- Published on
Every handsewn outfit I made for my now-dead space crew rated
May They Rest in Peace
Avery Cauldman (Head of Engineering)
Mr. Cauldman always seemed to walk around like a plastic cowboy who's meant to be able to slot right onto a horse somehow so I gave him the Sheriff Woody footsies. The suit itself is just pink saran wrap fused together with a hot iron.
Use a towel between the iron and the plastic itself if you're thinking of making your own but I wouldn't recommend it as Avery was found floating and asphyxiated several hundred feet from the station with several punctures evident in the fabric. Which probably points towards some structural issues still left to, uhh, haha, to iron out.
The subdermal ventilation tubing he insisted on my installing "for comfort" was poking through at odd angles (like I said it would) and the four separate massage guns he kept in his backpack were left fully charged which really makes me feel validated because I told him three separate times he'd never use them.
All together it's a stocky, solid look. The tubing, though useless, looks kind of space-y and I guess if nothing else you'll always be ready to relieve a pinched nerve, or whatever.
Rating: 👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀 3/5
Emma Rogers (Medical)
Ms. Rogers suit I took as a personal challenge. The headpiece required as large a FOV as possible cuz I imagined she'd probably get splattered with a lot of organs and strange fluids and stuff. So she'd need to be able to swivel her head to a non-soiled section quite often. The end result is probably a little bit of an overcorrection on my part. Emma's reports often complained of it being difficult to sleep as the suit was sewn into her skin along the shoulders. Because otherwise her whole body would pivot and to be fair it did solve that problem.
In an effort to have her better mentally identify the suit as an extension of her own body, I based some of its visual design off her entrance interview videos. She mentioned a weakness for camping, specifically roasting s'mores over a campfire as a favorite pasttime, as well as a passion for Japan which is why I over-pressurized the suit to give it the pillow-y marshmallow effect and added the grey thong I thought reminiscent of the traditional Japanese art of sumo.
The blue tube protruding off her right hip encloses two inner systems, one a waste line that meant she was effectively tethered to the ship at all times, the other a steady drip of intravenous caffeine. In my mind this meant the team would have round the clock stellar medical care but the reports seem to indicate that this wasn't the case so take note if looking to replicate.
Ms. Rogers was apparently often found to be bleary eyed at her station and contributed to at least two major incidents by sloppy scalpel work. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead here, in fact I believe Emma to be largely blameless in this, but it was a big problem.
The fatigue seems to suggest that I misjudged the titrated caffeine ratio. Plans for the next expedition include tripling it, hopefully to better effect.
Emma's body was found still tethered to her medical station, though nail marks on the tubing seem to indicate a last-ditch effort to shed it. Hopefully doubly enforcing that stitchwork will more effectively communicate to future officers the futility of that endeavor, once it's on it's on for good, so it's possible that they'll be able to find better uses for their precious last moments than Ms. Rogers did.
Still, I like chubbymallow look. It's cheery.
Rating: 👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀 4/5
I don't know who this is
Is this just Avery again, I have no idea. My records say there was an Evan Hardring on the mission but is this him? Do I have face blindness or something? He was supposed to be security but I don't see weapons in this picture. Hopefully his role wasn't improperly categorized as the ship is very carefully tuned. If so the least privilege access model would have prevented him from ever getting near the weapons stores. Will have to add a double-check of configs before launch to future checklists.
This is Avery's suit, that's for sure. I must have run out of time and made a duplicate. Seem to have added a blue egress tube on this one as well though have no memory of it. Possible he was jealous once Rogers showed him how I'd done hers.
I wonder if Avery had a twin. Regardless, logs show at least five attempts made by Evan (?) in quick succession to access the weapons bay in the ship's last moments, all denied, which means that at very least the access control system is working as config'd.
I hate seeing this suit again, the blue tube is a pale improvement, and Evan looks like he's spooning a kind of pvc halloween skeleton in there which yucks me out.
Rating: 👨🚀 1/5
John Leads (Mission Head)
Designing for mission heads is always a fraught endeavor. What I was going for here with John was a kind of anonymous authority. The all white should say "I'm the default guy." Though there is, I admit, a very real chance that it sways into too anonymous and Mr. Leads ends up getting lost in the negative space of a perfectly white and spotless section of ship wall somewhere—which, on a space ship, is most walls.
As it was he was just lost in the negative space of—well, space. But I assume the fact that he got sucked out the airlock in the first place meant that he was sufficiently active and leader-y pre-attack and not being a wallflower somewhere wishing I'd given him a more colorful suit. So I'll call that a win.
I like the fact that his whole head thing is mostly clear. I imagined that there would maybe be some scenarios in which he'd need to fully turn around inside of his suit like a weird space owl, the opposite of what I did for Emma. Just looking at the logs it's hard to tell whether that ever actually happened but I hope it did. Also I like the little see-through patch near the heart. It feels very vulnerable and honest which I feel like are important qualities in a leader.
His body was found with puncture wounds that seemed almost obsessively focused around the window itself which seems to suggest that the translucency-as-vulnerability idea made some sort of cross-species semiotic jump?? Very much bears looking into. The fact that the material is both very thin and transparent meant that ships logs show his death as extremely quick and painless which reads to me like a feature.
No large changes planned.
Rating: 👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀 4/5
Clarissa Meadows (Navigation)
I'm really proud of this one. It's hard when you spend most of your time poring over this stuff to really break the mould but let's all just sit back for a second and appreciate Ms. Meadow's boots. God, they are a thing of beauty.
There's actually a very real and unexpected problem I encountered while designing this outfit where it was almost too good. Like, do I trash all the hard work I'd done for the past three years preparing the suits for this round of cadets? Do I throw all of that away because of these boots? It was so tempting because honestly they are a revelation.
But let it be said, I am capable of practicality, even when everything inside me screamed for perfection, I did not let perfect be the enemy of good.
As it was, it was not easy finding a Clarissa. The boots, though highly fashionable, were only available in very specific sizes so I had to go in the mildly concerning order of finding the perfect navigator before I knew if she could, in a sense, navigate.
Now that's not to say that Ms. Meadows was poorly suited to the job. She fit the boots, and I believe firmly that a basic aptitude is all one needs when stepping into a role. Most of the skills that a job requires, after all, are always going to be learned in the first few weeks of taking on the role. To suggest otherwise hazards perpetuating those same harmful and exclusionary hiring practices that led our society to its current level of wealth stratification.
So I was willing to give Ms. Meadows a chance.
Ships logs seem to indicate that she far outperformed even my expectations. She was by far the last to die, with heartbeat records going for hours after the main attack. There are even indications that she had managed to turn the ship around and was attempting to head back to their initial launch point before she, sadly, ran out of fuel—which makes sense.
I have no idea why the fabric of her suit came out so much better than the others but I had halved the normal ease I put into the pattern in an attempt to give a skintight, space-chic, almost a catsuit kind of look, which obviously didn't happen. Actually, looking back through all the suits now it's possible that that number is just way too big. Will consider adjusting.
Tearing my eyes away from those gorgeous boots for a second, it's worth appreciating that Clarissa is also the only member of the crew with blue gloves. I can't take credit for that, though I really do love the idea that crew would maybe need a special glove color to touch a part of the ship to reinforce the access controls. Not really sure where she found those. Possibly were brought from home, in which case, I mean wow, that's a self starter for you. Going to be a real effort to replace her.
Rating: 👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀👨🚀 5/5