🔥⚡️Isa⚡️🔥
@EvilCleverDog
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Designer and maker specialising in costume FX, armour, props and creatures. | She/Her | Mixed heritage POC | Work with me: evilcleverdog91 @gmail .com
London, UK
Joined September 2013
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📌Hi, I’m Isa! I design and make speciality costume, armour, props and creatures for film, TV and theatre. I'm also a cosplayer and video maker.
You can also find me on:
📹
📷
🔵
💸
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Tell me you don't know anything about either costume design or cosplay without telling me you don't know anything about either costume design or cosplay
Netflix with millions / a girl with 100 dollars.
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So with it being confirmed that this is indeed AI art, people need to not buy this book and speak out against Wizards of the Coast using AI art
As the most influential (and profitable) company in this industry, WOTC cannot be allowed to get away with using AI art in their books
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Regular outfit vs in cosplay
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"Women weren't interested in nerdy things until nerdy things became mainstream 5 seconds ago"
The first person to do what we would now call cosplay was a woman called Myrtle R Douglas at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1939.
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Time for a LONG thread on Critical Role, colonialist visuals and the importance of costume design. 🧵
I've been a set, costume and prop designer for 7 years. I have a degree in design for performance. For that, I studied theatre, film, fashion and costume history.
1/21
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WOTC: We’re removing the racism from our game!
Also WOTC: Here’s our race of sentient monkey people who were created to be sold off as slave warriors because of their enhanced resilience!
😐😐😐
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"Assassin's Creed has always been based in reality"
Meanwhile:
“Assassins creed always been based in reality”
Meanwhile:
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DND: If you play this race/class, you should consider playing them with these personality traits and making them this alignment.
Me:
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I am so desperate for a Fantasy show that isn't dark, gritty and miserable, isn't super gross about women, POC and disability, doesn't contain sexual assault or demonise mixed race people, isn't about a race war, isn't Eurocentric and doesn't recycle the same 5 story elements.
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Ah yes, the three biggest players in British politics right now
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“Female warriors are historically inaccurate and unrealistic”
Female warriors ARE historically accurate and realistic, unlike a secret precursor race with magic powers, time travel via DNA or surviving jumping off a tower into a bale of hay but ya’ll are fine with all that stuff
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@RedwoodCreate
I really hate cosplayers being used to drag costume designers/makers - especially as someone who is BOTH professionally and knows the difference between making a costume for a con and designing one for stage/screen firsthand. Just. Fuck off lol.
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So did no one on Critical Role’s team tell them that leaning heavily into the colonialist explorer visuals in the intro video for their SWANA inspired setting with their all white main cast was maybe an extremely uncomfortable idea, or…?
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Seeing strangers flippantly dismiss the harassment, racism and abuse I apparently "didn't receive" from the CR fandom - but is in fact still a stormcloud hanging over how I interact with the TTRPG and cosplay communities - in the comments of a Kotaku article is pretty wild ngl
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There are numerous issues with the presentation of mixed races in
#OneDND
.
DND’s mechanisation of race makes depicting mixed races fraught with issues because of the specific kinds of racism we face – such as blood quantums and being seen as “parts of” or not “full” people. 1/16
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It feels encouraging to see larger outlets picking up on the issue of CR's orientalism, as well as discussing their power as a multi-million dollar company with an extremely parasocial fanbase who harass anyone that dares to even mildly criticise the media they produce.
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Quite frankly, we shouldn’t still need to have discussions about why entirely evil DND races are a problem. This is such basic level shit. And yet white people just can’t help themselves.
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Critical Role as a company needs to take more responsibility than touting out "don't forget to love each other" when it comes to their fandom sending racialised harassment at SWANA/POC voicing legitimate concerns with their content.
21/21
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If you're wondering why you, a white person, are being told you shouldn't make a setting based on "The Orient", the first reason why is the fact that you're calling Asia "The Orient" in the year 2022
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"You've got quite the fighting spirit in you there, I have to say. Most intriguing, and yet no surprise for someone born in hell itself."
Here's my Ares cosplay from
#HadesGame
⚔️
Photos by
@Carlos_Adama
Made using materials from
@PolyPropsLtd
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Can we, in discussing how Jamison & Satine have used their influencer status to harm people, please please NOT turn around and lionise other famous people in TTRPGs, ESPECIALLY when it's Brian W Foster, who sent his 180k+ followers to harass me for pointing out CR's orientalism
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Not reply guy "Marvel fans" decrying Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel as having been made up purely for a show this year for "woke points".
As if her comic, that started in 2014, isn't widely regarded as one of, if not THE, best new superhero debut in recent years.
Keep crying, fellas 🥰
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One of my other concerns with Marquet was how CR and their fandom would react when SWANA/POC pointed out inevitable missteps.
The torrent of harassment and abuse I've received the last two days has unequivocally confirmed that concern.
20/21
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Curse the Sn*der Cut for making people believe that assembly cuts are actually a secret treasure trove of lost amazing footage and not just a normal part of the editing process
There isn't a secret 5 hour version of your favourite film out there and no film needs to be that long
#GodzillaVsKong
director Adam Wingard has enough extra footage for a 5-hour cut of the movie... but don't hold your breath for a director's cut.
"For me, this is the version that worked the best, and I don’t see any reason to do a director’s cut."
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Okay so ya'll need to know about the time my mum's friend asked why I didn't have a boyfriend and my mum yelled from the kitchen, "SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH ARAGORN WHEN SHE WAS 10 AND NOW NO MAN WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH"
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Just because players can attempt to mod some racist elements out of DND, doesn’t mean the racism in the published source material isn’t worth discussing and fixing, or that WOTC are let off the hook.
Players shouldn’t have to do that in the first place.
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fuckin excuse me
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Some people - including the person who sent harassment at me yesterday - are completely misrepresenting what I actually said about the CR intro
Go back and read it
You're just making me out to be an angry, hysterical WOC stereotype with this shit. Also, love the rampant ableism
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The Venn diagram of men who think Aloy should be a Photoshopped supermodel wearing a full face of makeup while she fights machines in the wilderness and men who think it's ""unrealistic"" for women and POC to be present in historical settings is a circle lol
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Orientalism is so commonplace in Fantasy media that it’s easy to get away with and usually goes unnoticed. To them it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If it is pointed out, they’ll aggressively defend their right to create and consume orientalist media.
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Screenshots of the artist confirming they used AI to "enhance" their initial sketches.
imo the sketches have more clarity of design and accurate anatomy/clothing before being fed through AI. It's a real shame, and opens the door for WOTC to use more AI generated art.
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Cultural consultants are incredibly important, but they are NOT a shield. They are certainly not an excuse for non-SWANA to talk down at SWANA with legitimate, valid concerns over what will become the new prominent SWANA DND setting being owned by white people yet again.
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So you can boil down my criticisms of CR to "you're mad bc they wore the wrong hats" if you want, but you're being very reductionist about the power that costume design has.
Design is deliberate. These clothes were chosen for a reason. They have something to say.
13/21
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Me giving yet another of my TTRPG characters a polearm as their main weapon
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At this point I have to speak up on @/LOTPDND, and their recent whitewashing
In their original post they talked about it being impossible to have POC at their table. This is simply not true. There were POC in the show who tried to address issues of racism, but were harmed by it:
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I have never, nor will I ever, say that you cannot put a character in a pith helmet. My point is that you must consider the baggage and message that comes along with that design choice. The context of Marquet makes that a poor choice.
19/21
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No amount of guests, writers, or consultants will change that fact. They stand to profit from this forever.
Meanwhile, no doubt under-represented SWANA creators will be told we're copying Marquet. Or our products won't sell because Marquet will dominate that market (heh).
16/21
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This is sadly a perfect example of why visual design elements, and especially costuming choices, matter a lot more than is often fully dissected when it comes to perpetuating orientalism and colonialism
It’s not a coincidence these visuals were used for THIS intro over any other
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Breonna Taylor isn't a fucking meme. She was a real person who was brutally murdered in her own home while she was SLEEPING. Spreading the word is important but please don't turn her into a goddamn meme.
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But the issue with the Critical Role intro isn't just that they wore pith helmets and keffiyehs in and of itself.
It's compounded by the wider context of Critical Role as a white-led and owned media production company, creating and profiting from a SWANA setting.
15/21
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Soooooo, people masking for Covid precautions, and people wearing types of niqab etc are obviously going to be massively targeted by this. Nice ableism and racism as per usual 👍
No protester should be able to evade justice by wearing a face covering.
That’s why we’re banning them.
Offenders could receive up to a £1,000 fine and a month in prison.
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I had to watch the Prince of Persia movie as research last night and it was terrible, as expected. But it did inspire me to make this (with a little help from
@kreimnat
)
Maybe I should turn a copy of Orientalist Movie Bingo (SWANA Edition) in with my MA research project.
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As an aside, many questioned what else CR could wear in the intro. They assumed appropriating SWANA clothing the only alternative
They could have worn their own clothes. They could've casual cosplayed their PCs. It could've been animated featuring their PCs. Anything else
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it perpetuates a portrayal of colonialist & orientalist SWANA. It, maybe inadvertantly paints them as colonisers going there to (as DND demands) kill things & loot treasure. They're not dressed as their characters. They're portraying themselves dressed as explorers.
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Just because you haven't seen someone discussing that topic through that lens before, doesn't mean it isn't valid.
Costume and fashion are often dismissed in terms of the intellectual weight they carry. This is largely because they're perceived as feminine artforms.
6/21
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Whether it’s CR, the W*chowskis or Dune, white people have repeatedly shown that no matter how enlightened they think they are they will often be aggressively oblivious to Orientalism. Orientalism is so baked into storytelling that people don’t even fucking see it, let alone care
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In the
@aznsrepresent
costume panel I covered how white people unthinkingly replicate orientalist designs because there's few genuine portrayals in popular media. If they don't properly research, they only have lazy orientalist portrayals to pull from & the cycle continues
7/21
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These clothes have meaning. Pith helmets were worn by Europeans colonising African and Asian countries. They evoke cultural trauma still being felt today. Keffiyehs have strong political symbolism in Palestine and were later appropriated as a fashion trend in the west
10/21
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It’s done! Lara Croft’s Immortal Guardian armour from Rise of the Tomb Raider 🔥
The armour and axe were made from
@PolyPropsLtd
foam and I wove the chainmail with steel rings~
Turnaround video below
#tombraider
#laracroft
#riseofthetombraider
#cosplay
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Cosplay Character Cosplayer
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So when I discuss topics like blackface or orientalist costuming, I'm not just talking out of my arse. I'm thinking critically about elements of visual design and what messages they convey through the media they were crafted for.
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The same goes for colonialist explorer visuals. Due to media like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, Tarzan, Uncharted and Jumanji, pith helmets paired with tan coats and keffiyehs have become visual shorthand for "explorer".
8/21
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As I've said before, the size of their platform and the products they'll make mean CR's Marquet will be THE go-to setting for portraying a Fantasy version of SWANA in DND.
As well as this, the white main cast will be the very public faces of that setting.
15/21
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They have a more complex history than I can fit here but you get the idea.
So when white-led production company Critical Role uses these hodgepodge colonialist visuals to portray the white cast of their DND show exploring the SWANA-inspired setting of their new campaign,
11/21
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First Skyrim Dragon Priest mask fresh the mould! This guy was cold cast in bronze powder (which will be more shiny when it’s buffed)
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On top of that I'm a woman of colour in a field where historically, white people have dictated what the parts of the world I'm from look like in media. From the orientalist painters to now, the western perception of SWANA comes almost exclusively through an orientalist lens
3/21
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@thedylanhafer
Ya’ll should watch the interviews Oliver Twixt has been doing with past contestants! Wayyyy more tea than Jay would ever dare to spill in Jay’s Chats 👀 Highly recommend C5 Jayla’s, C7 Eugena’s and C3 Amanda’s as good starting points
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Given all of this, the intro's lazy homage to colonialist visuals in media underscores the haphazard care they're approaching Marquet with.
It's not only the costume choices themselves, but what they indicate insofar as their guardianship of my and others' cultures.
17/21
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This new framing somewhat obfuscates, but still harkens back to the garb's colonialist and appropriative origins. So when Critical Role reaches for that "explorer" aesthetic, they're bringing a lot more with it than just a homage to Indiana Jones.
9/21
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Funny how people only tout out the “overstaturation of superhero media” excuse to talk shit about shows like Ms Marvel, but not for the likes of Batman or Spider-Man. I wonder what the difference could possibly be 🤔🤔🤔
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“They’re not using colonialist explorer imagery, they’re using imagery from Indiana Jones, Jumanji, The Mummy etc because they like those movies!!”
Oh hey lads guess what the imagery and costuming in those movies was also strongly inspired by? That’s right, colonialist explorers
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“There is so much left to discover before the world ends.”
📸
@Carlos_Adama
Honestly I’m still in awe of this photo. Carlos is so amazing 💖
#horizonzerodawn
#hzd
#aloy
#gaming
#cosplay
#cosplayergirl
#foamsmith
#poccosplay
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It means I'm more likely to notice, say, costuming that evokes colonialism than others may be. So I choose to talk about that specifically, because it might help people see another side to the continuing effects of colonialism, orientalism, racism & representation in media
5/21
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The repeated use of language around "natural resilience" in relation to the Hadozee with their strong racial coding and the "created to be slaves" backstory is a WHOLE thing in and of itself.
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Oh, so the reason I got a ton of abuse this morning is because Br*an F*ster QT'd my thread last night. The exact thing he's been criticised for doing to people rightfully criticising CR before.
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Now, obviously you don't need a degree to discuss these topics. But I approach a lot of my critique of media through the lens of visual design, because that's my academic and professional area of expertise
4/21
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Dinosaur reveal: Trixie the baby triceratops puppet is finally complete!
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I still remember when Brian W Foster was parading himself around as a saviour of the TTRPG space rallying against Phoenix and Stone. Me and others were pointing out his own patterns of harassment and racism, but people still put him up on the pedestal he built for himself.
I don't know how to tell you that when someone is found to have done immense harm, the answer is not to make lists of "the good ones" -- it's to have structures in place that ensure that bad behavior -- of any severity -- can be called out early & often before it metastasizes.
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Something in DND that frustrates me is how the game so clearly favours races and classes that are white-, Euro- and/or sometimes Christian-centric.
Elves, dwarves, aasimar, clerics, paladins, druids etc are clearly the golden children with overtly better bonuses & mechanics
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A guardianship they seem to have unthinkingly walked into when they chose to portray this setting with their multi-million dollar platform.
18/21
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Cosplayers who brown/blackface frequently dismiss criticism by saying that they don’t “intend” to offend or harm anyone but here’s the thing; just because you don’t intend it to be harmful, doesn’t mean it isn’t. The racist history of raceface outweighs your ignorant intentions.
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Locking comments to mutuals only because cr*tters can't stand it when you mildly criticise their Favourite Thing.
I'd suggest actually being open to learning from POC/SWANA instead of immediately jumping on the offensive.
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Can't believe I'm wading into this again but wow lol are people still acting like DND isn't more complex, time consuming and expensive to learn than the vast majority of other TTRPGs?
And this isn't to dunk on DND - it's simply a fact that it is.
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I recently applied for an MA in Prosthetics Effects and I just found out that I GOT IN. After I had my interview just YESTERDAY.
I’M GONNA LEARN HOW TO MAKE COOL ALIENS AND MONSTERS AND STUFF FOR MOVIES AND OPEN UP A BUNCH OF NEW CAREER PATHWAYS I’M SO FUCKING EXCITED YOU GUYS
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Me: Seeing Norse/Viking related imagery is a red flag for me because it's often indicative of right wing/white supremacist views
Them: You're reading into it too much
Proud Boys:
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@Ubisoft
It’s not only the imagery that’s harmful, it’s the entire concept of the game. It’d be insensitive and harmful anyway, but it’s also especially poor timing - Inciting hatred towards protesters who’re a thinly veiled allegory for BLM when they’re the people suffering irl right now
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Do the people complaining that it's inappropriate or unrealistic to show a 13 y/o girl drawing fanart know that the age you were supposed to be to sign up to deviantART was 13, and many kids (myself included) joined earlier than that by simply lying about our age? lmao
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It’s my time to shine
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With this tweet gaining as much traction as it has I think it’s important to add this:
It seems as though there’s another layer to this, that the initial sketches that were fed through AI were done by a different artist, and this “finishing” was done without their permission
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Just GM’d my first game of DND and it was actually way more fun than it was scary and
@kreimnat
said it did a really good job 🥹🥹🥹
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There's also a concern (other artists feel free to weigh in on this, I'm not a TTRPG illustrator), that this workflow enables the company to credit and pay someone as a concept artist but not an illustrator, thus being able to pay them less while still having an artist credited?
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Idk maybe the SWANA and South Asian costume designer knows what she’s talking about here, just a thought
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My mum went to the Heath and she saw the mystical Goodest Boy, Wielder of the Great Stick
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This kind of outsized response wouldn't happen if I was white. It also wouldn't happen if I was a ~good, ~palatable WOC and told you that intentions are more important than impact.
Also ffs, I'm not a Critter. I don't do fandoms; look how toxic they are to POC.
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I described the costuming choices as "extremely uncomfortable," & I've been described as toxic, braindead, schizophrenic, r*tarded, harassing the cast of CR, "just as bad as the far right", setting us back 2069 years, tearing the left apart, and destroying America. (I'm British.)
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My Ares cosplay from
#hadesgame
is about half done! Here’s everything I’ve made so far.
I’m also nearly done with the first build video for this costume, which will cover how I made the breastplate, pauldrons and cloak
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I hate it here. So many people asking why the word Paki is "any different" from an abbreviation like Brit or Aussie. idk maybe it's because Brit and Aussie weren't created as racial slurs to incite hatred and physical violence (see: "Paki-bashing") towards those groups.
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Imagine how sick Monica Rambeau's hero suit is gonna look in the MCU send tweet
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/stares at the numerous well crafted and engaging solutions to this problem that members of the community have made without the backing of a massive company/
D&D 5E lead designer says improvements to racial depictions will take "several years" to fully implement.
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BWF’s tweet about me is gone - idk whether he took it down or it’s because I and others reported it. But that’s a big relief either way.
Thank you everyone who was so supportive today or reached out to check on me 💖
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