Texodus Project, take two
I have a lot to say and I need to be heard. I am Aurora Fox. I live in west Texas with my wife, and you probably know us as the artists behind Foxfire Fantasy.
First up, here's our links to contribute to our goals:
In 2014 I launched (and crowd funded) a huge project to document the design and building of three costumes to record tutorials and publish them in book format with a series of companion videos. Funding was only planned for a year of production, so I've been working on it for years now paid for out of our own income. Life has not been easy, but I completed the last of the three costumes in 2021 and have been working hard on compiling the text and formatting the 10TB+ of data into the 500+ page book outline whenever I've been able to find time since then.
Last year this time I was fighting for my life against covid, terrified that I was going to die before I could finish my project and share my knowledge with the world. This year I'm terrified for our immediate safety as trans people in west Texas.
We have been working towards our escape from Texas plan for the past few years, but our covid close call last year ate through everything we had and we only scraped by on the grace and generosity of our friends and online community support (plus I put together a pattern while my brain was actively being damaged by a deadly virus). By December it looked like we'd be able to enact the plan, and we bought a well maintained school bus to convert to a mobile studio and home on wheels so that we could have a reliable and safe place to live and create.
Since then, we have been struggling with reach due to the changes being made to Twitter, like so many other artists who rely on the platform for their income. We have been able to barely scrape by and have been working hard to help ourselves as much as possible, but we are treading water and watching the storm approaching.
Y'all, we're fucking scared. Not hypothetical scared, like only going to the bathroom in public places with the buddy system and always being ready to throw down or contemplating how to throw my own body between an assailant and my wife. Like not knowing if my wife’s meds are going to be criminalized next.
This is not a creative environment. We cannot thrive here.
We just want to make cool stuff for cooler people, and contribute to the community that has been such a huge part of our lives.
So I'm coming at this with a positive attitude! I've always planned to release a large amount of tutorials for free, so to fundraise for our escape from Texas I am going to set a goal to release one tutorial (or one pair of pages for the multi-page techniques) every single day for the next year! This will constitute about half of the expected content, starting with theory, anatomy, biomechanical physics and you, design, and materials and tools overview and then moving to the chemical formulas, molding and casting techniques, patterns and fur prep, and assembly methods and finishing techniques. I will finally reopen the pre-orders for the finished book at the 6 month mark if I am making good progress! At the end of the one year challenge, I intend to have the completed book ready, including the build log sections that won't be released during the yearlong challenge, to fulfill my original crowdfund backers and then release them to the pre-orders!
Plus, I'm going to kick off the excitement with the free release of my most popular pattern, the Legacy Wolf Hand Pattern!
I'll be setting the patterns as a pay what you want (min $0) on our new Kofi, and as always I'll be drafting the tutorials in our premium Telegram group, The Foxfire Lounge. Tips/donations are quite possibly a lifesaver right now, since that's what we'll be using for our escape from Texas.
Our funding goal is $10,000USD to cover the conversion of the bus into a livable self-contained home and studio plus the taxes and fees and transportation costs for getting our licenses properly updated. We've already paid for the bus itself and the transportation costs to get it here, and we have the supplies for the exterior code compliance renovations. We already have a suitable solution for flooring, and we got such a good condition bus that we can skip the teardown procedure and keep the existing insulation. We have already stripped the interior down and we are ready to move on to the floor insulation and the radiant heat tubing as soon as funds are available.
Here's our list of goals we are contributing to the community to achieve. I hope that this will be enough to save us again, because I am running out of time, ideas, and energy <3
Minimum life support
This is essential equipment for survival in a converted school bus. These will be our backup systems as soon as we can get our primary systems installed.
🌡️ 2" floor insulation and plywood subfloor: This would be all but impossible to do later on, and it's essential for our comfort inside the bus in both hot and cold weather.
🔥LPG heating and cooking systems: Until we can get a beefy solar energy system put together, we will need an off-grid solution for hot meals, water, and heating our space. Since these are intended to be backup for when we are not able to use electricity, we have chosen mostly camping equipment that can be operated from easy to fill and exchange propane cylinders.
🚽 Toilet, sink, and shower: One thing that we cannot live without is the ability to use the bathroom, shower, and wash our clothes in our home, especially when these basic needs are being increasingly criminalized for trans folks like us.
🛞 New drive tires: We're going to have to replace at least the front tires to pass inspection. We need to get a quote for our location, but prices are generally $600 per tire including installation costs.
🪟 Window treatments: This is critical for climate control and privacy. The odd sizing of the school bus windows requires a DIY approach, but luckily this is exactly my wheelhouse!
🧊Off-grid refrigerator: If we're going to live in the bus full time, we will need a reliable and safe way to store our perishables. Our solution is a 12v refrigerator, a lifepo4 battery, and a dedicated solar panel.
❄️ Air conditioning: We intend to chase comfortable weather conditions, but we'll need something for the worst times. This small but efficient unit will run on 110v so that we can hunker down in a campground with hookups if the weather is too hot.
🍽️ Low voltage food prep: When it's so hot that we're holed up in a campground with hookups, or somewhere we don't want to open up windows, these can be used with the 12v battery/inverter without overwhelming our tiny power supply.