humbled

I made a little wooly bear caterpillar. I was inspired by The Closet Historian's moth brooch video to learn turkey stitch, and I tried brushing it with a wire brush, which really fluffed it up a lot more. I had to trim it a little bit more after the brushing.

All the materials were from my stash, and I didn't time it but it took quite a few hours. I wish I'd used a thinner fabric because this felted coat wool was a bit tough to sew through, and didn't want to bend into a rounded caterpillar shape.

I'm quite happy with it, it turned out so cute! It's a bit bigger than a real one.

It's just regular 6 strand cotton embroidery floss! I used the full 6 strands, since for this stitch you want it to be really well filled in.

If I make another one I'll document it more thoroughly, but I did get a few more pictures than what I put in the first image. (Sorry for making you scroll up and down a lot if you're trying to follow this in oder! I'll hopefully make a blog post someday, though I am very very behind on blogspot...) I started by tracing my pin backing out on a scrap of wool and drawing a long oval shape around it with 3 sections.

Then I filled it all in with turkey stitch, which is pretty easy. I looked at the diagrams in an old needlework book I have, but there are plenty of written and video tutorials out there on the internet. It turns out it's best to go around the outside first and then fill it in, or else your edges turn out kinda wonky.

I cut the loops, trimmed it a lot, and brushed it very thoroughly with a cheap little wire brush I got at the hardware store. You've got to part the threads and do it section by section to really get at them and separate all the fibres. After that I had to trim it a bit more.

I cut the edge down to about 4mm, and clipped the corners out as indicated by the dashed lines here, but didn't get a picture of that step.

Even with all that clipped away it was really hard forcing the ends into shape, and I went over the whole thing with whipstitches 3 times. I wish I'd used a thinner fabric (but still one that's a bit rough and doesn't fray easily) and I also wish I'd used black fabric, even though barely any of the beige shows through anywhere.

I cut out a tiny strip of thin black leather in the same shape as the exposed belly portion, and carefully marked and cut little slits in it to put the 2 raised bits of the pin back through. Making sure the leather bit would be positioned correctly, I sewed on the pin back (Having marked the location with pins, since pencil doesn't really work on something so small and lumpy).

Then I sewed on a pair of little glass beads, and put the pin back through the 2 slits in the leather and whipstitched it down.

Voila! A precious baby!

having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.

taking my stupid walks for my stupid mental health with my stupid hypervigilant brain horse

thoroughly enjoying the notes on this post because it's equal parts people with anxiety going "yeah that's what it's like" and people with arabians going "yeah that's what they're like"

ancient humans were also just some guy, if you got a baby from 60,000 BC and raised him in the 21st century he’d just be another teen boy named logan who tech decks off your arm

this boy from tom björklund’s art WOULD own a minecraft creeper plushy

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok ok ok I’m so sorry but I HAVE to talk about this

there’s something so loving about what tom björklund does and just- fuck I’m foaming at the mouth here

facial reconstruction isn’t a new concept (see the Kennewick Man/Patrick Stewart incident) but it’s difficult to find people that are truly good at it! genuinely there is a big gap in this field because there just aren’t a lot of people who do it professionally!

facial reconstruction, especially from bone or bone fragments, is such a fascinating intersection of art and science, and a tremendous amount of care is put into determining what these people might have looked like.

with that said, it’s VERY easy to screw it up

configuring muscle attachments and fat distribution is genuinely *very* difficult to do, and when you do it badly, you get this (pictured above). by adding too much muscle, they gave this 600 year old man a VERY interesting jawline (notice that the bottom of the chin doesn’t match up with the bone at all!) and they *really* made him look older than he was. would you believe me if I said that he was estimated to only be 46 years old?

basically I’m just REALLY excited about Tom Björklund’s art because it’s amazing work, just from an anthropology perspective

just look at this!!!

facial reconstructions aren’t just an artsy thing that you can just say “oh, that’s cool!” to

by giving these people faces, even if they aren’t always accurate, we open the doors for the average person to connect with the past at a very human level. sure, looking at bones is cool, but looking at art of someone that lived thousands of years ago is *incredible*

looking at a picture of a boy that lived thousands of years ago and thinking “yeah, he would’ve loved Minecraft” is EXACTLY the reaction that these pieces are meant to elicit

For those new to AO3

Authors can see your bookmarks as a default. You have to mark them as private if you don't want authors to see them. There is an argument that bookmarks are a reader's space, but if you don't want authors to see what you are saying, make the bookmark private.

There is no algorithm on AO3. Seriously. It does not exist. Sorting by kudos, comments, length, etc. is the closest thing you will get. It is very much a curate your experience situation. Embrace it because you never know what gems you'll find if you give less popular fics a chance.

Depending on who you ask, kudos are not a good metric to judge a fic on anymore. As to if they ever were is, again, depending on who you ask. There is a spider/web crawler (we call it the kudos bot) who gives a bunch of guest kudos to fics. We cannot summon it and we cannot remove the kudos. At best, we can set our fics to private. So, if you see a fic with way more kudos than views, that's why. Many of us do not want these kudos, but we have to live with them.

Concrit (constructive criticism) is divisive because this is a hobby for many people. There is a culture on AO3 for concrit to be opt-in instead of opt-out, but not everyone subscribes to that. If you do not see an author's note saying concrit is OK, you can ask if it's OK. If they don't say anything, take it as a 'no'. If the author is cool with concrit, great. Concrit away.

Asking for updates is also divisive. Some people want/need that encouragement and some don't. Leaving a polite 'can't wait for the next chapter' is totally fine. If you ask for an update and the author asks you not to, please respect their wishes. You don't know what else is going on behind that screen. We all use fic for our own reasons and it's impossible to tell if that was someone's project to forget about things that they don't want to deal with.

There is a difference between A/B and A&B. A/B is for shipping and A&B is for non-shipping relationships (such as platonic and familial relationships or bullying or work situations). Please tag accordingly and please do not accuse people of writing shippy fic when they tagged it A&B.

Comment totals on AO3 count author responses. It doesn't make a distinction between a response and a new comment thread. Comment thread counts are in the author's stats page only available to them. Authors are not inflating their comment counts by responding to get more views. They are just trying to interact with people who support them.

Not all authors respond to comments. For many older fans, this can be due to years of harassment in fandom, witnessing friends being harassed, not having time, etc. etc. Their reasons are their own and it does not mean you are a bad person or said something wrong if they don't respond to you nor does it say anything about them. Authors do not owe you interaction just as you do not owe them comments. It's your prerogative if you only want to leave comments on fics where the author answers back, but it does not mean the author isn't grateful or doesn't care. You do not know what else is going on.

You cannot take a kudos back. Seriously. It's permanent. If that means you want to wait until a fic is finished to leave a kudos, that's totally fine. To authors, if you see a bunch of comments and views, but few kudos, this is probably the reason. It does not mean your fic is bad; it just means readers are holding kudos back until the fic is finished, which is perfectly legitimate.

Please read author's notes at the beginning and end of chapter updates. This is where authors are The Most Likely to tell you if there has been a change in their update schedule, if they made changes to previous chapters, explained a certain choice they made, etc. Same with checking the tags thoroughly before reading a fic. Most authors take tagging and warning/updating readers very seriously and the spaces they can do it in are the author's notes and the tags.

Because there are so many people from so many cultures on AO3, the categorizing of fics may not be totally even across the board. Tagging might have discrepancies. For instance: some people might view smut as M and not E depending on the level of detail; some might even view it as T. Please exercise caution and look at tags carefully when clicking on a fic. If you come across something you do not like, the back button is always an option.

There is a hard limit of 75 tags on fics, so not all characters that appear in a fic are likely to be tagged. For many of us, we only tag major players, major ships/&-relationships, and background relationships as a courtesy and save the rest of our tags for known triggers and making it easier for people to find our fics by tagging the tropes we use and certain parts of the content (such as 'AU where A loses their voice').

If you hate a character or a ship or a certain trope or have certain triggers, there is nothing wrong with asking a fandom friend for recommendations. If anything, we probably should bring back fic rec lists and you could be doing an amazing service for fandom if you start making one based on your preferences. Don't rely purely on other platforms to lead you to amazing fics; you never know how that person is finding fics and they could be missing out on some really amazing ones.

AO3 currently does not have a messaging system and many users prefer it that way. I am not positive what the future holds, but if any author wants you to get in contact, they will probably leave other socials in their notes or on their profile. They might even tell you to contact them in a comment response. You can absolutely respond to them on other social media platforms and talk fics or art or fandom. The AO3 lack of messaging is a comfort for many people because of previous experiences regarding harassment and, for some, that's the closest thing to a social media that they have. Some fandoms are more than 40 years old and not all of it has been positive for everyone.

Please do not leave 'placeholder' ideas in the fic tags. By this I mean, 'here's an idea I plan to write. Let me know if you like it!' and there's one or two sentences but no actual fic. AO3 is not social media. You can be reported for this and the post taken down as per AO3's guidelines. Fic, meta, and art are welcome on AO3. A plan to write a fic is not.

Lastly, please enjoy your time on AO3. It is an archive that dedicates itself to preserving fandom works, whether we agree with those works or not.

All good stuff! Thanks op! I wanted to add a link to a really useful post by @someao3tagsifound that has links to AO3 enhancement extensions and user scripts that can make AO3 work even better for you. I use the one that highlights certain tags with colors of my choosing and it's great. There's also one that can hide stats like kudos.

Begging ppl who say 1st/2nd-person POV is cringe to read something other than (poorly written) fanfic. That's like saying "the color blue is cringe"

1st Person – More intimate than 3rd. Seamless blending of a character’s outside and interior world. Since everything filters through a POV character, it’s a great opportunity for flavor and a distinct voice.

2nd Person – The Most intimate POV. Great for building empathy and/or playing with the reader’s agency (excellent for horror or blurring lines of reality)

*This one does a fun trick with POV. See if you can catch it.

**link also contains another short story ‘Homecoming’

Feel free to add more.

For 2nd person I think everyone should read The Man Who Sailed His House by Michael Paternity as an exercise in empathy

and for great 1st person non traditionally published fiction (because a part of me always feels obliged to defend "low brow" avenues like r/nosleep):

What I Cannot Know by D. Williams

Don’t forget classics like Frankenstein and Dracula, how did we come to the fact third person is the only “acceptable” way of writing when many stories were written in first person all the time?

wow tumblr really loves piracy huh. this didn’t break 100 on any other platform, but got 10k notes in less than 24 hours here. yo ho tumblrinas.

Piracy 🤝 Physical Media 🤝 Libraries

Physical media has two hands 😌

Reminders for the Anxious/Depressed Creatives

2023 Updates:

because I've had this question for a while, I decided to make a poll about it:

Personally I hate movie covers with a passion, but I'm curious if that's just me or not.

no clue how much traction this will get or if it’s been done before but I’m curious so

please consider rbing if you vote! my curiosity begs to be sated

writers shouldn't need to go on strike – but when we do, we're funny as fuck.

some of my personal faves, taken from a longer twitter thread by jenny yang. learn more about the strike here.

we seriously need to bring back the concept of “despite its flaws i still enjoy it” instead of ‘cancelling’ every fuckin thing in sight 

#we need to trust that just because someone loves a thing it doesn’t mean they don’t know it’s flawed

We also need to stop insisting that everyone enjoying flawed things must put 25 cents in the Problematic Jar and recite all its failings from memory.

If I just may add: we really need to stop pretending that “I’m a Good person, ergo the thing I like is PERFECT and if you criticize it you’re an ENEMY”. You can enjoy stuff AND keep your sense of critical thinking.

Youtubers will see some super tame sfw furry art and be like, “OH GOD WHY AAHHH MY EYES!!! WHAT IS THIS??!? WHY WOULD YOU SHOW ME THIS?!?” And the art will look like this:

I cannot believe there are people on tumblr dot com who are commenting on this post like, “erm yeah deserved reaction. Furries are freaks!!” Like friend, you are on TUMBLR lmao

where's the forth horseman

May I offer a second, blue Dave?

neocities guide - why you should build your own html website

what is neocities?

why should I make my own website?

what would I even put on a website?

getting started: neocities/html guide

fun stuff to add to your site

web revival manifestos & communities

in conclusion

i wish there were more than 24 hours in a day and beverages were $1 and growing up didn’t hurt so much

This is honestly the best poster I have found in a while supporting breast cancer awareness. I am honestly so sick of seeing, “set the tatas free” and “save the boobies”. There is no reason in hell a life threatening, life ruining disease should be sexualized. “Don’t wear a bra day,” go fuck yourselves. You’re not saving a pair of tits, you’re saving the entire package: mind, body, and soul included. Women are not just a pair of breasts.

official boob post