#this actually turned into more of a textile post

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

ANNOYED bc i keep plopping her on top of the bed whenever she tries to smack my ankles in the hall

[kakusu-shipping]

Sorry to say that I am once again coming to bug you about the Swatchlings specifically jgufhgjgk

The mental image of them parading you around is just sooooo cute to me and I must know more about your dynamic!! Whatever you’ve got on them!!

Also you should share about Watanuki and Doumeki, if that’s not too much!!

NO THANKYOU FOR BUGGING ME ABOUT THE SWATCHLINGS I FINALLY HAVE MORE TO SAY ABOUT THEM THEN JUST "Colors... pretty <3"

First of all I just found this term yesterday but it's perfect so; All the Swatchlings are Butler Caregivers.

They like to take care of a little like they're nobility. Bring them fancy desserts and finger clean foods and teas on silver platters. Button their shirts and tie their shoes just so. Follow them around exactly two paces behind, hands off unless absolutely necessary or directly asked for.

They like to use names like "Young Master/Mistress" or royal variations if requested, and play up the act of the cool collected butler who diligently watches over the house's perfect little bundle of joy.

They do tend to be. Pretty excitable though.

If their young master is looking particularly cute that day they can't help but squee over them. Cooing the sleepiest babies, or repeatedly pouring compliments over a little's hand chosen outfit that they put on all by themselves.

They're also all big Commit to the Bit types. Give them a role in playing pretend and they will play it as straight as Shakespeare, as serious as the most committed stage hand. This is their life now. Should they be the biggest bad in all the seven kingdoms or just a humble guest to a tea party, they are committed, and they are dramatic.

Their favorite activity is painting with their little, though will have a moment of panic if the baby, or surrounding area, gets too filthy. Their least favorite is Hide-and-Seek, just because they're all very quick to assume they've lost the child forever and will never find them again. Also if one of them looks in a hiding spot and sees a Maus then everything goes to chaos.

Each Swatchling is a little different of course, and I just tend to break them into the 6 colors to talk about so for specifics

Red is overly romantic, they love a story to read bedtime stories about princes who save princesses from dragons, or better to act at the princess being saved by their heroic knight. They're the best cook of the six but get depressed if they're missing baby time because they're in the kitchen making all the tiny food, so they tend to shove their responsibilities off on the other Swatchlings. They get lonely easy and tend to be just a bit clingy compared to the other 6, they need more hugs, kisses, and gifts than the others by quiet a bit.

Orange is a perfectionist who loves to pick out his little's perfect outfit, button their shirt, and tie their shoes just so every morning. He'll also brush and style their hair with little ribbons and bows if he's allowed. They're the first to go hands off when a little gets too messy for them, opting to go find a change of clothes for someone else to put them in to, that they'll then adjust as needed after they're all cleaned up. The most he'll do is gently wipe his little's face with a napkin while they're eating, but even that they may have to change gloves afterwards

Yellow is a lot more about the stuffie parties, especially ones he made. Serving over tea parties with all his little's stuffies, setting up movies and placing every guest so they can see the screen. He enjoys a good pillow fort with soft blankets and hot tea and quiet sleepy nights. What she hates is being the one who has to clean it up because she's the Caretaker so it's up to her to put everything back where it goes when blue eventually comes in and carries the baby back to their big plush bed. He just wants to go to bed but he's gotta take all these pillows back to their original rooms...

Green loves to be outside with a little. She wants to set up an easle and a canvas and watch her young master sit peacefully in the rose garden weaving flowers together to make wreaths and bracelets and crowns. She enjoys the babble of the brook and the rustle of leaves in the wind and the warmth of the sun. All idealized versions of the outside she adores. Heavy forbid though her little prefer to dig in the dirt, or stomp in puddles, or run and be loud and messy. She's more of a nice calm picnic in the sun outside type, not so much tag and red light green light red rover play outside type.

Blue's a music lover, they love to sing to their little or play the piano for them, write them little songs about how great they are or how fun it is to do basic chores like brush your teeth or eat breakfast. They're more of a bedtime caregiver, they love a sleepy little to listen to their lullabies, to rock gently and tuck comfortably into bed. They're the shortest of the six Swatchlings and just a little touchy about it, so little things like not being the first choice for carrying the little or struggling to place dangerous things out of a baby's reach would get to them. They're also the only Swatchling to place and uphold rules like Bedtime, Clean up, and Time Outs (if need be). They're the leader when Swatch isn't around.

Purple is the odd one out of the Swatchlings. She LOVES a chaotic baby, she loves a mess, splatter paint and mud and food fights. She loves bath time with an entire bottle of sudsy soap and lavender lotion. She loves toys all over the floor and snacks on every surface and open but not yet finished juice boxes. She comes across a lot more like an older sibling CG than a butler. She tends to get scolded a lot by Blue and is usually more on clean up than play supervision, however she's the only Swatchling willing to deal with a messy baby meaning she eventually has to be the one to step in and change her little's clothes, help them wipe up a spill, or get them ready for bathtime. She's the oldest of the six and the most mellow (but she still can't handle Maus)

[cathkaesque]

When it comes to understanding migration, this needs to be taken into account: if you are in a rural area in the global south, like Honduras, you have basically no access to social services, medicine, and education. In fact, the funding for those services is actually being cut, as the social security funds have been looted by corrupt politicans appointed by a military coup. Then you have to factor in that you likely have no access to the land, and no access to credit to buy seeds, and have to sell yourself for basically pennies to an agroindustrial giant. The peasants feed the local people; the agroindustries feed the Americans. In Guatamala, there is a neo-corporate fuedalism where you are allowed a patch of land if you are willing to work, unpaid, for coffee plantations which sell their produce to the German company Ritz. If you attempt to settle unoccupied land, a local businessman will claim it is his without any proof, and the police will take his side because the Agrarian Reform Institute, which issues land titles, is controlled by coupists whose main concern is squeezing as much wealth out of the country as possible. Thugs will murder a man and his wife in broad daylight, and the judge will respond by evicting you and your family from the land.

There is nowhere else for you to go but Tegucigalpa, where you can work trying to wash car windows or selling snacks to passing cars for a handful of lempira a day. Or perhaps you could work for a few dollars a day in one of the maquila factories making textiles for the American and European market, which are set up in special economic zones called Charter Cities where the constitution and labour laws do not apply, which can close down and spirit away whenever they like to another country when they are more willing to sell their people for even less. And then you have to factor in the hurricanes that sweep through the country, destroying everything, that the rains no longer come when they used to but when they do they come in flooding torrents. Much of the north of Honduras is currently underwater; most of the banana and coffee plantations have been destroyed.

And then you factor in when you tried to change this via electing a better government in 2006, he was overthrown in 2009; when you tried to get organised and resist the coup, your friends, your loved ones, your trade union leaders and peasant resisters all turned up mysteriously dead while the military and police worked with drug gangs disguised as agribusiness like the Dinant coproration to burn down villages that opposed them. For trying to change things in the way that you were supposed to, through non violently protesting, organising, and voting for something better, you were subjected to a decade of counterrevolutionary terror and violence that the “international community” not only ignored but gave its active approval to. All of the factors listed above have not only been ongoing for the last 10 years, they’ve been intensified, hothoused by the global counterrevolutionary terror that was the response to the 2011 wave of post-financial crisis uprisings and revolutions and accelerating climate apocalypse.

And at the same time, all of this is being done so more of the country can be turned into a massive cash cow for the benefit of foreign corporations and domestic oligarchs. The wealth of your country is siphoned off and flows around the American and European financial system, benefiting them and building a consumer disneyland that looks like paradise compared to your situation. That could, even if you are worked for nothing, give you a few dollars to send home that could build your abuela in the countryside a nice home for her to live out her days. What other option is left for you and your family other than joining the exodus of people heading north, to the countries where the wealth and profits and rewards of your homeland’s suffering are being kept. And after you cross mountains and rivers which freeze you to death and sweep you away, you are faced with a massive border wall of ahte and soldiers on horses which hit you with sticks. You are faced with an immigration detention centre that will chain you to your bed while you give birth and separate you from your baby who will be given away for adoption to a white couple. When you make a charge against the border fence in Melilla, fed up with being kept in shacks with nothing while the Northerners debate what to do about the problem people their greed has forced to move, the Moroccan police will beat 35 of you to death.

And then when you get there to that golden paradise, you end up doing work not dissimilar to the work you were doing back home, working for pennies (though pennies that are valuable enough back home to buy the family that remain the tiniest slice of comfort) for an agroindustrial giant that supplies supermarkets with cheap produce picked by cheaper people. While you work in the fields, a crop duster plane will spray you with paraquat; when support organisations try to raise this with OSHA they will ask for the plane’s number, and when this can’t be provided they will say nothing can be done. In fact, inspectors are ordered to stay away from the plantations on the Texas border. A member of the Border Agricultural Workers Project says she hasn’t seen a normal child born on the border in 20 years, such is the effect of agrichemicals. If you fuck up in the slightest, have any interaction with the state, you will be deported and sent back to square one. There are a 14 million migrants in the US in the same precarious state, effectively without any way of enforcing their rights. My aunt is a Mexican migrant in California. Her son was deported because he got a speeding ticket. It was 15 years before she saw him again, other than through the bars of the border fence, when she finally got her green card.

The situation in Honduras can be repeated for almost any other country. Syria, Venezuela, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, all the headline countries are countries that have been subjected to a severe counterrevolutionary terror. The processes of dispossession and destruction of peasant economies and communities (primitive accumulation to use the Marxist jargon) have been hothoused over the last decade by war and violence. I just wish that relatively comfortable people in the imperialist countries realised that the “migrant crisis” is the result of policies that their governments forced on others. Violence that their elites made their fortunes off. What a monstrous, barbarous way of life we have.

[reallyhardydraws]

2023.

i hope any of you reading this will forgive the essay. i started posting to this art blog ten years ago in 2013 when i was just at the very end of high school, uploading short animations i'd made for one of my final projects, preparing myself for art school where i was gearing up to become an illustration/animation student.

i went into my art foundation course in 2014, still thinking i was going to be going into storybook illustration or with faint hopes of becoming like a concept artist for game/animation, although even then i'd started thinking about patterns...

and then in 2015 i did go into my BA, going in for that illustration with animation degree that... usually when i talk about it in real life, i say didn't really feel like the best place for me. if i think back, the best things i got out of it were two of my best friends, one of whom is now my partner. looking back on my BA era, there's some bits of sketchbook stuff...

and while i was at university my main fandoms were thunderbirds are go and x-men for a bit... these are from the end of 2015 into the beginning of 2016...

then for a little while i was doing this still sort of pastel-ish lineless situation:

and i alternated between that and this thin fineliner type work (pretty sure all of the linearted pieces were done on paper and scanned, and all the lineless were graphics-tablet-only) - it was in this style that i started to offer commissions for the first time too.

and i also had fineliner-lined work in sketchbooks that i coloured with marker and posca pens, the colours of which were generally a bit more intense just based on not being able to slide the hue/saturation around on paper:

also 2016 was when i discovered the spongebob musical just after it's trial run in chicago (which ended in july of 2016) and i started making fanart at that point... which would have the biggest effect on the way i drew (and i did end up handing in a piece of spongebob musical fanart as one of my art school homeworks lmao)

from summer 2016 until early 2017 things were still quite soft and pastelly in my digital art, colour-wise:

and then suddenly everything got whacked up to 100% on saturation. also i was using the binary tool to give everything really thin pixel lineart for some reason.

then i went on vacation in summer 2017 and didn't draw for maybe a month? just short of? and when i came back i decided to change everything up again... giving characters blobbier, more ugly-cute faces with large squinting eyes and big nostrils and i was worrying a lot less about making anything look smooth, lineart-wise. i turned off the pen stabiliser in SAI and let it wiggle.

then... the spongebob musical opened on broadway in late 2017, i went to see it live in person for the first time... and my whole brain was ENTIRELY consumed by my love of it. i was putting that david zinn inspired pattern explosion into everything, even if it wasn't sbm fanart.

as we go into 2018, i started colouring my lineart. my biggest interest was still broadway musicals (with spongebob at the top of the list)

i think summer 2017 - early 2018 is probably my favourite art era, i was at my most bright and colourful and exciting... although i know in my actual real life i was struggling a lot with my home situation and i had been for some time. art was definitely my escapism back then, and i think a lot of the time i drew really bright, joyful stuff to try and inject that feeling into myself.

as for my university work, i was putting my focus into 3D paper-mache puppets:

and i was also starting to do more repeat patterns, mostly inspired by things around me. i'd learned how to make patterns actually tile and repeat in 2017, so made a few during my time at uni just to accompany some of my projects, but never as the focus of them. one of my university tutors told me that maybe i should put more focus on doing surface pattern, and maybe applying it to textiles, but i said i wasn't interested.

i graduated from my BA in the summer of 2018, and immediately began volunteering at the whitworth art gallery doing anything i could - stewarding, helping with arts and crafts, dancing with families...

in 2019 i was still very colourful... i was trying out more chunky colouring on characters skintones that i think was def inspired by tumblr artist jadenvargen:

but the blobbyness and ugly-cute style of drawing faces was gone by here, and i think... the way i drew characters probably had better *anatomy*, proportions were maybe a bit more realistic...

in 2020 i started adding the black shading to under the chins and some other places on characters' bodies because i started watching the anime my hero academia with my brother, lmao (and i was starting to pastelise colours a bit again, these are the most pastel-ish examples) my lineart has really smoothed back out too, though i never turned my pen stabiliser back on in SAI. i think my hand just adjusted. probably seems a bit insane to miss that, but i do.

by the end of 2020, the almost-year of lockdown over cobid had... made me a bit insane, i think, and i moved out of my mother's house and into a flat with a friend from university.

in 2021 i think things were much the same... i think from this point on is where things have sort of settled. i don't want to say stagnated, but i do think things have been very... like this for a while.

2022 - got the most exciting examples out...

also i was very into these little frames in 2022.

and then on to 2023! in 2022, i did begin trying to shift gears a bit -- hoping to put more energy into sewing and making products (like my tutor has suggested back in uni, even though i'd really resisted the idea.) i sold at a few in-person markets during winter of 2022, but got disheartened by the amount of money i had to sink in up front to sign up for a spot...

which has made me VERY grateful for the people who have supported me via online sales. it has really helped me stay afloat in 2023 - AND it has felt more wonderful than i can describe that there have been people interested in my work... especially when a lot of it has been my original designs, rather than the fanart that i expect a lot of people initially followed me for.

i've also... in the past 2 years... branched out a bit more when it comes to 'being an artist' - and have had the opportunity to deliver arts & crafts workshops with local refugee & asylum seeker support charity, afrocats. it's taken me to their home base in a church to hotels across the city where asylum seekers were temporarily placed while waiting on their new homes, and of course to my beloved whitworth art gallery, where we welcomed visitors from all backgrounds: from the typical white middle class visitors the gallery usually expects, to all the refugee visitors coming into the space for the first time.

and through my volunteering at the whitworth, i showed up so often they decided they might as well pay me. so i've also become a facilitator of... creative play sessions, my favourites of which have been outdoors. monthly, year-round, we have 'outdoor art club', where i get to paint with mud and make potions from leaves with kids & families - here you can see me tell you a little bit about it in this video below with 'crempog' a puppet character that makes videos about activities for kids and families around manchester (my bit starts at 01:10 although i am in the intro and thumbnail haha)

and then of course the summer 'PLAYTIME' activities we've had the past two years: scrap studio in 2022, and play market in 2023. it's the best freelance gig ever -- just to hang out and encourage families to be creative and have fun.

in working more in these new avenues... outside of being - as i've called myself for a long time - "an internet artist"... i've found myself more interested in this sort of thing. in being a "real world artist" too. in doing surface pattern design, and being a workshop facilitator, i find myself wanting to put more energy into these sorts of projects.

in 2023 i've also dabbled a little bit more in youtube videos! i have had a channel for a while and have made videos in previous years, but 2023 has been the year i've done the most in. admittedly most of them haven't been about my art, and more just like... random things that interest me (the spongebob musical in particular) but i've really been enjoying video editing. that's kind of an art form too, so i'm including it here!

moving forward, want to keep putting even more of my energy into other things. my shop, with a bigger range of products to offer. workshops in real life, where i can make a difference.

as for my art blog... i feel like i've done the least drawing in many years in 2023, and... well, things have been weird and complicated for a bit in my real life. i hope to draw for fun a bit more again very soon, and to return to doing things in more of a wild and crazy way, to be more creative and exciting with the way i draw things. still, here's some of my favourites from 2023:

thank you so much to everyone who has borne witness to my art journey this past decade!!! i hope you will stick with me, who knows, maybe for another 10 years if tumblr holds out. especially a big thank you to everyone who has ever commissioned me, or bought anything from my store, you literally keep me able to make art at all and i cannot, cannot, cannot overstate how much it means to me.

i'm moving homes soon, possibly into very cramped temporary conditions for a little while before HOPEFULLY starting my real life with my partner. if i can take one more moment to plug my work, then [here is a link to my online shop] and [here is my ko-fi page too.]

cheers, cheers, cheers!

- LOREN 🌈🍍🎉

[star-anise]

i see you have discovered history professor bret deveraux, my beloved. i highly recommend his battle of helm's deep and pelennor fields series if you want to learn about historical battlefield tactics (and operations and strategies) and his fremen mirage series if you want to learn about the facist view of history and why it's complete and utter bullshit. his series on sparta is also phenomenal

I'm having such a good time working through his back catalogue. AGreatDivorce on Youtube has recorded audio versions of many of his posts, which is a godsend for me.

The Fremen Mirage series was a balm to my soul after having to deal with SO many "military history buffs" and SFF reply guys who think that violence is the pinnacle of human achievement, and therefore acknowledging the personhood of anyone but the apex warriors is like, taking resources away from the war effort or something.

For the uninitiated, the "Fremen Mirage" is what Devereaux calls a "pop theory of history" that believes:

that a lack of wealth and sophistication leads to moral purity, which in turn leads to military prowess, which consequently produces a cycle of history wherein rich and decadent societies are forever being overthrown by poor, but hardy ‘Fremen’ who then become rich and decadent in their turn. Or, as the meme, originally coined by G. Michael Hopf puts it, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”

And then in his series he applies rigorous historical analysis to this idea, and takes it apart like Christmas wrapping. It's almost as fun as the Sparta series, where he demonstrates that Spartans would hate their modern fanboys, and also aren't actually as special or amazing as they're made out to be.

After a while, though, I got tired of the military side of things, and gone wandering. What I've found most refreshing this week were posts that take a step back from direct pop culture criticism and just simply lay out the material realities of life in the past. The really basic building blocks that help us get in tune with the daily life of the past. Stuff like the Lonely City series.

Or the clothing series! I said that I've been trying to figure out just how rare or common looms were, and while I've been looking at archeological evidence of loom types, he's just found the numbers that let me calculate it.

I'm using a base unit of 5 yards of cloth, which is, with a generous hand wiggle, enough to make one person's outfit, maybe two.

According to these estimates:

In the early middle ages, using a hand spindle and warp-weighted loom, that might take about 70 hours of weaving and, at a low estimate, 500 hours of spinning. If someone devoted eight hours a day to nothing but spinning yarn, it would take them over two months to have enough to weave with.

In the Late Middle Ages, with the invention of the spinning wheel and horizontal loom, that figure would go down to 180 hours of spinning and 30 hours of weaving. The change in technology reduces the time down to almost a third of what it was before!

This really settles for me the question I had about my early-medieval fantasy setting, which is that there would be a lot of looms, a loom in every household, and that it would not at all be out of place for even aristocratic women to spin and weave on a regular basis.

Which like, to be cranky about fantasy heroines who hate sewing: In that kind of world, embroidery is a luxury. Weavers and spinners have to bust their butts just to put clothes on everybody's backs. Spinning and weaving that much is gruelling work that I would absolutely understand hating. However, it is not stupid, silly, or useless. Being able to embroider—to do something primarily decorative and artistic, just because it looks good and feels nice—is likely to be more of an escape from drudgery than the drudgery itself.

It really can't be overstated, how much the Industrial Revolution was a textile revolution. Our relationship to cloth and clothing has transformed out of all recognition over the last 300 years. There are undeniable advantages to this, because it frees us to do so many other things with our time. But it also makes it tough to look back into the past clearly, because it's so easy to forget that the burdens we've shed still existed back then.

[anneapocalypse]

DAI Companion Styles: Josephine

Dragon Age Companion Styles Series

Next up by special request from @magneticmage is the lovely, the gracious, the refined, the stunning Josephine Montilyet, Ambassador to the Inquisition. (And yes, Josephine is an advisor, not a companion; yes this series is called “Companion Styles”; yes I’ve decided to just lump the advisors in with them and not change the name, and we’re all just going to have to live with it. 😉)

Disclaimer: I am not a fashion expert, dress historian, or professional designer! I'm just a gamer who likes to sew and has a casual interest in historical fashion, and a great interest in fantasy worldbuilding and the implications thereof, and that's where I'm coming from on these posts. I'd also love to hear thoughts from fans who have a more in-depth background in historical dress, textiles, and armor.

Also, we’re going to be talking about gendered clothing, so let me state for the record that I don’t believe clothing has any inherent gender. However we’re going to be talking about fashion in a cultural context here, and in the context of Thedas (and specifically Orlais), fashion is heavily gendered, and how characters engage with those gendered expectations can be personally and socially interesting.

As with Sera, I’m going to be focusing mostly on Josephine’s style from an in-universe perspective because that’s what I think is most interesting!

Much appreciation to @dragonagegallery, whose posts have made the canon review for this post much easier! The Art of Dragon Age Inquisition was also a great reference.

(Look at her. She even looks good in the Haven Chantry lighting. Nobody looks good in that. Iconic.)

Josephine is an Antivan-born noblewoman educated in Orlais, who trained and briefly worked as a bard before becoming disillusioned with that life and turning to a career as a diplomat instead. She has been working as the Antivan Ambassador to Orlais up until the point she joins the Inquisition as its Ambassador. Josephine is well-versed in the Grand Game and the culture of the Imperial Court and the upper class. If I were to say that Josephine is fashionable, I don’t think most people would disagree with me.

Yet her signature outfit is quite different from what we see on the fashionable upper class ladies of Orlais. There is a fair amount of Renaissance influence in Orlesian high fashion, but as others have pointed out, there's actually quite a lot of variation in sleeves, collar, and understructures (things like crinolines or panniers that give a skirt a certain volume and shape), drawing inspiration from centuries of European historical dress. Yet Josephine still stands apart from the fashions for Orlesian noblewomen, in some very interesting ways.

I should note at the start here that I am working at a bit of disadvantage with Josephine because we've never been to her country of origin in the games, and basically every Antivan character we've met so far has either been wearing armor, or the same styles as the country they're in at the time. (Also, most of them have been Crows, which Josephine is not.) So I can't comment on how Josie's look compares to what is fashionable in Antiva at the moment, because we don't know. Instead, I'll be talking about her style in the context of Orlais, which I think is fair since she went to school in Orlais and has been living and working there for quite a while now. Just bear in mind going forward that there is a whole sphere of potential influence that we can't really examine here.

But I do think there's also good reason to assume that Josephine takes inspiration from Orlesian fashion, starting with her color scheme. One of the first things that strikes me (and I think many viewers) about Josephine's outfit is "Wow, that's very gold." And it is! It's very gold and blue—colors directly associated with Orlais and with the nobility especially. We see gold and blue all over Orlais, from the capital to the countryside, and Josephine has deliberately chosen to dress herself in the colors that signify power and influence in this nation.

So let's take a look at the specific pieces she wears.

Josephine is wearing what appears to me to be a blouse of gold-colored silk satin with puffed sleeves and a tie-neck or possibly a matching scarf, dark-colored breeches ending just below the knee, a heavier sleeveless overdress or vest in blue brocade or damask (possibly even fine tooled leather; it's really hard to say) that ends at the knee, gold stockings, and black flat shoes. She wears a wide leather belt at the waist, with a gold satin sash tied over it. You can see some better images of Josephine's outfit in concept art and her character model in detail on @dragonagegallery.

This outfit is fascinating to me, and if you've read my post on Sera's style, you might have already guessed a few reasons why.

Given Josephine's basic silhouette, it's easy to look at her and assume she's wearing a dress, but she actually isn't. Even if she was, it would be a break from the Orlesian high fashions of the day, which favor floor-length skirts. But this isn't a dress at all. I would actually compare the blue vest to the leather vests we see in some of the Inquisitor armor variants, for mages and for rogues. The detailing on Josephine's makes it look finer, but it's a similar style, with a similar utility: it's easy to move in. Josephine's vest even has large visible pockets on the sides! And this goes all the way back to her concept art.

I think it's easy to get distracted by the big shiny gold sleeves and miss the fact that Josephine's outfit is actually very practical. In fact, you know what else it reminds me a little of?

Variants of this outfit appear in both Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, and it's always been a non-gendered look. Note the knee breeches, the vest, and the puffed sleeves (though with much less extravagant gathers than Josephine's).

Josephine wears flat shoes, easy to walk in, comfortable for all-day wear. The wide leather belt echoes but does not exactly mirror the popular underbust corsetry seen on gowns; it is of a more practical style and material, and I'd imagine it could be good for back support for those long hours she spends at a desk. And in fact, the way Josephine wears it over her vest with the sash tied over the belt is not unlike the way a rogue Inquisitor wears their armor:

Though Josephine has left behind the life of a bard, I feel it's undeniable that that life has influenced her style. This is rogue fashion—practical but still stylish, easy to move in, easy to carry items you might need. Josephine is dressed as a rogue, but adapted to her current profession and personal tastes.

It’s all an intriguing choice for a diplomat! Because despite the clear Orlesian influence, Josephine’s look does not very much resemble any of what is fashionable for Orlesian noblewoman at the moment. No long full skirts, no outer underbust corsetry (though her belt does offer a cinched at the waist look), no deep V neckline (though her blue vest does create a similar shape over her blouse). When we compare Josephine to these looks, it’s a very different silhouette with mostly very different shapes. Even her puffed sleeves are puffed in different places than the fashions of high noblewomen (which seem to have the most volume at the elbow or lower right now).

But you know what we do see in Josephine’s outfit?

Breeches ending just below the knee. An outer garment that ends at the knee. Knee-high stockings. A flat black shoe. A shirt with sleeves puffed at the shoulders.

While Josephine’s look is ungendered in the context of a rogue, in the context of a noble this look is undeniably gendered, in a way that might not immediately register to our modern eye.

In the context of Orlesian culture, this is a Menswear-Inspired Look.

Now, unlike Sera, I do not believe Josephine to actually be wearing clothing designed for a man; given her station, this was all likely custom made for her. But in the context of Orlesian high fashion, there is some undeniably masculine styling going on here! And this isn’t about “women don’t wear pants”; many women in Dragon Age do, in fact, wear pants, all the time or in certain contexts; see above about rogue looks. Cassandra and Vivienne both have a skinny pants/leggings thing going on, and they both read more feminine in their styles to me, but they’ll get their own posts! With Josephine, it’s the specific styles of the pieces she’s wearing that bear similarities to men’s high fashion in Orlais. In a modern context, think a woman with long hair in a deliberately feminine style, wearing makeup, some statement jewelry, with a custom-tailored suit. Maybe with a few feminine accents on the suit itself; still definitely a suit. Josephine’s sleeves, for example, are not simply a copy of the male sleeve style; they’re taking inspiration but kind of doing their own thing. And of course, her hair is worn in a style that is practical, but still very elegant and feminine. It’s a Menswear-Inspired Look.

And I just love the fact that both of our F/F romance options in this game are kind of playing with gendered clothing in their personal style, but each very much in their own way.

I'm also fascinated by this one set of concept art called "Displaced Pilgrims" in The Art of Dragon Age: Inquisition, meant to represent "Fereldan and Orlesian refugees who arrived in Haven on a pilgrimage and were unable to leave following the disaster" (p. 75). One piece depicts an Orlesian woman dressed in what is from the hips up the same silhouette we see at the Winter Palace: exaggerated underbust corsetry that emphasizes the hips, a plunging V neckline with scalloped embellishment, a slightly puffed half-sleeve. But below the corset, the skirt has been cropped to mid-thigh and the woman wears a pair of breeches, stockings, and flat shoes with a rounded toe—strikingly similar to Josephine's lower silhouette. I can't recall ever actually seeing any NPCs wandering around Haven looking like this, which is a shame, because I love the concept of an Orlesian noblewoman blending masculine and feminine fashions in order to dress more practically for a journey into the mountains, while still appearing fashionable. I think this may be what Josephine is doing.

Josephine’s necklace is of interest to me as well, as it doesn’t bear a particular resemblance to anything I’ve found in Orlesian fashion; while we see a lot of necklines trimmed in gold, and a few necklaces, there’s nothing that looks like this piece. After a bit of research, I don’t think this is just a flashy piece of jewelry. Given the size of the chain and the way Josephine wears it draped over her shoulders, I think this might actually be a livery collar, also called a chain of office, that denotes her position as an ambassador!

Josephine’s whole look is very distinctive, and very put-together. In my opinion, this is a Choice. This is the kind of outfit that says, “I look like this on purpose,” and this from a woman who knows that a first impression may decide the course of a conversation that will affect the fate of nations. She is wearing a chain of office that immediately announces her station. She’s wearing expensive fabrics—again, I am interpreting that shiny gold fabric as silk and that is not cheap. Her vest shows fine detailing. Her clothing immediately says that she is both a person of means and holds a position of respect. Her color scheme speaks to her Orlesian connections. Her clothing conveys power and status. Yet her divergence from the styles of an Orlesian noblewoman also sets her apart. The practical elements of her look say, “I am no idle lady of leisure; I am capable; I am prepared for every occasion, even the unexpected.” And the roguish elements hearken back to her bard training, saying, “I know how the Game is played; I can be dangerous if I must be.”

Above all, I think this outfit speaks to Josephine’s self-assurance. She knows and understands social trends, but she is not beholden to them; she bends them to her tastes, rather than being bent by them. She acknowledges her past and what she has learned from it. She knows herself, and is in control of her own image.

I think this outfit does some pretty brilliant and inspired visual storytelling about Josephine Montilyet. I wouldn’t change a thing.

[fleurdelait]

Hello! Your art is very beautiful. Please tell us more about your COTL AU Nomadic Faith. Seems very interesting! Are you asking for art requests? May a kind month come to you. Eat your fruits and vegetables.

HII!!! omg this is my first ask about my cotl au (and first ask in general yippee!!) you have just released a demon my friend. (and tysm :3)

OK SO! I was kinda reading the lore tablets in game and didn’t understand what the fuck was going on so I decided to make my own lore and run with it! :3 I always thought it’d be interesting if the Sheep never worshipped the Old Faith, instead I envisioned them more like Plimbo or some of the NPCs who have livelihoods that overshadow any cult like behavior. Or at least any that abided to that of the Bishops rather than their own culture.

I took inspiration from nomadic groups like the romani people and other eastern tribes in terms of clothing and style. (which i have yet to post my designs oopsie…) The idea of nomads kinda flowed into that idea of a ‘herd mentality’ sheep carry by having them travel and bond together like that. They’re very musical and are insanely talented at detailed wool cloths and textile crafting and trading herbs and spices. (Also the little earrings you see my lamb wear also speak to their wood workmanship! Each earring has a specific meaning whether it accords to age, family, etc. But by the time the lamb becomes a god.., they forget half of it :( )

Once Narinder had split off from the Old Faith and began to get more greedy with his power and start to question the Old Gods, that’s when Shamura had the vision of the prophecy and the reaping began. So The Lamb (i don’t have a name for them yet but I’ve been thinking of Ewe = Eve like from the bible), is born during the reaping, and has very much grown up with a more hurried ‘on-the-road’ lifestyle.

Most of the Sheep actually turned to Narinder’s faith (that was separate from the old faith) because they saw comfort in death being something they could believe in. Sheep are prey animals by default, so the idea was even more instilled into the herds once the reaping began.

(ALSO! Narinder is very fond of sheep in general as they made for the most loyal of followers.. plus they made him really pretty garments and wrote songs as offerings)

I’ve just realized i’ve probably talked your ear off into oblivion (big apologizes to anyone who’s reading this far 😭) but yeah I’m just very passionate abt this au of mine.

So anyways! Once the reaping gets more severe, the herds begin to break off smaller and smaller to protect one another. Usually it would’ve been 4-6 big families and family friends traveling together, but by the time The Lamb was born, they’d only travel is groups of 1-2 families. Though she did get to experience the culture of her kind up until her early adulthood when her sister was kinda… slaughtered 💀 They had been the last two sheep unknowingly, and after much running, hiding, and crying alone in the woods. The Lamb was captured, brought to slaughter, and everyone knows the rest.

Though they did buck out at the Bishops and put up a decent fight beforehand.

There is MUCH more in regards to cult life, my au version of narilamb has a lot of meat to it, but I’ll spare the yap for another day HFHSHD


THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK THOUGH!!! may a kind month come to you too :3

[swashbucklery]

I have been thinking about the costuming in Willow a lot, and yes this is for fanfiction reasons but it's also just for fun. As background, my non-fandom hobbies are mostly textile based: I sew garments and teach sewing classes, I'm an experienced knitter and handspinner and I've started to dabble in wool processing from fleece and four-shaft weaving.

So once I get into a Textile Puzzle Hole I can go pretty deep, and this is a fun and important part of understanding the worldbuilding for me.

Because they're doing a thing with Willow that - I actually really enjoy. It's not "classic fantasy" in the sense that it's not period-appropriate or of a specific era that we'd recognize. They're also clearly trying to call back to the 80s roots of the original film with some of the design choices; mostly the elements of armor and clothing that they're pulling from traditional martial arts clothing and the existence of Fun Fantasy Denim.

A lot of my thoughts aren't necessarily about critique, but more about trying to put together a cohesive rubric for myself as to what the costuming aesthetic is. Because it's not "anything goes," it's got a specific vibe and a clear voice and I want to "get it" more for my own writing and for my own understanding.

I think the two rules that I've drilled down so far are:

Textiles As Artisan Material (all-handmade, no fantasy spandex)

Function Over Form

1. Textiles As Artisan Material So to get into this a little, I want to get into the idea of how textiles are made because for me I'm In Deep and know a lot about the raw material to cloth to garment process but the average person does not. (I will say, I'm excepting the Cuirass from all of this - we know metatextually that it's a 3d printed stretch fabric bodysuit; it's also magic so it doesn't count.)

So, the average person is used to textile production that is predicated on post-industrial-revolution technology. Meaning:

power-driven machines for weaving and spinning

computer technology available in spinning and weaving machinery to allow for easy production of highly complex cloth structures and patterning

overabundance and artificially low costs of raw materials

When you are thinking of fabric (and I'd include cloth and leather here but not metal armor) as a skilled artisan material, understanding the reasoning for, for instance, Jade having one shirt for the entire series involves understanding what steps are involved. Then, we can understand how many human beings are involved in fabric and therefore garment production and also how many people need to get paid along the way. A piece of cloth entirely handmade for a garment would involve:

a producer to grow the textile fiber (cotton, flax, wool, hide for leather)

skilled artisans to process the fiber (washing, preparing for spinning which could include combing/carding wool, retting flax, etc, leather tanning)

skilled artisans to add dye. This can be done at the stage of prepared fiber, finished thread/yarn, or finished cloth. In a real-world/modern context, this would have significant impact on the cost of cloth. Certain colours (reds, purples) are much harder to dye true than others or require more expensive dyestuff.

skilled spinners to turn the fiber into fine threads for weaving - depending on the fineness needed for the specific weave of the cloth this could be weeks to months of work. Thinner threads will take more time but have more drape and be less stiff as a cloth, so you'd need thin threads for next-to-skin garments like undershirts, and for fine fabrics in things like dresses or fancy formalware

weavers to weave the threads into cloth. Again, the timing here would depend on the type of thread being used but it would also depend on whether or not there are any woven-in embellishments as components of the cloth. Basic cloth in plain weave would take time but not a lot of extra skill; twills or patterning require more time and weaving skill.

embroiderers to add any embellishments either to the base cloth or to the finished garment

tailors and seamstresses to make garments to measure, which would involve cutting any pieces out of the finished cloth and turning it into a garment the correct size for the wearer. If we are assuming that the mechanical sewing machine has not been invented, then garments would be sewn by hand.

handsewing a correctly finished garment involves more than just tacking the pieces together; seam finishes so that the cloth doesn't unravel often require going over the same seam line one or more times. The labour hours in this step cannot be overstated.

metalworkers or other craftspeople to make fastenings and finishings: buttons, toggles, grommets on lacing that weren't handsewn, etc.

leather garments would be made by a separate type of textile worker, since leatherwork requires different tools and a different skillset to successfully construct garments.

So for a basic garment we're looking at needing to pay six separate types of skilled artisans for their work, up to six or seven if it's a garment with elaborate fittings and/or finishing such as buttons or metal fasteners.

The textile economy is relevant here because it is going to translate directly into style. Cutting fabric into patterned shapes leaves waste; this is fine if you're using mass-produced fabric that you can easily afford to replace but if cloth is the 10/10 most precious thing in your garment, you're going to try to cut it into as low-waste a design as possible. It might also lead to less fussy fitting, so that garments are adjustable and can be used by a person for much longer.

It also translates into textile types. Prior to the advent of mechanical knitting machines, any knit (stretch) fabrics would be hand knit. If you have ever tried knitting yourself, you understand that knitting with thin thread takes more time, and therefore more labour hours.

What this means for clothing in-universe on Willow is:

almost entirely woven fabrics, with the exception of handknitting (see: Elora’s scarf-shawl)

this likely does translate into undergarments; I've been looking at regency and late-Victorian era examples to get my head around. The modern bra and panty set is heavily heavily dependent on not just machine knit fabric but also a TON of petroleum-based synthetic textiles that cannot be produced without modern post-industrial means.

fastened using items that can be handmade! Buttons, toggles, clasps, ties or belts for the most part, with the occasional Fantasy Rivet or Fantasy Grommet.

precious! so precious! Expensive to produce and also worth caring for; we see some examples of visible mending in-show and that would have been the standard for everyone with the exception of Kit and Airk.

2. Function Over Form So this is maybe something that I only think about because I sew, but the modern eye is really used to equating and understanding "woven" fabrics and "stretch woven" fabrics as equivalent. Jeans are the easiest example to think about: they're made with denim, but in things like skinny jeans that denim is usually blended with some kind of spandex. Typical woven fabric doesn't stretch in either direction in a meaningful way; stretch-woven fabrics do so because of the synthetic textile content.

So a lot of the design choices that we see in the show really have to take into account that those textiles won't stretch with movement, and that the wearers need to be able to swordfight:

larger, baggier shirts with cuffs or vests rather than more fitted shirts, to allow for full movement at the elbow and shoulder

trousers that have a bit of extra wearing ease at the hip and thigh, so that when the wearer sits or squats there is room for the change in their body shape with these positions

there are a couple of GREAT leather jackets (Kit's in the early season especially), but if you look closely there's actually a grommet-and-lacing system to attach the sleeve head to the body, so that the shoulder still moves. So clever!

Anyway I have been having a lot of fun thinking about this and deconstructing the garments further. Thinking more about the costuming helps me find the worldbuilding details that make it easy for me to write, and I’d love to chat about this lots and lots! I do have some screenshot receipts for this; I didn’t include them because I mostly just wanted to write and not do ~graphic design today.

[phoenixyfriend]

Worldbuilding: The ASPIRE Method

Part 2 - Arts

Now available on Patreon!

I'm including the first third of it here on tumblr for free. The rest is available on Patreon for as low as $1 to access all posts.

A – Arts

When physically visiting a society for the first time, Art will be one of the first things a person encounters, namely in the form of fashion, signage, and architecture. When studying a culture from afar, it is often among the last. In that regard, the order in which your story takes place will have varying degrees of exposure to the culture’s art.

In a visual medium, art provides a subconscious element of worldbuilding that can help set tone without having to take up time in the dialogue. Background characters and so on can inform the world in a colorful manner, suggesting elements of culture to the viewer while the foreground conveys the story itself. In a written narrative, mentions of art and artistry take up time and space by nature, and so you have to pick and choose which elements you talk about. The mention of a single form of art is used to suggest a much deeper background. In both cases, determining which art exists will help you decide which you display to the audience in pursuit of telling your story.

Which forms of art are most common?

Some cultures have very elaborate architecture. Others don’t put much time and effort into architecture, but do a lot with textiles. Paintings are going to be more common in regions where canvas or paper are easier to make. Some regions will have a focus on wooden or stone carvings that are unlikely, or even impossible, in others. Most have music, but frequently different kinds. All of these are forms of art, but not all of them are necessarily going to be common in the world you are building.

Ask yourself which of these forms and mediums of art are ones your culture puts time into, and why:

Architecture: stone, wood, or other

Painting and drawing: on canvas, on stone, on paper, on vellum

Sculpture: stone or wood, clay, metal (wire or mold), rubber, glassblowing, etc. - This includes aesthetic pieces, but also things like functional ceramics and furniture crafting

Textiles: fashion, tapestry, beadwork, interior design

Literature: written or oral, includes prose, poetry, and nonfiction

Film and Theater

Music and Dance

Culinary arts

Cosmetics

And when you decide on them, ask yourself why? What is it that has your culture focusing on one thing at the expense of others? For instance, if your culture is one where inclement weather is a major problem, then architecture may focus primarily on durability, and less so on visual appeal; in turn, the actual focus of artists is more likely to be an indoor activity, like storytelling or music. However, the primary dictator of what art people do is what they have to work with.

What tools are available to your artists?

The further in the past your story is set, the less likely your culture’s people are to have access to a wide variety of pigments and materials. Natural sources of pigment are limited, especially when there are low levels of trade. The local community is also likely to prioritize certain kinds of crops over others, which has a direct influence on the accessibility of textiles and paper.

A culture with a short growth period will likely prioritize food over any form of creative resources; textiles will likely be livestock-derived (like wool and skins), rather than cotton or linen, and will also have much less availability of plant-based art supplies like canvas, paper, and so on. They may focus on pragmatic art forms, such as teaching tools, or styles that can be built into things that are already being crafted, like weaving patterns. Their themes may also be influenced by having more free time in the winter.

Meanwhile, tattoos are popular across the world due to only requiring pigment and a sharp implement… and the knowledge of how to not get infected.

A more modern artist will have access to a wide variety of tools and options, including things like cameras and recording equipment.

Consider these elements:

Which pigments are available? How are they sourced? Which can be safely used for paint, textiles, construction, and cosmetics? - Pigments can be derived from plants, minerals, animals, or synthetic processes. If your world has low trade, figure out which ones are common in the area. Some pigments can be used in paint but are less functional for dyeing. Some can’t be ingested, and so aren’t safe for culinary arts, but are very good for oil painting. - A paint that is toxic to the skin may be used in cosmetics and textiles (see: lead face paint, which was used even when knowing the toxicity), but is much more likely to be used in painting and construction.

Which plants grow nearby? What can they be used for? - Are the trees suitable to carving, to steam bending, to architecture, to weaving? - Can other plants be processed into textiles, pigments, food? - Is there something unique and interesting, like a bioluminescent algae that can be used for glowing paint?

Which animals are available? Are they domestic or wild? How are they used? - Animals can be used for enabling other arts, such as oxen pulling plows to grow basic crops. - Some can be trained to perform, for dance and theater. - They can also be raw materials. This includes wool, feathers, furs, leather, vellum, horns, bones, silk, and even skins for glue. Some are hunted, and some are cultivated. - Note that antler, certain feathers, and wool can be harvested without harming the animals, and would be useful for a society that tries to abide by pacifist or vegan principles. - Others can also be gathered after a natural death, like bones, horn, and skins. The only ones that require a forced death or harm are vellum and certain kinds of silk, though natural death may impact the quality of other materials, like skins and furs.

Which raw materials are inherent, which need to be gathered, and which need to be cultivated? - A person’s own voice or body does not need to be gathered. A dancer or singer does not, for the most basic forms of art, need tools. - Sand for glassblowing does need to be gathered, but occurs naturally. - Flax for linen needs to be cultivated before processing, with a dedicated growth period in temperate climates (helpfully, it also produces food).

For a few historic examples, consider that Tyrian Purple is an uncommon color in textiles before the introduction of aniline dyes, and so Tyrian purple is often limited solely to royalty in period works. This includes the classic Roman example, but also the use of ‘Royal Purple’ and related shades in England after the introduction of a sumptuary act in 1463.

Since the Iron Age, darker, less saturated shades of purple could be achieved through mixing red (e.g. madder) and blue (e.g. woad, indigo), but are generally less intense, and still expensive due to the need for two forms of dye. Meanwhile, common colors in Medieval English art included, among other things, ochres, woad, madder, and chalk.

How intense is the processing period for materials?

How many people need to be involved in that processing? Can it be done in one day, by one person?

Weaving a basket from reeds is relatively centralized. One person can gather materials, cut them to size, and produce the final product.

Synthetic materials require oil drills and chemical production plants, employing hundreds of workers.

Creating a wool and linen dress requires: - farmers (both for sheep and for flax) - processing to clean and spin the raw materials - weavers to make the base textiles - dyeing vats to add color - a dressmaker to actually put together the final product - The support for this process also includes someone who makes buttons or other ties, someone who crafts looms, someone who makes barrels, and someone who breeds dogs for herding those sheep.

Is it theoretically possible for someone to unilaterally do everything from start to finish with no outside help? Yes. Are some of these elements vertically integrated? Probably! Is it likely, or a good idea, to handle everything from start to finish? Not for most scales of production. While farming and spinning are often done by the same people, it’s more likely to be a family business than a solo one. One farm can include the process from start to finish, but your couture dressmaker isn’t very likely to be your shepherd.

Human history is a patchwork of people specializing their skills in order to maximize productivity so everyone can have more free time at the end of the day. If one person has the loom best suited to making linen bedsheets, and another has a loom better designed for woolen cloak fabric, the individuals will produce more fabric in total if they each specialize on their looms, and then trade the results, rather than swapping looms or buying their own. This subject will be touched on in greater detail in the Economics section.

[such-a-daydreamer]

Haha so like, I was originally gonna post the inktober stuff one by one like everyone else is but like, I forgor :/

FIRST WEEK OF INKTOBERTALE!!

Just know that like, it is a lot. So continue under the cut if you wanna see my absolute shitter of an art dump

//-------Day One-------//

Prompt: Ink (warm up)

The second one was more of a warm up really, I just wanted to get myself in the mood. Especially love that fell drawing in the corner.

//--------Day 2--------//

Prompt: Pumpkin carving

Yes. Yes that is error and ink kissing on the pumpkin.

//--------Day 3--------//

Prompt: Medicine

Hehehe my original idea was to have ink covered in colourful splotches and be on the floor and have the medicine be his like vials. I ended up thinking "that's too easy" so that turned into him wearing one of those sexy nurse outfits then I made a last minute decision to NOT do that

//--------Day 4--------//

Prompt: honey

Little to say about this, other than I love him a lot💕💕

//--------Day 5--------//

Prompt: Theatre play

Yeah the caption says enough.

//--------Day 6--------//

Prompt: Stickers

Yeah I uh, forgot that this whole thing was like a pun on inktober and y'know the character ink and this whole thing is called inktobertale, derailed a lil bit but 'm gonna get back on track after this I swear😭

//--------Day 7--------//

Prompt: Gingham

Yeah I basically know my ass to my elbow when it comes to textiles and stuff like that so I had to research some things. Anyways, Gingham is cute :3 tempted to make that skele an actual oc but like I can't be bothered.

Here's the prompt list btw

Yeah so uh, see ya next week til I've gotten the next batch done ... unless you wanna have it done one by one? Idk, tell me your thoughts. ALSO HAHA bit reluctant about showing this cuz of the MASSIVE sidetrack for like the majority of the week

[cordcorvid]

hi! i hope this doesnt come off as a bother or anything . but do you have any mask making tips or tutorials you could reccomend ?? (like for materials, jaw movement, and how to see out of there) im planning to do a raven named Goose :D

ive been finding some resources here and there, but i thought it wouldnt hurt to ask !!!

Absolutely not! I'd love to answer all your questions. :D I have not looked at that many tutorials, I mostly looked at pinterest pictures of raven costumes to see what I can come up with. One that really inspired me to get things going is actually another Tumblr user I found on there who has posted some helpful tips that I followed along with! They too have a raven costume and they got their resin base from the same manufacturer (Crystumes, they have a website where you can shop for their blanks) Since this post is awfully long, I'll do a read more from here on:

The tutorials I followed the most is this one by Rah-Bop:

Rah-Bop has some tips about adding feathers, making foam-feathers, adding claws to your gloves, making gloves or feet. In terms of material: I used the hinged resin base by Crystumes which by itself cost me +/- 200USD, they sent me a pair of customizeable glass eyes and a tongue.

Crystumes has some additional tutorials specifically regarding their masks on their website! Crystumes also lists some of the materials on their website that I used and where to get them (Like the apoxie clay to do the eyelids, the glass eyes etc.) I did mess the eyes up though the first time I did it so I had to order them from delviesplastics.com (As suggested by Crystumes) Since I ordered the base with hinges I'm not sure how to do them myself but I will have to figure it out for the second fursuit I'm cooking! In terms of other material I bought some long rooster feathers and hair jewelry off of Etsy. I bought a pair of long faux leather gloves from Ricardo (which is a swiss second hand online shop) but you can buy the gloves anywhere else or even sew them yourself by tracing your arm and hand on a piece of paper, then trace the pattern twice on any somewhat stretchy material like faux leather or spandex and sew those two together for one glove each. I bought black fur in another Swiss textile / sewing shop named Alja (not sure if it's actually Swiss) since it's cheaper (around 60$ for 4 yards) than to ship fur from America to Switzerland (Which amounts to 100-200 for the same amount). But if you can afford it: Take a look at Howl's Fabrics or Big Z Fabric. Both websites offer samples! I personally don't buy from them as the shipping costs for me are devastating. I suggest looking at general "furring" tutorials or "how to fur a fursuit head" tutorials on youtube. Most of them will tell you to make a duct tape pattern on your base, draw on the patterns then cut those patterns out on fur, sew the fur together then glue to the base. Crystumes once made a twitter post about it as well I think but I'm not sure I'll find it. When cutting fur in general just make sure you keep the scissors as close to the backing as possible to avoid cutting any fur fibers in the process, it will be visible otherwise. I made a fur top / shirt by tracing one of my long sleeve t-shirts onto the fur I bought and went with that. For the back of the head I used an 80s Mullet/Rockstar wig I bought from another Swiss online store. Other fursuit makers mostly sew fur even to the back of the head but my personal Raven fursuit is literally just a mask with a wig to cover the back. Which in turn makes the whole mask less hot. To keep the mask ON my face and to keep it from slipping down I used the adjusteable part of a biking helmet or climbing helmet. and attached it to the mask by using a lot of hot glue, I eventually had to use some stronger glue as it kept falling off. Since the mask was fairly big when I bought it and rather uncomfortable I used thick felt sheets and glued them inside the head as padding material! Foam works as well, whatever floats your boat. I went with felt since I could easily cut some feather patterns into them as a nice easter egg. Not sure anymore what exactly I used to cover the holes by the beak that I see out of, but it was some kind of very fine dark and flexible grid that I bought from the swiss equivalent of home depot. In terms of being able to see: The crystume base has holes between the beak and the eyes that you can look out of or you can even look through the mouth, both works pretty well and the mask allows for a lot of visibility from within- Out of all my fellow furry friends I'm the only one that doesn't necessarily need a spotter since I can see pretty well. In terms of clothing I pretty much sewed nothing by myself and only assembled a bunch of my own outfits that would fit the raven costume. Sometimes I did buy some costume specific stuff from online clothing stores or went into the thrift shop to buy some costume specific clothing pieces. In general, for your first raven costume just go with the flow and try to keep it budget friendly, as your first will unlikely be perfect. And that's about it! Not sure if I missed something but I tried to cover everything as much in detail as I could. Hope it helps!

[magmacavern]

Hero and Partner Week, Day 7: Free Day!

Last up for the free day today is a little drawing of my own team! After I made all this art of Neo and Skitty (now named Penelope) for this week, I decided that I should actually try to come up with unique designs for them. Now all of my previous illustrations of them are officially outdated. Oops.

I'd gotten attached to the depictions of them in my previous Hero and Partner Week drawings, so I didn't want to change them too much, but I still wanted them to be recognizable as original chararcters and not just general depictions of an eevee and a skitty. I'm pleased with Neo's redesign, but I would like to make Penelope a little more unique in the future. If you're interested, you can read more about them and their alternate universe under the cut!

This will be my last submission for Hero and Partner Week. I had a blast drawing and writing for this event over the past month, and I really enjoyed seeing what everyone else created as well. Thanks so much for hosting this amazing event! I'm already looking forward to participating again next year and seeing how much I've improved as an artist by then!

(Also, apologies if this posts twice. It disappeared from my queue sometime after I scheduled it, and I'm not sure if it's still going to post. I decided to just rewrite it in advance, and if the other version turns up, I'll delete it.)

@heropartnerweek

Neo

Neo is an odd-colored Eevee who woke up in the Tiny Woods one morning unable to remember who she was or how she got there. She occasionally dreams of a strange Pokemon atop a frozen mountain, and after learning about the legend of Nintales, she comes to the conclusion that she must be the human in the story who angered the deity and abandoned her partner Pokemon, Gardevoir. She feels obligated to help save the world because she's (allegedly) the one who brought about its destruction long ago, but secretly she feels she's not capable of it and is hoping for a way out. Neo can most easily be described as cowardly. She lacks courage and prefers to run and hide rather than fight and stand up for herself. She doesn't wish to hurt others and cares deeply for many Pokemon she knows, but when push comes to shove, her strong sense of self preservation takes control and she always puts herself first, even at the detriment of other Pokemon. She also lacks confidence, and this causes others to be distrusting of her and lack belief in her abilities. Neo tends to make promises she can't keep because she either doesn't think it through all the way or just wants to help and please others, which makes her seem more unreliable to those she lets down. Her hastiness also hurts her ability to think for herself. Neo can problem solve well when she is forced to slow down and reason out the situation, but when she rushes herself, she doesn't consider all the possibilities and can come to the wrong conclusion. Neo came to trust Penelope quickly because Penelope was there for her when she didn't have anyone else to turn to, but she also sometimes regrets forming a team with her and wonders if it was the right choice because of her struggle to show bravery and do the right thing like Penelope does.

Penelope

Penelope is a young Skitty who was raised in Littlegrove, a town on the sea northwest of Pokemon Square. Her parents, a Meganium and a Delcatty, tend to a pecha berry orchard and a small garden of other berry and herb plants, and her mother is a skilled weaver who makes scarves and other textiles using the plants grown in town. Penelope and her younger sibling Orion were often tasked with travelling to Pokemon Square to sell Delcatty's scarves to the Kecleon brothers and the many rescue teams that visit town, but since a mystery dungeon formed within the Tiny Woods, Penelope has been making the trip alone. When she learns that she and her partner must be the ones to save the world, she immediately rises to the task because the lives of her family are on the line and she's determined to save them, even at the cost of her own life. Penelope is courageous and quick-thinking with a strong sense of integrity. She's highly motivated by her commitment to and love for her family, especially her younger sibling Orion, and she'll never make a promise that she thinks she can't keep. Her strict moral code often makes it difficult for her to be understanding of those who act selfishly, and it also makes her prone to overworking herself or throwing herself into danger if she thinks it will help someone she loves. She is highly confident in her beliefs and her decision-making abilities, which allows her to act quickly on instinct. However, this also makes her stubborn and unlikely to follow in other Pokemon's footsteps or take their advice without good reason, and because she's still young, her beliefs and decisions aren't always backed up by experience or knowledge, leading her to make some poor choices. Her personality is often at odds with Neo's cowardice and self-interest, so they have a rocky start to their relationship.

One early spring day, Penelope was travelling through Tiny Woods with a new stock of her mother's pecha scarves when she came across an odd-looking eevee named Neo who said she had lost her memory. While she was distracted by the stranger, Gengar of Team Meanies snuck up on Penelope and attacked her. Because of her Normalize ability, Penelope was unable to fight back and Gengar stole most of the scarves she was carrying. Neo fled in the commotion, and Penelope chased after her, assuming she was working with Gengar to steal the scarves.

Penelope found Neo at the entrance to the Tiny Woods's mystery dungeon, which appeared as a deep chasm in the forest floor. She confronted her while Neo couldn't escape, but Neo claimed she didn't know anything about Gengar or his plans to attack Penelope. As they were arguing, they were approached by a Butterfree who needed help because her child, Caterpie, was lost in the dungeon. Penelope agreed to help and forced Neo to come with her because she didn't yet believe that Neo and Gengar weren't working together.

After finding Caterpie and reuniting him with his mother, Penelope took Neo to Pokemon Square where they decided to stay the night at Kangaskhan's inn because Neo didn't have anywhere else to go and Penelope didn't know how to fix the problem of the stolen scarves. While in Pokemon Square, she asked Neo to form a real rescue team with her in order to help earn back the lost money.

[cant-think-of-a-good-one]

i havent tried printmaking but i rly wanna get into it so badd

printmaking and fiber arts are siblings to me

like theyre both technically these utilitily invented mediums?

printing is this invention that made it possible to make the same image a ton of times quickly. basically changing human knowledge forever.

and then well actually lets narrow it down to fiber arts that can create wide areas like crochet and knitting. embroidery and crossstitch modify upon existing areas.

hmm wait so really i wanna talk about textile arts yeah. okay. printmaking and textile arts are siblings to me.

i already talked about printmaking. textiles, is this invention that allows you create and combine wide areas from long strands of fibers. fibers that used to just be a long one dimensional thing. turned into a wide 2 dimensional thing that can be combined and folded into all sorts of shapes, like, clothing. allowing humans to fucking exist in otherwise dangerous weather. okay like, i know they probably used animal skin before fabric. but thats why i said textile arts and not leatherworking. because textiles is a more recent invention.

scrolls up oh wow thats a lot. i swear this only haplens at night its soo weird anyways lets summarize, for you, whoever is reading this, thanks, but alsk for myself because im kinda getting lost in my own sauce

printmaking and textile arts are siblings to me because theyre both relatively recent very important human inventions that fucking revolutionized alot of things but also people are still getting silly with it?

wait now that i think of it writinf techinally fits this too... writing isnt that old i mean relatively on this scale. fuckkk

like what i mean by people are still getting silly with it is that like for example writing. its this fucking big important thing and im using it to communicate whatever this is and saying silly shit. waitwaitwait hold on this something that can be explored further. lets go out of printmaking and textiles and get into this

like this people are still getting silly with it applies to all forms of art that is done right now. isnt fucking insane isnt it beautiful. these revolutionary inventions these old traditions of ways ko expression, still being done by us in our own way, playing with it, making each other laugh with it, isnt it crazy aaaaghhhgh fuck

okay thats it for this post i think

i am aware i might have some mistakes on the facts and really i should be citing shit. sorry about that. didnt expect to go this far

[callsignbaphomet]

Can we have a conversation about trans people in Fallout? Like, very specifically about trans men in Fallout? 'Cause Angelus is trans and I feel like I brush off a lot of details about his transness due to the setting and its limitations.

He was born a girl and around his pre-teens he was like, "Yeah, fuck this garbage." Now, he originally lived with his mom 'cause his dad dipped and then bugged out and it was just the two of 'em. His mom was totally supportive and shit. Certain things happened and he ended up living with his grandmother who was an absolute piece of shit and a year later through some nefarious means he ended up living with some old raider turned mercenary who actually turned out to be a pretty decent human being and accepted Angelus in every way. So you got this fucking kid going around in some old town in the south of post-apocalypse USA with multiple boyfriends and being outrageously gay as fuck all.

Fortunately when puberty hit it didn't hit so hard, he wasn't very curvy and he barely had any tits to begin with but they were still there, he knew they were there and it made him super uncomfortable and made him rage. So what do you do in that situation? You bind! How? He MacGyver'd his own binder with the help of one of his boyfriends and a friend. Sure, it took a long time to perfect it but it got the job done and he was super happy with it. I don't know much if anything at all about textiles so bear with my dumb ass here. They managed to sew several hardened pieces of cloth together sorta shaping it in a tube fashion. They used gauze application as an inspiration for it, which is super rare to find and that's why they didn't use gauze itself and the one time he just used duct tape it ended pretty badly and painfully. So this binder was supposed to be like a bra that was smaller than what he'd usually have to wear and it got the job done.

Now, did he have any bottom dysphoria? Nope! He enjoyed having a pussy for the time being...which he later put to good use. The merc that he was living with noticed he was wearing more clothes and baggier to hide the tits and he outright asked him if he wanted to get rid of them which Angelus was like, "You can get rid of these fucking things???" So the ol' merc asked a doctor living in town about it and both agreed on a price which the merc saved up enough caps for and Angelus got 'em chopped off.

Angelus lived with the old merc until he disappeared when Angelus was 21-years-old. He waited around for a few months and realized he wasn't coming back, he mourned him and then moved on. He put what the old merc taught him to good use which included all the raider knowledge he still had and joined several raider gangs between the years of 21 and 25.

During these years he discovered plenty of things about himself. He was strictly a top. "hOw Is He A tOp If hE dOeSN't hAve a DicK?" Hear me out, man, hear me out. You don't need one to top. So hush. The world and setting of Fallout is pretty stagnant and stale in terms of structure of cultures (we can get into that rant some other day) so it's open for us, the fans, to do what we can to make sense of all the queer aspects of post-apocalypse America.

People have been making sex toys since forever and I think it's no different after the apocalypse brought on by nuclear warfare. We also have had implants and cybernetic enhancements in the games. Also! It's a fucking sci-fi game, use your imagination, fool.

At around 24 Angelus was starting to feel some minor bottom dysphoria and packed to relieve some of that stress. Remember when I said he was strictly a top? What makes you think he wasn't getting penetrated and still topping? Like, positions play a larger part of it than you give 'em credit for, my dear. There are positions that give him full control of movement so that he's the one controlling Jelani and for all intents and purposes he's fucking him while getting penetrated. If he felt like doing the penetrating himself he has a few strap ons, some more simple ones he managed to get his hands on, steel and metal being the main materials. Some are better made than others and has several different sizes and shapes for all needs.

Circling back to him starting to develop some bottom dysphoria. It started when he was 24 and it got worse well after he met Jelani. He actually confessed to him that he was jealous of the fact that he had an actual dick and he didn't. I think I'll explore the implant option in the future but for now I'll leave Angelus as is. His boyfriend does the best he can to ease any dysphoria which can and does lead to some playing around that can lead to more eventually making Angelus feel better.

As for hrt I like to think it's something similar to the drugs already set in place within the Fallout universe. There's pills which I feel would be the most common, there's injections that don't look as scary as stimpaks! Have you actually stopped to see the size of those bitches??? Lucifer on his throne! What the shit??? And last and the least common and hardest to get your hands on would be a gel like substance of a lavender color (blue + pink + white = lavender). Angelus uses pills because it was the most readily available to him.

So far that's most of what I got for my little half Russian, half Scottish, flamboyantly effeminate, polyamorous, gay trans man with a serious attitude problem and anger issues living in the wide and interesting world of post-apocalypse America with his boyfriend and his two fathers-in-law.

Wanna focus this same energy on Jelani in Skyrim 'cause he's trans (FtM) in that setting but that's for another post.

[moldygreenblue]

she was probably nice, when you got to know her

I once had this large fic plan that was pre-asoue and pre-atwq, focusing on Ellington and Widdershins. However, I scrapped it, keeping only a snippet that was ficlet size. I originally planned on posting the original snippet ficlet, but I eventually rewrote it to make it more of a standalone, which I like a bit more. I hope you enjoy reading this!

With the cold water trickling out from the faucet, he takes time to stare at his reflection. He frowns at the bruise swelling up around his right eye. Looking at the bruise, he thinks how there are worser places to get punch and punt at. Like the stomach. Or the back.

Bang-Bang! “Hey! New Kid!! Hey!” Bang-Bang!

He ignores the voice, and continues to stare at his reflection. Blood is streaming down his nose, past the corners of his mouth and chin. One streams lands into the sink itself, while the other splatter onto his school shirt collar and cuffs.

“I know you’re in there!” The doorknob jiggles. “I saw you enter the bathroom minutes ago!”

Cupping his hands together in a small bowl, he thinks he can wash away the bloodstain when he gets home. Ma wouldn’t be home until he’s ready for bed, if not actually asleep. Ma works the afternoon shift at the textile factory that goes well into nighttime.

“New Kid, I just want to know if you’re okay! I saw your black eye!” Bang-Bang! “It’ll get nasty looking if you leave it alone like that!”

He brings his hands up to his nose, and snorts in the water. The burning sensation hits his nose, and he huffs it out as best as he could. The blood sprays all over the sink at odd angles. But cleaning the sink is better than having to force swallow the disgusting blood glop.

“Uck! New Kid, you know there’s an easier way to stop your bloody nose, right?”

The voice takes him by surprise. He yelps and jump. He then turns around and grabs ahold of the sink behind him. Standing before him is a girl; not a classmate, but he sees her around during lunchtime. The girl’s two braids curls upward, like snakes pulling themselves up to their full height. She raises one of her very curvy eyebrows, and reaches into her jacket pocket, pulling out a white handkerchief with ‘A.F.’ stitch into it in a dark green thread.

---

“Lean a bit forward over the sink, and pinch your nose for about ten minutes,” says Ellington calmly, still holding out her father’s handkerchief. “The bleeding will stop, but be careful when breathing. Do it too hard, and you could start the bleeding all over again.”

New Kid —not a classmate; Ellington calls him ‘New Kid’ because his status as a new student from overseas (an oversea refugee, in fact) is well known throughout the school— stares her with his wide, dark eyes. He slowly outreaches his right hand, before taking the handkerchief quickly as if she has cooties. He then pulls it closer to him, and staring at it with some confusion. New Kid then stares back at her, and tries to give back the handkerchief.

“Oh no! That’s yours to keep, New Kid,” says Ellington, pushing the boy’s hand back. “My father talked to your mother a few times. He knows how difficult you two are settling in, for we went through something similar in the past. Think of this as a late-welcoming gift from us.”

Ellington gives a small wave of goodbye, and leaves. She doesn’t have time to wait around to see if New Kid waves back. She doesn’t care if he does or doesn’t.  A good deed doesn’t need anything in return. That’s what her father always told her.

“I just hope New Kid gets that bruise swelling under control,” mutters Ellington, making her way back to the main hallway, where her father is waiting. “That won’t go away anytime soon if it isn’t tend to in time. I hope he has an icepack or anything frozen at home.”

[starcrossedyanderes]

Ghost Files: The Clementine Estate

Note from Star: Let it be known that this is proof of my blog still being active. I actually started this post about a year ago when Buzzfeed Unsolved ended. But we’re way past that so I decided to make it Ghost Files and a Halloween special. I tried really hard to nail the dialogue and I haven’t quite written this way before so bare with me. I also originally wrote this with Buzzfeed unsolved in mind and just made it Ghost files post edit. So sorry if stuff doesn’t sound quite right. Also this is kind of long so you have been warned.

“Welcome to Ghost Files, where we take your evidence, and our tools, into the field to prove the supernatural. My partner, a skeptic. Myself, a believer. Both of us truthseekers. Today we are investigating the Clementine estate where supposed ghosts reside.

“Ooh, I like that name. Nice and fruity.

“Shut up.

Now this case is an interesting one for many reasons, but most notably for the televised evidence provided.”

“Oh yeah, wasn’t there like that home renovation show about it? It wasn’t something called “a spooky house renovation” or something?”

“Precisely. While renovating the home many cases of ghost activity were recorded.”

“Didn’t the couple who host that show like immediately divorce?”

“Yes, but I don’t think that’s ghost related. Now here is where the story gets more interesting.

There was originally 2 ghosts reported but then one of them seemingly disappeared for over a century. But shortly after the show concluded this ghost seemingly reappeared.”

“That sounds kinda bogus to me. Just like, ‘yeah I’m gonna take a break for a while. Just tired of haunting. Might just go on a vacay to wherever ghosts go.”

“Okay, and cut.”

Shane takes a quick sig of water as Ryan stands up to stretch. After a minute of hearing popping from Ryan he trods over to grab a bag.

“Now the fun part. Taking a plane to Mississippi.”

~|~

“As all of our investigation goes we will work our way up the house floor by floor and then do our independent investigations. But today we’re starting off outside since this is a supposed haunted area.”

They stood in front of a large manor’s entrance. A massive pair of mahogany doors looked behind them.

“Now before we start the investigation, some information must be provided. The story begins in 1800’s Mississippi with the Clementine family. The Clementines are a wealthy family who own various textile companies along with other corporations. Another thing of note is that the South is currently being teared apart by slavery, especially in Mississippi. The Clementines happened to be abolitionists and seemed to have quite a few enemies.”

“Hmm, I’m smelling murder.”

“We’ll get to that later.”

“Now the Clementine household unfortunately came down with Tuberculosis which killed all but one of the members. This happened to shockingly be Emmett, the immunodeficient, albino heir.”

“Well that sucks.”

“After his parents death Emmett continued in his parents path to continue abolotionism and decided to keep his parents wish about marrying.

You see, Emmett had a little sweetheart he was courting.”

“Ooh, a little something on the side.”

“No, actually. He was a one woman fella as it turns out.

Emmet and his darling made plans to be wed and seemed to be genuinely in love until tragedy struck.

The two met up on the eve of their wedding, where they were killed.

Apparently Emmett had upset some pro-slavery Southerns who decided it best to kill him. The bodies were found on top of each other, both stabbed in the heart. Emmet’s face was contorted into shock, showing he was the one who spotted the killer.”

“Jeez! Kill them literally before they were married. Couldn’t wait another day?”

“I don’t know. But as the houses switched owners the reports started coming in.”

“Now we are standing in the front grounds on the Clementine estate and I have to say, it is rather gorgeous.”

“Oh yeah, these are some sweet digs. Despite the whole ‘haunting’ thing they really managed to keep up good landscaping.”

“In front of us is the front entrance that is covered by a large balcony. It is on this balcolny many have reported seeing a ghostly female in a wedding dress.”

They looked on silently for a small time.

“Whelp, I don’t see anything.”

“You have to admit, this is like a prime looking down at your people balcony. Like, uh, what was that musical called?”

“Evita?”

“Yes! They didn’t have slaves but I’m sure they like, waved down at their servants or something.”

They stepped through the entrance as the front doors shut behind them.

“Here we have a foyer sort of room. Very Vanderbilt-esque. Like I can totally see a big Christmas tree here.”

Shane stepped in further and pointed at the large portrait that sat between the two grand staricases.

“Ooh, we got the big man right here! And his little sweetheart, too.”

On the painting sat a relatively young adult male with somewhat long white hair. But most noticeably was his striking blue eyes. Sitting next to him was a somewhat plump woman with nice (h/c) and (e/c) eyes. She wore a pink dress that some would now call a ‘lolita’ style.

“Aw, she’s kinda cute.”

“It is with this sweetheart of his that the story gets weird.”

“A lot of evidence of this haunting is rather recent with the show “Clementine Renovation” being filmed. The show followed a team restoring the house that would be given away. But the cameras picked up various hauntings and tragedy sadly struck.”

“What sort of ‘evidence’ are we talking here? Random voice or like an actual figure.”

“Well they caught footage of a chandelier randomly falling on someone, items floating in the air, and people suddenly acting differntly, as if possessed.”

“Hold up, let’s talk about this whole chandelier falling on a person.”

“While filming a cameraman had a chandelier, that was perfectly secure, spontaneously fall on him. It ended up killing him but other tragedies occured as well.”

They both looked up to the ceiling, where a sparkling chandelier hangs down. They both silently walk out from under it.

“Well Ryan, I think this is as good as a place as any.”

Ryan heaved a sigh before pressing a button.

“Here we have the ovilus. A device that takes various changes in temperature and other factors. Then converts them into words from the English dictionary.”

“Hey ghosts, I’m Shane and this is my friend Ryan. Can I ask who we’re talking to?”

A word appeared on the monitor.

“Orange.”

Both of the men stepped back in shock.

“Orange? Maybe they’re trying to say Clementine?

Is this the ghost of the man who died from a chandelier?”

More words appeared.

“No. Scum.”

A laugh was heard from Shane.

“Are you saying we’re scum? Have to say I don’t appreciated being called that.”

No more responses came in.

“Look if you have a problem with us go ahead and say something. What? Cat got your tounge.”

No response. 

“Alright Shane, let’s put this up.”

~|~

The two men currently stood in a large hallway, with their goofy looking gear on.

“Alright, no we are in one of the hallways where more activity has been reported. When the television series was being recorded there were multiple reports of hearing piano music.”

Ryan placed a teddy bear looking thing down.

“Well, that could be explained. Multiple people were in the house at the time. Maybe someone was playing music. I know I like to work with music on. Or maybe someone wanted to test out the piano.” “That is a fair point, but I think we should check it out anyway.”

The merely stood in silence, with an occasional interruption by a pre-recorded voice coming from the plushie.

“Well, I certainly don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, let’s try the REM Pod. The REM Pod is a device that can detect presences and changes in temperature. The more extreme, the louder the noise. There are also lights that can be turned on.

We also have our Boo Buddy friend over there. It will just say pre-recorded things that hopefully will get a response from some entity. We are hoping for some success since Emmett’s fiancé supposedly liked cutsie things.

A few minutes of non-activity lasted before they walked into an adjoining room.

~|~

“Here we are in the ballroom, the most active room. It is here we reach the most interesting part of the story.” “There’s more?” “Unfortuanelty there is one more tragedy to tell. As mentioned before this house was renovated to give away in a sweepstake. This just happened to go to an intern on the show, (Y/n) (L/n). And yes, that is not a mistake. She shares the same name as Emmett Clementine’s late fiance. To make matters freakier they look eerily similar. It was in this ballroom that (Y/n) was found dead, stabbed in the heart with a piece of glass. Her body was found adorned in a wedding dress.”

“Dang. Now I have to admit Ryan, of all the stories you’ve told this is by far the creepiest and weirdest to date.”

“I would also nice like to discuss why we are visiting in the daytime. Our investigations tend to be held at night but this house is reportedly more active during the day.”

“Gotta admit, it’s very beautiful. There’s even the expansive gardens to explore later.”

“Well, this feels like a good room to bring out the SLS camera. The SLS can detect heat signatures.”

They pulled out a camera monitor and looked shocked at what they saw.

On the monitor showed 2 silhouettes of what looked like 2 people, dancing.

“Woah, okay that’s new. Hey ghosts? Were one of you who we talked to earlier.”

The figures merely ignored them.

“Hey ghouls! My friend asked you a question. You know I bet it is one of them since they still seem rude. Ignoring us and all.”

“Are you two the Clementine couple?”

Still no response.

“Shane, do your whole riling up thing.”

“Hey Emmett, why don’t you respond to us? Or are you two chicken? You know what, if you don’t do something, I’m taking your girl. Yeah, that’s right. She’s mine now. Whatchu gonna do about it, huh?”

Apparently Emmett was going to do something about it.

In front of them slowly appeared 2 nearly transparent forms. One of a male with white hair and blue eyes, clutching onto a woman with h/c and e/c. 

“Holy crap I think I just peed myself-”

The male wore more old timey clothes while the female merely wore some jeans and  a shirt.

“LEAVE.”

The lightbulbs in the room proceeded to flicker, with some completely exploding. The investigators quickly headed the ghost’s warning as they went running. It was as the doors slammed shut did Emmett stop giving chase.

“Emmett, you just had to scare them off, didn’t you? I happen to enjoy company, you know.” 

The male quickly approached the female and practically clung onto her.

“I-I know pumpkin, it’s just, that man. He was threating to take you from me. You know I can’t have that. We don’t need more people constantly pestering us like that.” “Emmett, you literally killed me. I don’t think there is a way to take me away from you.”

As the two investigators entered the van’s safety Shane finally turned to Ryan.

“I think ghost might be real.”