Hello. Hei. Shalom. Mae govannen. I’m Rae.

And I’m your resident:

  • Writer

    Mostly of drama set in the Paleolithic, but lets be real, there’s a healthy dose of fan fiction in this brain still, too.

  • Cosplayer

    Currently building for Marvel and Tolkien characters.

  • Science Enthusiast

    Lifelong dinosaur nerd who somehow ended up with an arts degree, encouraged by their scientist mother. Go figure.

Where I started…

 

Daydreaming since literally forever. At this age, probably about Animorphs.

 

My grandfather, who was visiting me at summer camp the day this photo was taken, instilled in me a great love of learning. He took me to museums, to the zoo, to the movies, and the theater. We learned to type and to use a computer together. He bought me my first encyclopedia (bless digital; I loved his leather-bound set for the aesthetic but they were heavy) and told me the history of every new piano piece he learned to play. He never, ever, wanted to go a day without learning something new, and neither do I.

…Where I’ve been…

 

Does anyone else cosplay an original character? 10/10 experience, highly recommend.

 

I’ve always been a writer. I don’t think I can ever recall a time when I wasn’t making up stories for myself, and somewhere around grade six I learned to write them down. Creating characters for fiction lead me to cosplay and costume design, and bringing those characters to life. My goal in cosplay has always been to bring a little magic to the world, to do something inspired by and just a little different. And for every costume I build, I like to try my hand at one new skill.

(In the image above, that skill was the double knitting. I hadn’t actually learned to sew yet. But now that I have, I kind of want to make a new attempt at Dumírom. But I have other upcoming projects first…)

…And where I’m going…

 

Is it just me or are we making the same face?

 

I have one other great love that has always been part of me — dinosaurs. From Jurassic Park (and movie trivia) to the latest finds (did everyone hear about that ankylosaur??), I’ll talk about dinosaurs for as long as anyone lets me. And because I never want to go a day without learning something, that love of dinosaurs has branched out much like a cladogram to include me digging into topics like biological- and paleo-anthropology, chemistry, convergent evolution, domestication, virology, DNA and CRISPR gene editing, psychology, food science, and really just… everything.

And that eternal quest for knowledge? That’s what makes me me, whoever I’m becoming.