june 2020: mostly sewing

friday, june 4

• I ordered some rayon rib knit for a mock turtleneck, but customer service emailed me saying that it's out of stock. They had tons in stock when I ordered, and there's still 70 yards left today...How is 70 out of stock? ;-;
• I want the setting for Blessfrey to be like the United States but not quite. I was using something along the lines of Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory series. The Confederate States is definitely an interesting place to study, but I was just using it as an obvious example of an alternative history setting. Really thinking about it, though, the failed U.S. state that interests me the most is Nickajack. The interior of the Confederacy was speckled with pro-Union enclaves trapped within pro-Sucession states. If a particular secession movement succeeded, north Alabama and parts of Tennessee and Georgia would have become the pro-Union state of Nickajack. The idea of Nickajack has captured my imagination since I was a kid, since it comes up in local politics and rants from grownups every once in a while. The disconnect between north and south Alabama persists to this day. Huntsville is a modern booming Southern city, outpacing the other big Alabama cities Birmingham, Montogomery, and Mobile, but the state refuses to recognize Huntsville as a bigger district. Huntsville also pays a lot of tax money into Alabama, but spending disproportionately favors southern Alabama. Not only that, but there's a distinct cultural disconnect, with northern Alabama's history of technology, connection to Nazi Germany, and general higher levels of education, income, racial diversity, and Democrat voters compared to the largely agricultural south. I'm not even sure how accurate this stuff is, though, since this is my summary of years of angry grownup hearsay, I didn't intentionally follow local politics until high school, and I've never lived long enough in southern Alabama to gain a sense of any significant cultural or political differences. At least my husband went to school in southern Alabama, but I don't have access to much more than his experiences. The idea of resolving the general north-south tension through secession is wacky to me. Alabama's political history has a lot of absurd events and figures, too. The Confederate States are interesting and all, but I think Nickajack is a lot more personal and unusual for use as a story setting.
• When I went online to learn more about Nickajack, the amount of sources was shockingly small compared to how often I've heard it discussed. About the best I could do is find books about it that are luckily available at my local library. I guess I should have checked the library first, since the only times Nickajack's come up in my reading have been while reading local historical journals and newspapers in the library's archives. Makes sense, since I only hear about other secession struggles directly from people who used to live in states with similar tension. (Superior vs. Michigan is one I learned through a Michigan-born classmate in 5th grade.)
• Even if I'm not setting my game immediately into the Confederate States, Nickajack is definitely strongly tied to the Civil War and Confederate States. A modern Confederate setting is just extremely controversial these days, even if it would have probably freed its slaves hundreds of years ago and legally recognized the equality of its citizens regardless of race. (It's not like even the general population of a Civil War-era Confederate setting really supported slavery either, but whatever.) The reality of the Confederacy or my representation of it doesn't really matter, though, since it's been reduced to a conversial symbol, representing either (by the left) racism, slavery, and radical right politics or (by the right) the rejection of the expanding government and progressive policies invading the private lives of citizens. No matter what I do with it, it's going to immediately mean virulent angry things to people. The setting of Nickajack really interests me, especially way more than a vanilla rural South, so I'll probably do it anyway because it's unique, but it's probably going to be controversial if anyone ends up playing my game at all.
• To make it worse, slavery actually is a relatively major theme of my setting, but it's more similar to modern day slavery. We still use slavery in labor to lower the prices of consumer goods, but instead of keeping slavery domestic and regulated, we have exported it. Slavery today's just as bad if not worse than the experience of Southern slavery, but it's out of sight, out of mind. That idea is kind of represented in Blessfrey's setting's exploitation of the hollow earth to support its unsustainable local economy (because the controversial hollow earth theory's in my setting, too, lol).
• Whatever. I checked out some cool library books about local history, though. It'll be fun to intentionally study it instead of generally learn it through osmosis.

sunday, june 6

• I feel like I've been so busy with translating manga, sewing new clothes, and socializing that I haven't worked on Blessfrey enough. I kinda forgot I'm so close to my first demo release. That would be so cool. Today I worked on refactoring movement.

tuesday, june 8

• First time going by myself to work on my laptop at the cafe since 2018! They let you go maskless if you're vaccinated and it's usually empty anyway, so I actually got to emote at people.
• Finally got to wear my new lipstick, too. Too bad my rosy mauve Rush expired, and Urban Decay's discontinuing their perfect Vice lipsticks. Maybe I should have bought one last bullet, but I couldn't resist a fancy closeout Becca lipstick. Mauve Truffle was out of stock, so I got warm pink Sorbet. I wore it with Looxi Genesis and JD Glow Good Gawd for a silver-lavender eye with a green shift.
• Let's make a schedule for sewing my new capsule wardrobe:
• Today - 泣き虫 cutting done
• ??? - findings, trims, and accent fabric arrive
• June 13 - turtleneck, pajama pants patterns done
• June 20 - foil, tissue, nightshade cutting done
• June 27 - turtleneck, pajama pants sewing done
• whenever Mood coupon is good for - order Penitentiary, 4x2 knit
• ??? - those arrive
• July 4 - 泣き虫 sewing done
• July 11 - bomber pattern done
• July 18 - bomber cutting done
• July 25 - bomber sewing done
• August 1 - plaid pants pattern done
• August 8 - plaid pants cutting done
• August 15 - plaid pants sewing done
• August 22 - silk turban, silk scrunchies done
• August 29 - wrap pajama pattern done
• September 5 - wrap pajama cutting done
• September 12 - wrap pajama sewing done
• September 19 - kimono pattern done
• September 26 - kimono, 4x2 turtleneck cutting done
• October 3 - kimono, 4x2 turtleneck sewing done
• October 10 - bodice pattern done
• October 17 - bodice cutting done
• October 24 - bodice sewing done
• October 31 - rickrack pajamas pattern done
• November 7 - rickrack pajamas cutting done
• November 14 - rickrack pajamas sewing done
• November 21 - trip
• If I keep moving at a good pace, I can finish 3 mock turtlenecks, a button shirt, a bodice, pants, a jacket, a kimono, two pajama sets, a silk turban, some silk scrunchies, and a pair of pajama pants for my husband. If I go faster, I can also include the two shorts I have planned. Too bad if not, but it's still a big step up from wearing hand-me-downs and my husband's clothes all the time. Plus, pajamas that actually fit will be so great.

wednesday, june 9

• Kitty loves supervising all chores, but his favorite is changing the bedding. He loves when I make waves with the sheets.
• Finally, the character follows a moving target.

thursday, june 10

• I got groceries at Target, so I had to peak into the Gamestop next-door. What happened? Even the Nintendo game section is small now, and 70% of the store is dedicated to Star Wars and anime clothes and toys. It's been trending this way for years, but at least they had a wall of Nintendo games before. They only had a few used games and controllers, and I didn't see any consoles at all. It looks like Hot Topic now, minus band merch.
• Target had lots of corpo pride displays scattered through the store, but Gamestop didn't have any at all lol.
• Blogging