just a smol nerd

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There will always be someone that you feel is better than you. Always. Learn to accept that.

What takes you two days now will, with practice, take you two hours later. Keep at it.

There will be people who tell you that you’re too fat, or thin, or black, or white to cosplay a character. For every one of them, there are 10 who love your cosplay. Don’t listen to the hate.

Keep the first cosplay you ever make. Or at least photos. It will remind you of how far you’ve come later.

Always map out how much fabric you need and buy a yard more.

When you see a $0.99 pattern sale, buy as many as you can. You never know when they’ll come in handy. (It’s also fun to see the crazy high price under “you saved” when you buy 30 $20 patterns for 99 cents each).

When you go to a convention in the first costume you ever make yourself, there will be a 100% chance of a more experienced cosplayer in the same cosplay. And you will want to throw yours away. Don’t do it.

Muslin is your friend. It’s $1 a yard and it’ll help you figure out if the pattern your using will fit before you cut into your $10 a yard fabric.

There is nothing wrong with starting simple and starting small. Know your skill level when you start. Stay relatively inside it and you will be less frustrated and more proud of your work.

A little later, pick cosplays that have aspects you know how to do and aspects you don’t know how to do. Look up tutorials and try new things.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, but make sure you try to help yourself first. Keep bookmarks of online tutorial and guide resources. 

Don’t be afraid to start over from scratch. If you don’t like what the end product looks like don’t let the hours you spent on it force you to keep it. Rip seams. Re-do hems. Go out and buy more fabric. All the work will be worth it for a cosplay you’re proud of.

Have cosplayers you look up to, but do not try to become them. Become you.

Invest in good materials. Starting with cheap products like $5 scissors means you will have to replace them much more frequently as your experience tells you that they aren’t good enough and you need better. Get better from the start.

Don’t be afraid to cosplay alone.

Get a sewing machine with at least 5 different types of stitches on it. You may not know how to use them now but as you learn you will want them available to you.

There will always be someone who gets more attention than you for the same cosplay. Don’t let that make you bitter. Likewise, don’t let it make you power hungry.

Don’t let notes on tumblr of favorites on deviantart dictate the quality of your cosplay.

Set goals and work to achieve them, like “5 new cosplays this year” or “win something in a costume contest.”

(yes this entirely for corporate profit)

Cut and paste the docket number to put in your response if you remember. You can comment anonymously if you want.

The Oregon Zoo has some sample arguments you can make.

Since OP didn't explain what's actually changing (lots of things) here's a simple explanation of one of the Big Ones.

One of the biggest changes is a proposal to remove the ESA’s Threatened Species Blanket Rule (FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029). The Blanket Rule is extremely important because it automatically extends the same protections given to endangered species to all newly listed threatened species, quickly providing prohibitions on harming, killing or trading the species. If the Blanket Rule is rescinded, species-specific rules would have to be enacted, imposing additional procedural delays and uncertainty at the most critical time for the species' survival. And with more and more species in danger each year, that’s a risk that we as a country cannot afford to take. 

Also, @why-animals-do-the-thing / @animalphotorefs this seems like something that your reach might help with, and that's relevant to your blog(s).

If you run into issues, try turning off your VPN if you have one, in case it's getting annoyed that you're not "in the U.S.".

If you need a template, I'm putting one I got sent at work under the cut. (But check out the Oregon Zoo link, too! Or better yet, write your own! Unique and individual comments catch more attention than copy-pasted ones!)

I’m going to give you a little bit of information about the process that’s happening here, why it’s happening, and how you can best contribute to protecting the Endangered Species Act. You can skip it by scrolling to the red text, but you’ll be best set up to comment and help if you know some things about what’s happening first, so please stick with me. I promise to be as simple and jargon free as possible.

First, and to catch people's attention as they scroll, here's two red wolf sisters: a species the ESA actively preserving. This is who we're doing this for.

To clarify one thing: they’re not trying to totally repeal the ESA, the entire law, they’re looking to roll back regulations implementing it/enforcing it to what was being used in 2019. This is still bad! Very bad! But a thing that’s important when dealing with legislation/regulation is precision in the language we use.

Okay, so here’s what you need to know. This is part of what is known as the “notice-and-comment” rule making process, which is federally mandated. This happens with the implementation of regulations to enact new laws, or changes to the interpretation of laws. Laws like the ESA, once passed, are delegated to various federal agencies and departments to enact and make happen, and they do that by deciding what regulations need to exist to fulfill the text and intent of the law. This change to the ESA is happening because one of the earliest executive orders from this administration “directed all departments and agencies to immediately review agency actions to identify those actions that potentially impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider suspending, revising, or rescinding agency actions identified as unduly burdensome that conflict with this national objective.” So, as @sweetfirebird said, literally go figure out what laws and regs and protections they can interpret differently, put on hold, or trash for the energy sector. Fucking gross.

This “notice-and-comment” process is the process with which all these federal agencies go about exploring changing regulations. It’s a formal process that is specifically designed to allow stakeholders to have input on what happens. Good news: in the ESA, the public is literally a stakeholder! It’s written into the law that any “person” (basically an individual or a group of individuals) can sue the government for a violation of the law. This is actually historically the prime enforcement mechanism of the ESA. Which means you, as an American on tumblr reading this, have absolutely valid standing to go tell the feds to knock this shit off. And with the way the “notice-and-comment” process works, they actually have to take your argument into account. (Yes, even though we know this admin is a piece of shit and dgaf). Here’s why.

A “notice and comment” process has four major steps.

Agency issues a notice of proposed rulemaking. That’s what you’re looking at in the first link @sweetbirdfire shared. They have to describe what the rule they want to make/change is and explain the legal authority for the rule.

The public must be given an opportunity to participate in a written comment period. That’s what you’re being asked to do - submit a comment before the comment period is over on the 22nd.

The agency must “consider all relevant, timely-submitted comments. If it decides to issue a final rule, the agency develops the regulatory text along with a preamble explaining the rule’s basis and responding to all significant issues raised in the comments.”

Final rule is published.

Okay, so why did I jump to a direct quote from federal documents in the third bullet point? Because that’s the really important shit. When federal agencies move forward with rulemaking after a public comment period, they are required to consider and response to all significant issues raised. And that is why you should write your own comment if you can.

It’s really common for organizations encouraging people to leave public comment to ask people to send in form letters. It’s easy, it takes no time or real work, it shows a lot of general public support on the issue, and they can quote the comment numbers when they’re lobbying.

But! What I’ve been told by serious professional people who work with regulatory agencies is that all those form letters only have the functional weight of a single comment during the “notice-and-comment” process. If 100 people only bring up the same significant set of issues, that requires far less time and work for the agency to respond to than even 20 people writing in with their individual concerns. I’ve seen follow-ups on comment periods where they actually count how many people raised issues on a single topic or concern - but the form letters only counted as one “comment” because they were the exact same thing.

And while the political agency head probably wants to fast-track this process of changing the regs to let the feds tear up whatever the fuck they want, a “notice-and-comment period” is a really good way to gum up those gears. There are still people in lower-level positions who do this daily work and I expect that they’re opposed to this and will go through the whole process like they’re been trained to. Under normal administrations, an overwhelming number of concerns raised during comment periods have stalled the creation/change of specific regulations for a decade. This is a process that works best when as many people as possible participate, and it’s detrimental to our interests as invested members of the public that that isn’t more widely known or the process understood.

So! What does that mean you should do here?

Write your own comment if you have the time/spoons.

Literally, write it in your own words, rather than using the form letters provided. If you make it a “different comment” it has to be considered separately and your concerns on the topic will be given more weight. Even if you just stick to the topics the Oregon Zoo offered: to be clear, they’re really good ones.

But, you’ll have even more impact if you can tie it to specific concerns for you. It takes a little more work so I don’t expect everyone to do this, but if you have some specialized or local knowledge that can be relevant, this is a great time to drop that in. Tie the concern to endangered or threatened species in your specific community, or an ecosystem that you know companies might want to pillage.

Your comment doesn’t have to be super well written or perfectly edited. It can be in language about as casual as you’d use in a tumblr post (with punctuation, though). This isn’t something you’re turning in for a grade - it’s raising your hand to say hey, I object! You’re not a major advocacy group or professional org, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to tell them how you feel. That being said. Public comments are public record. You can submit them anonymously but don’t include identifying information.

Here’s a link directly to the comment portal. While the site has a text box embedded in the page, you can also submit a document/file containing your comment.

https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039-0001

Comments close at 11:59 PM EST (4:59 GMT) on December 22nd. We have less than five days to get more comments in. I’m really not kidding when I say every unique, individual comment makes an impact. Let’s do this.

Public comments are not a voting process and simply expressing disagreement is not effective.

I personally disagree that you should write as informally you would a tumblr post. I would not trust that the regulators reading these comments have such principles about the importance of listening to people's concerns regardless of how informal or uneducated they sound.

Honestly, I would treat this as you would a graded assignment, because they are not obligation make any decisions simply because people comment that they don't want a rule made. You need to convince them that there are significant concerns, and you should be imagining the person you are convincing is an old white cis male politician who regularly complains that kids these days don't know cursive. That is the kind of person likely deciding if your comment is relevant to the regulation and brings up significant enough concerns.

But you could write out your thoughts in informal language, and then use Grammarly or something similar to help polish it into a more formal comment. Following the suggestions in that guide should help give you a basic structure for what your comment should look like.

I framed it as “this doesn’t have to be a graded assignment” because I didn’t want it to sound super formal and hard after going into a ton of detailed federal processes. It doesn’t have to be scary was really my point. Like, I’ve read a lot of federal comments for various zoo-related laws, and I’ve seen some of the stakeholders submit pretty casual comments. Is it ideal? Not really. But I know everyone is stressed as hell all the time these days and the idea of doing a bunch of intellectual labor on a foreign topic with real world consequences can be really intimidating.

"Safe Abortion for All.

No Compromise - No Apology"