by Elizabeth A. Allen
After much toil and trial, I can successfully construct a story, add panels, lay out dialog balloons, drop in pictures, resize them, add tails to balloons, etc. I was having trouble previously because of the particularly obtuse instructions. But now I’m writing down my own instructions as I go, and I’ve discovered actually how to do things!
Goodbye, Comic Life…I’m leaving you for a much more powerful program!
Felix Doll’s Calix looks very much like Geordie’s current plastic form. Since it’s more accurate and cheaper than a Fairyland Pong Pong, I will probably go with Calix for her.
I got my Planet Doll Mini Riz today! I chopped a bit off the neck and narrowed it with the help of an Xacto knife. I also removed the disturbing cone-like breasts. Then I fit Absinthe’s head atop the body, which is much yellower, but I don’t care. She’s about 10.5" tall, and I think she’s beautiful! I may paint her neck and breast to blend with the pallor of her head, but, other than that, I wouldn’t change her. Now she just needs some clothes, since her Planet Doll body is much more robust than the Obitsu body. All she currently has is her nightgown. Continue reading Absinthe has her resin body!
I would like to get the following dolls, the purchase of which I cannot currently justify:
Notdoll Lucy for Little Anneka.
Fairyland Puki Pong Pong for Geordie.
I also really like the following, but have no designated characters for them:
Elfdoll Doona Ryung.
Notdoll Manjou.
Felix Doll Brownie [of various types].
Sleeping Elf Bonbon. Perfect for a 1:6 woman with dwarfism!
Reshot for my upcoming LHF book [BUYBUYBUY], it’s 1.1: Domestic Vampires, in which our fair protagonists get off to a rollicking sarcastic start. I think Anneka’s dildo is about as big as her bedside lamp.
I just figured out how to change the default font in Comic Life. For a program that is universally hailed as easy to use, it sure has obscure methods for doing important things like getting rid of the nasty default font. I hate the program a little less now…I think…
Requiem aeternam,
dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Grant unto them
eternal rest, O Lord,
and may light perpetual shine upon them.
Michaela in a Lady’s Mission nun’s habit lent to me by D7ana. Continue reading …Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Terror is the abject, anticipatory dread you feel before something awful happens. Horror is the abject state of shock and disgust you feel after the awful thing occurs. Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.
He will help her lead a more independent life [she has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome], but she has trouble affording the cost of him and training and all, especially since her car needs a lot of repair. Story here with Paypal link.
Righty-o, so I’m reshooting all the eps of LHF that were done in digital renders because digital renders are ugly and impersonal compared to the warmth and flexibility of my dolls. I can approximate almost every digitally rendered ep without trouble, except for 2.1, "Homecoming Costumes." It’s basically a joke ep in which Anneka and Will wonder how to cover themselves up so they can drive to Vermont without sunlight hitting them and burning them. They consider options from their huge stash of kinky roleplaying stuff: Continue reading Brainstorming sources for unusual 1:6 accessories
It is compact, portable and perfect for removal from my desk so I have more room to take pictures. Also it weighs less than a gallon of milk. Also it was disgustingly inexpensive, insofar as these things are quantifiable. It should be here by the end of this week!
Previously on LHF: Anneka explains to Will that the guy who felt her up in the Nightcrawler is her abusive ex, Thomas Fell. At first he seemed glamorous and sexy, but soon his nasty temper and manipulative behavior showed through. Even now, Anneka gets bad memories from his ill treatment of her. She goes out with Pippilotta, Rori, Davry and Andrew in an attempt to escape her flashbacks with karaoke, but she feels smothered by their insulting solicitude.
Meanwhile, Will consults Mark for advice. He tells his best friend that he’s worried about Anneka, but somehow the conversation gets derailed. Will ends up professing his love for Mark.
Anneka decides that she needs some space. Though Will offers himself for her to do whatever she wants with, Anneka declines. Instead she wants to head to her parents’ house in Vermont.
With Anneka gone, Will bemoans his "sorry relationship" with Velvette and Viktor. Each of the three friends has their own troubles. Velvette wants to move to Provincetown with girlfriend Gemini, but she feels tied to Cambridge by her obligations to take care of Janet. Viktor has been programmed to be Sibley’s sex slave, but Sibley has banished him, leaving Viktor unable to perform his duties. Will feels increasingly estranged from Anneka and knows that he should probably break up with her, but he’s wallowing in too much self-pity to do so. Velvette and Viktor give him a metaphorical swift kick in the butt and tell him to stop whining and do something constructive.
Up in Vermont, Anneka spends time with her family. Her grandmother Mamie interrogates her about her "queer" nocturnal habits, which Anneka excuses by saying that she has anemia. Anneka asks Mamie what she does, now that her wife has died; Mamie talks about staying busy managing the estate and photographing sunsets. Despite Mamie’s curt exterior, Anneka sees that Mamie is greatly devoted to both her and Minerva.
Anneka dreams that she and Minerva are in a fall cemetery. She does not want Minerva to leave, but Minerva says it is time for her to go. They sing Gaudeamus Igitur, a rather morbid song by which Minerva taught Anneka Latin. Anneka finds herself alone in her dream.
Anneka swaps stories about Minerva with her parents Alexandra and Max. She feels happy to share in-jokes with them, but Will, over the phone, worries that Anneka is spending too much time up during the day. Anneka argues that her time with her family is necessary and therapeutic, especially since Will can’t understand her grief the way that they can. Stung by her self-conscious separation between him and the rest of her family, Will says to Anneka that he thinks they should break up.
In which Velvette wonders how Anneka got so dumb.
Everybody slurs their stilted speech as if they’re all tranqed, at least until the last half-hour, when suddenly a chase occurs. The viewer realizes suddenly and irrevocably that no one has any talent in this movie except Billy Burke as Bella’s dad and Robert Pattinson as Edward. The viewer ceases to be intrigued by the murky, pretty colors of the depressing, pretty scenery and falls asleep, despite the pointless chase scenes trying to compensate pathetically for the complete lack of plot. Danger and death do provide a certain illicit thrill, a primal libidinal allure that we cannot distinguish from fear because, at base, all our emotions are a type of arousal, but viewers will certainly find no exploration of the allure of the deadly in this movie. The vampires are not deadly in this movie; boredom is.
You know why? Because, all too often, characters with disabilities appear in pop media as one-dimensional fictional entities, lazily "developed" by having what I call compensatory strengths. Such compensatory strengths are supposed to sort of narratively cancel out the characters’ disabilities, but this never happens. In fact, the compensatory gifts just highlight the characters’ disabilities even more so that the characters, instead of being well-rounded, interesting individuals, end up being portrayed solely in terms of their disabilities.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about with compensatory gifts, look at a few characters from comics and movies. The X-Men’s Professor Xavier, who has mobility impairments requiring the use of an electric wheelchair, "compensates" by having a mutation that allows him to basically move mentally among all the mutants on the globe. Another comic superhero, Daredevil, gets blinded by radioactive waste, but conveniently compensates by developing his non-sight senses to superhuman levels. Another character with blindness, from the movies this time, is Ivy, protagonist of M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 movie The Village, who is blind, but somehow sees the goodness in people instead. As you can see, in each of these cases, the characters’ super abilities are directly tied to their disabilities. In fact, their super abilities all offer workarounds for their disabilities, effectively canceling out the characters’ disabilities.
In an especially egregious example of compensatory endowment, Daphne from Heroes has the power of superspeed. Somehow her zippiness "compensates for" and overrides her cerebral palsy, which is a disability so shameful that, when she loses her speed and has to go back to wearing leg braces [THE HORROR!] and using crutches [OH WOE!] in 3.10, "The Eclipse, Part I," she hides from the entire world in ignominy. In Heroes, Daphne’s CP is equated with tragedy, limitation, reclusivity, sadness and rejection. Her compensatory gift, super speed, provides her with glamour, adventure, riches and happiness. Yet, though she may seem to have some interesting contrast between her past, disabled self and her current, speedy self, she really doesn’t. Heroes, like all other lazy pieces of pop culture artwork that use the trope of compensatory strengths, shows no interest in exploring the psychological flux that might realistically go along with great strengths in one area and great deficits in another. Nope, Heroes just wants to make a dramatically compelling character, so it gives Daphne a tragically crippled [I’m using this word because you can see the show thinking it] past. Wow. That’s so deep.
What the lazy shorthand of compensatory endowment ignores is the simple reality of actual people with actual disabilities, to wit: Amazingly enough, people with disabilities don’t necessarily go around bemoaning the fact that they have disabilities. In fact, people with disabilities are much more likely to bemoan the ignorance, stupidity and inaccessibility of people and institutions. Some people with disabilities even accept that they have disabilities and, instead of "overcoming" them or "compensating" for them, accept their disabilities as a fact of life and go on about their business. And, stupendously enough, when you take a look at the types of lives that people with disabilities are living, they’re not, at base, fundamentally different from the lives of people without disabilities [although people with disabilities do daily battle with ableist people and institutions that may not be apparent to people without disabilities].
Ya know — sometimes characters with disabilities are just your average, normal, run-of-the-mill people who DON’T feel the need for pity-based super-endowments given to them by lazy, paternalistic, condescending creators to soothe the supposed horrid angst that characters with disabilities have over not being people without disabilities. Newsflash to dipshits: Creating a disabled character with a "compensatory" ability is not inspiring, unusual, original or desirable. By making a character’s notable traits the narrative inverse of his or her disability, you still end up defining the character by his or her disability, and that is a dehumanizing, reductionist simplification demonstrating only your limited, shallow imagination and your inability to see people with disabilities as people first.
I bought a Planetdoll Mini Riz off of DOAer tinybear. She will supply Absinthe’s body, with a few minor complications.
Anyway, I got my Riz for $200, which includes dolly, eyes, wig, faceup, dress and insured shipping with tracking. That’s an unbeatable price. Ideally, I would have liked a white one to match Absinthe’s head, but I couldn’t resist the tinybear fur wig, which will be repurposed for Little Will. This Riz also comes with a charming, lightly done set of freckles that I really like. She also comes with this white shift that tinybear made, which will be very helpful as an interim outfit [and old-fashioned nightgown!] as I attempt to find out what clothes will fit Absinthe’s new body.
I’m eagerly looking forward to the Mini Riz body for Absinthe. From what I can tell, it will pose expressively, even without wiring. [Look — she’s touching her face!] I really hope so. As a bonus, the body comes with an adorable headsculpt full of character. The head is currently unassigned, but I am sure I can make good use of it…..
After the great success of its original and striking series of monthly dolls inspired by zodiacal symbols, Soom has now created a mythical world with different zones pertaining to different elements and different doll characters as representatives from each zone. In practice, this means more dolls with limited, androgynous headsculpts, weird, fetishy outfits and therianthropic parts.
March’s issue, Cuprit, illustrates Soom’s smart capitalization on the most popular aspects of their previous monthly dolls. The Ice Queen character has pointy ears, horns, wings and hooves. The only thing that could make her even more desirable would be vampire fangs.
Though I hear some people grumbling about yet another doll with hooves, the majority of people interested in Cuprit are gushing with enthusiasm, even though her therianthropic parts have appeared on previous issues. Bravo, Soom. You know what sells, and you’re making money while making a lot of doll owners very very excited. Continue reading Savvy Soom knows what sells.
Now I know why Will has his eyebrows painted into such exaggeratedly happy upward curves. He’s compensating for a childhood during which during which his eyebrows were exaggeratedly depressed downward curves.
I did the faceup with chalk pastels, sealed in matte and satin varnish. To prepare the surfaces I wanted to paint, I gave them some tooth by laying down an initial coat of matte varnish. I know that my results do not achieve the delicately applied, gauzy, symmetrical, subtle effect idealized by so many painters of Asian BJDs, but I don’t paint my dolls for perfection. I paint them for character, in all its asymmetrical, messy, uneven, unpredictable forms. My stylized paint job quickly communicates personality and expression, which is what I want it to do. Why should I waste time with meticulously presented layering if I can achieve my desired effect my way?
Little Will is my saddest doll ever. Continue reading Little Will 3.0 with faceup
I got my Notdoll Miriam head in today. It was going to supply the head back for Little Will, but, on a whim, I put the whole Miriam head on his 20cm Elfdoll body. It looks much more suitable than the custom painted Kathlen head. While Kathlen has a large head with a smooth facial sculpt and a small smile, Miriam has a smaller head with a built-in pout and bags under her eyes. Miriam’s brow ridge is also slightly more prominent. She’s sculpted to be unhappy. Here’s the latest Little Will, a Notdoll Miriam head on a 20cm Elfdoll Kathlen body. Needs eyes, faceup and hair. DANG! Just when I thought I was finished with him…. Continue reading Little Will 3.0
My wife showed me this Jinx T-shirt, which is almost worthy of purchasing. I had a good laugh.
Verdict: A dense, moist, fluffy cake, substantial, but not as heavy as pound cake, this lightly flavored grapefruit cake is perfected with a grapefruit glaze that cuts the sweetness with a zippy bit of citrus flavor.
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Made by my wife!! Continue reading Grapefruit yogurt cake, now with pictures!
RaceFail 2009 [in which white sf/f writers are called out as racist by POC readers, and waaaaah, the white writers' feeeeewings are hurt, so they throw insults and won't listen to POC's reasoned, increasingly exhausted arguments, la la la la la WE CAN'T HEAR YOU], the correct response is not to pick up your toys and go home. [RaceFail '09 threads compiled by rydra_wrong. Pout'n'exit executed by davidlevine and deconstructed by multiple people, including tacky_tramp.] A more productive response is to:
1. Acknowledge one's racism.
2. Educate oneself through reading, listening and paying attention to POC and their experience. Coffeeandink has a collection of links to start with here. So does zvi_likes_tv.
3. Don't stop with baby steps. Actually change your life and perspective.
4. Continue creating art and learning from your mistakes.
Taken from a list via twilightsm about surviving horror movies and annotated with my own RHPS-specific comments. Continue reading Rocky Horror survival tips
So I watched the first 30 minutes of Twilight last night before my copy crapped out. It was so boring. I liked the pretty colors on the screen, very gloomy, dense and rainy, but the stupid, empty script, combined with the endless staring, drove me up the wall. Kristen Stewart may be hot, but she apparently has Jennifer Connelly Syndrome: an inability to keep her mouth from hanging open. Rob Pattinson has a fascinatingly angular profile, and his acting is a damn sight better than Stewart’s, which, in this film of feeble performances, is not saying much. The movie Bella has all the personality of a piece of uncooked tofu, while the movie Edward is prickly, insulting, pissy and completely unattractive. I don’t know what these characters see in each other.
I can’t quite distinguish between Notdoll and Roxydoll, so we’ll just call all dolls on the site Notdoll and forget any distinctions. I own a Tan Lucy [Susie] and a Miriam head [in the mail]. I also like very much, but will never get, their new issue, the 10cm Baby Manjou. Unlike most 1:6 resin approximations of babies, it’s not horribly deformed in its proportions. At the same time, it’s also extremely cute. I’m not really keen on their NDLC Lady, Man or Nari-pon lines, but their 1:6 dolls with realistic sculpts are utterly charming.
In which Anneka and her parents reminisce about old times, but are interrupted by Will on the phone.
Comments: Hooray, a reappearance of Anneka’s mom and dad! I don’t think Anneka gives Alexandra and Max enough credit. I know she thinks of them as demanding, perpetually unimpressed and kind of condescending, but it’s very obvious to me that they love her very much and want her only to be happy.
It may be difficult to see, but Will has an array of food around him in the kitchen. There’s a fruit tart over to the right of him when he first appears. On the table he has potato chips, some sort of huge drink and meatloaf. Here we have more evidence that vampires eat food for nostalgic and comfort reasons.
LHFers as of 3/22/09, all 42 of ’em. Continue reading All my LHF dolls, 3/22/09
Geordie: 6 in., 15.24 cm.
Little Will: 7.8 in., 19.81 cm.
Susie: 7.8 in., 19.81 cm.
Little Anneka: 8 in., 20.32 cm.
Margie: 9.4 in., 23.88 cm.
Davry: 9.8 in., 24.89 cm.
Absinthe: 10.4 in., 26.42 cm.
Chow: 10.4 in., 26.42 cm.
Tituba: 11.3 in., 28.7 cm.
Continue reading Small dolls comparison…the short characters of LHF.
I have 3 Elfdoll Kathlen faceplates [no thanks to the USPS, which ATE my fourth >: ], but only 2 head backs. In my search for a third [for Little Will so that Submit can have hers back], I noted that DOAer misa1 was selling a Roxydoll Miriam head. The head back of the Miriam head resembles the head back of the Kathlen head, so I think that I can jam Little Will’s face plate and the Miriam head back together to create a better head that the squishy plastic head back I currently have for Little Will.
That leaves me with an unused Miriam face plate.
In other BJD news, Little Will still needs an appropriate wig, and Absinthe still needs an appropriate body.
In BJD wishes, I’d really like to get a Fairyland Puki Singing Piki faceplate for Geordie. Hell, I’d really like to replasticate her as an entirely resin BJD, Fairyland Puki Singing Piki…
…And, while I’m REALLY dreaming, I’d also like Elfdoll’s Doona Ryung just because she looks so mature and pissy.
I feel like I’m starting a Home for Unwanted 1:6 BJDs here. I started off with my 2 cut-rate Kathlens from Dolls and Friends’ going-out-of-business sale, then continued with a tanned Lucy who’d been on the DOA marketplace for a while. Now here comes the Miriam head, which is one of maybe 3 Miriams on DOA, and I was the only one who showed any interest in her.
After being commissioned about 2 months ago and having his open-eyed plate eaten by USPS 1 month ago, Little Will has finally gotten his free faceup from tiffanyjbt, and he has successfully returned to me. Hooray! The faceup is pretty much as I requested, and it does a great job of making this otherwise perky and cute headsculpt look weary and worried.
After 2 months of annoyance, Little Will is STILL not finished. As you can tell from the flyaway mess on his head now, he needs a real wig, one NOT made by me out of spare Barbie hair….probably a mohair one.
When Little Will gets his little hair, he will finally be done. Then I want him to earn his keep, so he’ll pay me back for all the cost and aggravation associated with his creation by getting his own side plot.
Speaking of side plots…
Wow, it’s BUSY in LHF land!! Continue reading Little Will doll is back after much travail.
She might, according to DOAers. If that’s so, then that’s an even greater incentive to get such a body for Absinthe, since I really like the Agnes Dreary clothing.
While I’ve got an interest in Tonner 12-incher clothes, I might also note that Marley, Alice, Lyra, Dorothy and Gerda are the same size. Do they have anything interesting??
Well, somehow the French buyer for the Dollshe body argued her way out of paying customs fees on the full insured value, and she only ended up paying them on the postage and a nominal value. So, anyway, she’s happy because she got the body parts [and some extras] in perfect condition, and I’m happy that this needlessly complex transaction has completed…also that I have half a thousand dollars heading toward my furniture bill!
Sardonix’ Thaasa body is still up for sale, but no one wants it, so she’s staying. In yet another sure indicator of economic crap-out, the DOA marketplace has slowed considerably. In fact, I see on the DOA marketplace some interesting trends that show anecdotally how shittily we are in the economic shitter:
All of these indicators prove advantageous to buyers, but there aren’t as many buyers these days as there are sellers.
On Flickr, NickIsConfused has a set where he took pictures of a Star Wars walking robot AT-AT toy so that it looks like a house pet.
So I got a 12″ Character Options Martha Jones doll in a trade from corsetkitten today. She has a marvelously molded face with a welcoming, neutral expression, a simplified and realistic paint job and a passable likeness to Freema Agyeman. Actually, the doll has a longer, wider face with larger, less classically beautiful features than the person it’s supposed to represent. I think that only adds to her realism, however. Furthermore, her hands are small, proportionate and intricately sculpted in useful relaxed positions, including the character’s jewelry. I love her face and her hands.
I really hate the cheap, poorly constructed body, though. It completely lacks aesthetic appeal. The upper arms and upper thighs are not perfectly cylindrical, so any use of the swivel joints shows how the upper and lower parts of the limb do not perfectly mesh. Furthermore, the double-ganged knees and elbows have horrible notches at the tops and bottoms, making the bent limbs look unrealistic and hideous. In fact, I have no idea why the Dr. Who dolls have double-ganged limbs because, unlike other double-ganged limbs with better joint designs [e.g., Obitsu, CG, DML…heck, pretty much anything], the double joints actually add nothing to the poseability. You can’t see the nasty articulation under her clothes, but trust me…you don’t want to.
Anyway, may I now present the latest character in LHF? I don’t know who she is, but she’s certainly not Martha Jones or even Alicia Simms [who I had originally planned to enplasticate with this fig]. She isn’t even finished because she lacks Pink Hair of Awesomeness. However, she is quite adamant that her FQ [Fabulosity Quotient] is astronomical already!
She’s wearing a dress by Andrea, stockings from a BBI Goth Angel, shoes from a Mattel My Scene horror and a 1:1 stained glass earring dangling in her cleavage. Believe it or not — I actually spend quite a bit of time deciding how to dress my characters in the LHF style [whatever that is]. Continue reading So delicately sculpted, so poorly constructed
…If you hang in there until the end of the second week of April, and everything’s copacetic after that, you will be rewarded with many beautiful things…such as, quite possibly, a 1:6 spray bottle [see bottom of the page] and a body for Absinthe [with bonus head!]. Now go back to work.
Support 2 great causes: AIDS advocacy/research AND foiling homophobic bigots!
Westboro Baptist Cult protesters are scheduled to protest for 50 minutes on March 20, from 11 AM – around noon, in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. Pledge a set amount for every minute that the WBC dingdongs hang around, and, after they leave, your pledge will be multiplied for the total number of minutes that they stayed, and the total will be donated to Cambridge Cares About AIDS, a local organization for AIDS education and advocacy for PWAs. Go to the CCA Web site to pledge. Then go here and enter your donation information so that the amount that you pledge will be added to the total tally of money that the dingdongs are raising.
Some people look really good in them! Obviously our good friends at ugly_crap are unimpressed, however.
Will, however, is VERY impressed.
In which Will tries not to feel sorry for himself. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=323
Comments: Here’s the conclusion of the My Sorry Relationship show. Watch out, Will. Velvette’s obviously sick of trying to teach you some sense.
Well, he sure gets points for consistency. I suspect he’s constantly baffled and frustrated by the failure of the world to live up to the gendered scripts running in his head. I mean, for God’s sake, HE’S following them! He attempts to be the dashing, noble, protective, dominant, aggressive, macho, sex-obsessed dude that he’s scripted to be, so why aren’t the women he’s interested in adhering to their proper submissive, passive, biddable scripts? Continue reading What the hell is up with Thomas Fell?
I used my magnifying glass and my macro setting on my camera to take a portrait of Absinthe. This is how she sits on my desk, her head bent, her voluminous hair obscuring her closed, inward-turned face and shy, thoughtful smile. She turned out exactly the way I wanted her to [except for her damn plastic body]. Continue reading Absinthe in my latest lazy lens experiment
In which Absinthe demonstrates to Margie that real life does not follow romance. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=316
Comments: Previously in our side plot, Dead Girl’s Diary, we were following the adventures of the person who vamped Will, his ex-girlfriend Absinthe. She was writing, with great sadness, about the pivotal events in her 200+-year life, especially how she loved her Native American grandfather and also Will. Her “foster mom” Margie then interrupted her, announcing to Absinthe that she had mail. It was the Metro Moonlight, which Absinthe now reads.
…Obviously she’s reading the gossip section. Actually, I imagine the entire MeMo to be written in the same nosey, sensationalistic tone; it reinforces the concept I have of the vampire clans as citizens of a very invasive small town. :p
Franklin, Massachusetts, is on the coastline south of Boston called “the South Shore.” Salem, being north of Boston, is on “the North Shore.”
Val alerted me to the fact that a rough draft of the Song of Solomon has recently been discovered. This is evidently the version that was written when the collaborators were drunk, high, feverish, hallucinatory, sleep-deprived and suffering from concussions. Continue reading News flash: early version of Song of Solomon unearthed!
melopoeia advertised LHF in general on March 8th, saying:
That we all have these stories inside us are why books like The Graveyard Book do so well. We don’t just love vampires and ghosts.
We are and we carry within us vampires and ghosts.
D7ana and I have been talking about the magnifying glass "lazy lenses." On March 10th, she posted about her own experiments with magnifying glasses, but she started off addressing her entry to me:
An aside here, but your aged your grandmother figure is admirable. I would guess you used wax and paint to convey her chapped lips and weathered skin? Excellent job. Gives a genuine, aged look without making old, caricature.
Thanks, guys. 4.8 has been extremely well-received by all readers.
This Family Fun project could be adapted for use in 1:6.
…tastes like corrugated cardboard impregnated with glue.
Earlier I mentioned the possibility of using a magnifying glass as a cheap telephoto lens. In today’s ep of LHF, you can see the results of my experimentation. All close-ups of Anneka and her grandmother were taken with me holding the magnifying glass right in front of my lens with my camera on the autofocus for close range. The magnifying glass, which has 2x power, allows me to get a bit closer to my subjects and fill the frame with super close-ups. I’m pleased with the results. I just have to remember to angle the glass correctly so that it does not catch glare from the lights.
My shitty temporary one, a 27cm Obitsu with hacked legs, barely fits her old-fashioned bloomers. She looks fine with clothes on, but the poor quality of her plastic body underneath her clothes bothers me.
We went to Salem, ostensibly to take LHF photos and wander in cemeteries. We ended up capturing thrift horrors in Witch City Consignment and Thrift Store, displayed here for your delectation. Continue reading Horrors from Witch City Consignment and Thrift Store, Salem, MA
I like almost every item in Rement’s 2004 set, Vintage Home Appliances, but these things command ridiculous prices on Ebay. Look — the phones, toasters, blenders, sewing machines, etc., all have a design that would be perfectly at home in any living quarters from 1950 to the present. Continue reading Really cool — but unfortunately out-of-print — Rements
1. Joss Whedon. Just because he was behind a clever movie [BTVS], a generally awesome TV show [BTVS], two better-than-average TV shows [Angel and Firefly], an acceptable movie extension [Serenity] and an intermittently witty but mostly flaccid Web movie [Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog] does not mean that his latest outing, Dollhouse, is automatically wonderful.
2. Alan Moore [and Zack Snyder]. V for Vendetta is overrated; for a comic book, it has art equivalent to the poorly mimeographed ads in the back of my childhood Archie serials that wanted me to send $1.25 to a PO box in New York so I could get a box of "hilarious" practical joke devices. Watchmen is overrated; for a story about a whole world on the brink of collapse, it conveniently disregards the female population, except insofar as they are defined by sexually abusive relationships with wankers. And both Alan Moore and Zack Snyder are overrated; both of them are too busy staring at the magnificence of their own egos to register the fact that the world contains individuals besides tragic, conflicted, chisel-jawed men.
The people who need to be notified of these not-God individuals — namely, the Whedon wanks on Television Without Pity’s Dollhouse forums parsing every moment of dialog looking for "Jossian greatness" and the Moore/Snyder posse who seriously believes that the Watchmen movie is on par with The Godfather trilogy [seriously?!] — are not going to listen to me. However, if you happen to be of reasonable sanity and you wonder what all the spooge in a teacup is over these not-God individuals, rest assured that you are not missing anything in avoiding either Dollhouse or Watchmen. I’ll keep you updated on the off chance that Dollhouse improves. Anyone associated with #2, however, is a lost cause.
To conclude, the following people are God.
1. David Bowie…or, more precisely, his Area. That is all.
Because I am notorious for wanting the best results with the minimum amount of effort, I pass along this possibly intriguing tip, which D7ana alerted me to. Apparently an easy way to increase the macro function on one’s cheap camcorder is to put a magnifying glass in front of the lens. See video by k6yarddotcom for proof. Because I do not feel like dropping huge amounts on extra super special lenses [and because I am too lazy to learn how to use them], I shall try this with my digicam and report on the results. I just need to find a magnifying glass….
Apparently good for sticking Rements in dolls’ hands or eyes in dolls’ heads WITHOUT leaving nasty residue or stains. Clearly, it is a Miracle Substance. Only $5.75 plus shipping and handling from Aftosa.
Round 1 was when she was an action fig head on a cut-down Toy Biz body. Round 2 was when she was an Elfdoll Kathlen head on an Obitsu 27cm torso with Obitsu 23cm legs. Since the large torso and the small legs didn’t fit together very well, I got her a whole new Obitsu 27cm body with the intent to cut down the legs to an appropriate length. After all, I have experience doing so in the form of Geordie.
I’m currently stumped, though, since the Obitsu 27cm, despite its appropriate scrawniness elsewhere, possesses comparatively thunderous thighs. But Absinthe, being 13 when she died, is not supposed to have any curves. There’s no way to get rid of the thunderous thighs unless I swap out her pelvis and legs for those from ANOTHER doll. Maybe a Volks EB Dollfie boy? Part of me just wants to get her a resin body, preferably Planetdoll Mini Riz’.
Right now she’s in pieces as I try to construct a body for her. I am unhappy that one of my favorite characters is in pieces. After the many frustrations I am going through to make her, I am making her a primary character, just to get back as much blood, sweat and tears as I put into her.
I now post LHF eps on this blog, on MWD, on FN, on OSAFB and, when I remember, on Facebook. Comments and praise have spiked recently, especially for Will’s My Sorry Relationship plotline, universally hailed as hilarious. People also really like Anneka’s plotline about going back up to Vermont and seeing her family; apparently this is sad, emotionally engaging and compelling.
As measured by sheer volume of comments, my most popular eps are:
I’m not sure that I can draw a lot of conclusions from these, but I do see some interesting trends.
Go me!
This tutorial on how to make a late-Victorian pompadour, created for 1:12 dolls, looks perfectly adaptable to my method of gluing 1:6 hair on people’s heads, if only I can figure out what’s going on in the step where she turns the doll upside-down.
If this works, I can take that horrible bun off of Leonora’s head and replace it with something more realistic.
I’m not particularly keen on Mattel’s Kellys and Tommys, but this site, showcasing the work of doll customizer Loanne Ostiie, showing reroots, repaints and makeover on the little tykes, demonstrates to me that they can look cute, engaging and non-idiotic. The hairstyling is particularly impressive. Thanks, Kinjou!
P.S. Check out her gallery of custom Tommys, available from the index [first link].
Aria, from the Dynamite Girls’ Electropop release, has pink hair and fabulously mismatched clothes. She’s almost LHF-worthy in her default state. I would be more impressed if I couldn’t cobble together a similar doll for much less from my existing hoard. I do like her, though, but I think there’s a distressing lack of neon in a series supposedly based on fashions of the 1980s.
The US does not charge customs charges on incoming international packages. Apparently, this is not standard practice; most countries do charge customs fees on incoming international packages. I just sent Jareth’s body to France, for example. The buyer wanted me to mark the package’s value at $75.00 so that she would have to pay only a small amount in customs fees [25-30% of marked value!].
However, I wanted to adequately insure the package in case it got eaten [as Little Will’s open head was], and the amount insured for had to equal the stated value. So I had to state $675.00 as a value and insure for $650.00 [the max allowed on international priority]. Now the buyer is distressed about having to pay customs fees.
Overseas shipping is just a huge, anxiety-producing, expensive hassle, even if the recipients aren’t trying to avoid high customs charges.
PBBBBBFFFT.
That package had better arrive promptly and in excellent condition. I am never going to sell dolls out of the US again.
She’s wearing hacked-down Only Hearts Club clothes. I was saving the hat to use on some of my pink-loving adult figs, but, once she had it on, she wouldn’t give it back. Sigh…
Note: Pink Squad now has 13 members!! Continue reading Geordie is done, with hair and shoes! Pink Squad +1!
In which Viktor and Will compete on My Sorry Relationship. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=308
Comments: As you may recall, Will, Velvette and Viktor are bitching about their relationships: Velvette’s with her sister Janet, Viktor’s with his owner Sibley and Will’s with his girlfriend Anneka. Will thinks that the whole conversation sounds like a competition, so he’s imagining the three of them on a TV show of disastrous relationships, hosted by the current bane of his existence, Thomas, Anneka’s psycho ex. Since this whole game show scenario represents Will’s interpretation of events, we can gather that he has no patience or sympathy for anyone, including himself, as evidenced by the derisive words he puts in others’ mouths.
It is interesting to note that Thomas appears less perturbed by Velvette’s gun at his temple than by Viktor’s threat to disintegrate him. It is also interesting to note that Will pays no attention to this scene occurring behind him.
Here is Geordie in her current state with no shoes or hair. She is 5.5" tall! I ended up using a pelvis and legs from the same 21 [?] cm Obitsu doll. I took 2.5 cm out of the thighs and approximately the same amount out of the calves. I sacrificed ankle articulation, but the double-jointed knees and all thigh articulation remain functional. Oh yeah, I also hacked at least 1.5 cm out of her torso and fused the pieces so that her torso is not articulated at all. I’m sure that, if I had been neater, I could have retained at least all the articulation from her arms and legs, but, as she stands, she is good enough for me.
To finish, she just needs hair and shoes. I do not know where I will get shoes… Continue reading Geordie needs shoes.
I had an extra Obitsu upper torso and arms from a 21cm [?] doll, so I tried to create a torso with more toddler-like proportions. The first photo shows what I started with: the default. The second photo shows what I ended up with. I don’t know what brand the head is, but I amputated 0.5" in height off the scalp and altered the paint job by Andrea. I removed the eyebrows, recolored the eyes green with black pupils and gave some more definition to the lower lip. I do not know how tall Geordie will end up being. 6" would be acceptable, but I would like to get in the 5" range, perhaps even 4". It all depends on the legs. I wonder where to get some.
Need to sand the chest.
EDIT: I should mention that, in order to get Geordie’s arms short enough, I had to sacrifice the upper arm swivel. Thus her elbows will always be pointing toward her back. But, since she still has all original shoulder and wrist articulation, I felt that this was an acceptable trade-off. I do, however, regret her loss of ability to put her arms akimbo, a characteristic pose for almost all of my characters. Continue reading Geordie [toddler doll] in progress
Here’s my self-introduction on MWD, written a few days after I joined in October, 2001. It gives a glimpse into my 1:6 universe back then:
My collection’s mostly female, heavy on that wondrous Cy body, small, but eclectic and dynamic. It includes a drag king [an AA Jane with an earplug in her pants], a drag queen [a Mattel Frank Sinatra with black curls and a shitload of glitter], a porn star, a sword-wielding book guardian, a dominatrix/slam poet and the lead singer of the band I just made up, Flaming Hot Pussy.
Each 1:6 doll has been renamed, redressed and given a particular personality. For example, I turned A.J. into a 16-year-old bad-ass, Amelia, with one hand missing due to a motorcycle accident [ah, those detachable CY hands]. She wears her baseball cap backwards and adopts a rebellious, defiant stance. Very sexy in Kat’s tank top and a pair of hot pink hot pants from "Lauren," a horribly cheap dollar-store find.
She and all the other dolls change poses regularly, as they have a soap-opera-like series of tableaux going on. I haven’t been writing in a while, but this is my way of creating in the interim. I customize my figs’ **psychology,** rather than their appearance [resculpting, headswapping, etc.], if that makes any sense. Does anyone else do this [storylines, I mean], or am I the only one? *looks around*
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve hooking my girlfriend on the hobby, and we spend many happy hours kitbashing together. Pretty amazing, once you consider that the rest of the world thinks I’m fricking weird as it is.
Time passes, but the essentials remain. My characters are still soap-operatic, queer, gender-fucking, kinky, disabled, bad-ass and dressed in cheap, tacky clothes. Each has a detailed personality. The only major development in my 1:6 interests has been my increasing proficiency modding dolls and sculpting my own accessories.
Hmmm, from this clip, I seem like an interesting, but very defensive, person.
Now that I have my Dom doll back in commission, I’d like to get a doll of Geordie, his niece. She was originally an Elfdoll 17cm Jin dal Rae, but she wasn’t very poseable, so I got rid of her. As much as I’d love to get a 1:6 toddler BJD, I don’t have the money for that right now, so I’m brainstorming alternatives.
Obitsu 21cm with reduced arms, legs and torso. This body would satisfy my need for articulation, but I’m looking for something about half this height, 5" at max.
Mattel Kelly/Tommy doll. These are the appropriate size, but their articulation is crap, and they all have disturbing smiles.
Sekiguchi Mame Momoko. These dolls are the right size, with minimal articulation like Kellys, but their clothes can be realistic [see the Street Kids Mame for example], and I find their simplified faces much more charming than Kellys’.
The last time I took pictures of Frank was in September, 2007. Since I’ve been thinking about my BJDs recently, I took out Frank, removed his eyelashes and changed the position of his eyes. Instead of looking sideways to the right, he’s looking diagonally upward to the right. While he used to look mischievous, now he looks downright evil. >:} Continue reading My bad-assery knows no bounds!
At 27cm, with a proportionate head, she is perfectly 1:6 for a prepubescent or barely pubescent girl. The sculpt is full of character and delightful details, such as the protuberant ears, the serious mouth, the swayback spine, the chubby legs and slightly oversize hands and feet. I wonder if Absinthe’s head would fit on that body?
That’s My Face constructs 3-D likenesses of people with the help of 2 photos [front and profile] and a bunch of data points about the boundaries of certain features. One use for the likenesses is that of 1:6 action fig heads. I’m not impressed for several reasons.
Computers might be very capable, but they are not as awesome as people think they are for capturing vivid, lively, nuanced likenesses.
Looks like I’m selling my BJD Jareth’s body at least for sure. Hooray! This will help to pay off my our new dresser, couch and chair! If this all works out, I’ll be able to use a bit of tax refund money on another tiny BJD myself!
In which Mamie, Anneka’s sort-of grandmother, finds out the truth behind her granddaughter’s “queer” behavior.
Comments: If you don’t remember, Mamie is Anneka’s grandmother’s widow. Minerva [Anneka’s grandmother] had two partners at the same time: her husband Isaac and Mamie. All three of them raised Max, Anneka’s dad. Mamie used to be headmistress of the Endless Lake Boarding School in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, but she has been a nature photographer for some time now. She lives in South Burlington, Vermont, which is near Maple Corners, where Anneka’s parents live.
I really enjoy writing Mamie’s dialog because, as brusque and uncomfortable with emotions as she is, she really does love her family.
I downloaded DOSBox, an emulator allowing a user to play old games on a new computer, and installed it. Then I downloaded Jumpman 1.0 from The Jumpman Project, and then I played my favoritest computer game ever. Basically Jumpman involves jumping a little dude around a jungle gym, collecting pellets in order to win the level. Obstacles include flying white bombs, vampire bats, evil robots, etc. We got this game for our Commodore 64 shortly after its release in 1984 and we spent many joyous hours attempting to master it. In order to fully enjoy this game, I need a joystick…Hmmm…
Pink yarn wrapped around wire and jammed through two holes in her head. Scalp covered with Sculpey, dried with hair dryer, then painted orange with pink and white highlights. Continue reading Pink Squad +1: Pippilotta
Right here. Mmmmmmmmm.
On the subject of fat dolls, D7ana informs me of Play Along’s 2007 Tracy and Edna Turnblad dolls, which were actually fat, not to mention really cute. I do like regular Tracy’s ’60s flip, as well as her big smile, but I don’t want to get a doll without a character. That being said, I clearly need more fat people in LHF.
I count the following characters as fat: Andrew, Rori, Justine and Margie. Gemini might also be fat, but it’s difficult to tell what’s going on underneath her incredibly baggy clothes.
I got the genius idea last night to make ZaeZae fat, or, more specifically, to try out my new fats-sculpting technique on her: namely, adding fat to a headsculpt, rather than carving fats out of it, the way that I did with Margie. Adding fats to ZaeZae’s head won’t be a problem, although she will require a complete repaint to blend the Sculpey-colored fats in with her skin tone. Making her body fats may be more difficult, as she is currently on a stalk-like articulated Barbie body.
I also got the genius idea this morning to sculpt fats onto my forthcoming Alicia doll. Her default Martha Jones body is more robust than an articulated Barbie, so this might be easier than enlarging ZaeZae.
EDIT: Making fats for Alicia may be easier than making fats for ZaeZae, as Alicia’s neck connector is at the base of her neck [rather than under her chin], allowing me to make chin fats that will not impede her neck articulation.
Latinworks made a series of ads for activelifemovement.org, each depicting sedentary, fat versions of childhood toys, surrounded by the detritus of junk food. The tagline is "Keep obesity away from your child." Yup…because we all know that fat is a horrible contagious disease invading from outside, and body shape and weight have nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with sitting around and stuffing your face, and, with enough willpower, you can enforce skinniness! Besides its misinformed, moralizing scare tactics directed towards weight, the version below the cut also features a problematic reshaping of a fashion doll body, a plastic icon already well analyzed for its vexed cultural messages. Nasty, misogynist, anti-fat piece of drivel.
I do want that doll, though, as well as some of the fat little Playmobil pirates seen in another ad in the series. This series makes me think that I should try again to make a fat doll. My first fat doll, Margie, came out pretty well, but I couldn’t sculpt fats on her because I didn’t have the right modeling compound. Now that I have some Sculpey, I can add fats to a doll’s head and body! Continue reading Because fat is a contagious creeping crud. [Also…I want this doll.]
Besides poor posing, I really dislike poor doll photography. Like any other visual art, photography has many aspects that one can alter for varying effect: lighting, framing, focus, etc. [No, I don’t know the technical terms.] However, I have, unfortunately, experienced way too many photos where these aspects are altered out of sheer ineptitude, rather than artistic consideration. While we poor amateurs may not be able to take photos as beautiful as those of the masters, we can at least follow some basic rules to make our own works functional:
I really can take a decent picture, though, you know!
With my new camera, I finally got some respectable photos of others’ beautiful dolls in attendance at last Saturday’s doll club. Continue reading Doll club, 2/14/09
Marabou, on the left, epitomizes fabulousness with hair newly painted pink, accented with white and purple Prismacolors. Dom, on the right, epitomizes silliness. Boxers with red race cars on them not shown! Nice pants, Dom. Do you have to wipe the crotch on the doormat before you go inside? Continue reading Pink Squad +1, Loser Legion +1
Watched the premiere of Dollhouse just now. I’m very curious about the concept of programmable people, but, so far, the show itself is rather dull because the trite script allows no development for sympathetic characters and also because Eliza Dushku has even less acting talent than Anna Torv on Fringe, which I didn’t think was possible. [However, watching Anna Torv kick ass is ALWAYS entertaining.] Besides which, the show was much more interested in establishing that Eliza Dushku, in fact, does have boobs and less interested in delineating the rules and hierarchy of the programmable people project. As much as I think the backstory on Fringe is a steaming heap of vaguely crapped-out doo-doo, I find the characters’ personalities and pasts entertaining enough to watch the show so that I can learn more about them. I do not give two shits about anyone in Dollhouse yet.
This weekend, I removed ZaeZae’s original brownish hair and gave her a braid of purple and pink yarn attached to a new scalp of pink pulled-back hair. I also made her spectacles out of 20 gauge brass wire.
In other pink news, the pink count should eventually increase by 5:
Pink Squad as of now.
Standing, back row, L to R: Davry, ZaeZae, Andrew, Anneka, Will, Rori, Sibley.
Sitting, second-to-front row, L to R: Baozha, Sarah.
Lying, front row, L to R: Zinnia Pascale.
Continue reading Pink Squad +2
Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan from Twilight. The usually round, foreshortened and bland Tonner default fem sculpt yields to the slightly long and bumpy lineaments of Stewart’s sexy features. So cute!
Anne Hathaway as Agent 99 from Get Smart. Again, the actor’s salient features — a long face and plushy lips — escape through Tonner’s regimented blandification. Looks like Frank.
Re-Imagination Star-Crossed. A Romeo doll. Needs a repaint and a rehair to become a Jareth doll!!
Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala from The Golden Compass. HOT…except for the painted toenails.
LHF is definitely an ensemble performance, so it’s hard to determine who the main characters are, beyond Anneka and Will, of course. There is, however, a core group who get most of the plots:
Outside of this group, there are secondaries who appear frequently, but don’t really drive the story:
Name: Lucy. Maker: Roxydoll. Highly articulated, with double-jointed limbs and a three-part torso, Lucy is also small, slim and delicate. She is 20cm high and too slender for even Only Hearts Club clothes! I used to really dislike Roxydoll’s sculpts until I got one in person. The open mouth makes the sculpt all the more expressive. Link shows Tanned Lucy, the one I have [Susie!].
Name: Little Ryung. Maker: Elfdoll. Admired previously here.
Name: Uyoo. Maker: Soom. Yeah, I used to have one of these. Then I sold her. I miss her. I am a sucker for Sooms.
Name: Yohimbin. Maker: Roxydoll. Just like Lucy, only taller, Yohimbin has a delicate, androgynous face that’s less droopy than Lucy’s. If the price were lower [around Lucy’s price], I’d be tempted to get one.
For sale: NS SA Dollshe Hound, modded by Armeleia. Make me an offer. [Keep in mind: Bought at end of 2005 for $650.00, paid ~$100.00 for modding. Now out of production. Also unique head.] Continue reading For sale: NS SA Dollshe Hound, modded by Armeleia.
I sent Little Will’s face to tiffanyjbt on DOA to get him repainted. The mail ate him, even though he was priority. He should have taken only 3 days at max to go from MA to IN, but he still hain’t arrived yet, and it’s nearly Commercialized Hearts Day. >: I hate you USPS.
Thanks to the enthusiastic evangelism of D7ana, I’m interested in newcomers to the 12" fashion doll scene, the Mixis, made by the Canadian YNU Group. They are a group of 4 biracial characters, each with a distinctive headsculpt that reflects combos of racial backgrounds. Their wider torsos and thicker necks allow their clothing to even accommodate my standard body, the CG. I’m especially partial to Houda and Rosa. Though Mixis usually retail at about $60.00 because of their high-quality clothes, they can be found on clearance at the Canadian online retailer Nce N Necessary and for a reduced price at U.S.-based Aunt Jean’s Toys.
In progress
–Ethan [needs breeches, banyan and cap]
–Leonora [needs invalid chair]
–Susie [needs restringing]
–ZaeZae [needs haircut or new hair]
Out for work
–Little Will [needs new faceup]
Incoming
–Alicia
–Dom
–unknown UberBarbie club kid
Another trade with corsetkitten yields a bad-ass doll [photo by Mick Balte] done by Character Options with no designated character…although I suspect she will become Alicia, Janet and Velvette’s mom, an ex-feminist porn star turned evangelical Christian and writer of devotional poetry.
After college, Alicia and friends moved out West to start their feminist porn company. Alicia had her kids with some of her fellow start-up dudes in the business, then moved to her hometown area, Boston, to escape the volatile world of Californian porn in order to raise her daughters.
She has a long history of disappointment in her daughters because they appear to take after her own sexually adventurous tendencies. She kicked Velvette out of the house when Velvette started her fetish modeling and fashion designing. Velvette went to live with Janet, who was the exemplary, smart, overachieving, successful, sexually repressed daughter, until the sex scandal that brought her dismissal from MIT. Fearing their mom’s disapproving wrath, Janet and Velvette stayed far away in Cambridge, pissing each other off instead of dealing with Alicia.
Like I said, Alicia turned her considerable zeal into evangelical Christianity. She got saved and convicted. She may be an ex-masturbator. Since both Janet and Velvette are queer, with heavily kinky associations [Janet with robo-sex, Velvette with BDSM], they both pretend that their mom doesn’t exist. It’s a protective measure because they are sure that she will condemn them. She keeps sending them books of her devotional poetry, which they keep ignoring. It’s obvious that the daughters still love their mom and the mom still loves her daughters, or at least they all WANT to love each other, but they stay apart because of painful history.
There are definite class tensions between Alicia and her daughters because Alicia was indoctrinated with the concepts of assimilating, overachieving and being an outstanding representative of her race. She not-so-secretly thinks that Velvette and Janet are not being a credit to her because their behavior reflects a reversion to the "black woman as oversexed slut" stereotype. "I wanted you to work hard and make something of yourselves, not sleep around and ruin it!" Clearly there’s an element of bitterness and possibly self-hatred here, since Alicia had kids, which interrupted her hard work on the porn co.
Clearly I’m not going to explore all these tensions in depth in one side story, but, if I can at least allude to them accurately to make a rich, believable portrayal of my favorite secondaries [who are also characters of color]. [I’ve been thinking a lot recently about, as a white writer, writing believable, convincing, non-stereotypical characters of color, which is hard.] Yay more plots for Velvette and Janet! …Especially Janet… I think everyone dumps on her, but she has a really interesting inner life and motivations and past [what was that scandal at MIT????] that she never divulges. It’s always the quiet ones….
Well, anyway, the Martha Jones doll obviously needs her hair painted grey and her face lined to show age.
One of my longish-termish goals is to sculpt a DECENT 1:6 head. While poking around to see whose friends lists I’m on, I found this page of eBooks on how to sculpt body parts with polymer clay. Could these be useful? Well, they’re unquestionably cheap!
In which we learn that drag queens aren’t on all the time. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=277
Comments: After karaoke, the gang repairs to the Nightcrawler. Even when Anneka’s gone [she’s up in Vermont, as you may remember], the conversation is still entertaining. As a friend of Rori, who knows everyone in the universe apparently, Marabou the karaoke emcee joins ‘em. I like her. She’s sweet.
NOTE: As a work in progress, this list will be periodically updated to reflect my latest research.
Ever since my sister and I created our first imaginary world at age 4, I’ve been interested in imaginary worlds, technically termed "paracosms," and imaginary characters/friends. Information about the paracosmic is surprisingly difficult to come by, but, over the years, I have scraped together relevant material. Most of it is from a psychological, psychiatric or sociological point of view, although a few New Agey things have crept in since I considered them useful. Forthwith, a list.
Caughey, John. Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach. In a welcome antidote to archetypical navel-gazing, Imaginary Social Worlds compares the contents of imaginary social worlds cross-culturally. Caughey examines daydreams, celebrity fantasies, sexual fantasies, etc., and looks at the ways in which an individual’s fantasy world reflects themes and obsessions of the world around him/her.
Cohen, David; MacKeith, Stephen. The Development of Imagination: The Private Worlds of Childhood. Containing one of the first longitudinal studies of children and their paracosms, this book is notable for collecting stats and stories about the paracosms of several score British paracosms and the lives of their creators. The best parts of this book give thumbnail sketches of each creator’s family circumstances [economic status, siblings, location] and how these affected each paracosm. Included is also a summary of the salient points of each imaginary world. Good for a look at the actual content of paracosms.
Matthews, Caitlin. In Search of Woman’s Passionate Soul: Revealing the Daimon Lover Within. A collection of observations from heterosexual women discussing their experiences of relationships with male imaginary characters. Despite its Jungian underpinnings, limited sample size and ridiculous extrapolation, I like this book for its first-person reporting about the paracosmic.
Root-Bernstein, Michele. "Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness." In The International Handbook on Giftedness, edited by Larisa V. Shavinina. Noting that the seeds and early signs of adult creativity may be seen in childhood play, Root-Bernstein looks at what childhood paracosms can tell us about their creators as adults. She notes a high correlation between creators of childhood paracosms and those who went on to be artists and successful scientists. Less about paracosms themselves and more about their implications.
Rowan, John. Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us. Dry, but good for a historical overview, this book discusses the changing conceptions of imaginary characters over the last 150 years of psychology/psychiatry.
Taylor, Marjorie. Imaginary Companions and the Children who Create Them. Taking the perspective of a child development psychologist, Taylor synthesizes many studies on fantasy play in children. Discussing imaginary friends, transitional objects and paracosms, she concludes that the invention of these things represents a common, healthy aspect of modern American child development. Taylor is at her best when talking about imaginary friends; her section on paracosms has great first-person reports, but ends too abruptly.
Watkins, Mary M. Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues. A premier introduction and overview to the concept of multivocal consciousness, imaginary friends, whatever you want to call it. Watkins argues that the current psychiatric fixation with a unitary voice/self ignores a rich philosophical, mythological and phenomenological tradition of an internal population of >1. To that end, she synthesizes information reaching back to ancient Greek epics and forward to modern Jungianism. Her discussion of authorial relationships to story characters is especially strong.
Watkins, Mary M. Waking Dreams. Written before Invisible Guests, this book takes the same pro-paracosmic viewpoint, extended to fantasy, daydreaming, waking dreams and other supposedly "non-productive" states in general. Watkins’ Jungian background leads her to champion the concept of "active imagination," that is, calling out the characters in one’s head and talking to them. She explores the origins of this technique in European and American practice. Less rigorous and more poetically written than Invisible Guests, Waking Dreams is a thought-provoking ancillary, but should be read after Invisible Guests.
Wegner, Daniel M. White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession and the Psychology of Mental Control. A lucid, conversational, funny book about the ways in which people attempt to control their thoughts and the ways in which these methods backfire. Wegner’s comments on suppression and obsession provide insight into how people can create characters and then endow them with so much personality that they seem independent.
In which Will, Velvette and Viktor compete on a game show.
Comments: As you may recall, in the Tale of Two Sisters side plot, Velvette was caring for her sister Janet, who suffers debilitating migraines. Despite Velvette’s best attempts at patience, Janet’s demanding, short-tempered behavior pissed her off, so Velvette sought comfort with her new girlfriend, the undead Gemini, creator of crocheted roadkill. At the same time, Viktor, an eternally frustrated sexbot created by Janet, was rejected by his owner Sibley. Viktor approached Janet for help, but she rebuffed him. This storyline now overlaps with our main storyline in this ep.
I just realized that we’ve never actually seen Janet working in her lab. Hmmmm…
Please note that all events in My Sorry Relationship are Will’s interpretation of events, not actually accurate representations of each character’s voice. That said, he does have a certain vulgar knack for getting to the root of others’ problems….
It’s hard to add healthy amounts of fruit into your diet when the fruit is actively out to get you. One of my favorite bits from Eddie Izzard.
…comes home after an extended sojourn in the UK, along with Caveat 1.0 and a pack of spare Obitsu hands for my body-hacking needs.
\m/ ^_^ \m/
I finally got my Tanned Roxydoll Lucy after she took an unexpected detour, temporarily lost in the post office. I stuck her eyes in her head [the worst part of BJD ownership for me] and replaced all her stringing with pipe cleaners. Then I rustled up an outfit for her. That’s a Barbie short-sleeved shirt and a pair of Barbie jeans over 8" tights. Her shoes are Rement rubber boots from a Storage Beauty set.
Lucy is such a delicately sculpted doll, very light and highly jointed. I love the little open mouth and the combination of chubby cheeks and pointy chin.
Ergh…now that I see the photos, I recognize that her eyes are wonky. I’ll deal with that later. I may just give up and push her left eye in toward her nose and say she’s blind in that eye. I HATE adjusting eyes. Continue reading Susie 2.0…now with misdirected eyes!
corsetkitten linked me to an Ebay auction where the seller is selling the original Dom and Caveat dolls. I got rid of them during my Denial of Dolls phase. I wonder how they ended up in the UK. I hope to win the auction and get that little bastard back here for good.
Remind me never to get rid of dolls so cavalierly again!
Someone remixed Christian Bale’s shit-flipping on the director of photography for Terminator 4, and I’ve been listening to it a bit over the past few days. The remix brings out the repetitive, whiny, self-important nature of his bloviation and substitutes for an inner monolog when something annoys me.
Did you almost fall on the ice this morning? Play this.
Did you not get the job you wanted? Play this.
Did the post office temporarily misplace your $280.00 doll from Australia? Play this.
Do you have to review a self-insertion wank-off in 350 words or less? Play this.
Angelie, Korean-American fitness nut, got new hands from a Hi Glam Girl that I had lying around, gaining an axis of rotation, and Obitsu flat feet instead of high-heeled Barbie feet. I don’t care about the small size of the Obitsu feet because she is wearing high-tops, in which she can now stand unassisted.
Marquis, debauched consort of the evil Justine, got a vest from Andrea’s 75-ton gift and bloodstains thereon. I also aged his clothes with a seam ripper.
Teodora, leader of the Portuguese Irmas de Maria and also Pippilotta’s great aunt, upgraded to her final headsculpt, a Toybiz Xena from Andrea’s 75 tons. I weathered her face with brown colored pencil and gave her a haircut. She is now complete.
ZaeZae, a young Irma, some time ago, got big stompy boots from my War Toys order. More recently, she got hands from the DiD boy body, thus gaining two axes of rotation. Continue reading Angelie, Marquis, Teodora and ZaeZae upgraded
I do not like displays or photos in which dolls are poorly posed. A doll’s hands/feet shouldn’t be twisted around, nor should its elbows/knees bend backward or sideways. A doll should be in a position that is either a) physically possible for a human being or b) physically impossible for a human being, but fine for the character. Ideally, a doll’s clothes and hair should behave appropriately for the photo [disarrayed if you need disarray, neat, tidy and controlled otherwise]. I find poor posing such a distraction that I don’t care how unusual, rare or interesting the doll is; if it’s imitating a pretzel with bed head, I will ignore the overall picture in favor of sloppy details.
There are no visual aids for this post because I couldn’t find any suitably anonymous examples and I’m not subjecting my own dolls to the humiliation of illustrating what NOT to do in posing.
…parts out Rements. That is all.
I can’t find video of Richard O’Brien’s Dammit Janet [Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975], but I found Billy Idol’s White Wedding (1982). All the weirdos in the church, plus the juxtaposition of coffins and marriage, made me think of Dammit Janet. Billy Idol does an interesting job of fusing both the Brad and the Frank characters in this video…mostly Frank, given the vamping. It is also possible that he is a vampire, although I may be anachronistically projecting from a certain vampiric character [Spike in BTVS] that clearly ripped off his look.
…Wow, Billy Idol remade Mony Mony? All I’ve heard is the original. Maybe I need to investigate his sneer hair washboard abs music some more.
Today’s New Wave comments: Dancing With Myself is about masturbation. Safety Dance, besides being about safe sex, is the least interesting Men Without Hats song ever. In comparison to the rest of their thoughtful, poppy, odd oeuvre, it’s dull and predictable.
Appearing some time in Q2, it’s a Hot Toys 1:6 version of Scarlett Johannsen as Silken Floss in the silver screen turd known as The Spirit!!! You are probably wondering why I care, given my aversion to The Spirit, Nazis and Scarlett Johannsen [except in her capacity as inspiration for really awesome dolls like Elfdoll Ryung and Tiny Ryung]. I am interested because, first, it is a pretty doll and, second, it is sculpted by Hiroko Hayashi!
Pretty dolls are pretty easy to come by, but not ones by Hayashi [especially if one is in the U.S.]. This Japanese master of small-scale sculpture first came to my notice because he did the CG02 headsculpt on A.J., Shadow, Blaze and Destiny. It is my favoritest fem sculpt ever because packs a wealth of detail and character into the normally soft medium of a vinyl head. Even though CG04 has sharply defined, recognizable features, it can still look drastically different depending on paint and hair. I have 3 CG02s in my cast — Pippilotta, Tituba and Leonora — and they all look like distinct people. Anyway, I do not doubt that Hayashi’s work on Silken Floss meets or exceeds his work on CG04. His work on this doll makes it more attractive to me than it normally would be.
I also like her cat’s-eye glasses! Continue reading Hot Toys The Spirit: Silken Floss
Andrea sent me 75 tons of 1:6 clothing, food, heads, bodies, body parts, furniture and accessories, which arrived yesterday by priority mail. The following are from that package: Will’s stockings, Pippilotta’s new body [hooray!], her blazer, her shorts set, her stockings, her legwarmers and Anneka’s dress. Further photos of the booty later. Continue reading Blame Andrea for these outfits.
In which Anneka can’t stand it any more and Will falls to his knees.
Comments: Anneka is pondering with the help of her Jareth doll, a representation of her favorite movie character. Apparently this movie always gets her thinking about dominance and submission.
Will has quite the appetite. Besides orange juice, he also has a plate full of a pig in the blanket, a gyro, a slice of pizza, a bowl of pasta salad and a banana split.
The Development of Imagination: The Private Worlds of Childhood by David Cohen and Stephen A. MacKeith is about paracosms. I NEED IT RIGHT NOW.
And this one too, which has an essay about paracosms: Organizing Early Experience: Imagination and Cognition in Childhood edited by Delmont Morrison.
Below are a picture of my work space and some pictures of my plastic food collection. I don’t collect dolls, but I do collect plastic food, almost all of which is either Iwako or Re-ment. People have diverse diets, so I want to reflect that in 1:6. [My vampires, though bloodthirsty, eat human food for nostalgic and sensory reasons.] I’m not looking for a plastic representative of every food ever, but 1:6 versions of foods commonly found in American restaurants and kitchens. It’s all stored in plastic trays that used to hold beads or nails. Continue reading Work space photo and plastic food collection
Let’s see…what’s the recipe for this doll?
1 Triad Otaku head
1 standard Barbie torso
2 CG 1.0 arms
2 CG 1.0 hands
1 27cm Obitsu pelvis
2 27cm Obitsu pelvis legs
1 repaint by Corsetkitten
1 head of hair from fake pink fur wig
1 Flavas baseball cap
1 set goggles from some war dolly
1 Uneeda sweatshirt
1 Antique Dreaming Momoko apron
1 pair Yu Sai Wa Wa capris
1 pair Medicom Fujiko bootfeet
Stylistically, Sarah is obviously related to Pippilotta and Rori. She’s not mismatching enough to launch into fabulosity the way that Zinnia Pascale is, but she has enough unusual elements to her outfit to make her look decidedly odd.
I don’t really like Sarah’s shoes; they don’t go with the rest of her outfit. I also need to weather her face. Continue reading Sarah, now with pink hair and an updated outfit!
I have collected many dolls from various sources, but I do not think of myself as a collector. To me, a collector is a person mostly concerned with the acquisition of things, amassing a comprehensive array of stuff in a certain category. Collectors may display some of their stuff, but, in my mind, they are less interested in the objects themselves than they are the very fact of owning the objects. Having a complete set of something or a rare exemplar of something provides more satisfaction to collectors than the actual objects themselves. In fact, the objects themselves are immaterial; for example, people may collect experiences, less for the experiences themselves than for the thrill of pursuit and the sense of accomplishment derived from creating a complete set of something.
I do collect things, but not dolls. For me, dolls aren’t just physical objects, but confluences of several of my interests, talents and hobbies. They are kind of like lenses that allow me to focus my skills in writing, photography, set construction, painting, figure customization, sewing [?!], etc. I have a lot of them because I have a lot of characters. I’m not collecting a full set; I’m making a cast so I can play with them.
In contrast to a collector of dolls, I would call myself a user of dolls, in the same way that collectors of computers may be contrasted to users of computers. While collectors may fetishize completeness and the concept of certain objects, users fetishize interactivity. They debox; they customize; they pose; they photograph their dolls. They use them as dressmakers’ dummies, stress relief, story characters, construction experiments, etc. They may have lots of dolls, but they don’t think that they have collections; instead, they think of their dolls as works in progress. They can always develop a character’s personality or find a better outfit or repaint or re-pose…. To an untrained observer, a doll user looks pretty much like a doll collector, when, in actuality, the doll collector’s dolls don’t move, while the doll user’s dolls are constantly fidgeting.
For sale: ShinyDoll first ed. Thaasa body, modded by Elisa_Maza.
Sarah is an experiment in doll Frankensteining. She has a Triad Otaku head, painted by the lovely and talented Corsetkitten, a Barbie upper torso, CG 1.0 arms and hands and Obitsu legs, all held together with my trusty friends hot glue and electrical tape.
All I know about her so far is what I see. Given her expression, she is shy, anxious, inquisitive and very soft-spoken. Given her very broad shoulders and narrow waist and legs, she is a no-op trans girl. Given her barely matching outfit, she has no fashion sense, but that’s not really a character trait because almost no one in the LHF universe matches. She reminds me of Jennifer Connelly from the movie Labyrinth; Connelly played a character named Sarah, hence the name.
Sarah, Sarah
Storms are brewin’ in your eyes
Sarah, Sarah
No time is a good time for goodbye
–Sarah, by Starship
Nothing to do with Sarah here, but I’ve been singing it to myself as I’ve worked on her.
I call her a work in progress because I need to replace her hair with pink awesomeness…or add pink awesomeness to the existing brown. A character this beautiful needs pink hair!!! Continue reading Sarah, shy trans girl in progress
Concept: Will is a young boy, between 6 and 8, growing up in the 1870s. He is a semi-invalid, due to chronic, acute asthma. He also squints a lot because he’s really near-sighted. He worries excessively.
Execution: Faceup should be done with a light touch in "nude" or "natural" shades, nothing too heavily applied. Slight shading around bridge of nose to make it appear narrow. Slight shading also in hollows of cheeks. Shadows around eyes to indicate fatigue. Worried eyebrows, high as if raised, pale in color to match hair [pale yellow]. Mouth should be pale pink, either in a neutral, slightly open expression or a small frown. No blushing on cheeks, nose or ears.
I like the shadows under the eyes on Planetdoll Riz [below Unoa Lusis] and the lips on toydogz4’s Planetdoll Roseanne.
Pictures of Little Will before he became a doll below. Continue reading Faceup instructions for Little Will doll
Well, I think it’s the best Microman ever because it’s basically a super-articulated, naked female figure with a painted face, no hair and a broad array of hands, waiting to be customized. Unfortunately, she comes with some sort of electronic coffin, which exponentially jacks up her price. Yes, I know she’s a character from an anime series, but I don’t care. It’s a little naked doll waiting for a kitbash! Also did you see that she has articulated feet?!
Just as I apparently have a weakness for BJDs by Soom [having had in my house at one time or another a 30cm Uyoo and an 80cm Sabik], I also apparently have a weakness for the Elfdoll tinies, having had in my house at one time or another a 15cm Jin dal Rae [Geordie], a 20cm Hana Devil [Submit 1.0] and 2 20cm Kathlens [Absinthe, Little Will and Submit 2.0].
Anyway, I just recently caught some closeup pictures of the 20cm Elfdoll Doona Little Ryung. She is very charming. She looks more mature than her small, toddler-sized body. Her pointy chin and her petulant pout make her attractively expressive. My favorite faceplate is the one with half-closed eyes, which reminds me of Baozha. The annoyed faceplate reminds me of Cory [with the removal of the stupid leopard faceup].
Bad idea! No need to spend $400.00 to upgrade two minor characters who are already successfully enplasticated! Besides, I just upgraded Susie.
I wish that Elfdoll, like Fairyland, sold faceplates for the tinies separately. [Incidentally, Pongpong is my favorite Puki.]
Can’t you tell?
Currently waiting for his vest and bloodstains to be added thereon, after which point he will be finished. Continue reading Marquis hates Justine.
Susie Langdon, minor LHF character, is currently enplasticated by an Only Hearts Club head with a 23 cm Obitsu body. She will soon be upgraded to [yet another] 1:6 BJD, a tanned Roxydoll Lucy. As you can see from the photo below, taken by DOAer cerisey, the seller, she’s an innocent, serious, soulful doll with impressive posability for such a small [20cm] creature. She looks more serious than Susie’s original enplastication.
Anyway, because I’m paying $175.00 for her, Susie 2.0 will, like Absinthe 2.0, get a whole side plot devoted to her in my feeble attempt to justify spending that much for a minor character.
I notice that several of the young or young-appearing LHF characters are BJDs now: Absinthe, Little Will and now Susie. Michaela, however, is an action figure, as is Baozha. So is Little Anneka; well, more specifically, she’s an OHC doll with a haircut. She may upgrade to a mini BJD or BJD hybrid [as Absinthe technically is].
Also I have an extra sleeping Kathlen faceplate to work with…Hm…. Continue reading Tanned Roxydoll Lucy = Susie
This fan-made BTVS/Angel vid, Origin Stories by ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
giandujakiss, argues that the ID of Spike with the Black Leather Coat of Bad-Assness glosses over the fact that he stole it from Nikki the Slayer, one of his kills. The connection of Spike and the BLCB-A runs over the story of Nikki and her son, Robin, who saw her die and ends up helping Buffy and co. fight Uruk-Hai uber-vamps in season 7. Even when Spike dies out of BTVS and reincarnates in Angel, he still gets the damn BLCB-A, a deeply problematic privileging of the pouty Romantic WHITE monster anti-hero at the expense of the interesting and complex characters of color. untrue_accounts writes in words what the video shows in pictures, for those of you who are more verbally oriented.
I find these complementary commentaries deeply incisive and deeply disturbing, especially as they portray the actions of a fan favorite character to be the worst form of appropriation. It’s an especially bad form of appropriation because the show is constructed such that the audience is supposed to suck it up because a) Spike is so awesome!!; b) Buffy defends Spike, thus throwing her support behind his usurpations; c) did we mention that Spike is awesome?!! We’re not supposed to criticize the characters everyone likes, even if they are doing morally wretched things, because the popular characters are Good Guys, thus inured to criticism.
Why yes, I am late to the party. What else can you except from someone who just discovered Men Without Hats at the end of last year?
In which Will catches Mark in a compromising position and they have a serious talk.
Comments: This is the first ep filmed with my new camera, a Kodak EasyShare Z712. Certainly, I could have purchased an even more expensive one with many special features for super close-ups and sensitivity to light, but this mid-range, slightly outdated model serves my needs well. I don’t do a lot of fussing with the focus, so I like its macro auto-focus feature, as well as its image stabilization, since I can never hold the camera completely steady. The higher pixel count in my photos results in greater sensitivity to light, more accurate color representation and finer detail. Hurrah!
Marquis in progress. Painted hair black. Darkened lines on face. Need to add vest and bloodstains on everything. Continue reading Marquis [Charlie Innis] hates you.
Gary Takes a Bath is the funniest Spongebob episode ever. All the little details of Gary the snail’s character really make it. I especially like how Gary meows and Spongebob interprets it as actual words, how Gary can read books and move ladders though he has no arms and how Gary has a smile with little teeth in it. My favorite moment in the ep comes when Gary refuses to get in the tub. Spongebob releases him over the tub, but he just hovers over the tub, then teleports right back to Spongebob’s side. The conversation between Spongebob and Gary when Spongebob is up in the tree is also comedy gold, hitting all the right notes of "pissed off parent" and "defiant kid."
Even with high EMS shipping rates, Japanese BIC Co.’s prices on parted out Momokos are very reasonable.
All LHF characters as of January 23, 2009, taken with my new camera.
Not that I need any more miniature oranges, here is a tutorial from miniaturist Angie Scarr about how to make miniature unpeeled, halved, peeled, even sectioned oranges! She writes a whole book about making miniature foods, for which she relies heavily [and cleverly] on caning, or making a tube of something to cut into slices of fruits, vegetables, eggs, etc.
The Clay Store has a bunch of tutorials, which can be modified and refined to suit my capabilities. Those that catch my interest are:
I liked Mylene Farmer’s music before I saw her music videos, but now, having seen a few vids, I like her more. In this music vid, Live a Bercy, she sings Sans Contrefacon to hordes of rythmically waving, singing-along groupies. Well, I think she’s singing. Given her sinuous dancing, she could be lip-synching. She radiates a great amount of energy, charisma and simple joy to be performing. At the end, when she is singing out to the audience, who answers her, I think she’s laughing; she appears to be elated.
Also I like the back-up dancers.
Click below for lyrics to a defiant genderfucking song!
HLJ has really slashed prices on some of their items. Though I probably won’t get any of these because shipping from Japan is prohibitively high, here are those that tempt me the most:
Medicom made a 1:6 Jack Sparrow from Dead Man’s Chest before Hot Toys started putting out their figs from the same license. This dude originally ran about $200.00, but now he’s down to $82.62, which is a steal considering the beautiful outfit [I always like historical clothes] and the lifelike headsculpt. Even with EMS shipping from Japan, he’s almost affordable…or at least more justifiable to me than he was at his original price.
All the Aoshima Girls’ Mission dollies are on sale too for 40% off at approximately $58.00 each. I like Rei’s outfit the best, but Miki’s open mouth gives her a cuteness not seen in the others.
Meyrin Hawke, who I think is on an Obitsu body, is 80% off at approximately $28.00. I don’t know who she is, but I like her because she’s a cute anime dolly with bouncy hair.
Cheaper than Daz’ stuff, but also of lower quality. Could be serviceable.
Assembled room 3, $9.90, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=61941&Start=211&TopID=11219.34536.36591.
Old England Room, $6.50, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=32346&Start=661&TopID=11219.34536.36591.
New Boudoir Furniture Pack, $5.53, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=21194&Start=721&TopID=11219.34536.36591.
To soften the light from my desk lamp, I put fabric softener sheets over the bulbs…not because they are supposed to soften things, but because they were the only appropriately translucent papers I could find. [I wonder where the tissue paper went…] Not only are the results much easier on my eyes for all desk-related tasks, but they also produce photos with lower contrast and better, unwashed-out detail. As a bonus [?!], my desk smells like a dryer sheet. I deem this experiment successful! Continue reading MW’s photos, now with silky fresh scent!
So Doctor over on MWD picked me up some $5.00 Uneeda fashion dolls from an Indianan clearance store. He had previously posted pictures of the outfits from said finds. Amazingly enough, all pieces fit CGs, except for shoes and underwear. Attracted by the neon colors, I sought the Uneeda outfits for those characters of mine without fashion sense. Results are shown below.
Oh yeah…and a note about light. As shown in this photo, my spiffy full-spectrum lights are much too harsh, focused and intense, creating dramatic shadows that I don’t need all the time. I must figure out how to diffuse my light sources. And now back to our show. Continue reading Rockin’ the ridiculous clothes [and a note about light]
I found some more Victorian sets on Daz’ Web site. Continue reading More Victorian sets on Daz’ site
In which Margie gives Absinthe a package, but it is not as exciting as anticipated. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=258
Comments: Introducing Margie Lafayette, a marked contrast with Absinthe. After Dead Girl’s Diary 1, an entire episode of serious moping, I enjoy writing about Margie because she’s so cheerful and insouciant. She knows that Absinthe is a vampire burdened with painful memories, yet she still treats her with the same casual tenderness as her other kids.
The Undead Unitarians are Davry’s clan.
Anneka and Will are each supposed to have some dolls of their own in 1:6 scale, but I’ve had a horrible time finding affordable figures in the 1:36ish range…until now. The Homies series of plastic figures, all 2" high or less, presents models of various urban characters, one set of which, the Micro Icon Punks, would be perfect for Anneka and Will’s dolls. But I still need to make at least one mermaid for Anneka and a Bru for Will…maybe out of paper…
Barclay’s O Gauge Corner sells O gauge [1:48] civilian figures for reasonable prices.
Here’s a 1:12 scale girl doll [by Sophie Drummond?] that might work as Will’s Bru.
I deplore the divergent trends in male and female action figs. Basically, the male figs have craggy faces with a variety of ages, expressions and personalities [go to War Toys and look at the nudes if you need examples], while the female figs have stylized, generic faces with a tendency toward bland neoteny. I myself am not free from this bias, at least for female figs, but I actively fight it by scribbling on my dolls’ faces!! Continue reading Scribbling on my dolls’ faces makes everything better!
"Podunk" exists in the U.S. imagination as a mythical town of such remoteness and emptiness that it epitomizes hillbilly rurality, but, interestingly enough, there are several places in the U.S. actually named Podunk. One, a subdivision of the extremely small town Wardsboro (population 854 as of 2000), exists in my home state, Vermont. A few years back, the Washington Post gave an interesting, if cursory, look at the place with the folklorically charged name.
Podunk, located in Windham County in the extremely southern part of the state, flourished during the mid-1800s, peaking at 1000+ residents, most of whom were subsistence hill farmers. The population dwindled as residents of Wardsboro moved to better land or more industrialized places to live. By 1916, Podunk’s schoolhouse closed, and the forest began to overtake the once-cleared fields. Current residents sometimes happen upon abandoned foundations in the underbrush and, more poignantly, little cemeteries, mere family plots with a few markers. The population now numbers half a hundred full-timers, though that number may be increasing, at least on a seasonal basis. With the Mount Snow and Stratton Mountain ski areas nearby, Podunk now attracts vast vacation homes for skiers. Though Podunk is not an especially significant place, it is one with an interesting history, one that currently is being paved over by oblivious gentrification.
On a nostalgic trip, I was poking through Daz’ Web site, and I realized that a few of their sets would be good for any flashback eps to Will’s past. Continue reading Victorian sets on Daz’ site
I am playing more with my new camera. I learned how to turn the autofocus off so that it loses battery power more slowly. I also note that my new camera does much better in low light than my old camera. Both of these pictures are taken with my desk lamp pointed up at the wall to the far left of Anneka and Will. Continue reading Anneka and Will in low light
Since I have finally figured out how to force my new camera to default to memory card use, I hereby present the Pink Squad [not actually a real group] of the LHF cast. Continue reading Because pink is the awesomest hair color
Marquis will be enplasticated by DiD’s Ultimate Realistic Head 30003. Marquis has a very angular face, a large nose, full lips and an expression of disgusted cruelty that the aforementioned head captures.
Dom 2.0 will be enplasticated by the DiD scowling Timo Ducca sculpt [the top large picture on this page]. If this head reminds you of Davry, it’s no coincidence, as the Timo Ducca doll comes with three heads, one with a squinty expression, one with an open mouth and one with a scowl. The open-mouthed sculpt is the base for Davry. I selected the scowling Timo head for Dom because his salient characteristics are a round, soft, childish face and a conviction that the world is out to get him, both accurately transmitted in the sculpt. I’ll need to strip the paint, sand off the hair and repaint, but the essence of Dom is in there.
Why are the obnoxious characters — Dom, Marquis, Zinnia Pascale, Justine — always my favorites?
I am much more interested in getting Marquis, a member of the Sods implicated in Will’s ruination, and Dom, a member of the ‘Bloods implicated in Anneka’s vampirization, in plastic than I am Teodora and Dowager Lily. Hmmmm…
I ended up getting not a Kodak charge and spare battery, but a generic charger and generic spare battery. The charger is charging the battery as we speak. This had better work. I’d like to really use my new camera in the next few days.
I just bought some boring clothes for my dolls from War Toys, my preferred loose parts dealer. The damage was just around $54.00.
Kotobukiya sells a series of several styles of eyeglasses for figs. Each set comes flat-packed and cut out of a sheet of very thin metal, ready to be removed with wire snips and bent into shape. Hobby Search appears to have all styles in stock.
I swear Volks made some for Dollfies [27cm ones], but I can’t find a link. EDIT: Andrea, who is God, says that these no longer exist.
Forever Virginia sells sunglasses and eyeglasses at about 5 pairs per sheet of transparency plastic. You cut these out and then hook them around your figs’ ears.
Toymania has a tutorial on creating your own 1:6 glasses using wire, a paintbrush and wire snips.
A suggestion on MWD says that Toybiz Xena might be a candidate for Teodora’s headsculpt. Wow, that takes me back. When those dolls were still on the shelves [2000/2001], I used a Warlord Xena head on an original character, Patti, the gruff, Red-Bull-swilling junkyard owner. Incidentally, she was trans. I still have photos of her somewhere with her custom Red Bull can, painted sloppily by yours truly…. I always liked the sculpt for its no-nonsense, pissed-off expression. Maybe this shall be my choice for Teodora, if only for nostalgic reasons; she has the same imperious front that Patti did.
I should post some pictures and descriptions of my first wave of figs, their names, personalities and relationships. I had quite the soap opera running on my desk, pictures of which can still be seen in my photo album [before the advent of my digital camera]. As I recall, there were lots of queer characters, drag kings and queens and BDSM aficionados. And who could forget the hard-rockin’ band Flaming Hot Pussy? [As I recall, Patti was the drummer, and Velvette was a guitarist.] Obviously I translated most of these concepts into LHF, although FHP never made it.
Surprisingly enough, I’ve had lots of luck jamming wide-assed Cy Girls into clothes from collectible Barbies. Today’s successful experiment shows the outfit from the Avon P.F.E. Albee Barbie on a CG 2.0. The dickey to which the ruffles are attached fits with no problems, as does the bodice with train attached. The hobble skirt, a separate piece, did not fit over the CG butt until I ripped the seam a little bit, then pinned it back up after I hauled it over her hips. The train covers up the quick fix on the skirt, so the overall result is a historically approximate outfit and silhouette from the mid-1880s. Continue reading Justine in P.F.E. Albee Barbie clothes
…and the cities were barren of purveyors of playthings. The people were sore afflicted, and great was the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
This call of distress has been brought to you by the fact that there is a toy store in Fall River, MA, Tony’s Toys, where I would like to browse. [I would like to purchase ZC Girls Janice there, actually.] However, public transit does not extend to Fall River, and I feel ridiculous purchasing something from this store and having it shipped from so close [yet so far away].
In the past 10 years, opportunities to buy toys have really dwindled around Boston metro. There used to be an FAO Schwartz in the middle of Boston, but that closed in 2002, I think. There used to be a Toys R Us by Alewife in Cambridge, but I think it might be closed. After years of financial hardship, Kaybee Toys is going out of business, which means that its location in the Cambridgeside Galleria is closing. At this rate, there are no major toy-focused retailers in the area!
One can purchase one’s toys from mega department stores such as Walmart or Target, but the selection there tends to be haphazard and disorganized. One can also purchase one’s toys from comic shops, but their selection tends to be small and marked up. One can also purchase one’s toys from small independent retailers — I really like Henry Bear’s Park, especially since they started carrying Iwako erasers — but small, independent retailers shun fashion dolls and action figures.
I get a lot of my toys online now.
In which Absinthe, the one who vamped Will, reflects on the pivotal moments of her life. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=242
Comments: Welcome to another side plot for Love Has Fangs. Like Tale of Two Sisters, Dead Girl’s Diary follows the story of certain people who have fascinating adventures in the LHF universe outside of the main plot line. This particular parallel adventure concerns Absinthe, a vampire who died at the age of 13 and the one responsible for turning Will undead. What has she been doing in the century after biting her boyfriend? Find out here.
Absinthe ain’t your typical action figure. Her head is actually from a small Asian ball-jointed doll made by a Korean company, Elfdoll. The sculpt’s name is Kathlen, and it comes in open-eyed and close-eyed versions. I chose the one with closed eyes for Absinthe since it seems to give her a dreamy, thoughtful air appropriate to her character. Because the resin body that Kathlen comes on is just 20 cm high and not well-articulated, I put Absinthe’s head on an Obitsu body, a masectomized torso from a 27 cm Obitsu with a pelvis and legs from a 23 cm Obitsu. Her hair is a wig made of white mohair.
Oh yeah, and the snowy forest backdrops are from the Winter Wonder set of textures for Daz3D’s Woodland Realm Playset One. I would use actual forests, but I live in a densely populated suburban area and do not have any woods to take pictures of, so these graphics will have to suffice.
I’m going to do some more work on Ethan’s hair and possibly on his face, adding wrinkles, but here’s what he looks like in a very cadaverous, cold purple. He’s waiting for his pants, but I opted to save him the embarrassment of showing him breechless.Continue reading Ethan painted
Corsetkitten and I are doing a trade in which we each think that we’re getting the better end of the deal. She’s getting some stuff that she wants, and I’m getting Birthday Party Fun from the Re-ment American Kitchen set and a beautiful Otaku repaint by CorsetKitten. The default Otaku looks stoned, but CK’s repaint gives her an inquisitive look with expressive eyebrows and a slightly open mouth. She has loads more personality. She has no planned character in the LHF universe, but I couldn’t resist her charm.
Looking for a better head for Teodora.
Pippilotta needs a better body. Her left arm is kludgy, and her ankles are loose and weak.
Sibley’s default paint is wearing off his hair. I am dismayed because I don’t use him strenuously. I guess I’ll just have to paint his hair pink and induct him into the elite club of awesome dudes with pink heads.
Teodora, Pippilotta’s great aunt, is not a Colonial type of vampire the way that Pippilotta is. Pippilotta is an immortal, undead, sterile vampire, while Teodora is a bruxsas, a long-lived member of an exclusively female clan of Portuguese blood-drinkers who live for up to 300 years, interbreed with human men and work magic with gardening, cooking and fertility-related arts. I’m looking for a head for her because my OK Girl head, a soft, dirty copy of CG01, doesn’t really resemble her. I think Triad’s brunette fem sculpt might be good, as might their auburn sculpt, which has a rounder face. Below are front and side hairless renders of Teodora, then the headsculpts from Triad. What do you think? Continue reading Teodora’s head? Opinions, please.
Cracked.com did a feature about the formulaic nature of House. It’s amusing whether you’ve seen the show or not, no matter what your feelings toward it.
In the summers between college, I worked at the Bailey Howe Library for the University of Vermont along with my sister. I got paid to be surrounded by the largest collection of books in the state, and I enjoyed myself immensely. Besides the scholarly titles available, the library also offered a selection of casual reading, which was displayed prominently, along with other new acquisitions, at the back of the lobby on the first floor. I found many books to consume by sorting through the returns, stumbling upon them in the stacks when I was ostensibly making sure books were in call number order and, finally, picking them from the new acquisitions shelf.
During the summer of 1997, I saw a book on the new acquisitions shelf called Daughter of Darkness by Steven Spruill. The cover and title showed all stereotypical signs of being a thriller, possibly with some supernatural elements. As I enjoy thrillers, suspense novels, mysteries, etc., I picked it up. I saw that it was a medical suspense/vampire novel about a hospital intern coming to terms with her peaceful vampirism in opposition to her father’s murderous bloodsucking and picked it up. I read it quickly, liked it, then forgot it.
As soon as I forgot all the key details of the book, I wanted to read it again, primarily for the convincing biological interpretation of "hemophages," but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It didn’t help that all I remembered was the key invented term "hemophage" and the subtitle, "A Novel of Unearthly Thirst." Typing either phrase into search engines did nothing; neither did skimming my local library’s catalog of vampire fiction or even that of Amazon. Rather frustrated but not obsessed, I thought I would never figure out what book I barely remembered.
This morning, though, someone requested a Paperback Swap book from me, so I sent it off, then poked idly around the site, looking for a way to use my remaining credits. Seeking an anthology of vampire viction, Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction, that contains my favorite story by Tanith Lee, "Bite-Ne-Not, or, The Fleur de Fur," I didn’t find what I was looking for.
However, I did come across what I wasn’t looking for. A keyword search on Paperback Swap for "blood thirst" brought up tangentially related titles…one of which was Daughter of Darkness. The cover seemed familiar and the date, 1997, was approximately right for when I first read the book that I couldn’t fully remember. Before my prefrontal cortex registered the title’s significance, I felt a familiar rise of anticipation because the rest of me realized that I had been looking for this book for 12 years. Curious, I clicked.
Hooray! An end to my quest! As soon as I saw the subtitle, I knew what I had found.
In any event, I ordered Daughter of Darkness from Paperback Swap, then discovered that it was the second in a trilogy. I just now ordered the first book, Rulers of Darkness. When I get another credit, I will order the third book, Lords of Light, even though it sounds silly. I’m so very gratified to have found Daughter of Darkness, a gratification made stronger and more pleasing by the element of surprise, since I wasn’t looking for it in the first place. Serendipitous discoveries make me bubble.
I pulled out Zinnia Pascale’s dull default molded ponytails and bangs. In place of the ponytails, I glued two buns from some Bratz doll. In place of her molded bangs, I glued doll hair bangs from the same Bratz. Zinnia Pascale may now legitimately be counted among my pink-haired dolls. Furthermore, she has crazy hair to match her crazy outfit. She is the awesomest zombie I know!
Continue reading More pink hair, or, Zinnia Pascale! Now! With 103% More Awesomeness!
Well, I just paid for Ethan’s clothes, so he will have a complete outfit of shirt [which I have], breeches, stockings and banyan [last three commissioned]. A banyan is a loose robe-like housecoat for men, often with Chinese- or Japanese-inspired designs. Popular during the 1700s and 1800s in Europe, the banyan reflected a fascination with "Oriental" culture and motifs. Don’t tell me you didn’t learn something today.
I was talking to cobroldy, who did Ethan’s outfit for me, about doing a dandy outfit for Will largely copied after the affectations of Oscar Wilde. I’m not doing it right now because I don’t have the money, but I do want to record some ideas and sources of inspiration. Will’s Wildean suit will be in shades of purple, most likely aping the style of Wilde’s suit shown in these photos:
Continue reading Ethan gets clothes; Will goes Wilde.
I love spiders, and I especially think tarantulas are pretty cool because they are hairy, so they look cuddly. Therefore, I found this story heart-warming. Basically the writer rescued a little tarantula from a swimming pool, where it was suffering brain damage and partial paralysis after being stung by a wasp and also falling into the water. The writer and friend nursed it back to health, even feeding it by hand because it couldn’t jump on bugs and catch them. It still moves slowly, but it can catch its own food now. Isn’t that great?
Incidentally, I’ve always suspected that, the smaller something is, the shorter its lifespan, true for birds, bugs and small rodents, for example. Tarantulas go against this principle, however. Though they are really big for spiders, they’re still small in the grander scheme of things, but they can live for decades. Longer than dogs and cats even!!
Above and beyond his ebullient, hard-pumping, catchy synth aesthetic, balanced with equal parts fantastical optimism and wistful melancholy aslant:
1. He plays air guitar at his own concerts.
2. He plays air drums at his own concerts.
3. He headbangs at his own concerts.
4. He jumps around in circles at his own concerts.
5. He incorporates these weird noises — "Wha hoo hah hoo haaa!" — into his lyrics, as if to indicate that the music is so kickin’ rad that it renders him wordless.
6. His style of "dancing" involves lots of fist-pumping, wrist-twirling, spinning in circles and hopping.
7. He never lets his complete lack of kinesthetic talent get in the way of his bodily transmission of the super awesomeness and hip-unscrewing abandon of his music. He doesn’t just sing and/or play the music; he becomes it.
8. He is a complete dork, and he doesn’t care.
Who pays attention to this shit anyway?
Hair Color
Black: 9
Pink: 6
Brown: 6
Red: 5
Blond: 4
Grey: 4
Blue: 1
White: 1
I want to paint at least Zinnia Pascale’s ponytails pink. Then pink will be firmly in second place.
…for the overwhelming price of $2.99 + free shipping from Ebay. Why didn’t the seller just pay me to take it off their hands?
Still needed: A battery charger and a backup battery.
Davry now has pink hair. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make him any less self-righteous.
I finally got a passable close-up of Will. Unlike other dolls of mine, his face is done more impressionistically, with fewer definite borders. My new camera picks up details such as this that I don’t even notice in real life. Also please note that the Cy Girl relaxed hands may not be the most detailed out there, but they are the most graceful and elegant. I think they work equally well for male and female figs. Will looks very amused by something in this picture.
In other news, the battery charger + battery that I ordered is out of stock, so I have to get one somewhere else. I also need to get an SDHC card reader. Fleargh. Continue reading Pink hair count +1
Taking my numbers from this summary of the LHF cast, I figured out some interesting stats about them. Continue reading LHF character stats
Little Assistance makes custom, functional wheelchairs in a variety of styles for 1:12 dolls. I really wish they made 1:6 wheelchairs.
EDIT: They do custom wheelchairs in 1:6! For hundreds of dollars!
Even better now that I have discovered that RealPlayer has a feature allowing users to download videos, through which I am attempting to download the many mini-vids on YouTube of each song on the Live Hats DVD, my favorite Men Without Hats album. Then I will try to get them on a CD or DVD [I really just want the music, as much as I love Ivan’s jumping around] and put them on my hard drive.
Tonner makes a 10" friend to Tiny Kitty Collier, Simone Rouge. With a black bob and a round, pert face, the Simon Rouge Raven Basic edition is sweet and welcoming. Though fashions for Tiny Kitty and Simone Rouge tend toward the formal, fussy and mature, 10" Simone Rouge is just the right size for a teenaged girl or a petite woman in 1:6. Her price, around $60.00 in underwear, is about right for a doll that’s articulated as well as an articulated Barbie, but with bendable wrists. Like Momoko, she’s very cute, but useless, as I have no character for her.
Scratch that. I don’t have a dock for my camera. Ergo I ordered a camera charger and another battery. Continue reading Next! On the Cavalcade of LOLs! Also pictures with new camera…
Despite the fact that most of my dolls are queer and completely lacking in fashion sense, I’m attracted to Earring Magic Ken, a gay fashion disaster doll who appeared on the mainstream market in disastrous state. He would be entirely redundant, though, as I already have a character named Ken [Kenneth Sibley] and clothes that are even tackier than his default outfit.
I just got a rechargeable battery for my camera and 2 4 GB memory cards. Since Staples was selling the memory cards for almost half off, I got a backup. Now to charge the battery when I get home…. I should probably get another battery too when I have a bit more money to dispose of. Well, there went my Momoko refund… :p
Here is the page on the Kodak Web site for my new camera. I got it with a dock too. I really hope it came with a neck strap and a lens cap, but I can’t tell because I’m at work now, and my camera is at home. I also can’t tell if it came with a rechargeable battery pack, which I hope it did because then I can recharge the batteries on the camera dock. If not, it takes Kodak brand KLIC-8000 Li-Ion rechargeables. Damn proprietary batteries.
So far, this is what I have learned about my camera: Continue reading My new camera: Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS
I got a new camera in the mail today, a Kodak EasyShare Z712, refurbished, for <$125.00. I’ve spent the last hour learning its features and swearing at it. Its default pictures have much higher resolution, thus crisper detail, than my old camera. Witness the following picture of Michaela, who now has the red hair appropriate to her character. She’s not finished; she may get a haircut and her neck painted to match her head, but she’s in much better condition now than she was yesterday.
I hope I can work out my puzzlement with my new camera and get to work taking better close-ups. Continue reading New camera! Michaela with red hair!
After learning that the auction for the Momoko I wanted was pulled, I entered a Paypal claim for the full amount of my payment. This weekend, after the seller did not respond within the allotted period, I got a refund of the full payment, thanks to the Paypal Protection Policy or whatever it’s called. I’m annoyed that I did not get the doll, but grateful to have the $82.00 back to put toward my credit card, which still has an outstanding balance because of last month’s doll-buying orgy. I’m not sure I’ll be trying again for a Momoko, unless someone’s just selling her head.
In which Anneka’s karaoke buddies pave the road to Hell. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=240
Comments: Introducing a minor character, Marabou Fandango, a 12″ Playalong Lt. Uhura doll! With hair that fabulous, she had to be a drag queen!
So I finally found a use for the Mikelman Candi head that I bought from Andrea a while back. I had intended her to be Cory, but she did not resemble my earlier 3-D renders of Cory, so no dice.
A few days ago, I got into my head that I would like a doll of Justine, the evil leader of the Sods, Will and Absinthe’s former clan. I rendered some 3-D pictures of her and, lo and behold, saw that she looked approximately like the aforementioned Candi head, which, conveniently enough, even had the overdone makeup required for her character. I popped her on to a spare CG 2.0, and she looked convincingly like the portly and powerful Justine.
I then confronted another obstacle: Justine’s hair. I identified some wigs that could be historically passable, but I didn’t feel like paying $15.00 for some hair. So I poked around online, looking for information about historical hairstyles, finally discovering a small collection of photos at Shooting Star History ranging from the 1860s to the 1890s. Of all the styles roughly contemporary with Justine, the so-called "up twist with Spanish comb" looked simplest and most achievable, so I tried to push Justine’s original black rooted hair into a French twist. I failed because it was too slippery.
I ended up sculpting a French twist out of Sculpey directly on to Justine’s head. Then I dunked her in boiling water for 60 seconds to cure the Sculpey. [Note: This is an appropriate amount of time to cure a sculpted hairstyle, even with delicate parts, without it pulling away from the head.] Then I painted it a light turd brown, then scribbled all over it with Tuscan Red Prismacolor, then sealed it with matte varnish. The addition of a few loose hairs around her hairline effectively concluded the sculpted suggestion of hair.
Below are the renders of Justine’s head which I studied in order to find a headsculpt for her. They are hairless to better reveal the shape of her face and skull. There are two of them because the left represents her in Victorian times, when she was arrogant and evil, and the right represents her now, when she is less evil. Below that is a picture of Justine in plastic with her French twist, waiting for her P.F. Albee Barbie walking suit!!
Continue reading The story of Justine and her hair
…I found one in my doll drawers…and it’s explicitly a school uniform from a Catholic school, even! Said clothes came with Sideshow’s Dead Babysitter, whose head I used for the indefatigably fabulous Zinnia Pascale. Pictures and 1:6-related blather below.
Continue reading After all that piss about 1:6 Catholic schoolgirl uniforms…
That’s the kind of offer I can get behind. Amazon keeps offering me a $30.00 credit if I get an Amazon.com Visa card, so, since I was feeling like acquiring things without spending money today, I tossed a P.F. Albee Barbie and an Only Hearts Club outfit in my cart. With shipping, my total came to $29.09, which means that these purchases will end up not costing me anything.
The P.F. Albee Barbie commemorates a door-to-door Avon rep precursor who was active in the fin-de-siecle period. She comes in a beautiful lavender walking suit for respectable sales calls. Into this outfit I intend to jam the portly Justine. Wish me luck.
The OHC outfit, a blindingly pink jogging suit, will be divided up among my small characters, such as Susie, Little Anneka and Absinthe. Poor Susie…Her lightweight and very slender Obitsu body makes her look hunchbacked and cadaverous, despite her chubby little face. Maybe she needs some plastic surgery this weekend. I tried to bulk her up with a turtleneck under her sweatshirt, but she still looks fragile.
YAY FREE CLOTHES!
Breanna, curly bangs, sausage curls in back, size 4.5, $13.50. Victorian child.
Clarissa, bangs, side curls, ponytail w curls, size 4, $13.95. Victorian child. For Little Will.
Erika, curly bangs, two bunches of curls on sides, size 4-5, $12.50. Victorian child.
Martha, updo with curly bangs, size 4, $13.00. Victorian/Edwardian woman. For Leonora.
Nicolette, updo, curly bangs, sausage curls in back, size 4.5, $13.25. Edwardian/Victorian woman. For Justine.
Penny, bangs, shoulder length flip, size 4, $13.60. 1950s/1960s girl or woman. For Michaela.
All my dolls, 01/01/2009.
Crappy pictures from crappy camera showing current cast. Continue reading LHF cast as of 1/1/09
Now that I’m at home and staring at everyone, here’s a list of who needs clothes:
1. Teodora needs jeans.
2. Gemini needs jeans.
3. Mark needs pants with longer legs.
4. Will needs jeans.
5. Anneka needs jeans.
Apparently a majority of the crew wants denim!
Looks like AJ Clothiers may be my best bet for getting all items from one place.
OJI
2846 grey dress shirt 3.95
2487 white dress shirt 3.95
2360 light blue dress shirt 4.95
2491 brown curdoroy pants 3.95
2494 dark green cargo pants 3.95
2337 DID baggy jeans 4.95
2957 Chinese slippers 4.95
1920 DML black dress shoes 2.95
I would like, in no particular order…Continue reading While I’m dreaming…
H2 Creative is I think where Will’s head originally came from. I think he’s HH042. If so, then this is my reaction: right here.
LHF characters dress in one of two styles. Some wear subdued clothing, either historical or utilitarian. Others wear mismatched flamboyant disasters. See chart.Continue reading Finding dull doll clothes
In which Mark’s New Year’s party ends up being the wildest yet. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=204
As much as I think that ZC Girls are cheaply made, overpriced, microcephalic Cy Girl knock-offs, I rather like their recent release Janice, who seems to be some combination of a magician, a witch and a Playboy bunny. She comes with a plethora of accessories and 2 complete [although skimpy] outfits INCLUDING BOOTFEET, which almost makes her worth her $90.00 price.
Hmmm, I see that Dark Figures is trying desperately to get rid of its less desirable BTVS figs at $20.00 a pop. Must resist the temptation to buy Liam/Angelus for historically approximate clothing…
Not only is Ivan Doroschuk hot, energetic and smirky, with a shuddersomely wonderful voice, but he’s also…GASP…a feminist! Hey Men kind of blows my mind, being as it is a song about respecting women and children and, for men, embracing a wider, more compassionate definition of masculinity. No wonder this song never made any hit lists.
EDIT: This just in. Ivan Doroschuk is also a great big geek. He has been known to jump around in circles singing ["Tell me tell me tell me where do the boys go?!"] regularly and play air guitar at his own shows.
EDIT EDIT: I’m gonna have to buy the Live Hats concert DVD and somehow get the music off it. Here’s another awesome tune — Security — about being haunted by one’s confidence. And here’s the creepy original, apparently not available on CD anywhere.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: If I made a 1:6 Ivan Doroschuk, it would fail to capture his appeal because much of his magnetism comes from the sheer abandon with which he flings himself about in spasmodic blitheness.
Well, I can’t find the "before" pictures of Ethan’s head, so you’ll just have to feast your eyes on this progress picture, with wiggly arrows indicating most of the places where I gouged a lot. Fascinating. I need to gouge his nostrils deeper. Continue reading Ethan in progress
…a time when Web sites were characterized by multicolor walls of cheerfully misspelled text, uselessly animated buttons, blinking banner links, spasmodic mouseover animations and obscure Web rings! Case in point: Men Without Hats’ site. Despite the simplistic design, I actually love this site. It was clearly made without a designer [or any sense of design principles] by the hatless dudes themselves, who are just bubbling over with an infectious enthusiasm for the music. That’s one of the things I love best about this band: From their music videos and concert vids, it’s obvious that they’re having so much fun, grinning and singing and flailing wildly.
Anyway, from what I can unearth, Men Without Hats has a NEW ALBUM OUT, No Hats Beyond This Point, marking a return to their synth pop roots after a few decades away. I’m going to get it when I’m not hemorrhaging money in the direction of dolls and doll supplies.
Please excuse me. I need to drool over Ivan Doroschuk listen to more MWH music vids now.
EDIT: Okay, it’s not new. It came out in 2004. Well, it’s new to me.
Turns out that the $25.00 price on Triad’s site for Cadence is the after-Xmas sale price, while $37.00 is the regular non-sale price. Deciding that $37.00 was too much for one outfit, I sprang for the sale price, which means that Michaela’s clothes are in the mail, so I will indeed be remaking Michaela [YAY!], but will not be getting any Ladies’ Mission fetishwear [DAMMIT!].
Anyway, shipping from Triad was $2.99 for normal USPS first class. They must make their killing on shipping bulky items like dollies.
NOTE: Tonight I will post pictures of the apples I made this weekend and of the progress that I have made on gouging Ethan’s head.
Nouveau Toys, which specializes in Aoshima’s Ladies’ Mission dolls, has limited quantities of these Japanese imports, some with schoolgirl outfits! I like the ones without the scarves around the necks, Ai and Yui. I’m also very interested in the nun ["Street Corner Princess?!?!?!?!"] and the maid for fetishwear purposes, also because they are endlessly amusing. Anyone wanna split some LMs? :p
In other options, Triad has some possibilities. There is the New Skool outfit, but it has that stupid neck scarf which is more appropriate to Japanese school uniforms than U.S. ones. Cadence could work, as it is conservative and kinda girly.
As much as I like the Aoshima fetishwear, I think buying just an outfit would be better than buying a whole damn doll + clothes + guns when I am only going to use the clothes. Now the question is…where to get Cadence? It’s $25.00 at Triad, but they’re known for their naaaaaaaaaaastry shipping costs. Alternatively, it’s $37.00 at Good Stuff to Go, but why the $12.00 markup?
Oh, the weighty questions that plague me….
…My innocent vengeful Catholic schoolgirl vampire with a cross burning into her skin and a red ’50s flip. The best thing about her is her absolute seriousness about all matters of life, in contrast to her casual, chatty and very personal relationship with God, mediated by the Archangel Michael, who she firmly believes in, but who we never see. She has no designated role in any upcoming season, but I would like to bring her back. Here she is in (Un)Real Life, the previous incarnation of LHF, writing her column Dead and Devout for the vampire newspaper. The best joke of this whole episode is that I used a font called Catholic Schoolgirl for her handwriting! ^_^
Well, anyway, I have a Kisaragi Honey head that I could use for her; I just need to get that red flip and a schoolgirl outfit…something very demure.
Since Soom’s earlier hooved/horned/winged dolls, Beryl [April, fem] and Sard [May, dude], attracted such universal squealing and wanking, the company wisely decided to release another highly desirable hooved/horned/winged doll for December and the sign of Saggitarius. Heliot has the added distinction of being a unicorn. Like almost all entries in the zodiac series, he has a petulant, androgynous face and a drapey, esoteric outfit.
I admire Heliot’s headsculpt greatly, as I do with so many of Soom’s mature sculpts. However, after my failed experiment with an 80 cm doll from Soom, I have realized that I do not have room for more than 3 1:3 dolls. Since Jareth, Frank and Sardonix aren’t going anywhere, I have no room in my life for another large doll, except as an unattainable object that I admire.
Flirty Pink Going to the Pink Market contains cleaning products and a spray bottle!
Flirty Pink Sundays are Pink contains tools that are probably the right size for light crafting, rather than minor carpentry.
While I’m poking around on the site, I notice these that I like as well, but may not be able to get, since they are older:
American Kitchen Mommy’s Breakfast has cereal and a milk jug.
Elegant Sweets Girls Like Tarts reminds me of the fruit tarts I love so much.
In Fun Meals, I like Waffles because of the waffle iron and Eggs Etc. because of the eggs and bacon!
In Mini Sweets, I like Happy Birthday Surprise because of the balloons and the blowers and All-American Apple Pie for the beautiful pie!
Iwako interests:
Continue reading Notes to myself: Rement wants and Iwako interests
In which prep for Mark’s New Year’s party ain’t going so well. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=190
I won’t have everything set for an Xmas party, so all decorations and festivities you see below will be formally presented on for New Year’s Eve. I just wanted to show off my work early. I was able to find 1:6 balloons at a party store; they were called “balloon picks” and were sold as cake toppers. Garlands are from 1:1 garlands, snowflakes from copier paper and Post-Its, banner from wrapping paper, party hats from origami paper and pompoms, noisemakers from origami paper and slender dowels. Why yes, I do spend way too much time on these things…
Holiday cheer to all!
His voice gives me chills; also, he manages to look like he’s glowering and having fun at the same time.
Despite the fact that Ivan Doroschuk looks incredibly grim and pissed off, the infectious frolicking of everyone else in this music video always makes me happy. Hooray for Men Without Hats! It is, indeed, safe to dance. Do the Safety Dance!
Previously on LHF: Will pleads with Anneka to take some time to grieve in the wake of her grandmother’s death, but Anneka goes to work in the day, protected by the impenetrable leopard print coat. At work, she finds no respite from her sadness; instead, she uncovers a book by her grandmother Minerva and her father Max, with pictures by her grandmother’s partner Mamie. Mark tries to comfort her, pointing out that vampires’ long lives mean endless loss. He counsels her not to despair, saying she should remember who she has left.
Meanwhile, at home, Will fights with asinine lesbovamps.com freelancers and wonders what to do in Anneka’s absence. He reads some Baudelaire, but this just reminds him that his relationship with Anneka is in the shitter.
Determined not to wallow in sadness, Anneka goes out for karaoke with Pippilotta, Rori and two new members of the crowd, introverted carnivore Andrew and obnoxiously eco-friendly Davry.
On location in Janet’s lab for a lesbovamps.com shoot, Will tries to work with Velvette and Gemini, member of the Provincetown clan the End of the World, but Gemini keeps falling asleep. Despite Will’s warnings that Gemini is a dangerous ladykiller, Velvette and Gemini flirt outrageously, leaving Will pissed off about getting no satisfaction.
Then Will initiates a late-night conversation with Anneka about her avoiding him; she agrees to pay more attention to him, then suddenly falls asleep unreassuringly.
Home alone yet again, Will tries to mope, but Velvette, Gemini and Janet, all garishly and scantily clad, accost him. Velvette tells him to dress up and cheer up; he somewhat reluctantly accompanies them to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.
Later, Will takes Anneka to the Nightcrawler, in the hope that she will get slightly drunk and reminisce therapeutically about her grandmother. She does so, but her catharsis is interrupted by Thomas Fell, her ex who’s back in town. He puts moves on Anneka, while Will calls the police. Meanwhile, Zinnia Pascale gallantly steps in to physically subdue Thomas. The evening is derailed.
In which Anneka tells more about Will and his cheese weaselly behavior. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=176
Comments: We know things are bad between our fair protagonists; they’re not even sitting on the same piece of furniture. Incidentally, Anneka’s chair is one of my favorite recent acquisitions; it’s actually a pin cushion in the shape of an overstuffed chair. Will’s cosmetics and Anneka’s computer both come from Rement. Accessories make the scene, baby!
Speaking of accessories, they sure have a lot of sex toys, don’t they?
Labyrinth is my favoritest movie ever, and David Bowie as Jareth is my favoritest movie character ever. That said, Will’s right — the movie is rather creepy.
Professional toy sculptor turned freelance Chris Howes does beautiful 1:6 work. I’ve seen commission threads for him on various 1:6 boards full of members testifying to his greatness. He doesn’t have a storefront of completed sculpts the way that Wanted Action Figure does; instead, he works on commission, producing at least 10 of each likeness at a time. Therefore, his likenesses require more of an outlay; however, from what I’ve seen of his work, he has greater accuracy and more suppleness of curve and musculature than Wanted Action Figure.
If I was ever going to have some rich, obnoxious, vain, preppy characters in LHF, they would be enplasticated by Fashion Royalty Homme dolls, assuming that I could get one nude for <$100.00. I really like the body sculpt, but I don’t think that any of the headsculpts are attractive; because all their lines are sharp and stylized, the FR dudes look as if all their features have been squinched to the middle of their faces. They are, however, hilarious, perfect for bombastic characters, but too expensive for me to indulge them merely as tertiaries.
I rescind my earlier guarded compliments in favor of Moonlight, the canceled CBS weepy vampire detective drama. In case you missed it, this show concerns Mick St. John, an undead PI who stalks and romances Beth, an Internet reporter that he rescued from his nutso [also undead] ex-wife 20 years ago. In every episode, Beth starts to cover a crime for her news organization; Mick pokes around and discovers vampires behind the scenes. Beth gets herself in distress; Mick saves the day, and the viewer’s skull becomes dented with the falling anvils that are driving home the parallels between the murder du jour and Mick and Beth’s relationship.
The tedium is lightened only by the moments in which Josef, Mick’s slick, rich, mischievous friend, slides on scene and smirks around. As Josef, Jason Dohring, with his curling lips and casual air, seems to be the only person in all of Moonlight having fun with the hammy proceedings. He’s like a dignified comic relief character. I found myself fast-forwarding to scenes in which Dohring was on screen.
Blaaaaaah.
Ebay says:
What does that mean? Does that mean I’m not getting my dolly?? 🙁
Here’s a photo of Berry Hunter Momoko, the one that I bought. Of all the Momokos I’ve seen, her outfit and hairstyle seem the most practical. Her appearance communicates to me that she is a slouchy, carefree nerd concerned more with comfort than with stylishness. She is recycling her dad’s old hat, her mom’s old eyeglass frames and her younger brother’s rugby shirt. I bet she likes music and books that were popular 25 to 50 years ago, not because she’s a vampire from that period, but because she is not in tune with modern pop culture. She did not grow up with a TV or a computer. She likes big band music! ^_^ Her name is Parker Stanley. People who meet her often think she is a hipster, but she has only a vague idea of what a hipster is. She is a shy, smiley person with a great fascination for the physical artifacts of modern technology. You can often find her staring at cell phones, mice, remote controls and calculators with a dissective, curious eye. Continue reading Berry Hunter Momoko official picture
Today we’re talking about Misaki! This is another "useless" [i.e., non-LHF] doll that I would like to have, even more expensive than the average Momoko, but around the same price as today’s average Cy Girl. Continue reading Integrity Toys’ Misaki
I ordered a Wanted Action Figures Hugh Laurie head for Ethan. Woo hoo!
I also ordered a Momoko, after weeks of shopping around to discover the lowest price at which I could get a complete doll + outfit that I actually wanted [as opposed to the cheapest possible doll + outfit that I wasn’t necessarily interested in]. Answer: I found a complete Berry Hunter on Ebay for $82.00, $20.00 of which is shipping from Japan.
Unlike Ethan, the Momoko does not have a name or a personality, but, given her shorter size, she is either a mortal teenager or someone who died <21. She might be a member of Cory’s very new clan of displaced, mixed-race vampires, the Half-and-Halfs. She may also be a member of the Chinese vampire clan, the Hun. She may be one of those "hot Irma girls" that Pippilotta flirts with. Or she may be a character whose role I have not thought up yet.
Use this information collected here at Shakesville to let the organizers of the inaugural ball know that you too disapprove of misogynist homophobe Rev. Rick Warren’s selection to do the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Pass along to your friends!
Here’s what I sent to Emmett Beliveau, emmett@pic2009.org, the CEO of the inaugural committee:
—
Dear Mr. Beliveau:
I am writing to express my strong displeasure with the choice of Rev. Rick Warren as the one to perform the invocation at President-Elect Obama’s inauguration.
As a woman, I find Warren’s anti-choice views misogynist. Warren’s inclusion in a prominent position at the inauguration represents hypocrisy on the part of the Obama-Biden team, who ran on a platform advocating women’s reproductive freedom.
As a queer person, I also find Warren’s homophobic behavior despicable as well. His anti-marriage “slippery slope” argument equates gay marriage with incest and rape. How can Obama, who has said on record that he supports gay civil unions, condone Warren’s bigotry by letting him give the inaugural invocation?
Warren’s narrow-minded intolerance should have no place at an event supposedly heralding positive change. Choose another speaker for the invocation, one who truly represents the liberalism, hope and open-mindedness to which the Obama/Biden team has so frequently appealed.
Goal: Scrawny 1:6 male body to accommodate standard action fig heads.
Continue reading Brainstorming for an alternative body for 1:6 Will
I got rid of so many things recently. Then an equivalent number of things came into my life, mostly Rements and books. Paperback Swap, while great for getting rid of books, also tempts one to acquire more. Thus I have a huge pile of new-to-me books on my desk about vampires, New England and vampires in New England.
Also I got a Bratz doll, primarily for its shoes, which are appropriately fabulous and correctly sized for my 1:6ers. It also came with a useful microphone and keyboard and some useful pink and black hair. Tragically, none of the clothes fit ANY of my dolls, and the doll itself is hideous, made of vile-smelling plastic.
I need to retire from Paperback Swap and just donate unwanted books. Then I won’t be tempted to get more.
I have some books on my shelf from which I only like one or two stories. For example, The Penguin Book of Witches and Warlocks stays in my collection solely because of the perfervid, perverse and gloriously overwrought "Sanguinarius." A recent acquisition, Whisper of Blood, only has one story to recommend it to me: the learned tale of archaeological horror "The Ragthorn." I need to just copy the single stories that I like and get rid of the whole volumes.
In a sea of dispiriting news, there remains a minuscule atoll of good tidings. LHF is publicized every ep on Men With Dolls, Fantasy Net, this here blog and, when I remember, my Facebook page. Some of them I put on Pukey’s too. From what I can tell, people like it. Right now I have 45 eps up with 207 comments, which averages to 4.6 per ep. This is not counting the anonymous kudos that the eps get on MWD. [Much to my frustration, I don’t know WHO leaves the kudos.] I should count pageviews on MWD and FN and get some rough stats.
Sideshow’s upcoming entry in the Dead line is a zombie priest entitled The Harbinger. I must say that, while Sideshow’s record for 1:6 likenesses stinks, they do a great job on The Dead. I love my Dead Babysitter [who became Zinnia Pascale], and I really like the Harbinger too. His hand sculpts look arthritic and bony, and his drawn face and rolling eyes accurately reflect a despair that I think much more pertinent to zombies than slavering rage. Sideshow really has to start making their zombies lose ears, though. I don’t understand how this guy’s brain became exposed without him getting an ear or two torn off.
I’m tempted to get this guy for Ethan [the poor man is having such a problem being immortalized in plastic!], but I’d rather not wait an untold number of months before he comes out. His release date is Q1 2009, but toymakers are never on time.
I’ve been contemplating the creation of my own Ethan, but my current materials always daunt me. I don’t have an appropriate sculpting medium, just the remnants of some peach Sculpey and some rotten air-dry clay that won’t adhere to existing heads. I have a resin skull that could conceivably be the base for Ethan’s cadaverous visage, but that involves building up features, and I’m much better at scraping out features by using an Xacto knife or sandpaper.
Maybe I should just get an unpainted resin sculpt and shave it down. The prominent brows, sunken eyes, dour mouth and narrow cheeks of Hugh Laurie could work, as seen in this sculpt by Wanted Action Figure.
On the subject of Wanted Action Figure, maybe I should get a Johnny Depp head too. I’ve been toying with the idea of remaking Will with an appropriately scrawny body, but that would require getting him a new head, since his current one is already way too fragile. The Depp sculpt approximates his features best. Now if I could just find a body that’s as etoliated as the Obitsu Slim Male, but with slightly broader shoulders… Jesus Christ, it’d probably be best just to modify a PB or a CG 2.0!
I STILL have a hard-on for Medicom’s Young Indiana Jones because my mind thinks River Phoenix=Will. I wish I weren’t so interested in it, because I’m sure that there’s something disappointing about the sculpt that the prototype photos don’t show.
Hot Toys is issuing a beautiful 1:6 Edward Scissorhands soon. I want its clothes. The fact that I could probably get a likeness of Will out of the head doesn’t hurt either.
Sekiguchi’s Momokos continue to tantalize me. I draw very close to purchasing one, but then I always cheap out because I don’t have a designated character for such a doll, who costs a lot, even on sale. That said, I have found Miracle Party Girl, Wild and Sexy Tune, Dash After School, Sweet Poodle, Lovely Folklore and Berry Hunter for <$100 with s/h. Too bad I want Sea Maze/Blue Labyrinth/whatever the hell she’s called.
In which a psycho ex returns, and Zinnia Pascale kicks some butt.
Comments: Just in case you weren’t convinced from his rendezvous with Zinnia Pascale, we now see blatant evidence that Thomas has no redeeming characteristics. What did Anneka ever see in this dastardly dude? Find out next season….
Also please note that Will has changed. In the past, he would have acted like Zinnia Pascale, kicking Thomas’ ass across The Nightcrawler. But, as he said to Anneka in 1.1, “Domestic Vampires,” he’s learned that stomping people into the ground ain’t that effective, despite how good it makes one feel.
"Zombies enflesh our anxieties about the disintegration of our personhood on the political front, the occupational front and the medical front."
Some dude is singing a song while his hair blows violently, and fantasy cliches of the 1980s, all starring him, roll across the screen like a mash-up of several movie trailers. The music has nothing to do with the images, yet the mixture remains strangely compelling, if only because I’m trying to figure out who this guy is and what story, if any, he’s trying to tell. Also he’s kind of hot when he’s not wearing that stupid little goatee.
The dude’s IMDB page. The dude’s official site. An interview with the dude. Bonus: He explains the "plot" of the music video in the interview! Also he’s a complete nerd with a huge emotional investment in the music video characters, whom he wants to develop into a manga series. He seems like a nice guy, but why…why…WHY is his hair twitching like that? WHY?
A webinar is a specific type of web conferencing, like a seminar with a presenter and an audience, only online. I have nothing against the concept; I just think that the word sounds stupid. Unlike web + broadcast [=webcast], web + seminar do not easily create one word starting with web. What’s wrong with calling it a web seminar?
In which Materyllis’ cat misbehaves.
Comments: Rement makes a set of figures called My Cats. Materyllis’ cat comes from the set called the Nomuras’ Kitchen Cat, which contains the sleeping cat, the soup pot as shown, a playful kitten [not shown] and its plastic bag that it is swatting at [also not shown]. I initially bought the set for the sleeping cat, which I thought was cute, but for which I had no use.
Then I thought that Materyllis, as a reclusive, shapeshifting, vampire healer and conjure woman, would be just the sort of person to have cats. Much to her annoyance, however, her cat is about as inert as she is hard-working.
No, seriously. It’s the title of a real book. Since they’re virtual, they aren’t tied to a particular location, so why are they in Vermont, aside from alliterative value? Furthermore, what do they feed on: pixelated gore from first-person shooters?
EDIT: A riveting preview, full of One-Sentence Paragraphs Of Emphasis and Italics Of Doom!! Apparently nothing Vermont-related was employed in the creation of this hackwork entry into a series. How disappointing.
In which Will tries to get Anneka drunk…in an entirely therapeutic manner, of course.
Comments: Originally, Zinnia Pascale was not in this ep or the next one. However, given her animosity toward Thomas [see last frame], she horned her way in despite my authorial intentions.
You can tell that Thomas, first seen in Meanwhile 8: “Zombie in the Diner!!,” is an idiot because he walks around with his collar popped.
I’ve always thought that, if there were any more than, say, 10 vampires in the world, that they would form some sort of para-society, parasitic to, but somewhat independent of, human society. Vamp society, in my mind, would include an organization of power and some set of rules. Let’s look at some vamp societies in recent TV shows: Continue reading Vampire hierarchies in TV shows, with a close look at True Blood
I watched season 1 of True Blood yesterday and found it engrossing, entertaining, mordant, frothy, sly and lightweight. I enjoy the twitchy, brave, perky performance by Anna Paquin as Sookie and the dry, subdued performance by Stephen Moyer as Bill Compton. I especially appreciate his concentrated stillness and the way in which he projects an absence of movement appropriate to a non-living creature. He makes a wonderful foil for Sookie, instilled by Paquin with an almost fidgety sense of movement, brightness and sensitivity. Even though I have the most investment in Sookie and Bill, I’m curious about the rest of the characters and will probably follow their storylines whenever I get the chance to watch season 2 in one fell swoop.
That being said, the unrelenting amount of sex had me bouncing forward until such scenes were over. Every time anyone had sex, which was frequently, the story’s forward momentum halted to linger on the characters flailing away. Then I had an epiphany about the reason that almost all sex scenes in modern media are so incredibly dull. Continue reading True Blood, a.k.a. The Sex & Vampires Show, or, Why Sex Scenes Bore Me
Absinthe, Submit and the antique girl went to doll club today, but I didn’t take any pictures. The antique girl did, however, get some more appropriate hair, thanks to two members, Judy, who supplied the fuzzy fabric, and Anne Marie, who quickly sewed me a simple wig. I gave Absinthe a braided headband this evening to keep her hair out of her eyes. As for Submit, well, she still thinks she’s the awesomest thing ever! Continue reading My Kathlen-based dolls
I got two sets from the Rement My Cats series: The Suzukis’ Blogger Cat and The Nomuras’ Kitchen Cat. The sitting cat, the computer and the mouse are from the Blogger Cat set. The kitten is from the Kitchen Cat set. The cartoon is from my imagination. If anyone wants the cats, let me know. I just want the computer and the mouse [and the cat in a pot, not shown]. 😀
A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcom http://books.google.com/books?id=nQgBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover
Women in America 1820-1842 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/FEM/home.htm
Now that some shows I watch are on Christmas break [?!] apparently, I thought I'd update my opinions on them.Continue reading Thoughts about TV shows: Bones, Fringe, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Supernatural
I can’t find anything with it, even when I type in exact phrases that I know I put in certain entries.
In the most recent Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan writes about "What Girls Want." Basically, she says that all girls want steadfast male devotion, like she did, which is why the Twilight series is so popular among teen female readers. She makes the horrible logical fallacy of assuming that her particular experience is universal; in doing so, she erases all possible variations of sexual maturation — due to race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, size, disability, etc. — that young girls experience. She especially erases variations in young girls’ sexual preferences, assuming that they’re all heteronormative. We ain’t no monolith, you dipstick, and we don’t all want slavishly adoring masculine suitors.
Here we go. Lucretia Maria Davidson (1808-1825) was one of the Beautiful, Virtuous, Dead Teen Poets I was talking about earlier. Margaret Miller Davidson (1823-1838), Lucretia’s younger sister, was another. Margaret Jr. was named after her mother, Margaret Sr. (1787-1844), who acted as teacher, agent and career manager for both daughters, who, depressingly enough, she outlived. All three of them exploited and were further elevated by the aforesaid Soggy Cult of Tuberculosis, which romanticized the disease that both LMD and MMD Jr. died from. Seriously, there was a whole strain of early Romantic thought linking death by tuberculosis with great sensitivity, poetic skill and tragic beauty.
Interesting information and commentary about these individuals can be found in the following places:
Robert Southey, then the British poet laureate, wrote a very laudatory article (1827) in The Quarterly Review that gave the Soggy Cult more gushing power, but I can’t find a copy of it online.
The Poetical Remains of the Late Lucretia Maria Davidson (1857) contains poems by LMD, but, more pertinent to our investigation into the Soggy Cult, a short dedication by MMD Sr. to Washington Irving, in which MMD Sr. reconstructs LMD’s life so that it might conform to the lineaments of the Soggy Myth. There is also a very long biographical sketch by Catharine Marie Sedgwick that appears to draw on familial reminiscences, unpublished poems and LMD’s letters. Amid the constant tendency to romanticize LMD, there appear many interesting details of her everyday life as a middle-class girl of the very early 1800s. These details are very important! Oh yeah, there’s also some poetry in there.
Biography and Poetical Remains of the Late Margaret Miller Davidson (1850) contains poems by LMD’s sister, MMD Jr. In service of the Soggy Cult, Washington Irving wrote a long biography, ostensibly of MMD Jr., but also encompassing much about MMD Sr., who provided the notes on which the biography is based, and also about LMD, who of necessity enters into any discussion about the MMDs.
"Margaret Miller and Lucretia Maria Davidson" (1850) represents Edgar Allan Poe’s critical response to the Soggy Cult’s libations of praise for LMD and the MMDs. He thinks Sedgwick and Irving too effusive in their evaluation of LMD and MMD Jr. Apparently, Poe will employ the tropes of the Soggy Cult for horrific effect in his fiction, but he has no use for it in real life.
I need books about life in the Boston metro area in the early 1800s, which is when Absinthe was active. I find a plethora of material about Puritan Boston [when Ethan was active], witchcraft Boston [when Tituba was active], late Victorian Boston [when Will was active] and 20th century Boston [when Materyllis was active], but I have a huge gap in my historical knowledge, except for Fire and Roses, by Nancy Lusignan Schultz, which is the story of how Absinthe’s school, a convent school run by Ursuline nuns in Charlestown [now Somerville!], was burned by anti-Catholic rioters in 1834.
I think I need to find some of those soggy Romantic reports of the two young women who were poets in the early 1800s and who lived and died in Plattsburgh, NY. The lavish detail surrounding their portrayal, lives, deaths and poetry gives me a primary-source sense of the Romantic Cult of Tuberculosis, a disease that strongly affected Absinthe’s life. [She died of it.]
The next time I have $400.00+ just bonking around, begging to be spent, I’m going to commission DIM’s Minimee project to do a custom head of Juniper. She’s an original character that I created in Daz back in my electronic modeling phase. Of all the experimental 3-D renders I did, she captured my heart the most. I was going to release her as a character, meaning a custom morph and textures, with several custom poses, but I never got around to it. She reminds me of Sardonix, only much more feral.Continue reading Juniper says, “NYAH!”
Available online as an E-book. Looks like published conference proceedings covering Carmilla to BTVS. Super-chouette!
EDIT: This collection of rather short essays is at its best when covering modern vampires, although Hyun-Jung Lee’s analysis of LeFanu’s Carmilla as a threat to the very foundation of subjectivity is particularly good. In the section on vampires of today, one especially interesting essay by Elizabeth McCarthy addresses the importance of bodily mutilation inflicted by people on vampires to modern conceptions of the vampire legend. In another unusual essay, Pete Remington takes a look at Anne Rice’s vampires and their relation to the experience of the depressive self. Five essays treat BTVS and Angel, mostly the sexually problematic characters of Angel and Spike, who both embody and undermine tropes of magnetic, violent, brooding, Byronic heroism. This is a varied collection with essays of uniformly high quality, although I do wish most of the pieces were longer, with more in-depth analysis.
Also possibly of interest: Monsters: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, edited by Paul Yoder and Peter Kreuter, in the same series.
Also possibly of interest: The Monstrous Identity of Humanity, edited by Marlin Bates, by the same press.
So I’m poking around on Amazon, looking for comprehensive reference books about vampires, and I realize the sheer number of books devoted to critical analyses of BTVS. In no particular order, here are the ones I found, excluding those that focus primarily on shows other than BTVS:Continue reading I cannot indulge your multiverse.
3 books swapped on Paperback Swap
1 old shirt trashed
Total 4 riddances
Grand total 136 riddances
Here are the results of another lazy project of mine. I was going to make Margie, Absinthe’s foster mother, as a complete, separate doll, but I got bored, so I just finished her head and stuck it on Davry’s body. I redressed Davry’s body and gave Margie some breasts made out of polyfill under her shirt. Voila.
Margie is posing next to Mark because Mark represents what Margie’s head looked like before I started work on it. To make Mark’s headsculpt into Margie’s, I carved down the forehead and the brow ridges. I also narrowed the nose and chopped a lot off the tip. I took a lot of width out of the jaw and the chin. Then I sanded with 220 grit sandpaper until most of the nicks from my crappy carving were sanded out. I gave Margie a new paint job mostly with pastels, painted her hair and made her a bun from Barbie hair.
I have now successfully made a dumpy, homely character!Continue reading Yay! Fat doll success! Here’s Margie.
Step aside, all post-apocalyptic last-man-on-earth sci fi scenarios. Richard Matheson’s 1954 novella, I Am Legend, did it first and best. A simply plotted but viscerally effective work, it focuses on Robert Neville’s efforts to stay alive, kill vampires, research the vampirism plague and retain his humanity in the face of crushing loneliness. Matheson writes with a gritty compassion about Robert’s messy desperate days, his horrific flashbacks about his wife’s death, vampiric resurrection and death again at his hands.
The best parts occur when Robert thinks he’s found other plague survivors: a dog, then a woman. Despite his best, most patient, grovelingly desperate advances, the dog dies after only providing a moment of tender respite to Robert. At this point in the novella, the reader feels about as broken-hearted as Robert; while Robert still stubbornly forges ahead in his habits of survival, the more emotionally astute reader begins to suspect that Robert’s world has no hope for humankind. The vampires are taking over. By the end of the story, Robert has the hardest, most chilling realization of all. The vampires rule the world, and they regard him as a murderous relic, a frightening aberration in their new society. He is the monster, not them. I strongly recommend this book.
So I just finished watching seasons 1 and 2 of the BTVS rip-off British supernatural soap opera Hex.Continue reading Hex, seasons 1 and 2: an orgasm of tackiness
I’ve finally put together all my Elfdoll Kathlens. One is Submit, obviously, and the other is either a ghost or a child vampire from some time between 1800 and 1860. The blue hair is temporary. I’m extremely pleased to have Submit back. Goddamn…that girl is cute. ^_^
On the eve of the movie debut of Twilight, much pissing and swooning occurs on the subject of vampires as depicted in this film. Lots of articles wonder about the attraction that the Twilight vampires have to their audience.
Rosemary Black, New York Daily News: 1) Women are drawn to Byronic heroes. 2) We desire them because the intense fear provides orgasmic arousal. 3) They’re the ultimate symbol of a chaste sensuality. 4) They’re perpetually young, sexy and intensely devoted to their mortal lovers.
Kate Harding, Broadsheet [Salon]: 1) New York Daily News is full of shit. All the article’s arguments represent tired stereotypes about female sexuality. 2) Women are attracted to the recent crop of vampires because they are written by women and /or because there’s a focused on well-rounded female characters.
Henly 424, Salon commenter: The current iteration of the vampire, an intensely devoted, magical, eternally loving being with awesome superpowers, recapitulates the old fantasy that a supernatural creature can somehow rescue an ordinary kid from a life of boring normalcy and transform him/her into something powerful and stupendous, merely by association with the undead.
There’s not anything particularly attractive to women as a whole about vampires as a whole. For women as a whole to be attracted to vampires as a whole, both women as a whole and vampires as a whole would require definition as monadic entities. However, women are diverse in their attractions; vampires are diverse in their manifestations. The idea that "vampires" can reveal something "essential" about "feminine sexuality" can just go to hell.
Even if we’re talking about the type of vampires shown in the Twilight saga [which we probably are, even though it’s never explicitly stated], the question is still not "Why do women love vampires?" The question is "Why are these particular characters extremely popular among a huge subset of U.S. readers who are mostly teenaged and female?" There’s no ahistorical answer. I can’t stand it when people can’t frame their inquiries with appropriate exactness.
As to why the Twilight vampires are so popular with their audience, I think Laura Miller’s analysis of Bella as Mary Sue is an insightful start.
The LHF vampires are amused about the amount of critical ink being spilled in an attempt to explain their attractiveness to mortals. :p
In which Will wakes Anneka to have an urgent discussion about their [lack of a] relationship. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=132
Comments: I feel bad for both characters here. Both of them are obviously in pain, and both of them aren’t really listening to each other. Hmmm, that’s the story of their life together.
Anneka’s ability to fall asleep in the middle of heart-wrenching discussions unfortunately parallels my own.
1 package of Tarot cards exchanged in Holiday Wishlist meme
Total 1 riddance
Grand total 132 riddances
3 riddances were exchanged in the Holiday Wishlist meme:
2 picture frames
1 set season 2 Supernatural DVDs
2 riddances were trashed:
1 collection of rags
1 dead rug
Total 5 riddances
Grand total 131 riddances
I discovered Paperback Swap, and it is the BESTEST site ever!! You can post books you don’t want, which other users can then request of you. You send these books for the price of postage, in turn receiving credits that you can redeem for books posted by other users. I’m very excited because I posted the requisite 10 initial books that I wanted to get rid of, and, already, within hours, 5 of them have been claimed. Good riddance!!!
1 copy of Breaking Dawn
1 copy of The Spanish Pearl
1 copy of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
1 copy of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
1 copy of Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today
Total 5 riddances
Grand total 126 riddances
Fly little books! Fly to new appreciative owners and GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LIFE!
Available from Zittaw Press. I’m very keen on their scholarly edition of Varney the Vampire, or The Beast of Blood.
This beautiful collection of ads, centering on U.S. ads from the 1930s through the 1950s, portrays the tobacco industry’s cover-up of their drug’s deadly effects on users. Note how the manufacturers target especially vulnerable populations such as teenagers, college students, women and people of color. Bastards.
As you can see, I’m participating in the Holiday Wishlist meme, but I come off as too greedy and picky, so I’m not going to get anything off my list. That said, I can make others happy by scanning the lists in the Holiday Wishlist community and sending items to those who desire them. The following riddances have been sent off to a far better life with people who requested them on their wishlists:
1 copy of The Phantom Tollbooth
1 copy of Red As Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer
1 package of origami paper
1 riddance was donated:
1 comforter
Total 4 riddances
Grand total 121 riddances
Gotten from Andrea.
1. New readers [and COMMENTS!] of my weekly Web comic, a sarcastic melodrama about vampires in Boston, Love Has Fangs.
2. Repeal of California’s Prop 8 and other anti-gay props that recently passed in other states…or at least support of organizations working to overturn such legislation and promote marriage equality around the US.
3. A new digital camera with at least as much power as the Kodak Easy Share Z712.
4. A 5-drawer, non-Ikea dresser.
5. A fat 1:6 female action figure.
6. Sideshow Friday the 13th VII Jason 1:6 action figure.
7. Doctor Who Clockwork Droid 12" action fig.
8. Donations in my name of perishables and/or your no-longer needed clothes, books, etc. to non-religious charities.
9. Vampire schlock broadly construed!
Cross-posted here to be glossed over by the masses because I think I missed the appropriate bouncy, generous tone.
Send me an LJ message if you need to get in touch with me.
Continue reading Holiday list, I guess — Holiday wishlist meme keyword spam LQQK! NRFB MIB NR
1 fleece glove lost 🙁
1 hat with ear flaps lost 🙁
1 pair of BJD hands sold
1 BJD blanket sold
1 pile of papers shredded and recycled
Total 5 riddances
Grand total 117 riddances
I suppose I should explain my ideas about riddances. No matter how large/small the space I live in and no matter how many/few things I think I have, I accumulate more things than I expect. These things collect in nooks and crannies of space, such as bookshelves, hobby drawers, closet shelves, under the bed. Basically, they stack up anywhere that it is possible to stash something and forget about it…or at least ignore it for a while. Continue reading Recent riddances and my philosophy about ridding
So I’m getting another Kathlen from Dolls & Friends. No one seems to be buying her [except me], though the price has hit rock-bottom, and she’s so adorable. I felt sorry for the unpurchased Kathlens and yearned after them, mostly because the open-eyed face reminds me of a more mature Submit. Thus I made an offer to Dolls & Friends so low that I didn’t think they would accept it, but they did, so another is coming my way, along with some miscellaneous Rement cosmetics and bakery items!
Anyway, each Kathlen comes with 1 body, 1 head back and 2 face plates. 1 head back + 1 sleeping face plate went to Absinthe. Since she is on an action fig body, I have 1 open-eyed face plate + 1 Kathlen body left over. I’m not sure what to do with the leftovers; they might become a Very Young Will, or they might become an original character. Anyway, I dressed the extra Kathlen and gave him/her the open-eyed face just to see what he/she would look like. Antique girl with purple eyes below. Awwwww….Continue reading Antique girl with purple eyes
The American Family Association is selling a DVD about queer people becoming a visible part of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It’s an alarmist piece of tripe of blithering homophobia that harps about the nefariousness of gay invasions. Commenters from people on Shakesville amuse me greatly, especially the alternative gay agendas. Beware the ROY G. BIV skyscrapers! Boogedy boogedy!
For its repeated use of the word “fwoopy.” Man, what a turd.
In which Velvette and Janet discover that Gemini has an interesting scarf. http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=128
Comments: Previously in our tangential plot, Velvette gets fed up with Janet’s insomnia-related crabbiness, so Janet tries to catch some sleep in the cemetery. Viktor, banished from the site of the man he was created for, discovers her on a sarcophagus and accosts her about his ill treatment by Sibley. Janet banishes him from her sight. Meanwhile, back at Janet and Velvette’s house, Velvette and Gemini are having some fun.
I love how Gemini’s sweet facial expression is belied by her devious mind.
I haven’t been ridding myself of things for a while, but I just sold Jennifer’s body and some clothes, so I’m recording again.
11 BJD clothing items
1 BJD body
Total riddances 12
Grand total 112
Anyway, now that I have sold Jennifer’s body [for a vastly reduced price, due to the stains], I can get Ethan! [That’s Ethan Stuart, the 400-year-old walking skeleton who acts as unofficial king, judge and police of Boston vampire society.] Now I just have to find a place that sells that version of Jason for a reasonable price….
Well, normally, I don’t follow BJD news much these days, but I’m ecstatic to see the news mentioned in the subject line. [Here’s a product page which, as of yet, has nothing remotely resembling doll pictures on it.] Before this, all we had for commercially produced centaurs were the anatomically questionable [centaurs do not have 4 human feet!] Domadoll Kkotmus at about 12". Hopefully, Chiron [named after the wise teacher centaur, the only virtuous centaur in Greek mythology, yay!] will be a regular release, beginning a long line of therianthropic dolls including merfolk, general issue satyrs [as opposed to Soom’s beautiful but limited ones], nagas, sirens, et hoc genus omne.
