[insert clever title here]

Using your fabric efficiently? Makes total sense. No objection to that.

But specifically designing patterns such that every single part of a length of fabric is consumed by it? You're setting people up to fail. For one, you can really only do this with patterns made mostly of rectangles and right triangles, which can only make a very narrow range of garments that simply do not play nice with many people's bodies (especially bodies with lots of curvature). For another, a zero-waste pattern is also a zero-error-tolerance pattern. One wrong cut or measurement and the whole thing's toast. The wiggle-room that a more standard pattern allows also allows you to fix problems when they occur.

If you make a zero-waste garment and never wear it because it looks bad on you? That's not actually zero-waste. If you start a zero-waste garment and can't complete it because you made one little mistake? That's not actually zero-waste.

But more importantly, the whole idea of 'zero-waste' as a desireable outcome is antithetical to the methods and traditions of sewing. It's a form of functionless, guilt-driven, aesthetics-first minimalism that has no place in actual sewing practice. The scraps of fabric left over from cutting a pattern are incredibly useful. Larger pieces can become parts of new projects. Smaller pieces can become patchwork. Even really tiny scraps can become stuffing or batting or kindling or any number of other things. Home sewing has always been about not wasting things, but the way to not waste things is not by piously making only garments that suck, it's by repurposing, reusing, and recycling everything you buy. Once that fabric reaches your house, 98% of its environmental impact has already happened.

You are not responsible to make adults comftorble. They can do that themselves. You are still a teen/young adult and you do not have to carry the world on your shoulders. You also do not need to make an adult happy on the internet.

Theoretical goal of banning things you find uncomfortable as a CC:

Bad things you don't like will stop being made and existing about you/your character.

Actual outcomes of banning things you find uncomfortable as a CC:

Bad things you don't like will Still Exist.

Subsets of your community will harass & abuse other fans. Trolls will make upsetting bait content that devoted fans feel a duty to engage with & fight against. Well-intentioned fans who don't know the rules exist will break them and get yelled at. People will arbitrarily interpret rules to bludgeon other fans' headcanons & send hate campaigns after each other. This WILL happen, no matter how many times you caveat with 'but don't harass anyone': You have issued an edict whose only enforcement mechanism is harassment.

Some of the fans who are most viciously defensive of your rules will still create stuff you find uncomfortable. Life finds a way. If you ban peanut butter, the fandom will create a series of intricate excuses as to why ground peanuts with sugar added is totally a different thing, and moreover how dare you imply they would break boundaries. The stuff you dislike won't stop being made, it will just be mislabeled and harder to avoid.

Artists will inevitably make cool shit that technically breaks your boundaries but Is Cool. Engaging with it will get that artist harassed for ignoring your boundaries (even if you say this one is fine).

Less people will engage with your work. You will have a smaller audience and much more limited free advertisement.

Everyone following the rules will create a constant need for judgment about things at the edge of your comfort zone. 'Ask for permission' means you have given yourself a part-time job arbitrating to strangers on whether it's okay to draw you mad at another minecraft guy.

More earnestly: By and large the people who are most online, who take boundaries seriously and actually care about seeking permission, are teens and very young adults. That's who you're setting rules for and telling that they can't depict certain things. The kinksters and smut writers and grown-ass adults are generally going to be unaffected, because their self-esteem doesn't hinge on the approval of a Twitch streamer.

Genuine question: Do you want to have to stare at an ask on Tumblr and consider whether to give permission for some 14-year-old to write a fic about your character self-harming or having cancer or being sexually assaulted? To say yes or no, while knowing that this person is probably asking not out of prurient interest, but because it makes them feel a little less alone to imagine an older, stronger character going through what they are?

That is the actual effect of setting those rules.

(The better boundary, btw, is 'I don't want to see things that make me uncomfortable': it's still not perfectly enforceable unless you entirely abstain from the internet, but it is much more actionable than 'make that stuff stop existing'. Having a dedicated 'don't look' tag blocked solves a lot of problems. Another strategy would be letting friends/trusted fan-acquaintances vet the best work and send it to you to gush about, rather than scrolling your tags at random.)

It can definitely be a struggle sometimes, especially when starting out. It can also depend on what type of resources you’re looking to find - are you wanting politics, general life, material life (aka objects or clothing), etc.

I have found some luck with blogs run by reenactors, particularly when it comes to researching material life. YouTube also has some good historians, but you have to seperate the wheat from the chaff. I think my favourite is The Welsh Viking, who covers a wide range of historical topics.

When finding sources online, check what sources they are using. This can help discern how trustworthy they are.

The other way is to join groups or forums of other reenactors and see what digital stuff we have to share. For example, here’s my Google drive folder of all my digital historical resources. Not everything in there is useful, and I cannot guarantee the accuracy of some of the sources, but there’s nothing in there I’m aware of that’s egregiously bad (and none of it is AI). You can tell my area of interest mostly focuses on medieval Europe based on how many more sources are in that folder as opposed to the others xD.

I’m also almost certain that this post will be added onto by my reenactor mutuals, so also come check out the reblogs in a couple of days to see what other people have to say!