Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:

OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–

There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)

Did you find this helpful? If you’re able, maybe buy me a coffee please? :D

I see this a lot, no one has actual names, or any reference for names, that are legit Native American, varying among the tribes, for their characters.

Babynames.com and shit like that will give you names made up by white people.

However, I’ve got your solution.

Native-Languages  is a good website to turn to for knowledge on a lot of native things, including native names. If you’re unsure about the names you’ve picked, they even have a list of made up names here!

Please don’t trust names like babynames.com for native names, they’re made up and often quite offensive to the cultures themselves.

Hey! Are there blacksmiths in your story? I'm a hobbyist blacksmith and I'm here to help!

Blacksmithing is one of those things that a lot of people get wrong because they don't realize it stuck around past the advent of the assembly line. Here's a list of some common misconceptions I see and what to do instead!

• Not all blacksmiths are gigantic terrifying muscly guys with beards and deep voices. I am 5'8, skinny as a twig, have the muscle mass of wet bread, and exist on Tumblr. Anybody who is strong enough to pick up a hammer and understands fire safety can be a blacksmith.
• You can make more than just swords with blacksmithing. Though swords are undeniably practical, they're not the only things that can be made. I've made candle holders, wall hooks, kebab skewers, fire pokers, and more. Look up things other people have made, it's really amazing what can be done.
• "Red-hot" is actually not that hot by blacksmith terms. when heated up, the metal goes from black, to red, to orange, to yellow, to white. (for temperature reference, I got a second degree burn from picking up a piece of metal on black heat) The ideal color to work with the metal is yellow. White is not ideal at all, because the metal starts sparking and gets all weird and lumpy when it cools. (At no point in this process does the metal get even close to melting. It gets soft enough to work with, but I have never once seen metal become a liquid.)
• Blacksmithing takes fucking forever. Not even taking into account starting the forge, selecting and preparing metal, etc. etc. it takes me around an hour to make one (1) fancy skewer. The metals blacksmiths work with heat up and cool down incredibly fast. When the forge is going good, it only takes like 20 seconds to get your metal hot enough to work with, but it takes about the same time for it to cool down, sometimes even less.
• As long as you are careful, it is actually stupidly easy to not get hurt while blacksmithing. When I picked up this hobby I was like "okay, cool! I'm gonna make stuff, and I'm gonna end up in the hospital at some point!" Thus far, the latter has yet to occur. I've been doing this for nearly a year. I have earned myself a new scar from the aforementioned second degree burn, and one singe mark on my jeans. I don't even wear gloves half the time. Literally just eye protection, common sense, and fast reflexes and you'll probably be fine. (Accidents still happen of course, but I have found adequate safety weirdly easy to achieve with this hobby)
• A forge is not a fire. The forge is the thing blacksmiths put their metal in to heat it up. It starts as a small fire, usually with newspaper or something else that's relatively small and burns easily, which we then put in the forge itself, which is sort of a fireplace-esque thing (there's a lot of different types of forge, look into it and try to figure out what sort of forge would make the most sense for the context you're writing about) and we cover it with coal, which then catches fire and heats up. The forge gets really hot, and sometimes really bright. Sometimes when I stare at the forge for too long it's like staring into the sun. The forge is also not a waterfall of lava, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.
• Welding and blacksmithing are not the same thing. They often go hand-in-hand, but you cannot connected two pieces of metal with traditional blacksmithing alone. There is something called forge welding, where you heat your metal, sprinkle borax (or the in-universe equivalent) on it to prevent the metal from oxidizing/being non-weldable, and hammer the pieces together very quickly. Forge welding also sends sparks flying everywhere, and if you're working in a small space with other blacksmiths, you usually want to announce that you're welding before you do, so that everyone in a five-foot radius can get out of that five-foot radius. You also cannot just stuck some random pebbles into the forge and get a decent piece of metal that you can actually make something with, Steven Universe. It doesn't work like that, Steven Universe.
• Anvils are really fucking heavy. Nothing else to add here.
• Making jewelry is not a blacksmithing thing unless you want jewelry made of steel. And it will be very ugly if you try. Blacksmithing wasn't invented to make small things.
• If there's anything here I didn't mention, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

winter au warmup

HAPPY NEW YEAR NEW YEARLY COLLAB RAHHHH this time nice life with @litinalll 💚💙💜

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Hey y'all remember when the biologist projected the personality of her late (most likely dead or transformed) husband onto an owl that may or may not have actually been her actual husband after undergoing a transformation brought on by the effect of being in area x?

Y'all remember when the biologist lived with her owl husband for years and years, not forcing it to act human but allowing it to do its own owl thing while it allowed her to do her own thing? And despite them having their own individual lives, they loved in proximity of each other, sought each other out despite being completely different species, brought each other gifts and food? How even if the owl was never actually her husband and was just a regular old owl, how the love/solidarity/trust that formed the basis of their mutual relationship transcended both their species and extenuating circumstances?

Y'all remember how when the owl eventually succumbed to old age, the biologist allowed the brightness within her to be free? The very same brightness that the biologist was quite literally fighting off? How she had to continuously injure herself, self harm, make herself sick and miserable in order to desperately hold onto her humanity, onto the very essence of who she is? How when her owl husband died, she no longer had a reason to keep fighting against her transformation? To keep fighting to remain the biologist as she was?

Was the owl ever actually her husband, or was she looking for a reason to keep fighting against what became her very nature?

Y'all ever think about how, by being a literal owl, the biologist's husband was easier for the biologist to both understand and care for? How, by being an owl, the biologist's husband could show love and trust in a way that the biologist understood and appreciated? That this transformation allowed them to find happiness with each other, regardless of its fleeting nature?

obsessed with the fact that Ghost Bird, doppleganger created by alien entity Area X, is somehow better suited to interacting with/forming relationships with humans than the Biologist was

there's something to the fact that the Biologist ends up this massive, alien creature, while Ghost Bird ends up walking out of Area X seemingly human

what if you had an alien copy but somehow that copy was better at being human than you were

the parts in authority where control thinks he's overhearing normal conversation but he's actually hearing the twelfth expedition always get to me. it's so weird and so well done