On The Kindness Of Strangers In An Online Community

The university for whom I work has a reputation for being the tertiary educational institution of choice amongst those who require (or desire) distance education. There are likely many reasons for this, not least of all would presumably be the fact that, compared to the vast majority of other Australian universities, CSU has quite a large number of campuses. A direct result of this "global university" scheme that they are trying to pull off is the need for a centralised communications hub, especially given that the majority of students studying through CSU are either mature aged, and cannot travel to a CSU campus to study, or live in isolated regions of not only Australia, but also other counties (such as Canada, or China.)

To this end, CSU has created a number of forums (one for each subject, one for each course, plus a couple of 'extras' as well) to allow students who cannot interact with each other in real-space, mingle in the virtual world - and it is of one of the 'extra' forums that has just made my day today (so much so that I felt that they deserved a blog post!) Amongst the cluttering of spam posts that makes up the General Forum, and the barrage of weirdness that seems to fill the Classifieds (you'd think that they would be the other way around, but no...) there is a bastion of intelligence (most often), information (usually), and entertainment (always.) This haven for those who seek procrastination is officially referred to on the CSU student web as the "Mature Age Forum", however those inside refer to it as the MAF.

That's Right - Everyone At CSU Just Loves Mass Airflow Sensors

Some of my more regular readers (both those who read often, as well as those with good plumbing) may recall that I am attempting to create an Ezio costume for SupaNova this year. What I have not informed you of, however, is just how difficult I am finding this. I mean, don't get me wrong - I've started learning how to sew and, apart from a small incident where I forgot what I was doing and almost sewed a sleeve to my arm, I'm reportedly going quite well. Still, the difficulty of creating this costume seems to lie not in the actual sewing itself (although that will be a challenge) but, at this stage at least, actually figuring out just what it is I have to sew. I mean, sure, I see a picture of Ezio, and I go "Okay, I need a puffy shirt, and I need some kind of over-jacket thing...with a hood...and I need this..cape doodad...and...um..." and then I get frustrated and decide that I don't want to sew any more tonight, and instead I wish to watch TV.

I Don't Know Why I Find This Pic So Cool (I Found It Googling "Sewing Accident")

This needed to stop, because it was happening night after night, and was getting me quite literally no-where in terms of costume creation. Not to mention the fact that I still need to help Elmo with his Zuko (From Avatar: The Last Airbender) costume, Spud with his Hei (from Darker Than Black) and potentially assist Encey with her Haruhi (from Ouran High) costume. So basically, I need to become the sewing god, and I need to become the patterns god, and fast. So I did what any self-respecting nerdling would do - I posted a message on an online community, begging them for help.

And, thankfully for me, they delivered in a matter of less than 24 hours. Yesterday, as I checked back upon my post, I was granted support (and words of cheeky enthusiasm, of course) from some of the more prolific posters including (because I feel they might enjoy being named on here) Jacqueline Wilcox, Susan Cluett, and Julie Bousles (amongst others, but I can't name everyone or I'd be here all freaking afternoon.) Everybody...well...okay mostly the ladies, but still...was so enthusiastic about helping, and seeing how my progress went. It was so inspiring it made me want to rush home and sit down at my machine. Alas, however, I did not have the presence, yesterday, to sew - but come the weekend (or tomorrow afternoon, if I'm not busy cleaning) I shall craft like a flipping...crafty...person...

Now, there is one person who I did not mention above that I want to mention in their own paragraph. Someone on this forum not only directed me to a website that has free patterns available, but they also took the time to study the single image I had uploaded (and, perhaps, done a little research for some other angles), and come up with some (in their words 'rough draft') pattern shape concepts for me. For the entirety of the upper body of the costume. And they made it significantly simpler than the majority of the people on the "outside world" internet wanted to. And so, for this reason, I say it here: Elizabeth Williams, you are my cosplay heroine.

An Example Of The Effort Some People Will Go To For Me

Now that I actually have a bit more self-confidence, and have been boosted by the advice offered by the students of CSU (well, those on the MAF, anyway) I feel that I'm ready to grab myself a role of butcher's paper and get creative with the patterns. I will get myself measured. I will draw on that paper and create from these drawings a rough draft costume. I shall take this draft and from there I shall rule the god damned world. Okay, so maybe that's going a little too far - but you never know what a good costume can do for you until you try.

If They Can Do It, Then So Can I!

The moral of this story is that, if The Simpsons has taught me anything, it's that you can always depend on the kindness of strangers. Similar to this, it has also taught me that New Orleans used to be waaaaaaaay too sensitive about being called putrid, stinky, vomity, vile - learn to take a joke guys. I think they're pretty good life lessons, considering that all Family Guy has taught me is that you don't need to make sense in moving from one sentence to the next. Cheesecake.