#consolecadet

For the OC ask game

6. how do they wear their hair? do they care a lot how their hair looks?

Pendíkhia wears her hair up in a hair comb. It's a simple, functional style a lot of women in her clan wear. It fits well under a fur hat and doesn't collect ice in the winter, and it keeps your hair off your neck in the summer. Sometimes she lets Shékhie or Tanúngia do braids in her hair that she then gathers up, but she rarely bothers to do those herself. It's a Bonding Activity.

Tanúngia used to self-consciously wear her hair in the most feminine style she could (braided updo, wood comb, shell beads) because the options for physical transition in the Ice Age are pretty limited, and feminine hairstyles is something she can do. Her wife Wohdzigígio does her hair really pretty. She's kind of relaxed as she's gotten older and more comfortable, but Wohdzigígio made her several elaborately carved wooden hair combs that she cycles through or sometimes uses together.

Updos are not stylish among Kurrat's Neanderthal group; they wear their hair down, in ponytails or braids. Kurrat wears his hair in the laziest nape-of-his-neck ponytail possible because it works and he has stopped caring.

28. how do they show that they care about someone? how do they express that they don't like someone?

Pendíkhia is cuddly with people she’s close with! There’s a lot of casual touch in the Shúson Clan mostly because they’re up close and personal in each other’s space by the nature of cramming ~30 people into 2 mammoth bone huts, but Pendíkhia definitely likes casually leaning or lying on her friends. Brushing each other’s hair (and picking lice out of each other’s hair) is another gesture of intimacy. Also if Pendíkhia likes you, she will complain to you about her #opinions. Friendly bitch session. If she doesn’t like you you are likely to be on the receiving end of her complaints lol. As shaman she tries sooo hard to be responsible and fair to everybody but she can and will be curt and rude if you wear down her patience. Also sometimes just ignore what you tell her to do if she doesn’t want to give you the satisfaction of listening to you.

Tanúngia: if she likes and trusts you she will talk about her animal observations of the day with enthusiasm!

Kurrat: I’ve thought significantly less about this for him, which is exposing a gap! Hmmm. Because he starts out being kind of bitter and angry at Everyone, and curt and kind of rude as a result. Pushing people away because he’s hurt and because he thinks they’re not hurt enough. Liking someone starts by looking like opening up a little about his past and his thoughts in the first place. But this is definitely something to think more about!

11. what do they have in common with you? how are they different? would you get along with them?

Saving this one for last because hmm... hmmmm.... oh no self-reflection haha.

Easy answer is Pendíkhia and Kurrat are both aroace, because I Can. I mean also because I like thinking about what queerness means in a time period when everyone writing about it assumes everyone was straight. And because I feel like every time you get a story about a Neanderthal and a Sapiens the inevitable end result is hybrid baby and the story is definitely in part me kind of thinking about what life and legacy mean especially when you don't have children, which while I wouldn't be averse to it, it seems likely I'm never going to. But also because I Can.

Baby Ambivalence is definitely something Pendíkhia and I share.

Something else Pendíkhia and I share is impulsively having a hard time keeping our thoughts to ourselves, especially when pissed about something, even if it would be better to not verbalize it. She can be petty. Her struggle between doing/saying what she wants and doing/saying the Responsible thing is something I've definitely felt!

Kurrat has a low social battery and does not enjoy being around groups of people for long periods and constantly feels like he is not socializing Enough or responding to others Enough, which I feel very well :') Sucks to be him though when you know 20 people total and live in one cave with them all for your whole life.

How we're different... I imagine Pendíkhia as much more on top of things than I am. Coordinated and locked in. Also she likes people touching her hair.

Kurrat is different from me because he learns a new language from scratch in the span of about 3 months lmao. I could never. But also I think he's a lot more cynical and uncharitable towards people than I am, at least in the beginning.

- 400g water

- 2 1/4 tsp yeast (one packet)

- pinch of sugar

- 100g tapioca starch

- 100g potato starch

- 100g brown rice flour

- 60g sorghum flour

- 40g millet flour (or teff or buckwheat, really whatever)

- 17g psyllium husk powder

- 10g salt

- 1 tbsp each apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and honey

Heat your water up to ~105F and whisk in the yeast and pinch of sugar. Allow to sit until foamy (5-10 min).

Meanwhile, mix all dry ingredients together. Once the yeast is active, add to dry ingredients along with the apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and honey. Mix until fully combined and thickened. Give it a couple kneads for good measure, then cover with seran wrap and allow to rest on the counter ~2hrs. Shape into a boule and place in banneton. Allow to rise in the fridge overnight.

Preheat oven + Dutch oven to 500F. Once preheated, transfer loaf to parchment paper and score. Bake 15 min with the lid on, remove lid and bake 30 min more at 450F. Let cool!

do you know about the cryptid museum in maine? I’ve never been but it sounds cool

Don't ever apologise for liveblogging that, it was amazing and I will defend it to my death

consolecadet replied to your post “like i’ve definitely done more technically impressive stuff, but i’m...”

I loved that banner story so much

YOOO STAINED GLASS. Fave. I would love to see what you come up with!

Are you primarily using foil+solder or lead came? I've never actually used came so I have very little advice in that department, though I do want to at some point...

Some things to keep in mind, some imparted to me by my craft center teachers and some discovered by trial and error:

Get a designated box to cut glass over, because the more ambitious the shapes you want to cut, the more shards WILL go everywhere and you want to keep them contained.

If you're cutting glass by hand, you cannot make sharply concave shapes. You will think you can. You will think it can't be that hard. You WILL push your luck. You will end up frustrated. Avoid concave shapes.

If you want to cut concave curves, make them very gently and generously sloped.

If you want to incorporate concave shapes in your design, use multiple pieces of glass to make the curve.

Design with glass in mind from the get-go, rather than trying to adapt a complicated image. If you're designing your own work, try to build it around larger, geometric shapes, without a lot of small fiddly curves. Small fiddly curves DO make fun images, but they will also drive you crazy when they inevitably don't quite fit together right. Make sure you build in enough larger, geometric shapes into your design to anchor your piece and save your sanity.

That said. NGL incorporating things like fossils and marbles and weird shaped natural things is Fun. You can wrap anything you want in copper tape.

Draw or print out your pattern on paper and number each piece on both the pattern and the glass itself. Sharpie wipes off glass pretty easily.

When grinding glass, make sure each piece is ever so slightly smaller than it is on your pattern. The thickness of copper tape seems negligable but adds up when you want pieces to fit precisely.

There are non-lead solders, and they're basically fine, if a little more annoying to use. Lead melts more easily, but I usually use zinc because it's not lead lol. Though if you're not eating off of your stained glass, using lead proooobably isn't a huge deal. Always wash your hands after glasswork regardless.

Tip tinner is your friend! Tin the tip of your soldering iron before and after use, it makes it so much easier.

When you're soldering pieces together, I find laying down a base of thick cardboard, laying out your design on the cardboard, and then using thumbtacks around the edges to anchor the glass pieces in place and prevent them from sliding around helps a lot.

If you want to hang up your stained glass creation like a suncatcher, add loops or hooks, and try to put them at junctures/seams of different pieces of glass to distribute the weight and pressure. My go-to method to make loops for hanging the pieces is to take a metal paperclip, and then loop it around needlenose pliers to make a circle with the wire sticking straight out on either side. Lay the flat wire ends along the outside and solder it down. It makes good secure loops that you can tie a ribbon or attach a chain to, while distributing the pressure along the outside of the piece. And it’s metal so solder sticks to it.

@consolecadet asked: I must of course ask about #29, orb story!

Hah thank you! you both had the same idea.

This is an original concept that came from the idea "cyberpunk-ish future where body-mods are treated like tattoos." There are trendy ones, little ones, common ones, classy ones, cliche ones, but also really bold weird ones that will get you stared at and your parents will be judgy about.

The opening image came to me fully formed:

“I am going to become,” Florence said, as she flopped down onto the crappy couch, “an orb.” “Don’t become an orb,” Rose answered, not even bothering to look away from the kitchenette sink and interrupt the necessary job of washing her dishes. Florence rolled over.  Her glittering bronze-scaled tail caught on the fraying couch fibers.  “I can become an orb if I want.  You can’t stop me.” “An orb doesn’t have hands and can’t help do the dishes when they sit in the sink all day.” “An orb doesn’t eat and doesn’t make dirty dishes.  I still win.” Florence couldn’t actually see Rose’s expression, on account of Rose being over in the attached kitchenette and Florence’s face being smushed into a throw pillow with a cartoon spider in a witch hat on it because Halloween decorations were year-round décor for the truly cultured, but she could still tell Rose was rolling her eyes. “It wouldn’t actually be fun to be an orb.”  Rose placed her bowl in the drying rack with a neat clink.  “You already complain about not having enough hands, and orbs have even fewer hands than bio-humans.  When people change the number of hands they have, they usually go for mods that give them more hands, not fewer.” “Wow, look at you.  Fewer.  English major.  Besides,” and Florence pulled herself into a sitting position, hunching forward so her swept-back horns wouldn’t deepen the gouge on the wall where they always ended up landing, “why are you so fired up about hands?” “They’re handy,” Rose said. Florence threw the spider pillow at her.  It fell with a soft flump far short of the target of Rose’s face.

... but I was never able to decide how to end it. Does Florence become an orb? The current draft has her desire to go full transhumanist and upload her brain into a floating mechanical orb stemming from an uncomfortable interaction at work, that an orb wouldn't have to deal with. Because also Florence is aroace and the whole feeling of being embodied in a human body is one she has overall weird feelings about! But I can't decide whether becoming an orb or not becoming an orb is a more satisfying ending. Or something in between. Also what the primary conflict is. That's why this one stalled out. I'm charmed by the world, though.