year again. I'm working on a Maratus volans costume, or at least a similarly-designed jumping spider.

Making the skull

I generally start from an existing open-licensed 3d model of the skull or head I'm working from. In the past, I've used a scan of a fossil from Thingiverse, and a lowpoly triceratops model from Thingiverse.

Supplies, ho boy. This is a list of everything that went into my 2016 triceratops skull. It's a substantial investment in things.

At bare minimum, you're going to need a printer, scissors, glue, and paint.

I would recommend that you lose your own printer and print your model on a copy shop's three-foot-wide printer that prints from a roll of paper. It saves so much time during assembly, completely eliminating the "cut out the parts of the parts, then join the parts of the parts together" stage.

It may take multiple triees to get the correct size of print. To make this easier, I recommend finding a 3d model of a construction helmet and a human head, and putting them into your model. Measure how big your head is, create a ruler shape in the model that you can say, "This should be 15.5 inches long." Using Blender's native units support is helpful.

Once you have the model how you like it, figure out how to get it out of Blender. I used to use a script to export it from Blender as a papercraft SVG, but the linked wiki page is gone. You could try this github page for that tool or this unrelated tool?

After I exported the SVG from Blender, I opened it in Inkscape, and scaled the SVG so that the ruler would be the correct size when printed. Then I looked at all the tabs and rearranged and resized numbers so that they'd be legible once the model was printed. I then rearranged pieces for a more-compact print size, suited to my print shop's 36-inch paper reel. 36 inches wide, more than 15 feet long. Export the SVG as a PDF. Bring a rubber band to the print shop.

If you're printing on a home printer, there are tools that will make your job easier. Depending on your operating system, search the Internet for things like "how to print poster on Windows". This was my workflow on Linux in 2015 and 2016: split an image then print en masse.

Don't bother gluing the tabs of the papercraft work; use masking tape instead. You don't have to wait for glue to dry. Don't use medical tape; its sawtooth edges are impossible to hide.

Fill the weird gaps in the model where your tape ran awry with wood putty.

There is no need to paper-maiche on top of the printer paper. Buy a can of cheap windows-and-doors spray foam (not the very-expandy kind!) and fill up all the insides of your skull with that. Before filling with foam, add wire for rigidity and attachment points.

If you're not going to fill the innards with foam, then you'll need to paper-maiche or you'll need to glue the printer paper on top of posterboard before cutting it out. You can cut paper with scissors just fine, but posterboard deserves a sharp xacto knife.

Use a construction helmet as a base for your headpiece. Helmets are built to stay on the wearer's head despite strange impacts. Baseball caps are inadequate if you plan to bend over; they will not hold the skulll onto your head. Cut the crown off of the helmet with a hacksaw blade, drill some holes through the hatband, and zip-tie the helmet to the wire you placed in the skull before filling it up with foam. Trim the zip ties with wire cutters.

Does your paint emit fumes? It probably does. Find a way to do that outside, or find a way to ventilate the area where it'll be drying. If your bathroom has an exhaust fan, you can put newspaper on your bathroom floor, paint the mask outside, and then bring the skull into the bathroom to dry. This is particularly useful if it's too cold outside for the paint to cure properly. Look at the paint can; look at the thermometer. If the air is not at least 10 degress Fahrenheit above the paint's minimum temperature, you're going to have a verrrrry slow drying. Screen porches are handy things to have.

If your mask has more than one piece, figure out how to attach it to your head. For the lower jaw of a triceratops, I pinned the jawbone to a zentai, which wasn't the worst thing I've ever done. For the lower jaw of a much-better-planned deinonychus, I built a hinge from eyehooks. And then I put a rod on the jaw so that I could puppet the jaw. For this year's Maratus spp. head, I'm thinking some sort of Lego assembly will probably work best. Or copious quantities of elastic.

Polymer clay and air-dry clay are pretty much the same. What's your tolerance for fumes? That determines your tolerance for polymer clay, which must be baked. For air-dry clay, I molded the teeth around toothpicks. To attach the teeth to the model, I piked holes into the skull, filled the hole with hot glue, and then shoved the toothpick in until the tooth hit the bone.

For stretching gauze or tights or spandex across gaps, use pins to hold the fabric in place, but use Gorilla Glue to fix nylon in place, not hot glue or super glue. Spandex holds up under hot glue, but make sure that the hot glue is being bonded to a roughened surface on the skull side of the connection.

Do not use superglue on anything that is going to be near your eyes within 12 hours of the superglue application. Superglue offgasses straight chlorine gas, which stings exactly like pool water. Except more painfully.

Make something reusable. I've worn my 2015 Lewis skull to ... at least 5 venues that I can remember. The triceratops I wore twice before retiring it to a wall mount. The deinonychus I've worn at least 4 times.

Finally, do something that you'll have fun doing. Here's my thoughts on one con's worth of cosplay.

Miscellaneous other tutorials:

@rah-bop's Eye and Articulated Eyelid Tutorial

@nambroth has pretty feathers

[gwendolynlerman]

Discovering the world

Austria 🇦🇹

Basic facts

Official name: Republik Österreich (Republic of Austria)

Capital city: Vienna

Population: 8.9 million (2023)

Demonym: Austrian

Type of government: federal semi-presidential republic

Head of state: Alexander Van der Bellen (President)

Head of government: Karl Nehammer (Chancellor)

Gross domestic product (purchasing power parity): $634.36 billion (2024)

Gini coefficient of wealth inequality: 26.7% (low) (2021)

Human Development Index: 0.926 (very high) (2022)

Currency: euro (EUR)

Fun fact: Austria is home to the oldest still-operating restaurant in the world.

Etymology

The country’s name derives from the Old High German Ostarrîchi, which means “eastern realm”. It is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis. “Austria” is a Latinization of the German name.

Geography

Austria is located in Central Europe and borders Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west.

There are four main climates: subtropical highland in the north and east, warm-summer humid continental in the center and south, and tundra and subarctic in mountainous areas. Temperatures range from −10 °C (14 °F) in winter to 25 °C (77 °F) in summer. The average annual temperature is 4.1 °C (39.4 °F).

The country is divided into nine federal states (Bundesländer), which are further divided into 94 districts (Bezirke). The largest cities in Austria are Vienna, Graz, Linz, and Salzburg.

History

8th-6th centuries BCE: Hallstatt culture

16 BCE-476 CE: Roman Empire

555-1156: Duchy of Bavaria

1156-1453: Duchy of Austria

1453-1804: Archduchy of Austria

1618-1648: Thirty Years’ War

1701-1714: War of the Spanish Succession

1804-1867: Austrian Empire

1848: revolutions

1866: Austro-Prussian War

1867-1918: Austro-Hungarian Empire

1918-1919: Republic of German-Austria

1919-1934: First Austrian Republic

1934: Austrian Civil War

1934-1938: Federal State of Austria

1938-1945: German occupation

1945-1955: Allied-occupied Austria

1955-present: Second Austrian Republic

Economy

Austria mainly imports from Germany, Italy, and Switzerland and exports to Germany, the United States, and Italy. Its top exports are cars, medicines, and vaccines.

Tourism is an important part of the country’s economy. Services represent 70% of the GDP, followed by industry (28%) and agriculture (1.3%).

Austria is a member of the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Demographics

75.6% of the population is Austrian. There are three significant minorities: Carinthian Slovenes, Croats, and Hungarians. The main religion is Christianity, practiced by 64.1% of the population, 55.2% of which is Catholic.

Austria has a positive net migration rate and a fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman. 58% of the population lives in urban areas. Life expectancy is 81.7 years and the median age is 44.2 years. The literacy rate is 98%.

Languages

The official language of the country is German, spoken by 88.8% of the population. Croatian, Hungarian, and Slovene are official languages in some parts of the country. 73% of the population speaks English.

Culture

Music is a very important part of Austrian culture and the country has produced numerous renowned classical musicians. Austrians place a high value on politeness and respect and like outdoor activities.

Men traditionally wear a white shirt, a green vest or jacket, black or brown leather pants cut above the knee (Lederhosen), high socks, leather shoes, and a Tyrolean hat made of green felt and decorated with a corded hatband and feathers. Women wear a close-fitting bodice with a low neckline, a blouse under the bodice, a wide high-waisted skirt, and an apron known as Dirndl.

Architecture

Austria is known for its baroque and rococo architecture, but also has numerous examples of Gothic buildings. Traditional houses are made of wood and stone and have tiled roofs, several windows, and a balcony on the first floor.

Cuisine

The Austrian diet is based on bread, meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Typical dishes include Apfelstrudel (a pastry with apple filling and powdered sugar), Mohnnudel (thick noodles made of potato dough and served with butter and poppy seeds), Speckknödel (boiled dumplings with bacon inside that can be served with soup or sauerkraut), Tafelspitz (boiled veal or beef in broth served with potatoes and apples and horseradish or sour cream with chives), and Wiener Schnitzel (a breaded, pan-fried veal cutlet).

Mohnnudel

Holidays and festivals

Like other Christian countries, Austria celebrates Epiphany on January 6, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, All Saints’ Day, Immaculate Conception on December 8, Christmas Day, and St. Stephen’s Day. It also commemorates New Year’s Day and Labor Day. National Day is celebrated on October 26 and commemorates the permanent neutrality declaration.

Other celebrations include Almabtrieb, when cattle decorated with flowers and bells is brought down from higher altitudes back to the stables; Krampus, when a horned goat figure with a very long tongue that accompanies Saint Nicholas and punishes naughty children parades in the streets, and the Salzburg Festival, a music and drama festival.

Krampus

Landmarks

There are twelve UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, City of Graz, Salzkammergut Cultural Landscape, Fertő/Neusiedlersee Cultural Landscape, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, Great Spa Towns of Europe, Historic Center of the City of Salzburg, Historic Center of Vienna, Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn, Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, Semmering railway, and Wachau Cultural Landscape.

Schönbrunn Palace

Other landmarks include the Hofburg Palace, the Hohensalzburg Fortress, the Krimml Waterfalls, Seegrotte Hinterbrühl, and St. Stephan’s Cathedral.

Krimml Waterfalls

Famous people

Angelika Kauffmann - painter

Anna Stöhr - rock climber

Arnold Schwarzenegger - actor and politician

Gustav Klimt - painter

Hedy Lamarr - actress

Ingeborg Bachmann - writer

Joy Adamson - naturalist

Sigmund Freud - psychiatrist

Thomas Muster - tennis player

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - musician

Ingeborg Bachmann

You can find out more about life in Austria in this article and this video.

[strafethesesinners]

For the oc questions: Fun Facts! For the wonderful Cooper! 💜

Aaaah thank you!! 

Cooper McCoy: Fun Facts!

What tropes do they fit? Which archetypes?

(Sooo I also had to look these up. It’s been a few years since those lit classes lol.) I’m not 100% sure on any of these but maybe The Hero, The Everyman, The Lover and The Rebel. Maybe a little bit the Jester too. I’m not sure.

Do they play any instruments? Sports?

Cooper does not play any instruments. He did wrestling, boxing, and MMA all through high school and is still extremely skilled at all of those, although now he does them out of necessity rather than for fun. 

What are some items they always carry?

Cooper has a beat up old backpack he always carries around with a number of items in it needed for running around. A change of clothes, one of those sleeping bags that can roll up really small, condoms, lube, a little baggie of weed, a strange assortment of candy and power bars, gauze (for bandages), a towel, combo shampoo & bodywash, a small sketchbook and some pencils. He always carries at least one pistol and several throwing knives. 

Do they collect anything?

Not really. He likes to stick feathers in his hatband but doesn’t collect them, just picks one up if he sees one he likes.

What position do they sleep in?

Usually curled up on one or the other side, or on his stomach. He’ll sleep on his back if he’s with someone and they want to use him as a pillow.

Which emoji would they use the most?

;) (I’m doing this from my desktop)

What languages do they speak?

English and Spanish, although his Spanish has gotten a little rusty in Hope County.

What’s their favorite expletive?

Does “Hell yeah!” count? Cause he says that a lot. If not then probably “goddamnit” or “well shit.”

What’s their favorite candle scent?

He doesn’t know what the names are but he likes the ones that smell like cookies or birthday cake.

What songs remind you of them?

“Country Boy” by Alan Jackson, “Whitehouse Road” by Tyler Childers, “Nighttrain” by Guns n Roses, “99 Problems” by Hugo, “Livin’ After Midnight” by Judas Priest, “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks, “Mama Tried” by Merle Haggard.

Which animal would you say represents them?

Like a big dog I think. Fun, loving, and loyal but can be pretty scary or even dangerous if he doesn’t like you. Can run out of control if he doesn’t have someone who loves him and that he can come home too.....

What stereotypical high school clique would they fit into?

Somewhere between jock and stoner.

What would their favorite ride at an amusement park be?

Any of them really. As a kid anyway. Most rides are a little too small for adult Cooper and he doesn’t like feeling cramped. He prefers water parks.

Do they believe in aliens? Ghosts? Reincarnation or something else?

Aliens maybe. Ghosts no and Reincarnation no. 

Do they follow any religions/gods? Do they celebrate holidays?

No he doesn’t. Cooper’s parents were not religious, although they let his grandparents take him to church now and then and Cooper hated it. He always got scolded for not sitting still. Cooper treats holidays like any other day off as in he parties the night of/night before and sleeps the next day. He will give gifts on Christmas if he has someone to give them too.

Which Deadly Sin do they most correspond to? Which Heavenly Virtue?

Deadly Sin: oho well that’s The Big Question isn’t it? I don’t think Cooper is Wrath actually. He does get angry, but not without provocation and he usually cools off quickly. I’d say he’s either Pride or Lust. He can be stubborn and he’s pretty vain about his appearance.  Lust because of his tendency to overindulge in uh pleasures. (Or would that be Gluttony?) We’ll have to wait and see what John decides I guess. Heavenly Virtues: probably Charity or Fortitude.

If you had to choose one tarot card to represent them, which would it be?

I don’t know a lot about Tarot but probably Strength.

[anagamitofotografia]

News and helpful info on POS and POS System Equipment.

Q: Is there a proper ratio between a person’s physical build and the width of their cowboy hat’s brim? Everyone who has seen Toy Story wants to avoid the “Woody” look (tall person/narrow brim), and nobody wants the “umbrella” look (short person/wide brim). Is there a formula that determines the right hat style for a particular person?

Randy Fowler, Houston

A: The Texanist, as he’s noted many times over the years, is a hat man, which has come in handy on those occasions when he’s been obliged to answer questions on the subject. Back some fourteen years ago, for example, a reader wanted to know during which seasons one should and shouldn’t wear a straw hat. (It’s complicated.) And in 2018, there was a query about whether a self-respecting Texan would be caught dead in a shiny black straw cowboy hat, à la country singer Tim McGraw. (Firm no! And, really, neither should Tim McGraw.) Then, quite recently, the Texanist was summoned to ponder whether the resurgent popularity of Stetson’s classic Open Road model had ruined the topper for longtime wearers of the familiar short-brimmed hat. (“For the sake of all that is Texan, the Texanist sure hopes not,” he said at the time.)

Given that the Texanist tops himself with a wide array of hats, he knows of what he speaks. Standouts among the items in his collection include an Open Road, which he happily sports right alongside the newly behatted hipsters; a big, sturdy straw job made of Mexican palm leaf that gives off an exceedingly generous amount of shade; and a fine silverbelly Gus, originally shaped for the Texanist by the late Manny Gammage of Buda’s famed Texas Hatters hat shop. Gammage was the man responsible for bringing this hat into existence, for Robert Duvall’s memorable portrayal of Lonesome Dove’s Captain Gus McCrae. The Texanist owns a few others, too, such as an authentic Panama that was gifted to him many years ago by a traveling friend, a cheap Resistol knockoff purchased at an Alpine gas station, and several that wore out and have been lost to time. Or were just misplaced.

Now, the Texanist doesn’t bring all of this up as a boast—though he does, if he may say so himself, possess quite a sweet rack of hats. The reason he brings it up is to demonstrate that his impressive assortment of chapeaus features brims of widely varying widths. And though the Texanist’s physical build (medium-ish, though somewhat portly-ish in the midsection) is the exact same beneath each and every one of them, in nary a case does he resemble Sheriff Woody Pride—or an umbrella.

Nobody, of course, wants to look like an umbrella, but the Texanist will admit that he is a little flummoxed by your aversion to Sheriff Woody’s head-to-foot profile. Sure, Woody is a cartoon character, but he doesn’t have a particularly cartoonish look. In fact, the Texanist quite likes the cut of his jib, and the width of his brim, and the height of his crown. That cowhide vest is, okay, a bit over the top, but that’s pretty much the extent of the Texanist’s critique of Sheriff Woody’s bearing. He’s for sure no Yosemite Sam. Now, there’s a character with a seriously ill-fitting bucket, as most everyone except, apparently, Yosemite Sam would agree.

Because such judgments involve a degree of subjectivity, there really aren’t any surefire formulae for dictating who can or cannot wear any particular style of hat. Which isn’t to say that any old person can just pick up any old hat and wear it well. That isn’t how it works. There’s more to it.

To ascertain a fuller understanding of how, exactly, it does work, the Texanist reached out to master hatter David Torres, a former longtime apprentice to Manny Gammage and the husband of Manny’s daughter, Joella, with whom Torres is helping to carry on the family business, which is now located in Lockhart. Torres confirmed for the Texanist that there is no algorithm that precisely matches a hat to its wearer. “There’s a lot that goes into it,” Torres said. “The shape of the face is important, the jawline, the shape of the nose and eyes, the eye color, the complexion, even the hair color is something I take into consideration,” he explained. “There’s no law saying a tall person (or a short person) has to wear a certain hat, though. That said, people with long faces might not want a hat with a tall crown. And people with fuller or rounder faces should probably stick with medium crowns.”

But, again, even those aren’t hard-and-fast rules. A hat, after all, is not just a hat. A hat is the sum of a number of different elements. There’s the aforementioned brim, of course, but there’s also the crown and the crease, which is the indention made along the top of the crown; the pinch dents, which are the indentions shaped into the sides of the crown; the flange, which is the basic shape and curve of the brim from front to back and side to side; and the material from which the hat is formed. Not to mention the color of that material, and maybe the edge binding, the hatband, and a spiffy feather of some sort stuck into the hatband if that’s your thing. The possible combinations of all of these features are near infinite. Likewise, the donners of hats come in a near infinite assortment too.

So you see, when all things are considered, any one person, be they tall and slender, short and round, or even, say, medium-ish with a portly-ish midsection, might look great in any given style of hat. Or they might not. In the absence of strict sartorial constraints, the only useful system to consider in seeking a harmonious pairing with headwear is one consisting of two simple yet fundamental questions that one must ask of oneself while gazing into the mirror: “Do I like this hat on me?” And “Does this hat make me look like a fool?” If the respective answers to those questions are yes and no, then you’re probably in good shape. Though there is, of course, the occasional fellow or lady who, like Yosemite Sam (or Tim McGraw), just doesn’t know what’s good for them. Torres told the Texanist that he has, on occasion, had to politely but firmly steer a customer with strong but misguided personal preferences away from a disastrous choice. In fact, he quite recently had to assert himself in just such a manner with a well-known star of the small screen whose identity Torres refused to divulge.

Now with a tip of one of his own well-fitting (if he does say so himself) hats, the Texanist thanks you kindly for the great question, Mr. Fowler, and bids you good luck.

Have a question for the Texanist? He’s always available here. Be sure to tell him where you’re from.

The above article was first provided on this site.

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