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📺 Watched Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 episodes 1 & 2, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

As a kid, family viewing of TNG was one of my favorite things. I had an immense crush on Wesley Crusher (and still do on Wil Wheaton) and fancied myself a bit of a Spiner femme. The show aired from when I was 6 to when I was 12, and in middle school my best friend and I plotted a spec script where a teen flautist is the only one who can communicate with the Crystalline Entity and also befriends Data. We never actually wrote or submitted it. At the time, I thought Jean-Luc Picard was very cool, the kind of guy who would be a great mentor.

Now, at 38, I find myself having very different feelings about Picard, specifically that he is possibly the most attractive fictional character ever. I attribute this not only to my middle-aged hormones, but also to the fact that now he reminds me of my husband (the most attractive real person ever, to me, anyway). His blend of calm and intensity is :chefkiss:.

And now I realize too (and actually have for a while now) that Data’s appeal is about the extent to which I identify with him, for I, too, am a walking, talking computer trying to generate algorithms that will make me more human.

Also, Geordi LaForge needs to be my BFF.

Want to read: Fibershed : growing a movement of farmers, fashion activists, and makers for a new textile economy 📚

Here’s your (somewhat) regularly scheduled voting selfie!

03/02/20 Process Memo

I spent some time this morning installing encryption software so that I can encrypt the data files I will be backing up onto an external hard drive.

I created a spreadsheet to track the initial sources for my sustained, systematic observation and entered the resources Kroski (2015) mentions. I noted the title, author, URL, type (book, tutorial, blog post, etc), and whether the resource was part of a larger portal (e.g. YouTube, Instructables, Pinterest).

As you might expect of a 5 year old book, a few of the resources are now unavailable. Not a lot else to report today, and I expect this piece of the work will continue for a few more days before I start actually taking notes using my observation protocol.

Having a low spoons day today, so I’m working through a bunch of fiddly, errand-type to-do list stuff rather than getting knee-deep in data collection. But I have been reflecting on just the beginnings of this research process somewhat.

I’m an old hand at turning fun into work and vice versa. I did it with my first career as a Latin teacher, and then when I was a Latin teacher and picked up reading and blogging about kidlit and YA lit as a hobby, I became a school librarian. If things had gone differently at my job after that, I was going to steer my work in the direction of the Maker Movement and STEM-to-STEAM. In my two qualitative methods courses, I wrote my final papers about improv, which was my (incredibly) dominant hobby at the time.

Some people find that when they do a thing as a job, they don’t love that thing anymore. But not me, usually. (If I stop loving the thing, it’s less to do with the thing itself being my work and more to do with the work environment.)

So when I decided to make my research about cosplay, it was not a little bit because I knew that if I made cosplay part of my work, I would prioritize it more than I had in the past, and that’s definitely happened.

As part of looking at the resources Kroski recommends in her book, Cosplay in Libraries, I have found myself getting really excited about the possibilities for my own cosplay in the future. While everyone I’ve interacted with around cosplay has been immensely kind, it can be hard to feel like you’re capable of jumping in. There are so many possibilities for techniques you might use when you transition from styled cosplayer (where I still am right now) to cosplay maker, and I’m looking forward to having these resources at my fingertips to help me dig in more.

I think Gillian Conahan, author of The Hero’s Closet, tries to learn a technique with each costume she makes, and that’s my goal, too. For Oak City ComiCon, I’m putting together a Kitty Pryde (Sprite) costume and a Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) costume. For Kitty Pryde, I’m going to learn 3D printing and painting a 3D printed item. For Spider-Woman, I’m going to learn to use craft foam to modify glasses.

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