You’ve always loved how professional wooden props look, but you have no idea where to start. Watching and reading tutorials is a great way to figure out how you’re going to make something. Take a peek at these projects and see what you can make of them:
Beginner’s Sword (all you need is a marker, a plank, a knife, and sandpaper):
Beginner’s Rubber Band Gun (it’s given by a little kid who uses mixing sticks and hot glue. It’s a great way to get you thinking about layering and open up your mind to different resources):
What you’ll see again and again in here is the importance of planning your cuts, taking your time when you’re cutting and sanding, using primer, and patience. All the time you put into making wooden props will come back to you three-fold: they’ll be able to stand more abuse and will last much longer than most other props.
When you learned of the god of war, you thought he’d be tall and muscular and angry. When you were about to meet him, you braced yourself for the worst.
You weren’t quite expecting the short, scrawny, shy kid you ended up getting instead.
Olive skin, black hair, skinny, dirty face with pale lines where tears had sliced through the ash and dust. A white chiton dress and a threadbare shawl draped over her shoulders.
A pair of wings - huge, black vulture wings, far too large on her tiny body - were the only things that suggested she was divine.
The general shifted his weight from foot to foot. Obviously respect had to be given to gods, but… “Er - I’m sorry, I was invoking Ares? The god of war?”
The child god shrunk in on herself, and pulled the shawl over her shoulders. She muttered something. “Sorry?” the general asked.
“Ares is the god of slaughter,” the child god said in a slightly louder voice. “Not war.”
The general looked at the priest. The priest shrugged, clearly lost at sea. “Well,” the general said, “then maybe Athena? Goddess of tactics in war?”
“Tactics,” the child god repeated. “Not war.”
There was a long, ugly silence, as the huge vulture wings shifted with the whisper of brushing feathers. “My name is - was - Iphigenia. Daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, commander of the Greeks who stormed the walls of Troy. When my father disgraced Artemis, and the winds of Greece would not blow her battleships to Troy, I was brought to Aulis. For my wedding, I was told. I was-”
She sobbed. Teardrops dribbled off her chin and fell to the temple floor. “I was fourteen. And then I was brought to the highest altar in Aulis, and - and then - and-”
Another sob. “I was fourteen,” she said.
The vulture wings draped over her, and she disappeared under the cloak of black feathers. When they parted, and when the child god looked up at the general, he fell backwards. Those eyes. Eyes he’d seen a thousand times in battle -
“I am the true spirit of war, general,” the child god said. “I am the goddess of bloodshed, of sacrifice, of the slaughter of innocents. I am invoked when men ravage, burn and pillage. I am invoked when mothers cry out, when sons die, when daughters are stolen. I hear it all, general. I have heard it all since the fall of Troy.”
The terrible wings opened up. The child god loomed over the fallen man, twenty, thirty feet tall. Somewhere, the priest was screaming. “How dare you call upon my name.”
Iphigenia
Inktober 11
I didn’t know if I should post this by itself but this is fan art of that super dope story and also of that super dope art. So I figured this’d be the easiest way to credit them.
honestly,convos w friends does contain a lot of elements i typically enjoy in narratives (autistic woman narrator, complicated homoerotic female best friendship, absolutely horrible pathetic man, discussions of class framed through generational divides, dry humor, generally heinous people) so i get why my best friend wanted me to read it for those reasons, but i’m almost 80% of the way through the novel and i still find it hopelessly dull. even the most appealing narrative components will fall apart if not scaffolded by a cohesive whole.
okay, I do think the final act of the novel does weave together a lot of the aforementioned components in an elegant and compelling way, and I was especially impressed by the authenticity of frances’s shame surrounding her endometriosis. I think the way she kept nearly reaching a mystical apotheosis before getting too into her own head and forgetting her revelation(s) entirely was really well done, and the overwhelming catholicism (of the dogma of reaching enlightenment through pain) actually really worked in the book’s favor.
the way her overwhelming love for bobbi is also revealed throughout the novel is fascinating, because she otherwise spends so much time thinking about an irrelevant and terrible man to whom she has surrendered herself entirely. she is an incredibly messy and quite pathetic person, but a lot of her struggles with vulnerability and shame do feel authentic and sympathetic.
my biggest issue with this book overall is that i find the prose dull as hell, and I wish rooney had taken more stylistic risks to keep me as a reader engaged aesthetically as well as thematically. of course not every novel is for everyone, but as aforementioned, I did find a lot of its components interesting, especially where it concerned issues of chronic illness, class, and spirituality. also, I’m literally always a sucker for messy homoerotic female best friendships, and will never tire of seeing that expressed in fiction. overall, I’d say this novel had good ideas communicated through mediocre prose.
She’d known exactly what was on his mind the instant he told her to wear a dress. And if there had been any doubt there, even the slightest moment of it, it had dispersed when he’d specified the one with the dozens of cats, printed all over it. He had a penchant for the cute, something about the way it contrasted with her not-so-innocent mind. He’d lectured her on it before, but she’d just basked in the authority of it all.
“Ok, but you have to wear that shirt I like.” She bargained like a child, but her voice was nothing but flirtation.
“Since when did you get to make demands?"
"Since just then. It was ordained.” She could feel a giggle coming, and it started with a smile.
“I don’t think so. I’m the only one with ordination powers, and I don’t have you down in my schedule."
"It’s ok, you snuck me in. So wear the shirt.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“Uh huh it is. That’s exactly how this works.” There was a pause at the other end of the line, and she could almost imagine him chuckled. Smirking, at the very least.
“I’ll see you in an hour. Wear the dress.” And then he hung up. Just like that. She’d stomp her foot if she was a decade younger, but as it was she just tossed her phone onto the bed.
She wanted to defy him, wear something else, or even just another dress, so that she could feign ignorance or incompetence, infuriate him just a little so that he might take his anger out in the most enjoyable way.
But she enjoyed the order too much. Enjoyed the implication, and what she knew was going to come. The hands on her legs, pushing up on the fabric, cupping the swell of her rear before those strong fingers slipped between her legs, and she could just sigh for the rest of the afternoon. If he ever gave her that opportunity, that was, instead of escalating things from there. The dress would be gone within minutes of her arrival, tossed aside like an afterthought, like it was never really necessary in the first place.
She stepped up to his door, and smoothed the dress down. The cats seemed to mock her, each one preening a little more sarcastically than the last. The door opened, and she glanced up, smiling.
He smiled back, just the touch of a smirk playing across his lips. Her eyes travelled downwards, noticed the shirt, and her smile spread a little more.
“Why did you fight me so much when you were going to wear it anyway?” He shrugged, still smiling, still smirking.
“It’s fun.” And then he grabbed her, arms slipping around her and holding her close. She struggled, because it was more fun that way.
-getting lowkey miffed everytime you see a non Meowth kanto meowth on its hind legs
-either writing too much or too little accent
-internal babyrage everytime you see someone say ‘team rocket’ when they just mean jessie and james
-jimmy
-knowing collectively that he’s is trans and bi
-having only two modes: ‘aw cute babey’ and ‘*thousands of shitposts*’
-loving those ‘the pokemon get seperates from the humans’ episodes
-having to scroll through miles of rocketshipping fics where he’s either absent, a nonentity or completely out of character to find any content for him
Imagine you just started your shift at Talc Opal and a giant yellow woman reaches her hand through the drive-thru window and grabs fifty Cool Ranch® Doritos® Locos Tacos
People horrifically fucking up facts about evolution and genetics too support their stupid beliefs or to seem smart and “rational” is probably one of my big pet peeves
Yeah. An enormous number of racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes I’ve met eventually whip out something about evolutionary biology and they never, ever, ever, ever have the slightest shadow of even a half-right idea what any of it means or ever cite a claim ever actually made by a scientific study.
Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:
Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.
“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.
“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.
“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.
Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.
People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.
No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.
Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.
Some of us did, however, cross-breed with Neandethal man. It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes.Whoops, sorry “white purity” skinheads, you’re actually mixed with a whole other species.
I saw this post and now all I can think about is young Derek being nonverbal and he hides peoples shoes when he likes them so they stick around longer–the more he likes you, the harder they are to find. Laura understands this and finds it funny to watch, especially when Derek practically shoves Peters shoes into his hands and Peter always thanks him for being so helpful (when really he’s telling him to f off).
One day, Sheriff Stilinski comes over with his kid and Derek hides Stiles’ shoes. They eventually have to leave without them because they’re hidden so well and it’s years before they find them.
I couldn’t resist the angst so here we go… (Brace yourselves)
All of his family’s shoes were burnt up in the fire. He tries searching all the places he hid them but they’re all gone, and he’s left with nothing to remember them by and no way to keep them around.
Or, imagine one pair survives. A tiny pair of white sandals with little butterflies on them that once belonged to Laura. Talia gave up trying to get Cora to wear them because she’d either tear the shoes off and run around with bare feet or she’d try to rip the decorative butterflies off. So Talia stored them away in a corner of the basement, the one corner that was untouched by the fire.
Years later, Derek adopts a little girl and gives her the shoes, watching the way his little girl’s face lights up when she looks at the pretty butterflies and realising that his little girl has Laura’s smile.
An anon asked me on my other blog if I knew where this picture was. I had no idea, I probably deleted it from here and my laptop, but while I was cleaning up my external hard drive I saw it on one of the folders. So, if mystery anon still wanted it, there it is.
