#also if you have some sewing ability you could alter clothing that almost but not quite fits you

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Again I don't know who needs to hear this, but accept your grandparents' hand-me-downs. Even if you think they'll be frumpy, just try them on. You might be surprised.

Also remember that your grandparents were young once and a lot of what they used to wear has come back into vogue. So just try them on in the bathroom. A belt around the middle can go a long way, too. If you don't like them, just thank your grandparents and say they're not for you.

If you do like them, show it off to your grandparents. They will be absolutely tickled pink that their favourite jacket/blouse/pants/etc. from 40+ years ago is going to good use (their grandchild).

What's more is if the clothing is that old and still intact, it's probably very good quality and will last you a long time too.

[daonedaonlyskh]

ok people finally deserve info on Sk (also kinda doubles up as me but also not really? Idk any more)

Character Name: she doesn’t give out her name, she goes by Sk to anyone who knows she’s a demigod because she likes to keep her life pretending to be a mortal and her demigod life separate

Age: 14 or 15, or somewhere in between (I haven’t decided who old to make her yet)

What they usually smell like: sandalwood or vanilla. Sometimes both.

A smell they associate with their childhood: baking cookies, strong cooking smells of any kind

Their go-to drink: sparkling water

Do they alter their clothes (Cutting/sewing/anything): sometimes she cuts up t-shirts to add fringe to them, and she wants to learn how to sew. She also often ties up shirts with a hair tie bc shirts are often way to long on her

How they sleep: Side sleeper, but she rolls around a lot in her sleep so technically all positions

The weirdest dream they've had: she’s had a lot of weird dreams, but one she can always think of off the top of her head as weird is when an alligator broke into her car.

Do they wear designer brands (which ones?): Yes, sometimes. Any designer brand she wears though is either thrifted or gotten from an outlet store.

How often do they shower: everyday

How many steps are in their skincare routine: a few, probably four, she does it because if she doesn’t she gets painful acne :(

What they are afraid of: people they love dying

Are they a germophobe: not really

Which parent are they closest to and why: her mom and her dad. Not Poseidon, her dad. (Her mortal dad)

Their favorite food and why they like it: anything her dad makes (once again, not Poseidon), bc he makes the best food

Any accessories they wear with special meanings: she has a ring that turns into a shield that Tyson made for her

Something they would never tell anyone: why do her and Poseidon have such a rocky relationship? (actually a couple people know but basically no one)

Something they wish everyone knew about them: she looks calm cool and relaxed, but really, she’s not.

If deified (made a god), what would their domain be: patron of teenagers

Are they sure of their sexuality or questioning: going with bisexual for now. Gets imposter syndrome all the time about it though.

Their favorite genre for movies: she really likes sci fi or fantasy movies, but she likes almost everything

A unique and somewhat unusual power or ability they have: Poseidon children powers plus. (I’ll make a list one day)

Short answer questions:

If there is a spider in the house, what do they do?

She either leaves it alone if it’s far away from her and not big, because it eats mosquitoes, or squishes it. Sometimes she takes it outside be rarely

When they like someone, how do they show it (romantic or platonic)?

she will touch you, you will receive all the hugs. Type of person who you wouldn’t know had a crush on you bc nothing changed in your prior relationship

If they woke up as the opposite gender, what would they do first?

probably would not care. Might take some pictures to use as drawing references later so she could get good examples of a more “masculine” figure

I am going to steal this list and fill it out for my novel characters too, thank you to everyone who helped to make this great sheet!

Uuuuuuuusers!!!! IT'S TIME FOR ANOTHER WEDNESDAY ACTIVITY!!!

Today's post is not an ask meme!! It is a small project for every user!!! Copy and paste this list and fill it out to tell us more about your characters!!! Be as broad or specific as you like!!

credits to @boy-of-the-flowers, @likeapriceless-wine, @cerberusfavorite and @sweetxloverxx for helping make the list.

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲-𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞

Character Name:

Age:

What they usually smell like:

A smell they associate with their childhood:

Their go-to drink:

Do they alter their clothes (Cutting/sewing/anything):

How they sleep:

The weirdest dream they've had:

Do they wear designer brands (which ones?):

How often do they shower:

How many steps are in their skincare routine:

What they are afraid of:

Are they a germophobe:

Which parent are they closest to and why:

Their favorite food and why they like it:

Any accessories they wear with special meanings:

Something they would never tell anyone:

Something they wish everyone knew about them:

If deified (made a god), what would their domain be:

Are they sure of their sexuality or questioning:

Their favorite genre for movies:

A unique and somewhat unusual power or ability they have:

Short answer questions:

If there is a spider in the house, what do they do?

When they like someone, how do they show it (romantic or platonic)?

If they woke up as the opposite gender, what would they do first?

Let us know if we should make a part 2!!!

[unholyplumpprincess]

Donna Beneviento Headcanons

Gonna be doing all the Lords and Ladies! Alcina Dimitrescu and Karl Heisenberg done!

!Minors and ageless blogs dni, this is an adult work!

Warnings: R18+/NSFT below the cut, SFW above the cut, reader is gn and ambiguous, mentions of somno and consensual drugging

__________

• Angie serves almost like a best friend to her, so in sync that her thoughts are Angie’s. Though most people think that Angie is a projection of Donna’s voice, it’s more like her most internal thoughts without any social guidelines hindering her. Making Angie say things like when seeing someone’s cleavage. “Woah get a load of THOSE honkers.” while Donna herself would obviously Not say that aloud.

• After her parents passed, due to the trauma of it all Donna completely locked herself away- save for traveling to the other Lords’ and Ladies’ estates when needed. Agoraphobia prevents her from going pretty much anywhere else, but she did used to visit the local farmer who sheared sheep and alpacas and spun their own yarn and fabrics. And the local farmer that sold leathers.

• Donna is very anxious and quiet, non-verbal and finding it difficult to find her voice. Angie normally fills any silences that may happen, but even then sometimes she says things that have Donna scrambling to cover her mouth and shake her head, furiously blushing beneath her veil all the while.

• Donna enjoys all arts and crafts- not just doll making or sewing. But she likes knitting, coloring, painting, drawing, gardening, and even writing poetry. As far as knitting, sometimes she catches herself making baby clothes and smiling down at them. They normally end up being altered to fit a doll, but during Rose’s brief stay with her she had been delighted that some of the clothes she had made fit her. It also made it Incredibly hard for her to let her go until Mother Miranda snapped at her.

• As a lover, Donna is so gentle and giving. She speaks with her body and her hands, or Angie being her voice when she is unable. Normally Angie is more blunt than she ever would be, but if her partner finds Angie enjoyable then well, Donna’s hooked.

• Donna has spent so long alone that she’s mastered cooking. Being able to cook FOR someone is a dream come true! But that means she does a lot more baking and cooking, tending to watch you while fussing with her own fingers and clearly anxious about your reaction. You can always feel her beaming in the room when you compliment or say you especially like something.

• Donna’s love languages are physical affection and gift giving, emphasis on gift giving. She wants to make you clothes, buy you them, cook for you, feed you, sit with you, spend time with you. If you like your alone time- you may need to tell her that. She also likes her own solitude, but sometimes she forgets because she likes your presence so much.

• PET NAMES PET NAMES PET NAMES!!! Though Donna would much prefer to call you things in her native tongue and things like ‘My love’ ‘My treasure’ ‘My darling’, Angie tends to use...well...vulgar language. So your most used ones from her are ‘Hot stuff’ ‘Sweet face’ ‘Sugar tits’ and ‘Toots’.

• Despite modern technology, Donna prefers older technology. Including keeping her father’s old record player and records that she constantly plays through the house to keep noise around.

• Due to her mutation, Donna’s ability to secrete a mist that causes deep hallucinations and things like that can also cause other things. But Donna has used this against you in a good way, because when you’re in your ‘dream’ state, she can project herself to you and remove her veil and talk to you. She tells you in those catatonic states about how it’s easier because that isn’t ‘really’ her to her.

!NSFT under cut here!

• Remember what I said about her mist and how she uses it on you? Yeah. She’s also able to finally touch you in that state. And oh, oh is her mouth filthy sometimes when she’s like that. It’s her world, hers to manipulate and shift- and she uses it to her advantage to make herself more confident. Where her lips and teeth can press to you and she can murmur in your ear how long she’s waited to taste you. How she might do it when you sleep tonight and do not stir-

• In real life, Donna does not meet your eye when you are free of that state in the mornings. But you know she’s watching you, watching you rub phantom marks that do not lay on your skin despite you knowing you’d felt her touch there. But you enjoy the way she squeaks when you look at her with a coy little look and a smirk on your lips as if asking her if that’s really how she wanted to play.

• Donna also is...very talented sexually. But not from experience. She has hundreds to thousands of books in her house and a majority of them in her bedroom. A lot are on things like botanicals, foraging, dollmaking, etc. But a lot are of things like sex positions, basic sex ed, to downright raunchy and kinky things and safety behind them. You’re just basically her test dummy for all the things she’s been waiting to do.

• Talented, talented, talented hands. She can make you come undone from them alone. Very soft hands with light callouses on her fingertips and her knuckles scarred over from all her wood working and sewing. Her nails are always trimmed short, something you could simply pass as her needing short nails to work. But now? Now you know better.

• Her top kinks are: Somno, consensual drugging, breeding kink, and shibari. Somno comes from her desire to touch you, but her fear of you seeing her. Plus she just likes how...peaceful you look. Consensual drugging- same thing, but she also feels a sense of power behind it. Breeding is due to her wanting a family, ofc, and shibari is her liking artistic things. And seeing you in such a state, my, she might combust.

• She’s a huge service top. She just wants to please you and make you beg for it. She also enjoys when you’re dreaming with her, and she’s able to slink her fingers into you and brush your lips together and steal every breath and gasp you make as she raspily praises you.

• Be careful of this shy girl. She can only hold herself back so long before she must mark you and claim you as her own.

[adventuresofclever]

CleverMax: SDCC 2021 Masquerade Entry

Comic-Con@Home Masquerade Entry: Adventures of Clever Costume Title: CleverMax - Mr. Clever as a Borderlands boss Costume Description: Recreation of Mr. Clever from the Doctor Who episode Nightmare in Silver, written by Neil Gaiman, done in the style of the video game, Borderlands. Bio: They/He pronouns

Greetings all!

I realized that I never wrote about how I made my CleverMax mashup cosplay, so when SDCC posted about their At Home masquerade, I figured this was the perfect time to do so! Most of you know that I cosplay exclusively as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who, with the random mash up thrown in here and there. I’ve always wanted to be a Borderlands cosplayer, and the following is how I managed to combine the two together.

As always, enjoy the blog and if there are any questions, please feel free to contact me. 

Let’s step into the TARDIS and jump back to October 20, 2009, when the first Borderlands game was released. It was my first foray into FPS (First person shooters) and I was hooked from day one. In 2012 they released Borderlands 2 which is, in my not so humble opinion, the best video game ever created. We got some of the most iconic charcters and storylines in that game. Including the best DLC ever, Bunkers and Badasses. And my second favorite villain of all time – Handsome Jack.

Jack’s sass, sarcasm and charm fits well with Mr. Clever’s personality. And in the pre sequel you get to play a version of him called the Dopplegnager.  I mean, this pretty much wrote itself.

Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 and Mr. Clever from Doctor Who

Borderlands cosplayers have aIways left me in a state of awe and admiration. The style of the game is so unique and seeing it recreated in person is nothing short of incredible. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to be a Borderlands cosplayer. For the past eight years I have only ever cosplayed as Mr. Clever from Doctor Who. In the summer of 2019 I decided that was the perfect time to try to make this happen before NYCC.

When I initially decided to do this, it was going to be more of a mash up between Handsome Jack and Mr. Clever. I had planned on wearing Jack’s basic outfit, but in Clever’s colors with the a few add ons. Namely the bow tie and the cybernetics.

After much research and drafting, I decided against that. I ended up just turning Mr. Clever into a Borderlands boss. Same basic outfit as Mr. Clever/11th Doctor, but cel shaded and with weapons, cause Borderlands.

I made the accessories, chess set, and obviously the working cyberplanner piece itself for my Nightmare in Silver version of Clever, but I have never tackled anything this ambitious. An entire costume from scratch? Not something I thought I could do. Not knowing how to sew and being visually impaired were both challenges that I had to work around.

I started with looking around my house for various items that I thought I could use. I figured if I messed up, might as well mess up on something I hadn’t spent money on yet! I was going to toss a pair of my old paddock boots as they had some rips in the leather. Ripped leather? How very Pandora. They were the first thing I tackled.

Old paddock boots that I refurbished for the cosplay

This was my first time using leather paint and I have to say I am very pleased with the Angelus brand of leather paint. I have worn these in the rain and through puddles, and they have held up 100%.

After the boots were done, I started on the vest. I had an old black vest lying around the house that was sort of the shape and size I wanted. I don’t have a dress form, so I put it on myself, inside out, and used safety pins to make it the size I needed, then hand sewed around the safety pins. Not ideal, but it works.

I had a spare pair of black jeans, button down light blue shirt and a plain bow tie that I just ended up cel shading.

The only item that I really couldn’t figure out was the purple frock coat. Try as I might, I couldn’t find one to modify. So the coat was actually made by my friend Heather Long. I did alter the length after NYCC. 

With the clothes themselves all set, for the most part anyay, it was time to paint. This was my first time trying to recreate the art style of Borderlands, often referred to as cel shading. I have a few “art of Borderlands” style books that I poured over before I sat down to attempt this.

Other than the accessories and anything leather, I used the same materials and techniques for each article of clothing. Instead of describing each seprate piece, I’ll just explain what I did to achieve the overall look.

When you look at a Borderlands character on screen, it can be a bit overwhelming. So many colors, and so many nuances of each color. I did my best to visually sift through all that, and try to establish what I thought was the base color.

Once the base color was determined, I just added blotches, blobs, shading, low lights, highlights and other variations of the base color itself throughout each piece. I recommend keeping your fabric wrinkled and using those wrinkle as guidlenes for where the lines and shading would fall naturally.

Once all of that dried, I then went over different sections of the fabric with white and black lines. To get that crisp, almost comic book looking outline of each piece I used black sharpie, and white fabric pens as well as white fabric paint.

When I sat down to do the coat, I wanted something a little different than just cel shading. During a second playthrough of Tales from the Borderlands, I noticed Rhys and other characters had interesting logos and designs on the back of their jackets. I ended up putting a chessboard pattern on the back as a homage to the chess game between the 11th Doctor and Mr. Clever in the episode.

Great shot of the chess board and my Judd Nelson pose

The materials that I used for all of the clothing items were craft paints that I had around the house. Any brand works, but I prefer Americana paints. I then added an additive that you use to make the paint water proof and used various sized brushes. Dry brushes are also very useful if you have them.

Black sharpies of different sizes and any fabric markers are also very helpful. Heat setting is required to make the paint waterpfoof, so if you mess up before you add sharpies, you can wash the clothes and start over.

A few tips if you decide to undertake cel shading clothing: Until now I hadn’t noticed that there aren’t many thing in Borderlands that are true black. Due to the art style most things that appear black are in reality shades of grey, with a grey base colr. This makes it easier to add the lines, shading, and what not.  Looking back, I should have bought GREY clothes. It was a ton of work to make the pants look like they were a mixture of greys. And as a result of so many laers of paint, they are stiff, lost their stretch and feel an entire size smaller! So I would recommend grey fabric as a base for black clothing and buy a size larger.

The pants are so stiff that I think they will stand up on their own

This entire process was way more fun than I thought it would be and I’ve since become addicted to cel shading anything I can. I may or may not have started cel shading my guest room. 

After the clothing was finished, I started on some accessories and props. The first being the easiet – a wee little cybermite that I cel shaded. My cosplay of Mr. Clever always has a cybermite on my lapel, so I took one of my older ones and repainted it.

You can’t have a Borderlands character without some sort of weapon, so I painted a nerf gun that looks similar to the one that Clara Oswald holds in the episode.

I have never had to carry a gun for my Mr. Clever cosplay before so weapon checks are sort of new to me. I didn’t want to go through that at NYCC so I came up with a clever, no pun intended, way around it.

I took a photo of each side of the gun. Went to Staples and had them printed on heavy cardstock. Then I cut around the guns, glued them together between a piece of cardboard then added some black electical tape around the edges.  Viola. Instant weapons check approved gun that is lightweight, and also acts a fan when it gets hot. It was a huge hit at the con. A few security guards were like “ we have to check your…wait..is that flat?” And they proceeded to play with it. I highly recommend doing this!

Gun and its flat counterpart

I am holding the flat gun in this picture from NYCC

In the actual game, you can equip your characters with mods that give them certain abilities and bonuses. In the Pre-Sequel, you can play as a Dopplganger of Handsome Jack so I searched for some of his mods and found one in purple which seemed perfect. I made the mod with cardboard, covered it in craft foam, modge podge to set, and installed led lights. The first time I wore it I put it on my belt which didn’t work. It kept falling off. I eventually put it on my lapel and wore it like Jack does. Unfortunately, someone glomped on me at a con and broke it, so I recently had to remake it all over again.

No Borderlands costume would be complete without cel shading on yourself. This was a huge challenge for me for a few reasons. One, I’m visually impaired so doing line work like this was challenging. Two, I am highly allergic to so many materials and ingrediants that finding a make up brand that I could wear was a trial and error process that ended up with many break outs and rashes before I found the perfect combination.

I used mostly eye liner pencils and liquid eye liner to achieve the look. The Wet n Wild liquid eye liner lasts forever, and is actually difficult to remove, but that is not a bad thing as it stood up to the heat of a very crowded venue.

As for the cel shading itself, I relied on many refernce photos of various characters in the game. I started with the eyebrows first as that seemed to frame the face nicely and give me a nice mischvieous look. I then just outlined the bones of my face, adding some random lines here and there. It never looks the same way twice, but that’s ok. Playing with different angles, lines, shading etc is half the fun!

The only real challenge were my hands. The make up didn’t last that long on my hands so I had to touch it up throughout the con. I also eventually started to use band aids that I cel sahded to cover up a tattoo on my inner wrist.

Figuring what to do with my hair is an on going process that I still haven’t 100% mastered. I opted to not use a foam wig as I have over heating issues on a cool day let alone trying to wear one if it gets warmer. I have had adverse reactions to craft foam in the past, so I don’t want it touching my skin, and lastly, I think a wig AND a facial prosthetic would be too much for me. So I decided to just cel shade my hair.

This takes forever to do, and I’m still figuring out better techniques every time I wear it.

I have a really great brand of colored gel, called Mofajang which I apply with a baster brush that you would find in the kitchen gadgets aisle. I also use a clean mascara brush to add some finer lines here and there. Set with way more hair spray than I ever used in the 80’s and it becomes fairly waterproof.

I have learned that due to how hard the make up and hair color is to remove, I really need to wear this on the LAST day of a con. I made the mistake of wearing it on day one of Long Island Who one year, and spent hours scrubbing my skin and hair for the next day. Far better to just leave the con with a tad bit of left over cel shading. Which makes it very interesting when you stop at a roadside bathroom on the trip home.

With the entire costume done it was time to work on the actual cyberplanner appliance. 

Next time I make a variation of Clever, I will make this FIRST. Making these pieces is the bane of my existence – I love wearing them, hate making them.  It’s a long process.

I am allergic to latex, silocone, scuply, most clays, and so many other things that seem to be every cosplayers go-to. When I made my first cyber piece back in late 2013, I spent weeks trying to find a substance that would keep attached to my face all day without causing a rash. Like an alchemist in a fantasy novel, I submerged myself into creating the perfect concoction. It took 22 days to finish the final product.

I admit that I rushed a bit on the Borderlands one.  As a result, it doesn’t quite fit as well as my others, and is a bit heavier than I expected. I only added two working lights, instead of the usual four, to hopefully balance the piece out. It lasted through two full days of a con, despite the heat of a crowded venue, but I did end up tweaking it a bit after. Even with the tweaks, it still doesn’t fit as well as I would like. It is too heavy and brings down the entire left side of my face, making it difficult to keep my eye open at times. I really need to sit down and force myself to make a new one.

There are a few more things that I would like to add to this costume eventually. Like a belt of grenades, and maybe another gun. But aside from that, I am incredibly pleased with how this costume turned out. It is by far, my favorite Clever variation that I have done.

I hope this post gives you the inspiration to go off and cel shade something, and possibly even play some Borderlands!

[stygiantarot]

Tactile Witchcraft

(taught on The Alexandria Archives 5/16/2020)

Today we shall be exploring witchcraft from a specific sensory perception- touch. While there is absolutely no wrong sense to use to experience and practice witchcraft; I would say that sight and hearing are the most common; followed by scent. I’d like to offer an alternative inspiration with tactile focused witchcraft and show that it can be intermingled with a witch’s routine quite easily. This is especially helpful for those of us who have trouble with the common “visualizing” side of witchcraft.

Using my own experiences, I’ll explain how tactile witchcraft can be incorporated into the following routines and practices:

raising energy/charging

grounding and cleansing

meditation

divination

protection

ritual framework

Raising Energy and Charging Objects

Raising energy is used for almost any focused activity in witchcraft. The act of awakening your focus and intention in a ritual way. Many use visualizing for this- imagining energy flowing upwards into their hands or outward from their body like an expanding bubble. There are some common tactile methods that you may not even be aware of! Such as:

rubbing your hands together until they’re warm

posturing in a certain way (a certain standing or sitting position)

stomping or dancing

touching certain favored objects (like on an altar or other tools)


This can be expanded on further into a more intense tactile action to raise your energy. Certain complex hand motions (think like the show The Magicians!), or physically connecting with objects that help you raise energy. You could run your fingers through a pot of dirt or sand, put your feet in the tub or a basin and run water over them, toss a special stone or coin from hand to hand (carefully of course), rub a particular lotion or oil on your face, arms, shoulders, or feet.

Notice tactile sensations rather than visual ones to know that your energy is being called forth. Feel the heat, the goosebumps or tingles, a tightening or adjusting of your body’s muscles or stance, a small breeze or touch perhaps.

When it comes to charging objects and tools- get into using your body to do so! My personal method is called “massaging the bones” and can be read about here.

You can also use your lips to kiss or blow your breath onto the object. You can jump or dance with it. You can hug it, cuddle it, wrap it in a special blanket, stroke it with a brush, feather, leaf, etc. Just the act of focusing your attention with this activities imbues the object with energy. It might be harder than raising energy to feel a direct effect but you can still get the temperature change or goosebumps/prickles sensation when charging objects like this. Especially if you take it slow and give it emotional depth during the process.

Do you have any special things you do to welcome a new special object into your home? Especially something emotional like a stuffie or sentimental decorative object. What about things you enjoy yourself when visiting a close friend or family member? Think about how you can incorporate those kind of actions in altered ways to charging objects and ritual tools.

Grounding and Cleansing

The act of grounding frequently involves a tactile element already. Touching the floor with your hands or feet is the most common. You can add onto this with having a bowl or pot of soil, sand, marbles/stones, or other substance (you could use salt or flour!) that you run your fingertips through. When you use food or drink to ground, incorporate observing the tactile element along with the taste- the texture and the temperature.

Grounding is basically using deliberate observation to bring ourselves gently back into focus with the mundane world. Stroke a pet, a blanket, a stuffie. Shuffle a deck of cards or shake and roll some dice. Stack or unstack a favorite pile of books. Flip through one of those books. What do the pages feel like? What about the cover and binding? And there is nothing wrong with branching out to include multiple senses at once when focusing on tactile grounding- while flipping through the book and observing the pages, notice what they smell like. What does the book smells like? You can also focus on your own limbs and body, give yourself a brief massage limb by limb (lotion optional). Or trace your skin with a brush or fingertip, even a pen if you like to draw or write.

What actions tend to help bring you back to yourself when emotions overwhelm you? That’s mundane grounding! Think about how to incorporate some of those into a practice for grounding after a ritual or working.

When it comes to cleansing, the easiest way to do it tactilely is to literal clean the space (or your own body) that you are wanting to cleanse. Create a floor wash with particular correspondences and ingredients and then wash your floor, walls, and doorways with it. Mix a scented powder to sweep into corners to collect negative energy and then vacuum it up after a couple days (make sure to check if it’s pet safe ingredients if needed; they love to lick their paws after walking all over!). But you can also do variations on this if you don’t have the ability or spoons to physically clean a room.

Take a small scrap of fabric and charge it with the rooms energy. You can do this by walking around wiping down surfaces or just by sitting in the room or area needed to be cleansed holding the cloth and focusing on how the room feels, smells, sounds, and letting it “collect” into the cloth. Now get a small bowl of water, add some cleansing herbs or even just a squeeze of lemon juice and sprinkle of salt. Now wash that cloth gently but thoroughly. Let the energy of that washing spread outwards from the cloth to tie to the room. The cloth is the space’s taglock. And it can be reused- hang the fabric to dry as the room is cleared of bad energy and then gently fold it and place it in a safe place until needed again. This can be stacked on in other purposes- painting or stitching protection sigils on it to protect the space.

It’s important that the tactile cleansing action is something you associate personally with removing debris and dust but otherwise be as creative as you like!

Meditation

So much of mainstream meditation books, articles, and videos focus on auditory meditation. If any of you are like me, that can get old or lose it’s effectiveness on some days. I’m not a big meditator personally; especially of the type that’s “zone out and don’t think of anything” so this section will be short but here are a couple ways I do focused tactile meditations for inspiration:

Walking path meditations: I like to do cemeteries, but it can be parks, hikes, even just a walk in your neighborhood or in a shopping/urban district. The goal is mostly to not focus on any one thing too long and to observe your surroundings, especial natural ones. The weather, the vegetation, the structures/architecture, creatures, even energy/ vibes/feelings.

Strand or String based mediation: this involves knotting a long strand of string or rope, crocheting/knitting, braiding (even your own hair), sewing or embroidering, etc. Basically anything semi-repetitive that involves a fabrics, yarn, or string-like materials. It’s not about entirely zoning out, but about noticing the feel of your activity and how it makes you feel. You can include music as well if you like, again it’s okay to combine senses.

Kitchen based mediation: Kneading dough, mixing batter, combining a soup or stew, stirring a drink, chopping ingredients (safely of course), shaping cookies, tenderizing meat, rolling out and cutting pasta, etc. So many aspects of creating a dish in the kitchen have a meditative quality to them. Again, the idea isn’t to “think of nothing”, especially when working around heat and sharp objects. The idea is the almost repetitive action that you know is going to lead to nurturing sustenance. This can also be a good way to teach kiddos a gentler version of meditating without it being a huge chore. It was while kneading dough that my grandmother taught me to reflect on my day and what I wanted from the upcoming one- a version of focused meditation.

Self-care meditation: Soaking in a bath, smoothing on lotion, applying a face mask, brushing hair, massaging aching muscles, mixing up a favorite cuppa, etc. Give yourself that well deserved attention and gentleness while you let your mind also be soothed. Focus on the texture of your products on your skin, the feel of tea in your mouth and belly, the way you feel after giving yourself that treat.

Divination

Even divining has a tactile component that can be expanded! A deck of cards being shuffled is already about the feel, but you can also take the time to feel each card facedown before you turn them over. Do you notice anything different when you touch each one? If you take the time to truly shuffle your cards slowly and deliberately as a focusing activity to help get you in the zone of divining (before you even start considering a specific question or inquiry), you may be surprised to notice your ability to shuffle improve, especially if you do this daily. I encourage shuffling a deck at least once or twice a day regardless of whether you actually do a reading. Bond with that deck physically. Let your fingertips become so familiar with your deck(s) that you could pick it out of lineup, merely by the touch.

Other ways to divine with tactile focuses are: 


casting objects (throwing the bones: the feel of each piece should go into what associations it gets ascribed.

aleuromancy: toss, mix, or knead the flour with your hands. The shaping of dough for the paper slips is tactile. And you can use physical differences in each cookie in your interpretations as well.

wax divination: there is a variation on fire scrying that specifically uses wax and the way it melts. There is a physical aspect to this in holding the candle, feeling the wax when it’s still warm or after it has cooled. I’ve even kept interesting shaped drippings as charms or offerings on shrines

dowsing: using the touch and movement of an object in your hands to divine location of specific things (classically water).

palmistry: taking the feel and texture of the skin and lines into account

astragalamancy: feeling the dice and the act of throwing them

Protection

The act of protecting one’s practice and self is quite a varied one but most witches do practice some form of protection work in their practice. Whether for a space, self, or other persons they care about. It’s another practice that has a common visualizing methodology with imagining stacked bricks, hammered shields, pricking thorns, biting teeth, etc.

Much like what was discussed in the raising energy section, there are a lot of actions that can be done to focus your energy on protection without needing to invoke a sense that doesn’t work as well for you. Braiding a belt or bracers with protective colors or materials and affixing to a taglock or poppet. Creating a sympathetic magic wall of legos or blocks for a personal shield or property ward. Stitching protective sigils onto your clothing or on curtains in your home. Sympathetic magic is when a “stand in” object or representation of your goal or person is used to connect the will of influence. It’s very useful for tactile witchcraft and I find it especially effective in protective magic.

As with the gentle massaging mentioned in the charging objects section, the emotional side of your tactile action is important. When it comes to protection, if you need to smash, squish, stab, tear, flush, or stomp your sympathetic magic object during this process, go with that desire! (safely of course) Using a nail to puncture a potato over and over before you pour a withering potion over it is doubly effective at hex or curse breaking.

Protection doesn’t have to be something violent either; you can tap into loving feelings and give a protective bath or massage to a popper or taglock. You can gently weave a protective square of material as a shield. You could sculpt something out of clay or dough. Feeling where your protective strength and comfort stems from and build upon it!

Ritual Framework

This last section will outline how to tie a lot of what has been discussed together into a longer ritual framework. Multiple tactile actions during a ritual when it something you find effective in raising and directing your energy will only pack a stronger punch, so to speak.

Start by choosing a method of energy raising that involves touch and texture but relates well to your ritual goal. For example; if doing a ritual to heal a friend I wouldn’t choose something like stomping or throwing objects. The lotion or oil anointing would work well; or even the running water over the body. It might be hard to do with a faucet since I’d have to move from my bathroom to my ritual space afterwards but this can be accounted for either in mindset or by altering it. Bring a large basin of water and bowl or cup to your ritual space and pour the water over your feet and hands.

Then you might use some sympathetic magic to send healing energy to your friend. Create a poppet for the loved one that you can literally massage or give a soothing bath to. You might go beyond simple tactile actions and tuck the poppet into a comfy spot to sleep, read it a favorite story or sing a favorite song. Paint a healing sigil on the scrap of fabric you use as a blanket.

Use some tactile divination if needed to help guide you and your friend to the most ideal way to deal with this time while they heal. The fortune cookie variation of aleuromancy would be a good choice; you and your friend can reap the rewards of the baked goods together.

Grounding yourself after is important- don’t forget! This ritual would take a lot out of your, especially emotionally, with it being focused on healing a loved one. You might stroke a special blanket, stuffie, or pet to bring that soothing connection along with your grounding. Or stacking some favorite books that you might even pick from to unwind is a good choice too.

You can see from the example laid out how building on all these suggestions can work in tandem together for various forms of witchcraft and intentions.

What sort of ritual do you think could be built with a tactile focus? If you don’t usually do traditional rituals, what sort of working have you been inspired to add a new tactile element to?

[raespark]

That Allister cosplay is outstanding!! How did you make the mask and the gym symbol+endorsements? I'm planning on doing an Allister cosplay in the future myself

Thank you so much, and happy to answer! I took lots of pictures through the process so I’ll answer this in two parts.

“How did you make the gym symbol/ endorsements?”

So the first thing I did is take a TON of screenshots I have almost 300 screenshots of reference images of allister and the gym league trainers and the pokejobs logos and so on to get good references for all the logos I needed.Once I was done taking all the screenshots I spent hours tracing them to the best of my ability to create these images: (Not all of these were the final versions which were modified right before printing, apologies)Gym Logo - QUAY/ Gym Logo

XXA - Sponsor (This is the logo for MC Insurance, Allisters Sponsor)

291 - Number

ASTSA - Name (This is the new pokemon language for Onion, Allister’s japanese name)

The square with the diamond - This I nicknamed the “NIKE” cause its the logo for the spotswear company in game

Galar league logo - Galar League logo (this is the logo thats the red and blue pokeball with white marks, and “galar league written underneath it)

And then I put together this ref sheet to make sure the logos looked good together color wise, and some of the colors were still altered later but it all looked pretty good

And then once the logos were all set, I printed them onto heat transfer vinyl and let me explain why I did that specifically. The fabric I used was polyester, which is the kind of fabric that sports jerseys are made of. I did that because the gym’s uniforms are based on soccer jersey’s so it felt fitting!IT WAS A HUGE PAIN I DONT RECOMMEND ITbut now because of the fact that it was polyester paint wouldnt’ work on that fabric because of how stretchy it is and the fact it doesn’t absorb moisture easily. So we printed it onto heat transfer vinyl with my cheap ink printer and then I ironed them onto my clothes! I made sure they were placed correctly by first taping them to my clothes and making a note of the location before ironing it, and then once I was happy with a placement I’d carefully iron it on. This vinyl seems kinda cheap and like the ink might come off with too much water so watch out if you choose to use it. There are also printable iron on paper for other types of fabric as well and are cheaper iirc!

Same goes for the dots, thos were all cut using a CNC/ off brand cricut (just a bunch of circles all at once) and I placed them by hand using painters tape and trimmed as needed to make the designs:

Hopefully that was helpful!

“How did you make the mask?”

So this ones a little more complicated to answer because its not complicated but its not something everyone can do.

So we started on this one before the game came out, and before I’d gotten to Allisters battle in the game but we had enough reference material to figure out the general look of Allister’s mask, so we made a 3D model of it that we planned to 3D print (my bf has a 3D printer and a CNC and helped me a TON for this project) and did a test print of a tiny mask to start to make sure we were happy with the 3D model (here is the tiny mask in my tiny hand, we affectionally nicknamed it “mini mask”)

Now after we had the 3D model we had another issue of how big does it need to be? I have a round head on my own so I didn’t need to modify the shape of the mask thankfully (one time my fat head came in handy!) But we needed to figure out how big to make the mask to make sure it “fit” correctly.

So we tried cutting out a circle with paper in a few sizes until we thought we found a good size for my face (which for me was a little over 7 inches)

went and bought a styrofoam dome from the craft store in that size to make an EVA foam dome and then checked if that fit my face (later this worked fantastic as a way to transport the mask as a protective shell around it) I don’t have a picture of this EVA foam dome but all it was used for was putting it on my face and making sure it went over my chin and such. Once we had that we were ready to start printing the final mask. 

Once the 3D model was scaled for the final mask, it was too big for my bf’s printer to print all in one go so we split it into 4 pieces. Each piece took about 9 hours to print, and a few of the prints failed and had to be redone, so after a few days of printing it looked something like this:

for those who don’t know much about 3D printing all those beams are the supports that lets the printer print raised surfaces like that and have to all be removed. So after about 2 hours of pulling plastic with pliers it looked more like this:

so we left small gaps in the edges of the mask so that we could put metal pins between each piece to help hold it together so we cut our metal pins and assembled the mask and it was starting to come together!

So from here we melted some plasitc onto the seams (plastic welding!) with a wood burner and - wow that looks gross

but trust me its better than gaps in the mask. so after a bit of sanding here we entered the rounds of priming it with spraypaint primer and sanding it for like an hour and doing that again, occasionally using bondo putty to try and even out those seams and those rounds tended to look like allister just murdered a village:

but you can see compared to the previous image that the mask is a lot smoother! This was the final round of sanding and you can tell that most of the layer lines from the printer have been sanded down! You can almost not see the seams anymore! (though now they’re also very red but they’re very smooth in comparison to the beginning trust me…I sat there sanding for many hours for this)

But after this all that needed to be done with a final priming in grey, and then painted it gray!

While the paint was drying, we prepared some masking in the design of allisters mask which if you don’t know what the full mask looks like I wanna reference this from the collectors guidebook (which I just now got my hands on today but saw these on twitter)

So we cut out a sticker sheet in that design and placed it down with some painters tape to keep that part of the mask gray and then it was painted white, and that was the painting done!

For the black in the eyes, I got a scrap of black fabric for cheap at joann’s that I picked up and pulled and it was a very soft polyester/spandex material that you’d use for pantyhose so i’m sure you could also cut up some of those for a similar effect. But when stretched you can see out of them. 

So we made small rings the same shape as the inside of the mask behind the eyes, glued the fabric using super glue to that ring (and the mouth as well) and viola:

and then the final step was to get that mask on my face, and basically we had some rings on the left and right sides of the inside of the mask that I attatched some elastic too, and then needed to glue a third strap over the top of my head. and sewed it all in place and put some craft foam along the forehead and chin inside the mask for some cushioning and it was done! 

I really hope that was helpful and I tried to make sure I took lots of photos along the way so I hope they were helpful. If you have other questions feel free to ask! Sorry for the novel but just wanted to be as detailed as I could be!

Thank you for your nice words and best of luck!! Allister is a detailed boy but he’s very fun!

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball 129

Popo isn’t satisfied with Goku’s progress, so he starts him on some new training.   I feel like Goku’s already started and stopped three different training regimens already, but what’s one more?

First, Popo sews Goku a new outfit, since he’s been wearing the same rage he’s had since defeating King Piccolo. 

Goku seems to be touched and impressed by this.    I think it says something about Goku that he’s just as amazed by Popo’s ability to make clothes as his immense strength.  

Popo then leads Goku into the Room of Time, which is covered in clocks.   When I first saw this episode, I had hoped that the “Room of Time” would be the Hyperbolic Time Chamber from DBZ.   When that concept was introduced, Goku said that he had learned of it during this period, while he was training with Kami and Popo.    But it’s a retcon, the Hyperbolic Time Chamber never appeared in the original Dragon Ball anime in any form.

As far as this room goes, I’m unclear as to what it does.    The notion that it “creates time” is ridiculous.   This episode appears to suggest that it’s a typical time machine, since it flings Goku back into the past, but I’m not sure that makes sense either.   

My guess is that the room simply “creates” replicas of past eras, allowing Goku to interact with historical events without altering history or actually leaving the Lookout.  For that matter, I’m starting to wonder if the places Goku visited in the previous two episodes weren’t simulations as well.   The whole point of Goku training on the Lookout was to ensure that Piccolo Junior didn’t track him down and try to kill him before the tournament.   Sending Goku back down to Earth for training exercises seems to defeat that idea.  

Likewise, I doubt Kami would want to send Goku into the actual past, for feat that he might kill somebody’s grandfather and cause a time paradox.    But we never really get a handle on what this thing is or how it works.

Meanwhile, Tien and the others are running around with giant rocks on their backs.   Tien breaks his because he’s frustrated that these kinds of exercises won’t be enough to get them as strong as they want to be.   He later suggest that they all seek out Korin Tower, and receive training there, since it worked for Goku.

Meanwhile Goku tumbles into the past, where he lands on a young Master Roshi, who was trying to peep on a girl taking a bath.  

Okay, so the big problem with this episode is that “Master Roshi” isn’t this guy’s name, and even if it was, this would have been before he became a master.   He’s not the “Turtle Hermit” either, but he introduces himself as “Turtle-chan”, just so we have something to call him.   The Crane Hermit is in this episode too, and he’s just called “Crane” for some reason.   Must be the hat.

The object of Roshi’s lust is this lady, named Fanfan.   Okay, just to clear this up...

Ranfan is the lady who fought Nam in the 21st Budokai.   She has curly purple hair and isn’t above using nudity to win a match.

Ran Ran is Chiaotzu’s doll/wife from the third Dragon Ball movie “Mystical Adventure.”.  

Colonel Violet is an officer in the Red Ribbon Army.     She looks almost exactly like the lady in this episode, except Violet has blue eyes.

But this episode features Fanfan.    Her main distinction from the others is that she lived at least 280 years before Dragon Ball began.   I say this because Master Roshi is at least 300 years old, and his younger self claims to be 18 in this episode.    So maybe Fanfan is the ancestor of Violet and Ranfan?

Of course, this implies the existence of yet another purple-haired woman (or doll) named Fanran.   I’ll let you know if I spot one.

Anyway, Turtle-chan is pissed that Goku messed up his chance to see titties, so Goku shows him his own titties.   Turtle-chan explains that it doesn’t count.    Insert your own Tumblr nipple joke here.

Crane shows up and gives Turtle a hard time, and he claims that one day Fanfan will be his girlfriend.   Okay, so what I don’t get is how both of these guys are supposed to be students of the great Mutaito, but neither of them wear his uniform.    They also have full heads of hair, unlike their previous appearance in flashback during the King Piccolo Saga, where they looked a lot more like Crane’s flunkies in the back.

See, he’s 18.   Feel free to draw all the young Roshi/young Crane Hermit slash fan art you want, kids.

Roshi takes Goku to see Mutaito, who is curious enough about Goku to accept his request for a fight.   

There’s something about Mutaito that reminds me of my dad, and I can’t quite figure out what.    They don’t look that much alike.  

Goku wonders why Mutaito doesn’t adopt a stance for their battle, and Mutaito assures thim that he’s been in one this whole time.    They fight while he sits right there, and then he knocks Goku against the wall without even touching him.

So, is Mutaito supposed to be stronger than Goku is?  

No, because even Mutaito acknowledges that Goku has incredible speed and power.    It’s more likely that Mutaito won that exchange simply because he surprised Goku with moves he wasn’t expecting.

He explains to Goku that he used ki to knock him back.

This whole scene feels a little weird, since we’ve seen Goku use ki before, and he’s fought against other ki users like Roshi, Tien, and Piccolo.   I think the point of this lesson is that Goku’s mostly been using it in very primitive ways.    The Kamehameha is powerful, and Goku learned to bend it around to make it more versatile, but ki could be used for more intricate applications than this.   

Mutaito demonstrates by using a thin beam of energy to divide the flow of a waterfall.   He assures both Roshi and Goku that they could do the same with enough concentration and hard work.

While Goku plugs away at this, he finds some of Fanfan’s laundry in the water.

Fanfan thanks Goku for finding it, and wipes the sweat off his face.

Turtle-chan says he’s sweaty too, but Fanfan points out that he’s drooling.   Master Roshi Turtle Chan belongs in jail.

Then Crane shows up and he’s all “D-Did you get my DM?” and she’s like “Nope.”

I feel bad for Fanfan, because it looks like her only options for romance are a peeping tom and a cranky incel with a stupid haircut.   Goku’s actually 15 in this episode, so I guess he’s almost eigible, but all he wants to do is cut waterfalls in half and show everyone his titties. 

So Crane just punches Fanfan and kidnaps her on the spot.   Man, this guy is the worst.  He tells Roshi to tell Goku to meet him in the harvest field.   Uh, okay?

Roshi brings Goku along...

...And Crane tries to fight Goku, but he can’t even touch the guy.   

Well, I guess he does touch Goku’s fist with his face, but that really doesn’t help him.

Turns out he’s got Fanfan tied to a tree, and his henchmen are going to kill her.

So Goku has to let him beat him up, and somehow even that doesn’t help.   Crane works him over for a bit, but Goku’s not even hurt.    Look at this smug li’l bastard.    Crane Hermit absolutely sucks.   I was mad at him before for hitting Fanfan, but now I’m starting to think she just pretended to get knocked out so she wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

So Crane calls on his other henchman to light a fire around Goku and Turtle.   I guess they poured gasoline all over this field before they showed up?     Is this even a threat?   I’m pretty sure Goku could jump over this easily.

Roshi is panicked, at least.

But Goku remembers what Mutaito told him, and he starts powering up his ki while he’s surrounded by flames.   Foreshadowing! 

So Goku manages to clear a path through the flames. 

And Fanfan kicks one of Crane’s buddies in the nuts.   

The other flunky tries to hit her, but then Mutaito stops him, and he looks pissed.

He tells Crane to either quit the dojo now, or get moved to the back of the class.

Turtle is super-impressed with Goku’s ki power, and vows to train hard to surpass him.    Well, he did beat Goku once, so he’s not totally wrong.  Fanfan promises to wipe the sweat from Turtle’s brow, but only after he surpasses Goku.  I like that because it would have been really hacky for Roshi to get the girl.    He didn’t even do anything in this episode except bring Goku along.   This way, she doesn’t even have to touch the sleazebag until he gets strong enough to beat Goku, which doesn’t happen until after she’s long dead. 

Later, Goku tries to cut the waterfall, but he can’t get his ki power to work this time.   Turtle wonders if what he did in the fire was a fluke.

From the Lookout, Kami and Popo watch all of this, and wonder if Goku is getting anywhere.    So does this mean they watched the part where Fanfan was taking a bath?   

[strigital]

Headcanons: Hero of Kvatch - Kassandra Saryn

‘tis about time i did something like that with Kassie. so here we go!

Kassandra is a halfbreed: she’s got a Breton father and a Dunmer mother. She looks very much human in almost every way, from the shape of her face and complexion of her skin, to the Nibenayan accent of her speech and a preference for simpler, less posh things. The only elven things about her are her pointed ears, predisposition to magical arts and slower aging.

Kassie’s got heterochromia: her left eye is bright blue and her right eye is vibrant green, which is believed to be the result of mixed blood. Her unique physical traits are also attributed to her vast and complicated genealogical tree, which includes centuries worth of interracial marriages, infidelities and all sorts of blood mixing between men and mer you could possibly imagine.

Her natural hair color is chestnut brown, not pearly white. Her hair was bleached by exposure to strong magical energies at a very young age, when her mother used a teleportation spell on the girl and her twin in order to relocate them from Morrowind to High Rock, to their father’s family.

Getting such a dose of raw magical energy not only made her hair standout in the crowd, but also awoke her own magical talents. Kassie got predisposition to Destruction and Illusion, while her little sister’s magic leaned towards Restoration and Alteration.

Kass considers herself a self-taught mage like her mother, though anyone at the Mages Guild would call her incompetent, unskilled and dangerous to both herself and her surroundings, especially after you learn that this girl favors Fire spells over anything else. She’s chosen fire not so much because of her Fire Resistance inherited from her mom, but rather because of many ways she finds instant fire out of nowhere useful in the wilds. However, Kass is NOT good with her spells: most of them aren’t even real spells, just random conjurations of magical fire and as such, most often than not, she ends up burning something. Usually herself. A nasty burn scar on her left arm and a frequent smell of burnt hair are constant reminders that she's in a dire need of a tutor. On the other hand, her skills in the arts of Illusion are a lot better. The only spells she knows from this school are a Candlelight and a somewhat effective Chameleon which are quite useful and help her out far more often that a little wild magical fire. Lucien believes that the reason why she’s far more successful as an Illusionist, rather than a Pyromancer is because one of her signs is the Shadow, which is known to favor anything that has to do with invisibility and sneak.

Kass was born under two signs, which even Uriel Septim VII himself believed to be of prophetic significance. She was born during the season of the Shadow, on the 5th of the Second Seed, 410 of 3rd Era, yet a wandering sign with no assigned season, which is known to pop up on the night sky every now and again - the Serpent - was also present on the night of her birth. Kass believes that the Serpent is responsible for all the misery in her life, but the Shadow is the one which allowed her to dodge all those miseries despite all odds.

After her daring escape from an orphanage as a kid, Kass ventured to the Imperial Reserve, where a huntsman from Chorrol named Honditar took her in as his apprentice. She’d spend summers at his lodge, learning the secrets of survival in the wilds and would leave before winter, when he went back to the city ‘till next spring. Kass then would go to the Gottlesfont Priory, where kind nuns gladly took her in and taught her about herbs and traditional medicine. Those were the best days of her life.

Years spent living in the wilds made her quite an aloof. She developed a strong dislike for cities and civilization in general, preferring thick woodlands over cramped streets any day. She would only leave the woods and go to the nearest town in order to trade furs and occasional treasure for soap or new clothes. If a certain winter happened to be a bit too harsh she’d find a job at a farmstead as a shepherd or a maid, but as soon as thaw began she’d disappear into the wilds once more. On the other hand, she became a real pro at all this survival stuff. She could make a trap out of anything, track down almost any living being and never get lost in the woods. One look around and she’d immediately know where’s the north, how far is the nearest river and what kind of predator frequents this place. Unfortunately, this also means that she’s absolutely helpless in a city. The streets confuse her, the people annoy her, the guards scare her and there’s no way of telling which way is the exit! Her life in the cities became easier once she discovered a way onto the rooftops though.

Because the wilds are never truly safe, Kass learned to sleep like a rabbit, with her ears perked up and listening. She’s such an incredibly light sleeper, that even Lucien couldn’t sneak up on her during the night of their first official meeting. On the other hand, she has serious troubles getting well rested and can’t stay asleep for longer than four hours without a cup of strong chamomile tea or a sleeping potion. That makes her the second insomniac of the Cheydinhal family right after the Speaker.

Since she’s the wild hermit from the forest, Kassie is an absolute tragedy when it comes to high class socializing. She can’t do small talk to save her own life, doesn’t understand when someone is flirting with her or how to pay back a compliment and most of the jokes totally fly over her head! She is polite, however, mostly due to her having some experience working as a servant girl. Also because of her uncivilized way of life, Kass never had a lesson in courtship. Poor baby does not understand all those sexual innuendos and metaphors people keep telling, has no idea what sexuality is and is absolutely clueless when it comes to sex and/or making out. Madam Josele finds her innocence irresistibly adorable and more than once scolded Lucien for attempting to use his charms on the poor girl.

As such, Kass was never in love before joining the Brotherhood. Lucien Lachance was her crush since day one and he, knowing that, deliberately manipulated her with his charms in order to make her a loyal little puppy by rewarding good behavior with a smooch or a suggestive smile, but punishing undesirable actions by giving her a cold shoulder or talking in harsh professional tone. That being said, Kassie felt that her feelings towards her boss were doomed and so she kept her options open. During one of her contracts she met a rather dashing Dunmeri merchant from Wayrest, with whom she exchanged letters for quite a few months after he went back to High Rock to his boring wife. However, Vicente was the one who pushed Kassie towards Lucien and when she insisted that he already had a mistress, the vampire said something that made her change her mind in an instant: “she gives him what he wants, but you give him what he needs.”

Later in the future, when she becomes a mother to Lucien’s only child and a future High Listener - Lawrence - Kass won’t stay to rebuild the Brotherhood after the civil war. She’ll disappear beyond the mysterious blue door in the middle of Bravil’s lake to never be seen again.

Kass may have a very simple taste in clothes, but boy does she know how to make them! Even though her auntie and a step mother died before the girl was five, she learned quite a few things from her before her demise. Sussana Saryn was a quite popular tailor in Anvil and did miracles with all those fabrics her husband brought to her from across the seas on his ship, and Kassie was always there to help with sewing. Give the girl a piece of cloth, a few needles and a thread and you’ll have a simple but cute dress in less than a day!

Kass is crazy for simple, energetic folk dances, which she learned whilst working at farmsteads during harvest seasons. Nothing gets her feet moving as much as a violin and a handsome farmer’s boy with whom she could spin under a linden tree in the late afternoon ‘till she loses her breath. Ah! Truly happiness lies in small things like these.

Because most of her adolescence she was malnourished, Kass has fallen victim to stunted growth. Even at the age of twenty she’s got thin limbs, small hips and little to no volume in her chest area. Because of this she looks unthreatening and small, which in some cases greatly helps her with contracts in crowded cities and other places where the ability to be unnoticeable is crucial to the success.

Kassie dislikes people, because for the most of her life they were cruel to her and indifferent to her miseries. For this reason she always preferred the company of animals, because in her eyes an animal will not lie, betray or deceive: if it wants to kill you it growls and does not pretend to be your best friend, and if it is truly your best friend then it will gladly follow you to Oblivion and back. Even after joining the Brotherhood she remains quite introverted, preferring to play with Schemer when everyone else is gossiping at the dinner table, or go for a walk with Ragnar rather than have dull conversations with other members of the Black Hand.

For some reason Kass dislikes felines. Maybe it’s because she has to constantly compete with wild big cats for food in the forest, or because she was robbed by Khajiiti highwaymen so many times... She just doesn’t like felines: housecats, wild senches, Khajiits or anything in-between she doesn’t like. The only exception is Vicente’s cat, who lives in his mansion in Blacktown. She’s a fluffy gray Alfiq named after the Queen-Wolf, who somehow managed to win over Kassie’s heart with her big eyes and melodic meows. Must be her magic!

That being said, Kass only makes friends with a few people at the time and stays loyal to them ‘till the end. Her best friend is, of course, Vicente, whom she found very likeable since their first meeting. Monsieur Valtieri became like a father figure to her, a mentor and a friend in one person. She always found vampires fascinating, because they live for so long and most certainly must know a great deal of things! Even in times when she’d doubt Lucien’s decisions, her trust in Vicente’s wisdom would remain absolute.

Kassandra may be polite, shy and unnoticeable, but she certainly can make her own decisions. It is often believed that she’ll do anything for the Brotherhood and will never disobey an order, but in truth she always does things as her heart says. If she’s given an order which doesn’t make sense in her mind and just screams “not right!” at her, she’ll do things her own way. The job will be done, but the contractor may be left displeased.

Her favorite season will always be spring, because with thaw comes warmth, longer days, first harvest of berries and mushrooms, prey comes out from hiding... With spring she can breathe easier, knowing that hungry winter is behind and for the next few months she’ll be busy hunting, gathering and exploring away from those pesky humans and their suffocating cities. Her favorite weather happens to be heavy rain in summer, when the sun is brightly shining from behind the clouds, whilst a wall of warm water falls from the sky, rejuvenating vegetation and washing away dust and sweat. On the other hand, she hates storms. Lightning and thunder were always scary, but in the middle of the woods at night? Absolute nightmare.

Kassie’s favorite food (and beverage) will always be milk. Just your simple milk straight from under a cow. Since most of her diet usually consists of roasted game, raw berries and an occasional fruit, the “normal people’s food” like bread, milk and soup are rare commodities in her life. A glass of warm milk is all it takes to make this lil’ elf a happy camper.

However, ever since becoming Lucien’s agent Kass developed a taste for apples, specifically those big red ones the Speaker always orders from Bretoni merchants. They’re big, sweet and juicy and most importantly they keep both her and her horses well fed.

Once she learned that everyone and their mother in the Brotherhood have their own postal pets, be it a bird, a bat or a magical construct, Kass didn’t hesitate to get her hands on her very own courier. After many hours spent walking about the animal market, she chose a small but witty flying fox, brought to Cyrodiil by poachers from the jungles of Elsweyr. She named her Chestnut.

After some phenomenal events in her life, Kass became heavily involved in Brother Martin’s life. Despite her constantly running back underground to deal with the Brotherhood’s problems, she and Martin became good friends. In fact, she was the only one the prince was not afraid to share his secrets with. At some point she even brought him the Rose of Sanguine so he could destroy it in his ritual and through this, symbolically, destroy his own dark past. He never forgot this gesture.

Kass is one of the few living people who knows that the last Septim did not die at the battle for the Imperial City. She made sure that nobody ever learns of what truly happened on that terrible night and provided Martin, who was no longer in possession of Dragon’s blood nor the Amulet of Kings, with quiet, safe and anonymous life somewhere in the meadows of the newly rebuild county of Kvatch. She’d visit him once every few months up until her journey to the Shivering Isles.

whoo boy, another long one, eh?

welp, y’all know the rules: if you made it to the end have a cookie and praise our Dark Lord while eating it C:

[fantroll-purgatory]

@plumb1tes

(The image was made by me)

It’s a real good image. I want to let you know from the beginning of this review that CD and I have both been raving about what a good troll Charyl is from the second she set (prosthetic) foot in our inbox. She’s so so creepy and we both love her so much.

FIRST: Alternia, and she’s closer to being in the Hiveswap setting then the Hivebent one.

I think given our current info re: Hiveswap all that tells us is that she is living before Feferi was hatched.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why): Charyl (derived from one of the Deathstalker scorpion’s venom known to cause paralysis) Thytue (from a genus of scorpion called ‘Tityus’)

Age: 7.85 sweeps

Strife Specibus: Needlekind (the sewing kind)

I like it, especially since you can also swap it with the hypodermic kind. If I may suggest another option, maybe stringkind? She could use anything from silly string (comedic), to thread (thematic), to fishing line (deadly).

Fetch Modus: I can never think of a good one, lol.

I have two for you! The first is a simple SINGING MODUS based off Singer sewing machines.

The second is a CLAW CRANE MODUS like the ones you see in arcades and are invariably rigged to some extent. I like this for a few reasons:

1) it harkens back to her toy theme which is present throughout her bio, and

2) you could have the “claw” of this modus be her limp doll hand, which would just look so creepy.

Blood color: Cerulean,

Symbol and meaning: Scorrius, sign of the cunning (Hope + Derse)

We’ll get to that later in your bio!

Trolltag: tetraplegicTrinket (it’s referring to her dolls, which are trolls that are essentially permanently paralyzed, and she dolls them up)

It’s a good name! If you want to alter it slightly you can go for quadriplegicTinkerer so her abbreviation can be QT.

Quirk: Sh3 tr13s to 1ncoporat3 h3r s1gn 1n h3r sp33ch! (i want to find something that suits her better, if you have any suggestions!)

|-|-|-|- H(::)w about that she begins and ends her sentences with f(::)ur stitches and replaces “o” with (::)? -|-|-|-|

|-|-|-|- B(::)th as a d(::)llmaker and as s(::)me(::)ne with bifurcated visi(::)n eightf(::)ld? -|-|-|-|

|-|-|-|- Als(::) it mimics the cutesy way s(::)me l(::)lita girls talk by making their (::)’s r(::)under -|-|-|-|

Special Abilities (if any): Vision eightfold, with it being split to both her eyeballs, to appear like buttons, going along with her doll-like theme. It doesn’t really do much for her.

I mean tbh that holds up. We don’t know how much of Vriska’s own abilities were from her vision eightfold, her psychic mutation, or her eventual role as a Thief of Light. The girl had a lot of stuff going on.

Lusus: ScorpionMom, a giant scorpion that paralyzes Charyl’s dolls for her with her giant stinger. She also eats the trolls that die after being turned into dolls. Charyl also laces her needles with her lusus’s poison, to kidnap trolls she finds fit for being turned into dolls. Their relationship is pretty good, all things considered, though ScorpionMom keeps to herself, most of the time. This adds on to Charyl’s feeling of isolation.

I think this is oddly permissive for a ceruleanblood lusus; while Vriska’s Spidermom was obviously an extreme case, it seems that bigger lusii generally need to get fed, and will not necessarily take kindly to their ward dangling almost-available food in front of them while they finish playing with it. I think it makes more sense that Charyl uses her lusus’s poison to paralyze (and eventually kill) her victims where Scorpionmom’s full sting would out-and-out kill a troll. It can still play into her isolation because she’ll need to work to keep away from her mom while her doll is still alive, and it still gives her an easy method of getting rid of the bodies.

Apperance: She is a tall troll, around 5’9, and rather thin. Charyl has vision eightfold, though split, and makes her eyes look like buttons. She styles her hair into two long twintails, and a bow wrapped around her horn that has her symbol on it. Charyl dresses in gothic trollita garb, which is mostly made by herself, consisting of a black, frilly dress with a cerulean bow, and mary janes, and knee-high socks.

GOTHIC TROLLITA. HOLY SHIT I LOVE IT.

Charyl is a quadruple amputee, from an accident where one of her dolls, a fellow cerulean blood, was under-dosed, and managed to mind control Charyl into breaking and contorting her own limbs, as a way of revenge. The cerulean blood escaped, and Charyl managed to recover from the life-threatening experience. She managed to take some rather large doll parts, and fashion them into workable replacement limbs with the help of an acquaintance experienced in robotics.

Hm. So I like the premise of this a lot. With that said, do we have evidence that psychic cerlueanbloods can influence their peers? After all, part of what makes them so dangerous is that they have psychic abilities on par with a lowblood sans their requisite vulnerabilities. If I may suggest a different scenario with a similar outcome, perhaps an indigoblood with a particularly STRONG immune system failed to succumb to the poison in the expected timeframe and overcame her with their remaining strength. This could spur her distaste for kidnapping highbloods and still leave her disabled.

Personality: She’s pretty bubbly and energetic, and quite motherly. Sometimes she wishes she were a jadeblood so she could take care of a wriggler. She also treats her dolls (both living and nonliving), like her children, loving to dress them up and take care of their needs. However she is also very controlling, and is quite uncomfortable whenever she isn’t able to offer her opinion, or do things how she wants.

She’s pretty spoiled from her highblood upbringing, but is equally friendly to both highbloods and lowbloods, due to her not caring about the hemospectrum that much (though she turns more lowbloods into her dolls than highbloods, due to them being easier to abduct). Charyl is a lonely troll, and uses her dolls as a way to not feel as alone as she does, due to her lack of friends outside of the ones she meets online.

Yeah kidnapping lowbloods sure is easier when everything about the hemospectrum makes them easier to kill huh?

Due to the experience with the cerulean blood (which is one of the reasons why she prefers lowbloods for her dolls), she hardly leaves her hive, aside from going outside to find new victims. She is also socially awkward, and prefers the company of her dolls, mostly due to not fearing the social apprehension she feels when interacting with highbloods.

Interests: Charyl absolutely loves fashion, especially gothic trollita clothes. She likes sewing, and making her own dresses and accessories, for herself, and also her dolls.

If it wasn’t obvious, she also is obsessed with dolls, though her favorite type are the trolls she kidnaps, and permanently paralyze with her lusus’s poison. Most are unable to speak, and eventually die to the poison. Charyl dotes on them, dressing them up and taking care of their needs. She has a rather large collection of both living and nonliving dolls.

Charyl also likes playing doctor, though treats “patients” through the process of bloodletting, with the same needles she uses for her sewing.

Title: (got any suggestions?)

I do, because I don’t think she’s actually a Hope player. I mean if we wanted to stay on that track she’d be more likely to be a Rage player because her whole schtick is narrowing her own and others’ options, and I could make arguments for her being a Life or a Doom player, buuuuut.

You’ve made her bio one that’s very Of Things. She likes having material things, whether they’re bodies or dolls or clothes. And her hobby of kidnapping real, actual trolls to turn them into dolls is technically a form of recycling and of creativity.

Basically, she’s a fucked-up kind of Space player. More specifically, she’s a Thief of Space, which is GREAT because she’s like if Kanaya and Vriska had a creepy and fashionable lovechild, ESPECIALLY given that you said she sometimes wishes she was a jadeblood!

Her inverse would be a Page of Time, which I think kind of works given that she’s effectively fucking with others’ time both by freezing their progress and by dramatically shortening their lives!

Land: Doesn’t have one yet! Still on the fence on if she’ll actually play sburb or not

That’s fine! For the sake of argument let’s say her land is Land of Chloroform and Frogs (LOCAF). All these frogs just floating in chloroform. Maybe some of them are splayed out like an anatomical diagram. Maybe some of them have been taxidermied. Many of them will be dissected like a high school bio unit. It’ll certainly make it easy to see which frog have the anatomical traits you want in the future Bilious Slick. The Land probably isn’t even safe to traverse without a gas mask given how damn fast the stuff works. It’s macabre and fits really well with how Space players’ frogs tend to be frozen in time in some manner.

Dream Planet: Derse

I definitely agree that she’s a Dersite given how much she seems to be in her head. With that, she’s a Scorga, sign of the Deviser, which sufficiently vague that I guess it works?

…Oh MAN I just looked that one up and the fuckin’ arrow tail looks like a scorpion poised to strike! It’s perfect for her!

Thanks again!

Thank YOU for this creepy creepy lady! My redesign will be very very minimal but HOO BOY did I have fun making her sprite!

This is gonna come with my requisite list of credits especially because I do not have a tablet and had no goddamn idea where to start with spriting her dress. That base is from deviantart user Thefantrolls and was then heavily edited to match your picture. The horns are straight-up Vriska’s, the bow is from naphal, and the hair was made by compositing like 4 different fan-troll templates.

For the redesign, I used a prosthetic base by hmnj to make it a little more obvious that her legs are prosthetic while maintaining the doll aesthetic. For the hair I wanted to do the scorpion callback but didn’t want to do anything as obvious as the stinger braid (especially since it might lose the lolita aesthetic), so I took a note from Gothorita’s design and tried to give her scorpion claw buns?

Anyway thank you again for this scary scary woman I can’t wait to see her in action.

-TR

[anthemnz]

Pivot, don’t panic: how to stay grounded during disruption

Vincent Heeringa in conversation with Melissa Clark-Reynolds

Suddenly everyone wants to pivot.  

Given the current crisis, that sounds like an excellent idea. But what exactly is a pivot?

I would have guessed it meant to alter course, to strike out boldly in a new direction.  

But what would I know? So I asked Melissa Clark-Reynolds, an entrepreneur, board director and old pal of mine, who spends her time advising companies on such things.  

“It really means keeping one foot solid on the ground and then moving the other foot into a new place,” she said.

Makes sense. You can’t pivot when both feet are off the ground. That’s a hop. And you can’t stretch further than your legs will allow. That’s a jump.  

“So many people think to pivot is to leave your existing business behind and jump off in a new direction. That’s a leap of faith, not a pivot.”  

As we enter deeper into a Covid-19 recession, business leaders will come under increasing pressure to replace falling revenues with new ideas and innovations. The word pivot will pepper our conversations and board papers.

So it’s worth remembering Melissa’s advice. She mentioned it during a superb seminar by the Institute of Directors called ‘Innovating During Disruption’. She’s got another one coming up here. I highly recommend it.

What does a Covid Pivot look like? The lockdown period has created some early winners that I reckon can be classed into three categories (these are my reckons not hers):

The ‘Emergency Covid’ pivot

These are companies who turned around overnight to meet the demand for Covid-related products:

Cactus Clothing and Little Yellow Bird switched their sewing machines to the job of making face masks  

Good George used their brewery, and Carbon Six their distillery, to make hand sanitiser

Zuru, the toy maker, and Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall, used their global supply chains to source PPE gear for front-line workers.

The ‘Force Majeure’ pivot

These are companies forced to find new ways to deliver existing products and services in a Level 4 environment:

Habit Group, New Zealand’s largest health and recovery network, pivoted into a telemedicine company. Its 600-odd staff deliver gym, personal training and physiotherapy clinics over the Internet and via a dedicated Habit app. “In response to Alert Level 4, we leapfrogged at least three years of service development and delivery with the impact of Covid,” Habit’s Grant Bai told me last week

Countdown responded to the massive demand in online shopping by building an 8800 square metre store in Penrose that looks like a regular supermarket, with a butchery, bakery, shelves of packaged grocery items, fresh fruit and vegetables – and a team of 200 personal shoppers to complete online orders.

The ‘My Time Has Come’ pivot

These are companies who have enjoyed a massive boost and had to scale quickly to meet demand:

Zoom – the hitherto small-time competitor to Skype, Teams and Facetime has increased daily downloads 30-fold and has been the top free app for iPhones in the US since March 18. Zoom says daily users spiked to 200 million in March, up from 10 million last December  

Kiwi online ordering apps Mobi2Go and The Regular both experienced unprecedented traffic on the day we switched to Level 3

I don’t know it for sure but people tell me Imagr, the wireless shopping trolley company, has gone nuts following its successful fundraising round of $14 million and imminent roll out in Japan.

All of these companies already had one foot on the ground – they had loyal customers, stable systems and talented management that allowed them to pivot to new delivery systems or to rapidly expand.

So that’s all very well, I hear you say, but that’s the past (‘thank you Captain Hindsight!’). What happens next? As we move into a post-lockdown world, what kind of pivot should you consider? How can you anticipate where the market will be? Melissa says that when it comes to managing disruptive change it helps to think about some basic principles:

This will happen again. “We shouldn’t be surprised by crises. In my time in business I’ve experienced the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the GFC, the Christchurch earthquake, the Kaikoura earthquake, M. bovis and now this. I’ve also discovered that pandemics typically occur every three-and-a-half years. So we need to imagine a world where lockdown of some sort is a regular occurrence.

“We did this exercise with Radio New Zealand. Being based in Wellington we realised we were vulnerable to earthquakes. So we trialled operating from just the Auckland office. Then from Christchurch. Then from no office at all. When the event did actually occur, we were able to broadcast from everyone’s homes without much interruption.

“You need to imagine what happens to your IT, to customer-service, to supply chains to all aspects of your business if the proverbial hits the fan – because eventually it will.”

Crises reinforce current trends. As with the GFC, this crisis has accelerated the shift to e-commerce and digital service delivery. What other mega-trends are happening that Covid-19 could reinforce? How about the shift towards subscription services? Look at what subscription has done to TV, software and now car ownership. “Imagine if your company had to shift to a monthly subscription model. How would you respond? What would you have to change?”

Existing customers are key: Pivoting is not about finding new customers – that requires a different kind of innovation. Pivoting is about making more from your already loyal customer base. It answers the question: ‘they already trust us for this, can we now extend that trust to give them that?’ A great example is Lewis Road Creamery’s ability to move down the dairy isle from butter to milk, to chocolate milk, to cream and now ice cream. At this time of crisis, Melissa’s advice is to get close to your customers and really make yourself useful. “Remember, the best ROI is to get more from your highest-margin customers.”

That last bit sounds so sensible I’m almost disappointed. I was hoping to hear that pivoting provides permission for us to go crazy on new ideas. Maybe, but then who wants an unpredictable nutjob in charge when you’re facing a calamity? Unless of course you’re selling bleach.

Good luck with the pivot!

Vincent Heeringa, Content Director at Anthem. Article reposted from Idealog

Find out more about Melissa Clark-Reynold’s upcoming seminar ‘Generating new revenue streams’ here.

[nyquiloid]

THE (IN)COMPLETE ACCURSED SAGA OF FRANK KNOWBODIE & FRIENDS LORE (2021) ft. childhoodfriends both beloved and [REDACTED] AKA my surface pen broke so now you have to listen to me talk about cursed creations from 10 years ago (sheesh)

I was at the tender age of 7 (probably), my elementary school class was lined up in the hallway for a bathroom break. A teacher asked who was still left in the bathroom, and many children responded “Nobody”. There, at that moment, a (less than) brilliant idea formed in my head, I would create a personification of Nobody. I was already familiar with imaginary friends, so this was not new for me. A friend caught on and the name Frank Nobody was coined, then later it was altered to Frank Knowbodie. At the time it was an innocent creation, a mere childhood skit, it had no idea what I had started, but it was too late, the fire was ignited and there was no turning back. 

The first year or so of Frank’s creation were slow, an imaginary friend to laugh and joke about occasionally, but as I grew older, the layers would pile. 

SECTION A: A Homeland and its inhabitants

Frank’s story begins in a territory called “No Mexico” in a city called “Knowwhere”. No Mexico is located between the border of New Mexico and Arizona, and is only visible to the citizens and certain people who just happen to be allowed to see it (and subsequently all of its citizens and creatures). As No Mexico is not widely visible, neither are its citizens and creatures, again only certain people are born with the ability to see them. 

Frank and his family were all born and raised in No Mexico, on a Ranch/Farm. They were one of the largest producers of Moosicorn Milk. I Don't want to have to explain what moosicorns are. Theres really not much else there, they lived on a Moosicorn ranch.

When Frank was around 9 years old (presumably) his parents moved to our city in Florida. The reason why was never explicitly stated or explained, and to this day I still don't know ( and IM the motherfucker that created this).

SECTION B: Frank’s Personality & Physical Traits

Frank was a dweeby kid who was prone to getting violently bullied by both my friends and I AND the other kids in my class no shit. 

Frank was slightly shy, but one you got to know him he was energetic and in some people’s words “annoying”, but it didn’t stop him from his hobbies/interests. He liked climbing trees, and he liked animals. He would frequently get injured via both of these things. 

He was a tall and lanky kid, (canonically he’s a few years older than us), he had a farmer’s tan and dark brown hair ( in my mind he was always Mexican, but my [REDACTED] Co-contributor at the time imagined him as white, but IM the one who created him so I get to say what he is and he’s CANONICALLY MEXICAN)

His favorite color was a sort of faded periwinkle blue. He also had a liking to rainbow/holographic colored things because that was the color of  moosicorn milk, and it reminded him of home. 

SECTION C: His Family

Frank had four sisters and one (or two?) brother (allegedly? I don't remember most of them) 

He had an older sister (name forgotten/unknown) She was married with a daughter (names unknown) aka Frank’s niece. 

His other older sister was named Carrie (I think??) At the time of creation she was attending a local Highschool. 

His third older sister (name also forgotten) Who was four (?) years older than us, and attended our PK-8 school. 

His fourth sister was a year younger than us and three years younger than frank. (I think her name was Molly or Maria, but I might be wrong) she was the most prominent sibling. She was more charismatic than Frank, and was allegedly popular in her grade, she was almost the polar opposite of Frank. She had a cat named Luna. 

He had a baby brother who was named John. Not much there.

I think there was mentions of an older brother in between Carrie and the oldest, but most likely only mentioned once. 

His parents were named Bob and Melinda (?) and they were, (allegedly) very rich via less-than-legal activity. Maybe this is why they moved to Florida?

SECTION D: His Pets 

Frank Knowbodie had a beloved childhood pet “dog” named Porky. 

Porky was a rather chubby looking thing brown with black spots, and had a fucked up face, making him look like a strange pig. 

Frank would bring Porky to school, which he could do only because the teachers couldn’t see him or his dog.  One day, Porky got through a fence at school and was flattened by a car, RIP. Fortunately, before Porky’s death, a neighbor of the Knowbodie’s had an equally pig like dog, which had puppies with Porky. this family allowed Frank to claim one of the pup’s which he named Piggy. 

Frank’s family also had several cats that they took in. Most belonged to Molly(?). The names were Stella, Luna, Orion, Starry, and Sunny. As you can see there was a theme. 

There was also the fact that the Knowbodies brought some of their prize moosicorn’s with them, though I'm not sure if you could call that a pet?

SECTION E: CULTURAL IMPACT 1 “Just beginning”

When Frank was 12 and we were 10, he was growing in popularity. He was a strange inconceivable entity to most, a concept at best. To my friends and I, he was very real. 

We would do our best to convince everyone that he was really there standing next to us. Eventually a surprising large amount of classmates caught on, albeit to bully/tease the ever-loving hell out of him, but at least they acknowledged him. This grew to the point that our beloved 5th grade teacher let us put a nametag for Frank on an empty desk in the back. Things were just beginning. 

SECTION F: Sara 

Originally I was going to save this section for an entirely different post but hey while we’re at it. 

Sara’s lore reached even further than Frank’s. I would typically say Sara originated when I was 6 years old, but the reality is even further back. 

At the age of 4, an illiterate child, I used to draw little “comics” about a spy named Sara and her partner Flower. So at the age of 6, Sara, ex-child spy, became my imaginary friend. Sara was eccentric and hyper. She enjoyed sewing as many pockets on to her clothes as possible. When she got older, she dyed her hair so much, people didn’t know what the original color was (it was dark brown). 

Eventually I “brought her back” when Frank began to pick up steam. Sara was mad jealous of Frank, because he was stealing my attention as a friend. She would lash out to him at first, but over time, she began to like him. She eventually apologized for her previous actions and became one of his closest friends. 

Frank allegedly had a little bit of a crush on Sara, but it would be revealed later that Sara was not even into boys. 

So there, Sara No-name, ex-child spy lesbian who enjoyed sewing and committing crimes. To be honest I don't have much of an emotional connection to Sara as I do with Frank, even if she existed long before. 

(I am also going to mention another “imaginary” character named Crystal, she was the imaginary friend of one of my longtime best friends. I don't know her backstory and don’t really have the authority to mention much else besides the fact that she was another frequent character of our made up plot)

SECTION G: The comics “ a snippet” 

This part will have an entirely different post dedicated to it, there are as many layers to the lore of the comics are there are to Frank’s story. I will try to be as brief as possible. 

At the ages of 9 to11, I started to draw little mini comics on Index cards. They would be about little caricatures of my friends and I, and other little characters we made up. The line between these comic stories and reality often blurred when we were playing around. Frank was never explicitly depicted in the comics, but only because (by technical terms) he was unable to be perceived by most. Drawing him would give away a bit of the mystery and fun of it. Unfortunately any mention of him in the comics is lost to time, as most of the physical comic cards were destroyed or lost in the incident of 2018. 

There were hundreds of these little cards, and he was included (by mention or crudely drawn shapes to allude to his form) in roughly 10 of them maybe?

SECTION H: CULTURAL IMPACT 2

I was 11-12, at the peak of Frank Knowbodie fame and impact, I was very active online. Forums, blogs, YouTube, you name it. It was time to make Frank Knowbodie an internet persona. 

Tumblr account, a Roblox account, multiple emails, A twitter, a YouTube channel, A Google Plus (RIP) were all created and dedicated to Frank. Most of these are now defunct, save for maybe the Roblox and emails. 

I remember I would post on these accounts playing as Frank. If you used to follow my original tumblr you might remember a few of my posts. I remember going on Omegle and trying to get people to follow the Frank Knowbodie accounts and understand the stories. Most of these attempts fell through unfortunately (or fortunately) and the content is lost to time. 

Section I: The Disney World Incident

There were so many different little skits and situations we placed Frank & his companions in, I couldn't possible list them all, so I will mention one of the most prominent.

In 6th grade, [REDACTED] asked a beloved friend and I to Disney world for a birthday gift, which we agreed and happily went along, with Frank trailing along as usual. 

Then... the incident. We were on splash mountain and forgot Frank on the ride. The thing was, he couldn’t ask to get out, as no one could see him. He was stuck on in infinite loop on the ride, for One Whole Year. He ate popcorn and snacks that others (that could see him) threw at him. That was the extent of it, and eventually he made his was off, and entered 7th grade with us. 

Section J: 7th grade, and Carter “a snippet”

7th grade is seen as a turning point for me and all of my friends at the time. My personal friend group turned from a trio to a quintet (kind of) to a duo and sometimes a trio again. Middle school drama caused a lot of divides, both willing and unwillingly, some of my friends and I grew apart in the years following 6th grade. But not to get too ahead of myself. 

[REDACTED] and I changed a great deal in the summer following 6th grade. I still lugged around my giant sketchbook with loads of comics and doodles when we returned in August. She on the other hand was... different, it was probably for the best, as her “true self” was revealed more and more. What does this have to do with Frank? Well she was the largest contributor to his story behind me, she started to reject our “childish” skits and games. It broke my heart a little, because I loved my stories, and I (we) were still 12, I didn’t want to grow up and stop making that kind of stuff. 

I remember one conversation, when another classmate mentioned/asked Frank, and she seemed very embarrassed and judgmental, as she nervously laughed and quickly made an impromptu joking story along the lines of “Oh, haha yeah he got expelled!” or something. She brushed it off so she wouldn’t have to face her past embarrassments while giving me a sideways glace. She was too good for it then, there was no creative fire to her story, she had a tone of voice, and look on her face that reminded me of all of my older cousins who judged and cringed at me for acting like a kid. 

So... Carter... Well in 7th grade, another beloved friend of mine had a faulty iPad. When she would tap or try to interact with it, it would let out a terrifying high-pitched shrill. So being an edgy little fuck, and also a 12 year old who loved storytelling, my friends and I called this phenomenon “Carter”. Carter was a tech-demon, who inhabited (mostly modern) technology and haunted people via the internet. 

Originally Carter’s appearance was a grey-skinned demon, with red eyes and “glitchy” wings. A pretty basic appearance for any preteen OC design. 

Later though, my older sister helped me tweak his design, he was primarily blue themed, no wings, but he had a tail with a more sci-fi ‘vibe’. 

Carter’s backstory changed over the years, but the general consensus was that  he died via some sort of technology/internet related incident in the late 90s-early 2000s . He was stuck between the human and demon world, cursed to roam eternity alone, and not visible to humans. He would go on to spook people through their devices for sport, until he traveled to my friend’s iPad, and met Frank& Friends. Frank & his family/friends are able to see him, because of some ancient deal between demons and the ancestors of the No Mexico citizens (It’s a stretch I KNOW, but all of this is pretty far fetched, and again, I was 12). Carter becomes close friends with Frank, and was very appreciative of him because he is the first person in years to show him kindness. At the time, I was a spiteful closeted kid, and I knew making Frank canonically have a crush on Carter would piss off [REDACTED], as I had suspicions that she was homophobic. (Spoiler, she was very subtlety homophobic in 8th grade and later in highschool it was kind of confirmed that she was) 

At the time I was first dipping into what would later develop into my current drawing style, and I loved to draw Carter and Frank. 

However, these drawings, and Carter’s creation, was a silent signal to the closing of Frank’s story, and my childhood as I knew it. 

SECTION K: The End of An Era, and the Impact of One Beloved Childhood Character. 

After 7th grade, my life got increasingly complicated. Friends moved on, I started to create new stories, my old comics collected dust under my bed, and Frank became a sweet memory of happier times. 

I had to move on (reluctantly), and “face reality” according to most people around me. Years past, I started highschool, and forced myself to grow up, giving up my “childish tendencies”. I doodled Frank maybe twice since I was 12, but never really looked back until now. I think at first Frank was a joke of course, but as I developed his story, he was more of a projection of my complex 11 year old thoughts and feelings. 

There was a time at 14 where I avoided mentioning him, I became what I hated, I was just like [REDACTED], I hated my younger self for acting like a kid and doing what made me happy. I threw away mass amounts of comics and trinkets I made, I was terrified of being seen as a awkward kid. I regret it now, I know know I was a young kid who was hurting so deeply from growing up, who was so scared of it. It was such a silly thing too, to hate myself for something so simple. 

I owe so much to Frank in a way. Him and his story paved a way for me today, to make my current stories and characters, more complex of course, but I still owe it all. I don't deny myself anymore, he taught me over the years that I don’t have to hide my true self, from [REDACTED] or anyone else.  As I enter senior year soon, I am so grateful for my past and the fun I has while it lasted. Its like that one stupid saying, although it’s a joke, there is a funny little truth to it. “Don’t kill the part of you that is cringe, kill the part of you that cringes.”

[twinbabycarriers-blog]

All About Twin Baby Carriers

A flexible pouch sling known as a carrier provides flexibility and ease and is a considerable alternative for beginners with twins. Additionally, it could be made out of yarn or leather. The i-pad messenger bag is a bright idea not because it provides the I pad extra protection.

All About Baby Carriers

Plenty of those carriers provide you with choices in how you put them on, while some will offer you a headache trying to figure out them there. There are in fact many means to save our money before forfeiting our baby's demands! Babies are costly, however almost always there is a means to store an outstanding amount of funds!

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There are lots of parents who believe the notion of working with an infant sling for their twins for the very simple reason which their babies feel cosier as well as more joyful. As demonstrated by Baby Monitor Town there's no correct or wrong method to clinic babywearing provided you and your baby are both comfortable and, demonstrably, safe. Joyce Asabor explains that it's wise to breast feed your baby before embarking on a lengthy trip.

The Baby Carriers Cover Up

The most important thing you would like to be certain of before buying a baby carrier is that the product which you select will actually fit your baby. Deciding on a child wrap is about personal taste. Obtaining the baby from the stroller can be a little easier as it's likely to endure over it.

Baby carrierthis can be an arduous subject, since it's a really personal taste for mom and baby. Nursing Pillow Nursing pillows like the Boppy Pillow My Breast Friend help you in locating comfortable feeding places for your own baby. Baby is currently also protected.

In spite of how it is given in practically all sizes, you'll need to opt for a size whilst buying this particular specific carrier. Predicated on the price of baby company options you are considering, you might even wish to bring home two of the exact one and that means you don't need to wait around for you to remain clean! Some carriers will be size specific and can't be shared between professionals of distinct sizes where as others can fit a vast variety of individuals.

How to Find Baby Carriers Online

Contemporary baby carriers arrive at a vast selection of styles to accommodate every taste and price range. Design people have a good deal of products that are great. Selecting the most effective high chair for your kid can look to be a unimaginably tough task as a result of selection of brands, models and functions to take into account.

Possible to get NursingThe Boba is meant for ease and relaxation throughout nursing, and which usually means that you won't need to be concerned about a hungry baby in a nature trip. By tying the four straps into your whole body, the fabric will generate a pouch for your child to sit down inside. A wrapping involves an extremely long bit of soft fabric that's wrapped around baby and you.

Baby Carriers: No Longer a Mystery

Struggling to trace your kid's requests may restrict your chances later on. When it can take a little more practice to own a sash-type carrier on, the advantage is that you are able to tie it to match absolutely. If a kid was injured, suffered head injury, or has died due to working together with a baby sling, it's imperative that you realize you do have legal rights, and you also might take a posture to seek payment for your damages by way of filing case.

Cleaning your carrier regularly should negate any corrosion as time passes, but it's worth paying attention to the state of the carrier prior to each usage. Even the K'tan's potential only downside could be the look is much less versatile as an ordinary wrapping and may possibly be more challenging to fit two parents which are vastly different in measurement, plus it can be more challenging to produce minor alterations for fit or comfort. These baby carriers are versatile, permitting one to utilize them in several situations.

My pregnancy essentials in the proceedings you may. There are lots of other styles of baby carriers which let the baby to become worn on your parent. Babywearing offers several advantages to both a child and the health professional.

Many cases of the aforementioned types may also be employed to hold a youngster on your trunk. By the start of all Africa, to the conclusion of Asian states, different kinds of baby carriers also have evolved both modern and traditional.

Baby Carriers Fundamentals Explained

Usually these slings are going to have padded shoulder and possibly padding across the boundaries of the cloth too. Your child is usually worn along with their legs straddling your waist in such an infant carrier, and a number of the carriers enable you to keep on to maintain your kid's arms tucked free or in at your own discretion. Whenever your carrier is comfortably adjusted in your whole body, you can place the infant in.

You may even find models it is likely to take on your hips. You will need to get these if in case you would like your baby to be coddled, soothed and comforted while outside of your arms because that could be the very best thing that is likely to do the trick. Make certain you're able to understand your kid's face whatsoever times and their face is uncovered in any way times by your entire human body or the sew cloth.

As opposed to with an region to store camping gear, there exists a baby chair as an alternative. Our ring sling baby carriers allow you to benefit from life whilst still making the the majority of one's baby's. Your infant could possibly be advised to temporarily put on a helmet to be in a position to shape his head to a normal form.

If it regards the various items new parents will need to stock up to get a new baby, a automobile seat ought to be on the list of initial things purchased. The time in your child's room after he's in bed has to be short and sweet. You are able to transfer your baby in a stroller or carseat, but plenty of parents take pleasure in the simplicity and feeling of closeness written by means of a baby carrier.

The New Angle On Baby Carriers Just Released

Contrary to other carriers, you will find not any clasps, rings or buckles which may dig to you or your youngster's body. Stirrups will also be an excellent that you ought to look for on a child carrier. The Evenflo baby carrier is your ideal way to go.

There are a few manufacturers of baby carriers that specify exactly the advised burden of babies for a while company. You've got to make sure that the carrier, you've chosen, has the ability to strengthen your child's weight reduction. If you would like some form of company really depends upon how frequently you would like to hold your infant.

Who Else Wants to Learn About Baby Carriers?

Models that are made to be flame proof are in reality intended to guard the contents for around 30-45 minutes of heat. Many pet owners realize that pet strollers are highly beneficial in many different ways. The last point you should consider before purchasing a hiking baby carrier is how frequently and for how long you're going to put it to use.