by Elizabeth A. Allen
There’s no really good David Bowie morph out there for us digital art amateurs. Sure, there’s a free Jareth preset available for Michael 4 using Morphs++, but it kinda looks like Rod Stewart. So I decided to make my own [David Bowie, not Rod Stewart]. I went for a likeness from the Ziggy Stardust era, and, after a few hours with some free, redistributable morphs by Die Trying, as well as strategic use of D-Forms in Daz Studio, I achieved maybe an 80% likeness using the Genesis figure.
…Wearing a blue silk floral poet’s blouse, peach bellbottoms, and some superfly chunky platform heels that I can’t get a good look at. Oh yeah, and he’s singing an acoustic live version of Space Oddity too.
Med4D offered a time-limited freebie, 80s Gym Set for G2F, including the clothing and hair you see below. It’s a beautifully modeled set with lots of material zones, and the hair especially makes me very happy. Jareth too, as you can tell by the renders below.Continue reading Time for some Jazzercize [TM]!
I got a new Samil bot today: Rema, a character originally for Aiko 3.
As I have repeatedly stated, I love the work of Renderosity vendor Samildanach, but I have long lamented the unavailability of some of her coolest characters. Much to my joy, though, Renderosity has been bringing back expired products on deep discount, and Samildanach offered a selection of her old stuff for this sale. I picked up the greatly coveted No!, Android Blues 2 Naté, and Rusty Dreams Delicious Delirium. Then all my Samildanach characters got together for my idea of pin-up shots. Who knew they were all such hams?
Instead of doing separate posts on each figure, I’ve collected some recent body mods into a single post. With the articulation mods on Marabou especially, I feel like my skills have reached a new level of sophistication — even though the results don’t look very sophisticated. :p
Janet, one of my favorite LHFers, recently got a body, after sitting around in storage as a head! I seem to have a plethora of AA Hasbro GI Janes, so I popped the helo pilot’s head off and painted her neck with red undertones to match Janet’s head, which is an Integrity Toys Janay head [back from when they had a playline].
Continue reading Recent 1:6 scale body mods: Janet, Pearlene, and Marabou
Whenever we encounter something particularly repetitive — especially if it’s a book or a movie that slams the same point home ad nauseam — Jill and I call it “beating a dead horse to death.” Yes, I know that phrase is redundant itself, but it also illustrates that the redundancy we’re referring to is not just useless, but exquisitely overdone. If I really want to emphasize the redundancy in something, I’ll go even further and talk about beating a horse to death, resurrecting it as a zombie, then bludgeoning it into inanimacy again.
All of this is to say that E.L. James’ new book, Grey: 50 Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, is caught in some hellish spin cycle of endless zombie horse torture. It’s right up there with Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun — which is Twilight from Edward’s point of view — in terms of gratuitous fatuity. Naturally, I have it on reserve at the library so I’m first in line to read it when it arrives…assuming I can suppress a) my gag reflexes, b) my pain sensors, and c) my compulsion to throw it across the room.
I should start by saying that I liked the first book in Erika Johansen’s fantasy trilogy, The Queen of the Tearling. While set amidst Ye Olde Tirede Fantasie Elements [princess raised in secrecy must ascend to throne and deal with treacherous nobles while fending off an evil, magical queen who threatens to invade], the book distinguished itself by considering how a young noble woman might fare, coming of age in such a setting. Frankly, I’m bored by princes Finding Their Destinies, but I read The Queen of the Tearling with interest, as it lavishes attention on protagonist Kelsea as she both rises to the challenges of her role and chafes at unfamiliar restraints. The story of a young woman with a bad temper and an egalitarian, reactionary perspective coming into her own in a conservative, sexist, hierarchical society fascinates me. Thus I finished book 1 eager to learn how Kelsea’s new magic powers and the impending invasion of her country would affect her character, particularly her impulsiveness and her reformist tendencies.
Continue reading Not angry at, just disappointed in, Erika Johansen’s Invasion of the Tearling
Flower, June, and Submit accompanied me to VTDL last Saturday. I also brought my 1:6 scale Barbie/Coke soda fountain, which occasioned some fun vignettes.
I’m making a digital set with a gingerbread house, chocolate pond, marshmallow cliffs, whipped cream trees — in short, a fanciful landscape formed entirely of sweets. During my work, I have been thinking about other worlds made of food, including Hasbro’s board game Candy Land, the cottage encountered by Hansel and Gretel in the fairy tale, and the edible forest in the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
At least in the examples of Hansel and Gretel and “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” the food landscape represents a sort of macabre “hunger horror.” The theme of food/hunger runs throughout Hansel and Gretel. The children use a trail of bread crumbs to lead them back home, but the crumbs are eaten by the birds, leaving the children lost and starving; they encounter the old woman when they start eating her house made of food; the old woman wants to turn Hansel into food, so she fattens him up in a cage; finally, when the woman prepares to cook Hansel, Gretel shoves her into the oven instead, thus putting the woman on the menu instead of the kid.
You can tell that Hansel and Gretel reflects the kids’ own food insecurity because everything coded as food is…well…insecure. They depend on bread crumbs to save them, but birds take away this food from them. The edible house may satisfy their empty bellies, but chewing on it leads to their imprisonment. The old woman then begins her project of turning Hansel into food, and she can only be defeated by being cooked herself. Food betrays Hansel and Gretel at every turn. It fails at its express purpose — to provide nourishment and continual survival — and instead leads Hansel and Gretel toward greater threat and possible death. The portrayal of food as an actively hostile force is why I call this “hunger horror.”
In contrast, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” seems, at first glance, a much less horrific text, a merry list of the edible features of the aforesaid mountain: “Oh the buzzing of the bees / In the cigarette trees / And the soda water fountain / By the lemonade springs / Where the bluebird sings / In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Most people these days know just about that much of the lyrics, leading them to cast it as a nonsense song…which is probably why I grew up listening to this song on a children’s record. [The “cigarette trees” may have been censored, however.] Beyond the chorus, though, the first verse features an itinerant homeless man singing “Of the land of milk and honey / Where a bum can stay / For many a day / And they don’t have any money.” As the rest of the song clarifies, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” is a wish fulfillment song for people who want food and shelter. The horror lies in the blatant, obvious artificiality of the fantasy [everything’s made out of food, i.e., processed], which suggests that the hobo’s dream of having his basic needs met will never come true.
Rachel Dolezal has made headlines recently for being a racist liar in her makeover of herself from white kid of Christian missionaries to prominent civil rights activist of color. To support her identity as a black woman, she pulled such shit as claiming she lived in a teepee and hunted with bow and arrows in South Africa, identifying a man of color and family friend as her dad, and saying that her adopted brother [person of color] was her son. Her identification of herself as black certainly helped her get the position of president of the Idahoan Human Rights Education Institute and the presidency of Seattle, WA’s NAACP chapter.
Dolezal’s fabrications remind me of white people who pretend to be Indians. Back when yet another author was revealed to have perpetrated [yet another] lie about her nonexistent Native American youth in [yet another] false memoir, David Treuer, an Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation, MN, analyzed the phenomenon insightfully. Noting that popular culture associates Indians with “tragedy,” he writes that “[t]ragedy is a shortcut that sells.” Privileged white people glom onto Indian identity to partake of the sad history of oppression, invasion, and dispossession experienced by so many Native Americans because such stories garner immediate sympathy. [Treuer also cannily observes that the deployment of Indian melodrama distracts from the fake Indians’ thoroughly mediocre writing. HAH!]
Treuer’s comments on the seductive suffering of [fake] members of a racial group seems particularly applicable to Dolezal’s case. Just as white memoirists find the specter of Indian suffering somehow appealing, so Dolezal appears particularly drawn to the concept of woman of color as tragic victim. I say this particularly in light of her claims that she has been the target of anti-black hate crimes. Investigation into these alleged incidents reveals almost all as dubious at best and spurious at worst. Her reiteration of discrimination claims suggests that she feels herself to be victimized. Apparently the “romance” of the suffering of women of color gives her the vehicle she wants to win attention, sympathy, and righteous indignation on her behalf.
Even if Dolezal portrays herself as a victim here, she does not suffer the most grievous repercussions. I return to Treuer’s comments on fake Indians for perspective: “The real victims are Indian citizens and writers. People who have for so long been denied the opportunity to express themselves. … As for Indian citizens, the more than 2 million of us living in the U.S. who are not fakes — our lives [especially if they are happy lives] will go on unseen. This is the greater tragedy. …” Indeed. Dolezal co-opted an experience of race that was not hers, and she made it all about her. So now the public focuses on a white woman and her fake sob story of oppression, while overlooking women of color, whose experiences of racism, activism, frustration, and success are being overshadowed.
Songs, like poetry, don’t always translate well. Stephen Torrence’s translation of Jonathan Coulton’s “Re: Your Brains” into American Sign Language, however, captures the rhythm, tone, and low-key humor perfectly.
Check out Mari Shimizu’s ball-jointed doll masterpieces, including a doll with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil planted in her chest, a doll with a ribcage infested with imp-like nightmares, a doll whose eviscerated torso has become a shrine to angels, conjoined twins with carven frames as of stained glass windows that look into their chests, and more. More on Facebook.
I particularly like the insistence on the core of the doll as another canvas, as well as the way so many of the dolls are spilling their guts and/or housing other dolls within them. The tension between the aesthetized, pacified child figures and the painful violence implicit in their opening charges them, I think, with a dynamism that enhances the sense that they’re alive. As much as I’m not a fan of Christian symbolism, the references to and postures of saints and crucifixion add an interesting dimension, inviting the viewer to frankly consider the grotesqueries, pain, and torture that Christianity has glossed over and miraculized in the formation of its origin story hagiography.
I also just like BJDs with large, round, ball-shaped joints [part of the reason for my continuing interest in DollMore’s Trinity line]. They hearken back to the rounded joints of late 19th-century bebe dolls. To me, they make the dolls seem both more antique and more weighty.
Someone on MWD asked for dressed shots of Isabel posing, so here they are. Standard stuff, really. Insert your own witty captions here because I’m too tired to make them.
Continue reading Isabel’s improved poseability and nifty pop-out torso!
Isabel’s strung resin ball-jointed body, a 5StarDoll “tiny” BJD body with an Elfdoll Doona Ryung head, has the correct chunky shape for her character. However, I value more than just an accurately fat body shape. After years of playing with action figures whose well-engineered articulation allows for fluid posing, I want sophisticated poseability too!
Continue reading Isabel’s improved body — looks like a BJD, poses like an action figure
Isabel plans the next chapter of Brandeis’ new and better life.
Great! I’m fascinated already! Tell me more, MSN.
“Bruce Jenner introduced the world to Caitlyn, the Olympian’s female identity, on the new cover of Vanity Fair on Monday…”
If I had one of those buzzers that I could hit whenever someone said something wrong, I’d be leaning on it right here. Let me fix that for you, MSN.
“Caitlyn Jenner, Olympic decathlete, TV star, and person famous for being famous, appeared on the cover on Monday’s Vanity Fair.”
The authors of this article apparently felt so curious about gender transitions that they [pick one]:
a) talked to a variety of trans women who have considered and effected a variety of transitions, including social, occupational, legal, and medical
or b) interviewed a straight, white, rich, cis male plastic surgeon about jaw reduction, tracheal shaves, lip injections, hairline repositioning, and other procedures often known collectively as “facial feminization surgery.”
If you guessed b), you’re right! Yes! No trans persons were consulted in the creation of this article. Despite being nominally about trans people, this article is actually an entirely trans-free zone. This makes it easier, I guess, for clueless cis people to satisfy their prurient curiosity without having to do anything uncomfortable like hearing from trans women themselves.
MSN’s complete inability to talk to some actual people actually involved in actual transitions leads to painfully clueless claims like the following:
“Every transgender person’s journey is different. However, facial feminization surgery is typically one of the first considerations for someone looking to make a change.”
Really? That’s news to me. Because I thought that your average trans person in the U.S., who, according to an overview report by LGBT Movement Advancement Project, overwhelmingly experiences discrimination in public places, employment, housing, and education — and who’s also at disproportionate risk for poverty, homelessness, violence, suicide, and murder — is just trying to, you know, get through the day in one piece. But no — apparently your average U.S. trans person, once she decides to do some physical transitions, is saying to herself, “Okay, I’d better move $50K out of my rainy day fund to pay for a series of delicate and invasive operations from which it will require months of rest and recuperation. Let me check my calendar — okay, I’ve got the next year free — let’s do this!”
Oh FFS, MSN! [And FFS does not = Facial Feminization Surgery. :p ]