my dad was DEEPLY offended when i offered to help him set up the switch, saying things like “how old do you think i am” and “i’ve been playing video games since before you were born” etc etc. i didn’t mean to offend him, it’s just that the last console he’s touched was like, the gamecube back when it first came out! things have changed since then. we have touch screen now.
anyway he’s had a bit of a chip on his shoulder since then, and so he basically destroyed Breath of the Wild and left me in he dust. he found more shrines, korok seeds, and armor than i did in like, half the time, and he got very pleased when i told him i didn’t know about certain areas or quests.
i’ll admit i underestimated him because he always seemed to struggle when playing Ocarina of Time back when we lived together when i was like, eight. in hindsight i realize he struggled because he didn’t speak english very well and couldn’t understand most of the on-screen explanations. once he set the language to korean he was blazing through botw so fast he was fighting lynels before i’d even gotten to the point where i felt comfortable with lizalfos.
anyway i’m sick of him rubbing it in so for christmas i’m getting him dark souls. see how much you like challenges then, pops
So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.
I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”
She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”
I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”
And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.”
And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.”
She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”
So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.
My mom has been telling me this story since I was five.
So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.
I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.
And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”
So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…
This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.
A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.
The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas – like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.
Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.
And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.
He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”
And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…
Smiles.
He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”
As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.
“My dad did it for most of his life.”
“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”
The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”
“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”
“I remember that cane,” he says.
I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”
“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”
“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”
“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”
“Yup.”
I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.
I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.
And this is what I made.
This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”
And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me.
That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.
I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.
So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.
[Two versions of a waist-up drawing of Kon-El, in his updated 90s glory. He has one earring, three belts (all different), and a leather jacket covered with spikes (and one red patch). He’s holding one of his large lapels, pulling it slightly to the side and showing off his S-logo. He’s smirking at the viewer and exudes confidence.
Fruits Basket 2019 TV anime English subbed teaser PV
Character renders
Tohru Honda (voiced by Manaka Iwami)
Yuki Sohma (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki)
Kyo Sohma (voiced by Yuma Uchida)
Shigure Sohma (voiced by Yuichi Nakamura)
The Very Little Sister and I love this depressing and ridiculous series! So Excited!
[Note: If you aren’t familiar with Fruits Basket, ¾ of the relationships are extremely unhealthy. Romantic, familial, and friend-related. There is subtle (and blatant) abuse. Many of the characters slowly heal over the course of the story, but there are a lot of triggers here.]
is being into coffee an older sibling thing bc everyone i know who loves coffee is the oldest child
like every oldest child ik loves coffee, the middle child hates it/prefers tea, and the youngest will drink it but only if its super sweet n has a ton of milk
rb w/ if ur oldest, middle, or youngest child and how u feel about coffee
i was really getting comfortable on this platform. i got a compliment earlier today on my liveblogging nonsense, i just broke 400 followers this week, i had all these posts planned and queued, and i was like okay tumblr is going under slowly now but i’ve got a community here, i’ll hang around while it does.
this site had turned into a home. a place where i had people.
and now, poof. technically i still exist; if you’re following me you can see me on your dash, i can still use the chat function, but like. i’ve been cut off from any real networking capability. i’m not in the community anymore. my posts can’t really circulate because even if you reblog them your followers can’t see them, because i’m Sensitive Content. i’ve been ostracized by mechanical fiat.
because i reblogged too many of the ‘this image has been flagged’ memes since yesterday? because i’m mutuals with people who’ve been flagged? because of a glitch staff is unlikely to get around to fixing in the middle of the censorship apocalypse? who knows.
i never started trying to monetize being-creative-on-tumblr because of a lot of reasons including shyness, but it was in the back of my head that if things got any tighter i could start actually trying to use Patreon properly and advertising it here.
i just. this is so demoralizing. it’s incredible what we don’t notice we’re gaining strength from until it’s gone, and ‘periodically says something that’s mildly popular on tumblr’ was apparently very identity-affirming for me.
Hey I hate this a lot! I really love not only your content but also your tags and the stuff you reblog and I really hope this gets resolved for you soon!!
Thank you! Haha so do I. It’s apparently something of a plague. As usual, I feel slightly better having expressed myself and been heard, which is why tumblr was shaping up to be such a useful venue for me to blather on.
❤ Also I’m glad you like my tags! The tagging culture is fun.
@12freddofrogs
🙁 But I imagine its probably not permanent? Like so many people got deleted and then brought back, so since you cant even understand why you’re invisible you presumably have options? I apologise that I have no idea what they are, but things like this do tend to get solved after a few days.
Well, I hope not. Thanks for the chill. I put in a complaint to support, but I imagine they’re deluged. These are not normal times. And at least one of the blogs I’ve been following almost since I joined has not been restored, so…
How do you get a smiley to work in the comment field? I can’t even get ❤ hearts to work there. Not that it matters now, I suppose…
@redjaybathood
but, like, I’ve seen all your posts regarding RHATO? more or less right after the moment you wrote them. i refreshed my feed pretty often at that time.
You left this comment on a different post but it makes more sense to answer here…yes! You are my follower! You can still see me! ❤
However, I am invisible to search, my sister who is not my follower can no longer message me, and when I open my blog in a browser where I’m not signed in, my content cuts off after my first mention today of Lex Luthor.
Also I’m told my posts from that point on will be invisible to non-followers, even if reblogged elsewhere, though I haven’t tested that because idk how.
Social media is alarmingly centralized in the most idiotic ways.
Anyway my sideblog I never use seems to be fine? If I create posts there and reblog them through whetstonefires will they become invisible if reblogged again by followers? Does anyone know???
Noooo!!!!!
This must not stand! I only found you on Tumblr this year, after so long loving you on ao3! You are one of the 10 people I am going to make sure I follow EVEN IF I HAVE TO TALK TO PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF TUMBLR. I do not want you to feel hurt and demoralized!!
kiragecko 