That’s it, the Professor is truly the King of Sass
The letter didn’t come from the Nazi party, but from the publishing house which had expressed an interest in the German translation of The Hobbit. Tolkien’s response really is a thing of beauty, though, so it deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully
Lookie what I just added to my pattern collection!
So there are a lot of layered details on this thing, as you can see. But I think these pattern pieces will cover the basic features of McCree’s forearm. There’s another piece that extends across his wrist and connects to a cable - for that, I’ll create a removable bracelet-type piece that I think will attach magnetically.
The most annoying thing about this pattern is the skull, because McCree’s fuckin’ forearms are practically as wide as they are long, and having NORMAL HUMAN PROPORTIONS really throws off the shape of that skull. But I’m pretty happy with what I came up with so far anyway.
Next step, literally hours with my new best friend, the heat gun!
No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
This technically counts, as students are civilians, and thus considered a “protected person”. So yes, collective classroom punishment breaks the fourth Geneva Convention, and she should be rewarded for standing up for human rights and doing her research.
Power-move: accuse your teacher of a war crime using knowledge they supplied you with
Being trans is not a mental illness/ you don’t need dysphoria to be trans: 12 3 4 567 (this one is massive) 8 (also if you want a living example of a cis person with dysphoria search godflex here on tumblr, careful it’s nsfw)
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of especially bad judgement when it comes to picking which projects to learn a new material with. It started way back two years ago when I decided gloves would be my very first leatheworking project, and here I go again doing finger armor for my first foray into Worbla. I should know better than to pick such a tiny, fiddly, detailed project to start with, buuuuuuut here we are anyway.
I made quite a few attempts at my first finger segment before I got the hang of it and figured out the technique to use. From left to right, my attempts in chronological order:
First I tried a foam core, as per the most common technique for Worbla. It turned out WAY too fat and bulky.
The next two have a card stock core. Unfortunately the results were really inconsistent. I couldn’t keep the sharp edges I wanted, card stock doesn’t really flex smoothly enough, and they were still too bulky.
Finally, although this goes against basically all advice for Worbla, I tried just a single layer of unreinforced Worbla. It’s weaker than the double layer options, but it fits correctly and didn’t make me feel like I had giant cyborg sausage fingers when I put it on.
Once I figured out the technique, it was more or less simple to cut everything out from my patterns, heat, smoosh, and repeat 14 times. My patterns worked out pretty much just right; I added about 1/8″ on each end to give myself room to overlap the seams, and everything fit perfectly.
Voila! Cyborg fingers. And now for the only functionality test that matters for this cosplay…
Due to some highly unfortunate circumstances involving an inexperienced paint crew and my workshop, Day 4 was a wash as far as actually making anything. Therefore instead, I spent the day doing some hard-core research on how to tackle the next project: Jesse McCree’s mechanical arm.
Now, in spite of my plenty of experience making heavy duty armor out of leather, I’m finding this design more than a little intimidating. Tragically I have concluded that I do not possess the necessary equipment to actually make it out of metal (boooooo!), nor has anyone shared a 3d model that I can print. There are some people who sell a pre-printed arm but don’t share/sell their models, which… fair… kind of… but even if they did, I’d have to do massive modification to get a rigid arm to fit me properly, which I’m not skilled enough at 3d modeling to do. Point is I’m all on my own!
So, what are the important features I want in this design?
I need to retain full mobility in my fingers, wrist, and elbow
The fingertips and palm must be durable enough (both the base material and the paint job) for me to go about normal convention activities without getting significantly damaged
It’s gotta light up!
With those three things in mind, I’m looking at a combination of worbla and EVA foam, and possibly some PVC for the elbow widgets. One encouraging thing about this design is that the big ol’ clunky elbow looks like it could house a battery easily, and that convenient tube running from the elbow to the wrist is the perfect conduit for my wires to run. Also, I found this sweet button, complete with a blue LED, that fits the aesthetic of this arm to a T.
However, after reading 3 how-to-make-armor books from cover to cover yesterday, my conclusion is that I am going to need some new tools for this job. So it’s off to the hardware store for me!
Probably not! I sure can’t! But the woman who’s going to be wearing this is a size smaller than me, so I’ll hold out hope that it’ll be OK and I won’t have to make frantic last minute alterations the week before the show.
This is actually a pretty cool pattern when it all comes together. I don’t love that it has no lining, but for a dance costume that’s fine. I used spandex for a couple of panels to try and give it more stretch for the dancer, but honestly I think that was a futile effort. The worst restriction is across the shoulders, and there’s nothing I could really do about that without massively reworking the entire pattern. These dance commissions are really tricky!
