iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

This included about a dozen break-away tankards! Sugar glass tankards ran about $20 each So I bought $5 of clay and slab-built a table full of tankards. Let them get bone dry. They were capable of holding water poured into them on stage and then smashed gloriously when hit with a regular cup

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

...probably pulling off outfitting a show with over 100 props on a $200 budget $30 under budget When someone had spent $40 on a plastic skeleton*before* I was handed the reins. I was very very good at borrowing, thrift shopping, and building my own

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

It's 85+ degrees and my coastal-acclimated fat ass is absolutely melting On the downside, I got a text at lunch telling me I wasn't cast.😑 On the upside, I went to check on the killdeer nesting on the lawn at my work and BABIES!!! WE HAVE BABIES!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!! 🥰

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Oh You've got to be kidding me... It's been a week and just found out there's still "a role to cast" and I'm gonna lose my mind. 😫 I love the local theater scene but it's going to give me an ulcer I swear 😵‍💫 I've never had to wait this long to hear the outcome of auditions before.

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

I am going to gnaw a limb off at this rate!😩

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Uuuuurgh One more late audition has to happen Gotta wait until they're seen Probably will be stewing in my anxiety for the whole week. Wheee

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Uuuuuugh I hate waiting for audition results. 😑 Just put me out of my misery already.

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I think it may have been The Expanse I'm remembering that used CG hair...

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Hair must be the bane of wirework-as-zero-G 😂 What was it I saw that used practical wirework and then CG'd the hair? Thats the surgical use of CG I love. Though hair is a huge challenge for CG too!

And I always love when the CG is more of a scalpel than a hammer - using it to *remove* puppeteers, for example. Or to merge two practical effects that couldn't otherwise exist in the same space. When it's done right it absolutely makes a shot!

Oh yes I get that! It's hard to have the ball rolling AND Rocky in it and both be practical. But they leaned as hard into the practical as they possibly could. The fact that Rocky was a puppet at ALL is awesome! It's the original Jurassic Park method - CG when needed, practical whenever possible.

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As practical as humanly possible, from what I understand. Also when tasked with finding a voice over artist for the "final" voice of the puppet, they decided nobody could do it better than the actual puppeteer 😍

I can't do horror at all, so I probably will never see either of these performances. But when I say that Project Hail Mary made me weep for multiple reasons... Practical! Everything was practical! Let's get four people to operate a real live puppet!! A zillion LEDs!! Wire rigging for zero g!!!

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WHAT WHAT WHAT!!!!!!! I NEED TO SEE THIS *NOW*!!

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

It was basically this. 😂 Anck-su-namun in body paint hit the screen, and after that I was suddenly questioning what exactly my adoration for Evie was. It was easy to pass off my love for certain lady characters as "I wish I could be their best friend!" This movie made things suddenly make sense.

Image with the caption above - "My sexual orientation is: the cast of 'The Mummy' (1999)"
And underneath is a mosaic of character photos of Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay, Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep, Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan, Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell
And they are all hot as hell.

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This is giving me "create a mural at least a foot to a side of your fave celebrity out of skittles" flashbacks from Gish 😂

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

"Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard Boiled Egg!" Happy Glorious 25th of May, all. GNU Sir Terry

A close chot of a bundle of lilac blossoms, with a fuzzy bee face-first into the flowers

Dr Kat Day (she/her) 🎃🌒 @chronicleflask.katday.com · 04/05/2026

Reposted by Nikki

Always love to be reminded of this. A lot of it was hand-stitched too. Really amazing, precise work. Women’s work is so often minimised and forgotten.

Screenshot:

ALSO, it's not just little old ladies sewed the first spacesuits," it's "the women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed." Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras.
Bra-makers sent us to the moon.
And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn't use pins or re-sew seams because the spacesuits had to be airtight, so any additional holes in them were NO GOOD. They were also sewing to some STUPID tight tolerances-in our costume shop if you're within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you're usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC.

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Still happy I have the gorgeous skirts I *do* own!

Image of a Maya Kern "Cathedral" skirt - black background with stained glass panels. At the top the panels are blue, turquoise and purple, and at the bottom the arches panels show scenes of the ocean with a crescent moon, or a landscape and stars.

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Goldangit, I somehow missed the @mayakern.com sale by a few minutes... Didn't realize that the time the sale ended must have been Eastern time and I didn't have until my midnight my time like I thought 😭 Don't stay on the fence, peeps! Your fave might sell out or you may accidentally miss a sale 😮‍💨

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Ooh you have art prints now!?! And if you ever considered doing blank greeting cards of your designs, I'd love to send my friends morays and caelocanths!

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

My extra stitch markers when I'm knitting! 😁

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Maya Kern has some awesome nerdy clothing that crosses multiple styles of geekdom and is super size inclusive! You deserve awesome clothes now! 💙

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I will always hype Maya Kern's skirts. Hard wearing, ethically made, HUGE POCKETS, size inclusive - & gloriously nerdy a lot of the time! She currently has a Dungeon Delver design (pictured), but I own one of hers that has CAELOCANTHS on it and I love it to bits. store.mayakern.com/collections/...

Image of a woman from waist to knees, modeling a skirt. It's black with orange and pink griffins, dragons, weapons and treasure on it. She's pulling a Nintendo Switch out of the pocket.

Chuck Tingle @chucktingle.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Reposted by Nikki

if you are a bigot or support bigotry or act in a movie built on the profits of hate, people are allowed to not like you 1. because bigotry is bad and 2. because people generally DONT LIKE THINGS THAT HURT THEM. like this is so obvious. it is not 'canceling' it is an exercise in basic human autonomy

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

I haven't worked on the audiodrama idea i had for... years now. But when i got that email from the Podcasting host i'd signed up with saying "oh our TS is being updated & btw, look at all our great AI options!" Logged in and deleted my account so damn fast. Wrote and told them exactly why. Fuck AI.

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Omg! These are so fantastic, thank you so much! I can really use these as section dividers in my novels, even if it gets published?!? 😍

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Such a bright memory for me for so many reasons. The support of my friends, the fulfilling of a long time dream - and getting to dress up in something that made me feel unstoppable. 💙

What's hilarious is we were staying with my friend's mom, & she asked us to come to her dance group's party the night before. "It's 40's themed, I know I didn't mention before and you probably don't have anything but we can get you a hat maybe?" "Oh, NO worries. We are SET!"

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This was huge because my husband had left recently (literally just packed & left with no word while I was at work) and this event was something I'd wanted to do for YEARS. My friend went with me. Drove a whole day to get me there. I made her a killer pinstripe suit to match the theme.

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I had a noir themed writing event. Found a beautiful red wrap dress, did my hair up, made a fancy hat and matching jewelry for myself, even wore red and white period heels. I'm a fat gal. And it's not often I feel confident and *sexy*. And I felt it on that night.

A selfie of me from the shoulders up. I'm pale complexioned, with brown-blonde hair pulled back and in a vaguely 40's style, and am wearing half rim glasses. I have a facinator style hat on with white tulle covering part of my face, matching pearl-and-ruby earrings and necklace, and a red dress with a deep neckline.

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Wish we had you longer, Sir Terry 💙 GNU

Screencap of the quote:

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, #6; Witches, #2)

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

🤦🏼‍♀️ environment, not encouragement. I promise I checked over my actual comment before sending.

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I'm so lucky to have an amazing GP. I told her I wanted it and she was like "yep! I'll order it!" I'll keep going to her even if she moves halfway across the state, i swear.

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Done. Hammered not just the encouragement, but the economic impact. We don't need more communities destroyed by wildfires or major roads closed indefinitely because of landslides 🫤

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Aw man the scientists who work there shouldn't have to deal with that!! 🫤

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

I watched this the first time on mute, and having watched it again with sound, I can say that the caption writer was absolutely bang on. 😂

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

This is the Olympics. The entire thing is based around ego - both personal and country based. If you're not allowed to celebrate *yourself* at a presser *for you* about a sport you just *dominated in*, where the hell ARE you allowed?

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

So a woman should just accept being asked a humiliating question from a man with no pushback because she's more well known than him. Got it. 🙄

Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

What the ever loving hell 😬 Oooooooof

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

I composed a song, recorded it w/ a $100 recorder, scored it w/ audacity & MuseScore. When the audio drama director needed the situation the song was used in to change, I was able to pivot & make tweaks to the lyrics. I don't work in the music industry. I'm nowhere near wealthy. Just my own brain.

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Nikki @brightshadowsky.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Every sci-fi show has a "whoops we've swapped bodies" episode. Farscape is by far my favorite, because they had the guts to do what no other show did. "You walked a mile in my shoes, I walked a mile in your pants..."