#windmaster

"But all I have is RAGE."

Ghost King Shi Qingxuan 🍂🌪

Thought of this as I read @marloviandevil ficlet "Drowned in the scream of cicadas".

my original plan for this fan was always to laser cut it out of bamboo. i struggled finding sheets of bamboo so i ultimately bought bookmark blanks to cut one by one into the ribs for the fan. however, the only place i knew for sure i could do this was on campus and the campus fabrication labs are closed for the summer. so i was taking my svgs for the laser and converting them into stls to 3D print them. which required basically relearning blender. again.

i was gonna print them at the library, but after going there to figure out what size the library’s print bed, i found out there were not enough time slots between now and con to print *and* finish them. plus, i was still worried that the prints would be flimsy and cheap looking.

but! i wasn’t gonna give up there, and started looking for literally anywhere else i could go to print my fan’s ribs, and i found a makerspace that just so happened to have 3d printers, a laser, and public hours for three hours once a week.. in approximately 10 minutes after i found this out. so i loaded all of the possibly relevant files onto a flash drive and hurried out there.

and everyone there was super helpful! i got my files re-formatted to actually work on the laser, and one by one etched and cut my bamboo bookmarks into fan ribs :D

i made a mad dash for menards approximately 25 minutes before they closed once i was done with the laser, to pick up the single screw i needed to put it all together, and before i knew it i had a functional fan frame!!

once it was together i made a little tassel with some embroidery floss, put some beads on it, and tied it to the fan.

now all that’s left to do is the calligraphy on the silk habotai i dyed for the fan itself, which i also mounted into my silk painting frame tonight :D i did the dyeing a couple weeks ago and im very excited to get to paint it soon here. windmaster’s coming together!

I finally got to do a canon Windmaster look thanks to @under-burning-stars letting me borrow their cosplay and fan! 🥰🫶

📸 @zenithfables I am so excited to post all these photos! Your talent never ceases to amaze me 💖😭