by Elizabeth A. Allen
…determining the type of hijab my Bantu girl character would wear. Shayla? Al-amira? Khimar? I’m having better luck determining what it’s NOT [abaya, niqab, chador, burqa].
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1543505.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Yes, fashion blogger and nitpicker extraordinaire Mary Fischer. Sarah Jessica Parker wore sandals and socks the other day just to make YOU barf. She knows that your delicate constitution can’t handle such sins against fashion, and she maliciously plotted to upset your stomach. She’s evil. So am I.
Regards,
someone who won’t wear sandals WITHOUT socks
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Continue reading Shopping While Constipated and other doll notes
September 12th, 13th and 14th! At the Hyatt Regency in Buffalo, NY! We’re going to make a road trip of it, visiting Railroads on Parade in Pottersville, NY, on the way there. I’m thinking 1 to 1.5 days to get from here to RROP and thence to Buffalo, 1.5 to 2 days at the convention, then 1 day to drive back.
Hmmm…looks like about 2 hours from here to RROP. We could drive down in the morning, have lunch and spend the afternoon at RROP. We could either spend the night locally or drive a bit father and spend the night closer to Buffalo. The route from RROP to Buffalo goes right through the Adirondacks, so there are plenty of small hotels and B&Bs to choose from.
The next day we could drive the rest of the way to Buffalo, arriving mid- to late afternoon, in time for any late afternoon or evening convention events. The next day would be all convention, and the day following would be all the return trip.
Possible itinerary
Day 1 [Thursday]: Drive to RROP. See RROP. Option #1: Spend night in Pottersville. Option #2: Spend night in some place between Pottersville and Utica [2 hours from Pottersville]. Option #3: Spend night in Utica.
Day 2 [Friday]: Drive rest of way to Buffalo. Attend convention in later afternoon and/or early evening. Spend night in Buffalo.
Day 3 [Saturday]: Attend convention. Option #1: After full day at convention, spend night in Buffalo. Option #2: After partial day at convention, leave in late afternoon and spend night in Rochester [1.25 hours from Buffalo]. Option #3: After partial day at convention, leave in late afternoon and spend night in Syracuse [2.75 hours from Buffalo].
Day 4 [Sunday]: Drive home.
Day 5 [Monday]: Collapse.
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I found some sprays of plastic ferns in the clearance section at Michael’s last week and couldn’t pass them up. Tonight I broke out the ferns, some leftover dried moss and the Aves Apoxie Sculpt to make some more ground cover.
Continue reading Now the forest set has ferns!
I raised it up higher by not gluing the wheels so far up the chair legs. I also removed the default plastic front cross brace and added double front wheels. Walker is now about 1cm taller [and so is Peter, for that matter, making him more proportional, thank God!].
This project is giving me so much grief. -_-
Erased the watercolor pencil lips and redid them in paint. Bottom lip is tomato red acrylic. Top lip is same, darkened with a bit of black. Also went over his eyebrows with black paint. Sealed the shit out of his mouth with satin varnish and eyebrows with matte.
Here he is borrowing Yamarrah’s body. The bad proportions make me twitch.
Hacked off a centimeter from each of her ankles, pried open hack-offs to rescue ankle pins, drilled out new ankle holes and jammed ankle pins up there, tightening with hot glue. Gotta do something with her hands next. I like them, but they are way out of scale.
Continue reading Shortening Prunella
It’s been about a month and a half since my last census, and things have changed yet again, mostly in the active populations at my house. I’m reusing photos from the last census for everyone except the "out and about" crew at home.
Continue reading All my dolls, 07/07/2013
I got a package from Andrea yesterday [the first at my new address, yay!] containing, among other things, Prunella Jones. She came to me under the name Gavali, a repainted, rerooted High School Musical Gabriella head on an articulated Ballerina Barbie body drilled to accept action figure hands. Naturally, Andrea did the reroot and repaint, as well as the custom zip-up jumpsuit.
Continue reading Prunella the slightly unhinged
I’m surprised the package didn’t disintegrate on the way from Sweden, however, given that it was a mere shoebox secured with Scotch tape, with the address label on a single sheet of wrapping paper poorly adhered to the box. >_>
Fortunately, however, the contents arrived intact, though fully strung. I expected an unstrung doll, so was actually disappointed that I did not have to reassemble her.
Though renowned for its poor posing abilities, the Domuya Flexi body is much more than I expected. Mine, at least, is strung with just the right tension, and it’s balanced, engineered and weighted well enough to stand on high-pile carpeting right out of the box. There are indeed lots of joints, making the body better suited to sitting, lying, slouching and curling up, rather than standing. However, nearly every single joint has locks so that limbs and torso segments can keep their position. Thus the body is pretty solid, even without wiring, though I am gonna wire the arms.
Anyway, here’s Yamarrah’s body and outfit as it stands. The sweatshirt fits, but it rides up on her shoulders whenever I move her arms, so I will not be using it. Instead I will go with an oversize, lightweight T-shirt of the same color with a boat neck and raglan sleeves [yeah, 1980s!!!]. I just have to commission that. The sweatshirt will do for now, though. Besides the shirt, I’m very pleased with the results. I look forward to painting flames up her forearms and neck to disguise some of the resin difference.
Sticking Jareth’s head temporarily on Janvier Jett’s body gives me conniptions of wrongness. Nevertheless, I redid his lips in crimson red watercolor pencil, outlined with dark brown watercolor pencil, and managed to see that it was a great improvement over that previous vile orangey shit before I succumbed to the distraction of HORRIBLY WRONG PROPORTIONS GAAAAAHHHHH.
Continue reading Whhhaaa, the neck is too short and wide! *twitch twitch*
This never fails to cheer me up!
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I mean, I miss my Jareth BJD, whose body is out at the tailor’s. He used to sit right next to my living room chair so that I could enjoy his gleeful fabulosity merely by looking over to the side. Now he’s temporarily gone. I hope he’ll be back soon!
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Ever since one of its legs broke off, I’ve been saving both the body and the leg, primarily because a body with that size tits is pretty rare.
Now that I have grown much more proficient in drilling, hacking and Apoxie Sculpting things, I think that I could reattach its leg using a long pin through the top of the thigh and anchored into the crotch. This fix would prohibit rotation at the thigh, but would allow swinging back and forth. That’s good enough for me. Then Anneka, even though she is now in storage, could have her body back.
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As I have previously noted, Ringdoll does wonderfully gross things with their BJD concepts. Their reissue of Frankenstein [sic] is no exception. The reissue comes out in the beginning of August along with his bride Eva. The basic Eva comes with the following, a direct quote from the sales promo:
Hah hah hah hah, that’s amazing! I wonder what a BJD fetus looks like. Does it have eyes and/or joints? Does it come with a ball-jointed placenta and optional bloodstains? Can we pop it in and out of Eva’s uterine cavity?
Just to be clear, I do not think fetuses are gross. In the context of Frankenstein and Eva, however, who are corpse-based cyborgs, a dead fetus accessory for Eva is pretty revolting. Also awesome.
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Ellery talks to her muse[s], and the ambiguity rises. Thus ends season 6, and we’re going on hiatus again while I, uh, write the rest of the story…
I decided to improve Jareth’s faceup today. Since his body is out being fitted for fabulous clothes beyond imagination [!!!!!!!], Janvier Jett allowed him to borrow hers. First he borrowed her wig and glasses too. He has rocked her wig and a pair of the orange spectacles before, but him on her body with all her gear just strikes me as jarringly wrong. [I wonder what he’ll look like on Yamarrah’s Domuya Flexi body when it comes?]
I made two changes to the dead version of Isabel this weekend. I lengthened her neck prong so that her head stays on more firmly. I also made her an overskirt out of the sparkly purple fabric I got from Georgia Landau.
Originally I wanted the overskirt to be a subdued addition of color to the dead version’s flat black velvet skirt. So I made the skirt wrong way out, showing a predominantly black field with occasional pieces of purple glitter. I liked the effect, but thought that the hems were too even. I then cut strips into both her underskirt and overskirt to suggest shredding after years in the ground. She now has voluminous rags with regular black velvet nap, slightly shiny black velvet "wrong side," sparkly purple and only slightly sparkly "wrong side," all of which are showing, as the rags twist in various directions. I really like the effect!
Anna’s wheelchair finally fits her. I lengthened the foot rest bar, which was originally too short. I also adjusted the joybox so that it extends out from the end of the armrest so that she can reach it with her left arm in a natural, relaxed position.
…I did 1:6 scale paper dolls. In the fall of 1997, I drew several of Jareth [much to my frustration, he never came out right], myself and various fictional characters. I’ve selected my two favorites for exhibition today.
Continue reading Before I did 1:6 scale action figures and BJDs…
Given that I see resettled Somali Bantu people everywhere around Winooski, especially kids, I think Zombieville needs at least one, a young woman, who was moved here with her family at a very young age.
EDIT: The Somali Bantu Community Organization of Vermont [which is in Winooski] estimates that there are about 600 Somali Bantu people in Chittenden County. As far as I can tell, the highest concentrations are in the Old North End of Burlington and in Winooski.
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Iplehouse just released another doll in the Addiction special edition: a version of nYID Bianca. Like Aaliyah and Doria [whence Yamarrah], she has a fantasy head with fangs, pointy ears and optional horns. Unlike those dolls, though, Bianca’s fantasy head suffers from Sabertooth Fang Disorder, wherein the teeth are sculpted to hang outside of the mouth in a silly manner. [See also anything in the Dollpire line by DollMore.]
I’m surprised that Iplehouse, which does all of its sculpting digitally, did not choose to rework the lower half of Bianca’s face to accommodate a more open mouth and more realistic teefs. She doesn’t look like she has fangs; she just looks like she has two slightly raised triangles resting on her lower lip. Too bad, as I love everything else about the concept, including the outfit, the grey resin option and the flamboyantly large, oar-like ears with multiple piercings.
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I just read through the entire archive of Me and My Muses. It’s not bad, several typos and blurry photos notwithstanding. The typos irritate me more than anything.
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Implications to follow. Ruling here to be read at my leisure.
EDIT: The fucking off of DOMA does not apparently entail the fucking off of anti-marriage state-level biases.
EDIT: Proposition 8 has fucked off too!
EDIT: The fuck off of Prop 8 only addresses the constitutionality of marriage in California, not the whole country in general. Meanwhile, the fuck off of DOMA addresses only those same-sex marriages that already exist, not, as I mentioned above, states without marriage equality.
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This version is slightly different from the previous. She has adjusted nasal bridge lines and neatened mouth with satin varnish.
Colorado’s civil rights division has determined that Coy Mathis, prohibited from using her school’s bathroom, has been unfairly discriminated against for being told to hold it all damn day just because she has a penis. She will now be able to take a shit on school premises again. Why we needed to go all the way up to the state judiciary to determine that taking a crap is an inalienable right is beyond me. But at least now the Bathroom Police Department in Colorado Springs, Colorado can fuck right the fuck off.
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Her outfit and her hair weren’t doing her any favors, so I improved them. Her faceup also needs refinement. I like the features, but the coloring is a little messy. I need to touch up her lips and the lines around her nose. Her eyebrows and eye bags, however, are perfect! She’s so cute.
Her shiny purple face made her really difficult to photograph, so I wiped it this weekend and redid her. The darkness of her complexion, again, makes it hard for me to photograph her, but some highlighting helps pick out her features.
She also got new hair, the volume of which I reduced by flattening it with some Mod Podge. I also gave her a different top so she’s showing a little more skin.
Ellery is trying to tell her muse Jamisia to shut up.
More correctly, I should say that Peter has been altered to fit the walker. I took at least 2cm, possibly a bit more, out of both his thighs and his ankles. Yes, I am aware that he now looks ungainly, with long arms, massive hands and short legs. I’m okay with that. Very few people have idealized proportions. ^_^
Here’s Peter with the latest iteration of the walker in progress. I added a front cross brace and handlebars this weekend. They are made out of 8 gauge solid copper, which I bent with the help of a hammer and lots of cursing.
As you can see, the walker is too short. The handles should be as high as the creases in his wrists. I have spent so much time on this damn thing that, at this point, it will be easier to make Peter shorter than to reconfigure his walker. >:[
I have developed a HUGE crush on Lesley Gore. I could watch her sing all day, even if it’s heteronormative bullshit. She sings with such power and force, propelling the words out from inside her with irresistible potency. That voice could knock down walls. She’s amazing!
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There are three completely new sculpts: Fionn [sleeping dude], Kiran [awake dude], Helena [open-mouthed fem]. There’s also Mini Zero, a smaller version of Zero, a sold-out 1:3 scale Lumedoll notable for his inchoate, in-progress face.
There are also some new resin colors available: ebony [a darker, more intense brown than the very light tan], bronze [a deep brown with gold undertones] and, finally and most amusingly, "zombie" [a greenish grey that I cannot distinguish from the regular grey Lumedoll offers].
Now I regret ordering a bunch of Lumedoll heads before these new sculpts came out! I especially like Helena and Mini Zero, who would be great as some disturbing, lurking embodiment of silence or something. I wish I could get him in completely black resin. Then I would dress him in ridiculously long white linen robes and a white fur wig and call him Silencio. He would stand around freaking out all my fairies. :p Ebony would also work as a resin color for him, just as long as there was a stark contrast between his skin color and hair/clothing color.
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I just scored duplicates of the Hasbro Shoezies L and N as shown in my inventory of bootfeet. Color combos are going to be lime/lemon and orange/magenta! \o/ I might also repaint M if I can get the feets out of the Shoezies. I need to get at least some gold and silver paint. Not sure if I need some orange.
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Now that I have decided to modify Isabel’s legs so that they have action figure ankle cups, thus allowing her to use my collection of bootfeet, I decided to take an inventory of what options for footwear she has:Continue reading All my bootfeet, 06/19/2013
Here’s Lesley Gore doing You Don’t Own Me in 1989 with the same expressive passion that she imbued the performance I recently mentioned. I love the way she bounces on her toes, as if the force of her voice is going to sweep her off her feet. She looks so grounded and so powerful.
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I just got the best idea…I have lots of action figure bootfeet, especially from all my Cy Girls and from my modified Hasbro Shoezies. To expand Isabel’s wardrobe [and to make her more stable], I should remove her feet and somehow string her with action fig ankle cups so that she can wear all those shoes!!!
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Interactive and/or serialized and/or illustrated sci fi/fantasy stories decorated with a mid-century pulpy flair appear to contain actual women and people of color!
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I just scored Yamarrah a Domuya Flexi Perennial body off the DOA marketplace for $145.00 shipped, which is less than I paid for her head. O_O Known for their high level of articulation and concomitant difficulty in posing, the Domuya Flexi bodies have a distinctly segmented, mechanical look to their sculpt [in contrast to the Shinydoll Thaasa bodies, which represent a beautiful marriage of engineering, aesthetics and poseability — yes, it’s a menage a trois!].
Ever since I restrung August last summer, I have grown increasingly confident about customizing my BJDs more intensively. I’ve improved my subtractive mods, such as sanding Novella’s head, removing Béatrice’s pointy ears, modding Isabel and Carter’s necks, etc. I’ve even ventured into additive mods with an Aves Apoxie Sculpt headback for the dead version of Isabel. I’ve developed my own fur wig pattern and gained enough skill with faux fur so that I am ready to branch out into the wool that I got from Georgia Landau. In conclusion, I’m ready to take on a challenge like Yamarrah’s new body.
The Domuya Flexi will need significant wiring in order to hold poses, I think. I may also need to fuse the hip balls to the thighs and perhaps one of the torso joints to the other to prevent parts spinning around. Furthermore, since the resin of the body, which has pink undertones, will not match Yamarrah’s head, which has brown undertones, I will be painting [or scribbling] stylized flames on her upper breast and neck, as well as her wrists and forearms. Yippee!!
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This video of Lesley Gore, most likely around 17 or 18, singing You Don’t Own Me live, fascinates me. She sings with such joy and passion and expressiveness; she clearly loves to sing! Plus she’s hot; I love her baggy eyes and her long straight nose and her rectangular face and those amazing flickery eyebrows. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s one of us. 😀
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1532604.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
…take the damn thing to the store and look at solid-core electrical wire in appropriate gauge!
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And already-running TV:
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Note to self: The DOA marketplace contains many cheap, aesthetically acceptable bodies by Fantasy Doll. Searching under "fantasydoll," "fdoll" or "fantasy doll" finds them.
Further Yamarrah concept: Fire elemental with flames up her forearms and on her breast, up her neck, to incorporate cool translucent hands and to cover mismatch in skintone. Possibly also flames on ears and cheeks.
Yamarrah: "Hey little dude! I’m a fire spirit too!"
Mellifer: O_O
Hee hee hee.
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Remember her? I did a split for her along with a person who wanted the human head and a person who wanted the body. I have already paid off Yamarrah’s head [good thing too, as expenses in our new place are really draining me], but I am waiting for the other two split partners to finish the 3-month layaway. The final payment for that is due at the end of June, so Yamarrah should ship to the buyer of the body sometime in July!
I already have the following pieces of her:
I should lay all these pieces out and take a few photos.
Of course, she needs a body. Given that her hands are translucent yellow and obviously not matching the rest of her and also that most of her except neck and part of shoulders will be covered, I wonder if I can find a cheap body on the DOA marketplace and paint the exposed parts to match? I’ve done it with 1:6ers…
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Here’s a possibility for the Zombieville title. Font is Ebenezer with large caps and small caps.
Based on the typeface in olden primers, but also suitable for 18th and 19th century epitaphs.
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Remember last month, when my BJDs were discussing the taciturn newcomer Timonium? I shot the continuation of that completely trivial and banal saga almost a month ago, but have not gotten around to posting it until now. Since Jareth has gone off to a tailor’s to acquire some bespoke couture, who will be the voice of reason in his stead??? Who cares?
Continue reading The investigation of Timonium
I swapped them out for the Sideshow Dead Punk’s. I have yet to paint his skull ring because I don’t have any silver paint.
…put Peter’s original knobby, beringed hands on his new body? His current hands, Obitsu slender male defaults, are tubular, lacking in detail and completely flat. They have about as much individuality as hot dogs. :[
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It’s like Pilgrim’s Progress, only less allegorical and more tedious.
Painted skull globe and mouth corner, refined faceup around eyes and nose, started doing faceup around mouth. I especially like his genial smile.
Filled in the crease at right of lower lip, sanded out divot in chin, added height to skull globe, started faceup. If you refer back to the faceup concept from a few days ago, you can see that he’s looking similar, with allowance for added scribbling.
Filled in more divots around skull, blended brow ridge further into forehead, smoothed out eye sockets, narrowed nasal bridge, added and refined nostril wings. Area where bottom lip meets chin and area around tip of chin still need work. Almost there!
Continue reading Mr. Almost There Head
Because all the fibers in my haul from Georgia Landau contained dust and stink, they required lengthy preparations before use. First, I picked out all the stray threads, vegetable matter and pieces of fabric. Then I gave them a quick wash in lukewarm water with some dish soap. Finally I aired out the hanks on my clothesline [a very useful addition to our new apartment!] for several hours. Though I still need to comb out the fibers I intend to use, I can now work with them without sneezing my head off.Continue reading Working on Alabama’s hair
Even though she’s yellow and averagely sculpted, I really like her. So does Isabel. Now I just need to remove that embossed doggerel on the front and repaint her a marble or granite color, including some bird shit stains.
Following the principles in my June 12th entry, I made more 1:6 scale plants for the Figurvore Custom Challenge. Here’s the whole set:
Whiny voice a la Sarah from Labyrinth: "It keeps changing! What am I supposed to do?"
Continue reading All my sets and medium-size things, 06/15/2013
Way back in the early days of the millennium, I chose ModernWizard as a screen name, a practice that I have continued over the past 10+ years to create a coherent online identity. I specifically chose it because it combines connotations of magic and fantasy with a more up-to-date sensibility. I also specifically chose it because it’s not gender-marked, although, now that I think about it, most people think "wizard" to be a gender-marked word, the male equivalent to "witch." Also informing my choice was a T-shirt I had at that time with glow-in-the-dark constellations, which, I decided, would be appropriate for a modern wizard’s garb, as opposed to the stylized astronomical symbols of yore. ^_^
Anyway, people who don’t know me continually assume that I’m a guy. Well, let me rephrase that — straight cis white dudes continually assume I’m one of them by using masculine pronouns on trade references or calling me sir. It is interesting that women do not do this.
I could go off onto a whole tangent about the gendered ways in which people write only and how people interpret other people’s gender from what they write [For example, I very rarely see masculine-identified people use ^_^. :), 🙁 and :p, yes, but ^_^, no. :p ] and what happens when one reads "conflicting" cues. I don’t wanna, though. The end.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1527439.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
At the end of last month, I lusted over Soom Faery Legend Boehm and thought that the concept of a dryad would put his pale green resin to good use. I’m on the verge of purchasing another magenta Soom Faery Legend Aenigma head [why I don’t know], and I remembered my dryad concept and thought that perhaps she could be a dryad.
Then I realized that I have bunches of BJD parts hanging around in my "raw dolls" drawer and, in fact, a better choice for a dryad would be my tan Lumedoll Koit head on a chocolate Hujoo body. Behold Verdure! She is a shy little dryad, much younger than all the other fairies, maybe 10 or 11? She is also trans.
Hmmm, I really hate the Hujoo hands and feet. I should swap those out for the Lumedoll hands and feet that I have bonking around in my "raw dolls" drawer.
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In today’s Dear Prudence, a letter writer wonders how to deal with her husband, who cannot handle the fact that one of his kids is really attached to her transitional object. He has even confiscated it from her!
Great move, genius. Now you have a crying kid who worries that her blankie is gonna die, and it’s all because you’re a miserable, insecure control freak at best and an abusive asshole at worst.
Try developing a functional sense of empathy, and give the kid back her blankie! This could end up being one of those memorable experiences that she’ll always, on some level, feel upset about. I’m not sure you can comprehend, though, how you may have justifiably earned your child’s lifelong mistrust and hostility because your head is jammed way too far up your own rectum for you to see anything but your own navel.
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The wools I got from Georgia Landau have been sitting in dusty bags for untold years, so they have dust on them, as well as a musty smell. I have removed them from the bags I bought them in, but I still want to wash them before use. After some online research, I have decided that a quick dunk and swish in hot water with dish soap would be most effective, followed by drying on my drying rack.
Also in doll-related news, I discovered that I can hasten the 24-hour curing time of Aves Apoxie Sculpt by sticking my items in the oven on 200 degrees for, say, 15 minutes!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1526436.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Filled in the deep creases on forehead and cheeks, as well as where jaw joins neck under ears [not shown in this photo]. Cheeks and jaw/neck joins actually look pretty good. Forehead still needs some filling in, and I haven’t even gotten to the nasal bridge yet. I’m pleased with the progress, however.
Continue reading Mr. Slightly Less Lumpy Head
Figurvore’s first custom challenge is to make a 1:6 scale plant. I toyed with the idea of making a bonsai tree with some of my various wire for a skeleton and possibly some fauxliage as leaves, but that looked like it would require hours, rather than minutes, of effort, so I scaled back. I made an E-Z Cactus, as previously mentioned in an entry in December, 2012, but with some improvements.
I made the cactus by twisting together two shades of green pipe cleaners. Then I formed the pipe cleaners into a club shape with a projection on the bottom to stick into the soil unit. To help the cactus stand upright, I rammed a slender piece of bronze wire up inside it.
To make the soil unit, I filled a 1.5" diameter terra cotta pot with Aves Apoxie Sculpt most of the way. I snipped off small shreds of brown crinkle paper and stuck them to the top of the Aves Apoxie Sculpt to look like wood chips. Then I stuck the wire on the bottom of the cactus into the soil unit. When the Aves Apoxie Sculpt dried, I used hot glue and more "wood chips" to cover the areas where the soil unit showed.
Continue reading E-Z Cacti [TM]
GO AWAY STOP MAKING ME THROW OUT ALL MY BREAD AND RICE AND PASTA AND PANCAKE MIX I’M TRYING TO SAVE MONEY HERE BY BUYING IN BULK AND YOU LITTLE SHITS AREN’T HELPING
I HATE YOU GUYS YOU’RE SO ANNOYING AND BESIDES YOU ARE FUCKING UP OUR FRESHLY PAINTED WALLS BECAUSE I HAVE TO PASTE YOU WITH A PACK OF PHOTO PAPER AND THEN HALF THE TIME AFTER I SCORE A DIRECT HIT YOU’RE STILL FUCKING ALIVE AND WHEN I DO GET YOU YOU LEAVE BUG GUTS ALL OVER THE WALL
THE PANTRY LOOKS LIKE AN INSECT CHARNEL HOUSE ALL BECAUSE OF YOU
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU LAYING YOUR FUCKING EGGS ANYWAY WE ALREADY GOT RID OF ALL THE OPEN BULK PACKAGES AND SEALED EVERYTHING IN PLASTIC STORAGE SO ARE YOU INCUBATING INSIDE THE STORAGE AND THEN MAGICALLY TELEPORTING THROUGH THE PLASTIC OR SOMETHING
STOP HAVING CONVENTIONS IN OUR PANTRY GO BOTHER THE UPSTAIRS NEIGHBORS WHO COULD THEN DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH ALL THEIR ELEPHANT STOMPING AND SQUASH THE SHIT OUT OF YOU
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Here’s Peter after I bulked out his chin more last night, then painted him all the same color so I could more easily see what work needs to be done.
Yes, the forehead clearly needs work!!!
Before sanding:
Breyer, purveyor of plastic horses, has a 1:32 scale line of horses [obviously] that occasionally includes human figures in the playsets. It’s very hard to find pictures of them. However, they appear to be articulated at the shoulders, hips and knees at the least. I think they are about the size of my Hasbro Human Alliance Mikaela doll. They’re wayyyyyy cheaper though!
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I kind of pity the copywriters for Design Toscano. They have to make all that tacky shit sound alluring and justifiably high-priced. Look DT — you either want things like a suit of armor t.p. holder or you don’t. You’re preaching to the choir. Don’t waste your limited stock of two-bit adjectives on us.
Take, for example, a sentence from their copy for Ravishing Rachel [who’s in the Sexy Temptresses category, along with the ass-flaunting Temptress Witch Christmas Ornament]:
"Cast in quality designer resin, this large-scale, display-quality indoor sculpture transforms any home bar, entertainment area or recreation room into something truly magnificent!"
"Quality designer resin": as opposed, I guess, to all that shitty, no-name resin that floods the market these days?
"Large-scale": Isn’t that redundant, given that the title indicates that it’s "Life Size"?
"Display-quality": Seriously…why would you buy a Technicolor rendition of a very stiff, cartoony woman flashing her tits if not to display it?
"Transforms any home bar, entertainment area or recreation room": So you’re admitting that your target consumers for these are sleazy misogynist straight white cis dudes who throw around obscene sums of money in an attempt to compensate for their utter lack of redeeming traits? Superb! I’ll take 10!!!
"Truly magnficent": I don’t think that is the word you’re looking for. May I humbly suggest "alarming"?
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Anna, Zombieville denizen and Isabel’s close friend, used to look like this:
Megan Meehan, Zombieville denizen and Doctor Z.’s assistant, used to look like this:
Continue reading New and improved Megan, now with increased wrinkles and bags!
Ellery is pestered by new muse Jamisia in the cemetery.
He’s undergone so many permutations, none of which have satisfied me. Friday night I had the sad epiphany that he needed a resculpt. I’ve tried a bazillion times to work with the Sideshow The Dead Punk headsculpt, and it continues to fail me.
I decided to try one last time, though, and strip the paint off his head, hands and torso. After untold hours and repeated applications of Pebeo, he was mostly paint-free. I then realized with dismay that the head’s built-in woeful expression will never accurately capture Peter, who is friendly, even-tempered and relatively content.
Looked online briefly to find a bald male head with a neutral expression. Unfortunately, most male action figures look grim and constipated [grim because constipated?] and they have hair, so I could only find ones that were either bald/constipated or hairy/neutral, not bald/neutral. I gave up.
I looked through my drawer of extra bodies and heads. I procured a Triad Lola head, which I originally bought in 2009 for its "sarcastic expression," and plopped it on an Obitsu Slim Male body. I really like the sharp features here, as well as the deep-set, baggy eyes and the creases between the corners of the nose and lips.
Continue reading Poor Peter
Out of the blue, earlier this month, I received an E-mail from figural sculptor Georgia Landau, asking me if I wished to buy some of her dollmaking supplies. After decades of making dolls, primarily in porcelain, she has moved onto clay, leaving behind wool and other fibers, fabrics, furniture and other odds and ends. Unable to make her official Saturday moving sale, I trekked to Montpelier Friday after work in driving rain to examine the goods.Continue reading Alabama and the rest of my haul from Georgia Landau’s castoffs
Here is the dead version of Isabel showing off the hollow plastic gravestones I got at the end of last week. As you can see, the fronts are, like most Halloween decorations, bullshit in terms of cemetery iconography, but the backs are fine!
The character designs for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure are just so much fun! As all 3 of my regular readers know, I originally succumbed to the temptations of the Medicom dolls of this series when I got Anna, who started off life as a Jolyne. I have now found another Medicom doll from the same line whose awesomeness nearly equals that of Jolyne’s: Kira Yoshikage. He comes with two heads — one with wavy hair and the other with spiky hair — and a fucking purple tuxedo. He’d make a great butch dyke, especially with the spiky hair!
He’s not so awesome that he’s writing himself into Zombieville, though.
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I think I’m going to use some of my self-standing display boards to make a partial light box. I’m going to cut out frames from the side panels and then put white pillowcases in the holes for added light filtering.
For easy reference, here’s a link to the first light box I made.
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Just a comparison shot.Continue reading Isabel: the quick and the dead
His shirt and vest do not fit well, but they do represent the type of clothes he should be wearing. Why do I get the feeling that Isabel is snickering to herself over Carter’s style choices?
Continue reading Carter now has the right hat
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I have recently developed the useful and somewhat surprising facility for making my own serviceable 1:6 scale stuff. I go through the following process, demonstrated for example’s sake with an electric wheelchair:
The key steps, I think, are 5 and 6. I’m currently planning to scratch-build two 1:6 scale things, not necessarily because I need them, but because I want to see if I can.
The first is a tape dispenser, which is basically a block with a channel down the center and a roll of tape half-submerged in the channel. I know exactly how I want to make this; I just need to sit down and actually do it.
The second is a grandfather clock. I started coveting a functioning 1:6 scale grandfather clock on the Doll Page Show and Sell site, but $33.00 for something I don’t really neeeeeeed seemed too rich to me. Even when I got the idea that the dead version of Isabel could come and go in Isabel’s room through the door in the clock, I still couldn’t bring myself to spend north of $30.00 for one.
I’m perfectly willing to make one, however. A grandfather clock is basically a clock face on top of a locker, so, once I find the appropriate 1:6 scale locker/narrow cupboard with working door, I have the base for a modern grandfather clock!
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In The Ones You Love, Artie, while split into Good and Evil Artie, kills Leena, a WOC and series regular who, though having been around for 3.5 seasons, has yet to receive a last name or any other characterization beyond "B&B owner" and "tool of McPherson."
Two episodes later, in The Living and the Dead, despite the existence of multiple artifacts that can bring people back to life, Leena is still dead. However, no one gives a shit, except insofar as her death causes angst to a white man [Artie]. In fact, she appears in Artie’s subconscious as an essentially vacuous prop to demonstrate the painful reality from which he’s shielding himself. Claudia and Steve exercise themselves mightily over drawing Artie out from his subconscious, paying no attention to Leena except as a tragic figment of his imagination. Who cares about the black woman?
In the next episode, Parks and Rehabilitation, Artie stands on tribunal in front of the Regents, who decide to reinstate him as head of Warehouse 13 because Saul Rubinek has an ongoing contract with the SyFy network the plot must go on. The head Regent explains that Artie was kind of possessed by an evil version of himself, so he’s morally blameless. He also says that "Leena was a valued member of the team" and that "she knew the risks."
I buy neither statement. First, Evil Artie was in fact Artie, just a concentrated version of those thoughts and feelings that he censors in his attempt to be a good, kind person. As a part of Artie, Evil Artie is indeed under Artie’s jurisdiction and part of his responsibility. No matter what the show wants me to believe, Artie willingly, knowingly and with malice aforethought murdered Leena.
Second, if Leena was such a "valued member of the team," why the hell do we never see her doing anything but being victimized and keeping house in the background? And why the hell couldn’t the Regents refer to her by her full name?
Oh right, it’s because she’s a cardboard Mammy. :[
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…have some clause in his contracts that stipulates that, when he guest stars on a fantasy TV show, he has to be A) an exceptionally long-lived character and/or B) one that explicitly tells our protagonists that vampires are bullshit?
In Smallville’s Thirst, he played Milton Fine/Brainiac, who fulfilled the B role.
In Supernatural’s Shut Up, Dr. Phil, he played Don Stark, a witch with a greatly extended lifespan.
In Warehouse 13’s The Living and the Dead, he played Professor Sutton/the Count of St. Germain, a 500-year-old charlatan who, he emphasized, was not a vampire. A + B!
I must say, though, that it’s always a pleasure to see him guest star, especially when he plays a charming rogue, which he does with relish [mmmmmm, relish!] and playfulness.
Also he is hot.
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Here’s a selection of my miniature dolls that are articulated:
I tossed the dead version of Isabel’s default hands. Even after I repositioned them, I still disliked them. I made her a new set out of a pair of white Takara CG gloved hands. I carved them out, gave them a dry brush of light grey, drew in wrist bones and phalanges with permanent marker, added white highlights with white out and sealed them. Wheeee.
I did Dillon — Isabel’s ex, coworker, purchaser of her car and carpooler, not to mention Carter’s friend and representative of stupid shit people say about PWS — for once and for all tonight. He started off as an AA Hasbro GI Jane Vietnam Nurse, who is quite possibly one of the sweetest, cutest, most adorable dolls ever. Don’t you just want to be her friend?
Continue reading Voici Dillon!
In answer to someone who is extremely bothered by the fact that their wife enthusiastically enjoys YA fiction: "Gift her a nice Franzen box set, a fresh copy of Infinite Jest or the complete works of Dave Eggers, so that she may better learn to center her recreational reading around fictional middle-aged white men instead of fictional people who aren’t as important and interesting as they are."
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This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1520102.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I have finished the dead version of Isabel tonight. Last night I broke lots of her fingers and repositioned them in less tense, claw-shaped configurations. I also made her a skirt by hacking out a circle of black velvet with a 9-inch radius, snipping a hole in the center, pulling it over her pelvis, then sewing it closed around her spine with embroidery thread. That’s as far as my tailoring skills go.
Today her shirt came, so I lettered it first with watercolor pencil, then with white paint. The blotchiness of the paint and the smears from the watercolor pencil both worked in my favor, creating the effect of worn screenprinting. I also hacked out the hems on the sleeves and neckline.
Finally I gave the exposed portions of her body [neck, arms, hands, lower legs, feet] a wash and dry brush of light grey to a) disguise the fact that I had reshaped her hands and filled in gaps with hot glue and b) make her body match her head better. I am aware that her left hand especially looks like shit. I may improve her hands later; I’m not sure.
Here she is. She looks sad.
I already have the supplies for a 17th/18th century cemetery in the form of these stupendous little magnets from Della’Morte:
Andrea sent me a link to the following Flickr photo, where a user rehaired a Mattel Mad Hatter [not Johnny Depp] and used it as an old woman. I clearly need to do this, only with a bulkier articulated body for the figure and a repaint for the head. There may also be fats involved….
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Ellery sees the dolls of her new muse Jamisia.
I acquired a Zoloworld/Day2day 1:6 scale Grim Reaper action figure to use its skeletal body as a dead version of the protagonist of my upcoming series Zombieville. I have heard nothing about this figure, so I am providing a detailed review as a public service.
Continue reading Zoloworld/Day2Day Grim Reaper pictorial review and mods
One was Bering Lusk, my Harumika mannequin who went to visit Andrea a while, then came back when I decided that Isabel needed a lifesize doll. I discovered that Bering’s arms popped out of their sockets, so I was able to dress her in actual clothes, as opposed to the strange tuck-and-wrap fabrics she was sold with.Continue reading Isabel got more dolls today!
New things since last time, going L to R, top shelf to bottom: Rement mushroom container with frog, 1:6 scale Vermont bicentennial license plate [scanned from personal collection], Rement vase of flowers, Rement orange pen [below vase], Mattel watch, Rement magnetic paperclip holder, Kitchen Littles mug with Rement utensil sticking out.
The first survey since moving!
Continue reading All my sets and medium-size things, 06/01/2013
Dillon has gone through several permutations since his original conception. He was going to be the doll that ended up being Brandeis. As shown in various census pictures, he is now a Phicen Hindu head on a Takara Cy Girl AA body, wearing jeans, a white button-down shirt and a green vest with cartoon aliens on it.
I have decided that this is not actually what Dillon looks like. Dillon is moving to my incoming Hasbro AA GI Jane Vietnam Nurse [the cute one]. Jeans will stay, but top will be replaced by plaid shirt with hooded sweatshirt over it. He now strikes me as the sort of person who accidentally wears pajamas to work and has to be reminded by his loved ones that he’s already worn those pants 4 days in a row. ["What? Damn…these are my favorite jeans."] I’m not quite clear on what he’s thinking about instead, but it’s clearly not clothes.
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Last Friday, May 24th, I ordered and paid for a 1:6 scale Grim Reaper to furnish the dead version of Isabel’s body. Later that day, I received notice that the seller had marked my order as shipped and provided tracking information.
Given that it can take up to 2 business days for tracking information to hit the USPS Web site and that there was a holiday Monday, the tracking information didn’t yield anything until May 28th. Fine.
Not fine, however, is that the tracking has been saying "Status of your item: shipping information received" since May 28th, when it first appeared on USPS’ radar.
What’s it doing? Taking a nap? Picking its nose? Enjoying a transcontinental tour? I wish that the tracking would actually tell me.
For some reason, I think the obtuse tracking information is a function of the shipping service used by the seller [toynk], which sends all their packages to a third party [OSM Worldwide] to take care of shipping. In contrast, another package that I ordered last Friday [Willy and some black T-shirts from Cotswold Collectibles!] went directly to UPS, so, even though it’s not scheduled to arrive until next Monday [June 3rd], I’ve been able to follow its progress. In further contrast, another package that I ordered yesterday [Carter’s driving cap, also a plaid shirt and a hooded sweatshirt for anyone who needs them from Black Ops Toys] shipped directly through USPS has also appeared on USPS’ Web site [also scheduled to arrive on June 3rd]. I blame the shipping company. Argh!
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I’ve gone off on a bookcase tangent. I’m trying to make its contents a little more interesting than just books, but generic enough so that the bookcase can be used as a general backdrop. I added three things today:Continue reading Continuing to work on the bookcase
As I’ve mentioned before, bamboo drawer organizers make wonderful bookcases with little to no modification.
Make page blocks for dummy books by hot-gluing together "signatures" of balsa, foamcore or craft foam cut to size.
Don’t forget to vary the dimensions of the dummy books. No one’s library contains uniform volumes of all the same size.
Use scraps of paper sticking out from between "signatures" for bookmarks.
Create the impression of a diverse library by binding your dummy books in a variety of papers. Magazine pages and origami paper provide aesthetically pleasing patterns. Used cheap self-adhesive gift tags for trim, stripes and further differentiation.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to distribute colors and patterns randomly amongt the stacks. Very few people shelve according to the color spectrum. :p
For added realism, make it messy. [Tip for the lazy: Falling-over books take up more room than neatly stuffed shelves!] Have some books stick out further than others. A pile of books can act as a makeshift bookend. Try shelving some books on top of other books.
Use some sort of adhesive to keep the books on the shelves, particularly those that are falling over or leaning precariously.
See these principles in practice below.
Here kitty kitty! These are amazing! I would love to get one just to see if it can do the same positions that Babycat does: loaf cat, extend-o-feets, retract-o-feets, circle and florb.
EDIT: The artist also has an entry showing her 3-D digital models of the cats, as well as other headsculpts.
I was just thinking that it would be pretty funny to have a cat in one of my stories that talks, but only in phrases that are obviously translatable from the sounds cats make. I.e., the cat would never say, "I think it looks like rain" or "What’s the meaning of life?" Instead, you’d get a lot of "Is that food for me?", "Can I have some?", "I love you Mom!", "I’m bored," "I’m hungry," "Fuck off — I’m napping," "No, I don’t wanna move," "It hurts," "I’m scared," "Pet me," "Do not pet me," etc. ^_^
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"The abyss, with gulfy maw, / Thirsts on unsated…"
That’s Roy Campbell, trying to translate part of Baudelaire’s Horloge and, tripping on the hurdles of redundant froufrou, failing miserably.
The sentence in question is, "Le gouffre a toujours soif." Literally, that’s, "The pit is always thirsty." But nah…let’s go with a "translation" that basically says, "The abyss, with an abyssal abyss, abysses abysmally."
Baudelaire tends not to fare well in translation…
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The dead version of Isabel started off as a neutral Elfdoll Doona Ryung faceplate, shown here stripped of the default faceup.
…Poorly Dressed is racist. Also classist and sexist. It’s a site on the Cheezburger network that mocks “seriously questionable style moments.” They derive a lot of their mockery from the fantastic things that women of color do with their hair.
In a textbook example, a WOC who sculpted an Easter basket out of her hair + weave got trashed. She [or her hairdresser] demonstrated amazing creativity and ingenuity to create an eye-catching work of art that then got shit on by the Intertubez, where commenters characterized her as a cheap, tacky, “ghetto” person with no sense of style. Basically she was vilified for being a WOC whose hairstyle [e.g., using a weave] is associated with poor and working class women.
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When we last saw Novella, she looked like this. I made some changes today.
1. I wired from her neck down through her thighs to reduce her floppiness.
2. While I liked the flamboyance of her outfit, I never liked her bikini top, which seemed way too casual for her personal style and for her job as receptionist, bookkeeper and Webmaster at Champlain Valley Body Art. One of my improvements was therefore covering up her midsection with a red tank, a skull tank and then the nubby pink overshirt.
3. Her pale resin made her nose seem undefined, so I gave her some nasal shading.
I’m pleased with the results, which make her look more proportional. Uyoo’s headsculpt has eyes, nose and lips much too big for the small skull, so the temptation is to balance out the large face by adding a high-volume wig. I did that, and the results only accentuated that Uyoo’s head is way out of proportion to her narrow, flat body. By giving her a few layers of clothes up top, I gave her some bulk, which makes her look less cartoony and more realistic. Her proportions are much more stylized than the other regular issue Minigem girls, all because of her huge facial features on a small head.
When we last saw Brandeis, she had no faceup, a different wig and a different outfit. Now she has a faceup [all brown and a little pink for the lips], a black-based wig instead of a white-based one and a different outfit. I ditched her hat and changed her pants and shoes. She’s adorable! Love her little legwarmers with hearts. <3 <3 The simplicity of her faceup brings out the lively detail in her sculpt.
Now her smirk is smirkier!
Continue reading Painted a line between Isabel’s lips tonight.
While not a fan of Soom’s 1:3 scale bodies, which I find rather stiff and unyielding, I love their fem hands [ref. Jareth’s]. I just scored a set of Soom Topaz’ translucent yellow hands off the DOA marketplace, for no other reason than the fact that they look really cool. They have the same sculpt as Jareth’s, only with shorter nails. I really like the expressive positioning of the fingers on Jareth’s hands, so I’m pleased to get a similar set for Yamarrah.
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Here’s Carter with his faceup done. The hat is definitely getting replaced, and I’m not a fan of the shirt either. But this is what his face looks like. Colors used were white, black, grey and brown.
Lightning-shaped sideburns are the awesomest awesome that ever awesomed!
This is cracking my shit up right now. "Chicken from larger animals like beef." HAH!
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I love this piece of fan art, Evil King 2, by MarylinFill on DeviantArt. She accurately captures the menacing underworldly power that emanates from him when he first appears. Reminds me of the Major Arcanum the Magician. Also the kind of air I was trying to evoke with Timonium.
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My drag king, previously mentioned here and shown here. This is a pretty rare doll, so I’m quite excited. I love you, Willy! Come back to me!
Dammit…I have all these dolls I want to get RIGHT NOW: Soom Faery Legend Boehm, a 1:6 scale Grim Reaper action figure for the dead version of Isabel…and now Willy. Plus some black T-shirts to make gravestone designs on for Isabel and the dead version of Isabel. Whhhhaaaaaaa!
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…I will put this in a new entry, so as not to detract from Sarah’s triumph. After Sarah says, "You have no power over me!" I just love David Bowie’s final facial expression. He looks wrung out, worn down and deflated. He’s not angry at all, just disappointed and hopeless. He knew it was coming; he knew it a long time ago, all the way back in the ballroom in a bubble when Sarah wrenched herself from his arms and escaped. He knew it when she ran after Toby in the stair maze, instead of him. It’s the ineluctable trajectory: dude is goin’ down.
Continue reading While I’m on that subject…
Though generally not a fan of Jennifer Connelly’s one-note performance as Sarah in Labyrinth [where that one note = HUH???], I do love the way she delivers that line. She starts off reciting the little climactic speech from the play that she was struggling with in the beginning.
As she begins, you can see her speaking pro forma, mouthing the words because that’s the function of the Protagonist during a Showdown with the Antagonist. Staring into middle distance, not really at Jareth, she goes through the motions necessary to achieve the Climax…
…And then she stalls on "kingdom as great." While she’s wracking her brains, Jareth takes the opportunity to butt in with a truly ridiculous show of groveling: the "Do as I say, and I will be your slave" speech that has launched a thousand kinky OTPs.
Sarah continues to try to remember the next Step in the Formulaic Process, but then you can actually see the moment where she stops. She looks up at Jareth and really perceives him for the first time in that scene. You can see her realizing that, for all his bluster, he’s terrified of her. You can see her deciding that he’s no longer worth it. You can see that weight of terror lifting from her shoulders. You can see her confidence blooming as she looks straight into his eyes, standing up a little taller, even smiling a bit.
At that moment, she’s finally full of herself and her own power. You can see her pride and her hope and her determination when she states with calm finality and some amazement, "You have no power over me." Those words happen to be the Next Words in the Spell of Confrontation, but, more importantly, they are the words with which Sarah seizes her own agency after an entire movie of being a whiny, reactive, powerless girl. HURRAY!!!!
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I did a rough draft of his faceup tonight. Not sure about the lips, but I definitely like his eyebrows and the way the bags under his eyes are looking. I have decided that he, as a voluntarily bald man, wears a hat all the time, either a racing cap or a fedora. That big ball of lint on his head is supposed to be a racing cap, but the heavy weight of its fabric ruins the execution.
goldi was using a simple, inexpensive macro filter set on her Canon digicam at doll club. The lenses just screwed on top of her existing lens to provide +1, +4, up to +10 magnification. Coooool. Clearly I need some.
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A South Carolina couple is suing the state for performing unnecessary mutilative surgery on their son, who was born with ambiguous genitalia, operated on at the Medical University of South Carolina and assigned female. The Crawfords adopted him after this surgery and raised their son as a girl until last year, when he said he was actually a boy.
I applaud the Crawfords for resisting the medical industrial complex’s obsession with forcibly shoving everyone into M or F categories before the people being shoved into the categories can express any preference. It is indeed a violation of civil rights to alter people’s bodies like that without their consent. All parties being sued should indeed be held accountable for their assumptions that they can steamroll individual liberties for the sake of some stinkin’, rigid gender binary bullshit.
I’m also happy that the parents seem pretty cool with their son selecting a different gender presentation than the one assigned him at mutilation. They come across in the article as parents who really love their son and who want him to be happy. They want to protect him, but they know sadly that the world doesn’t see their son the way that he does and they do. i.e., the way he actually is.
Tagged "trans yay" for resistance to forcible gender reassignment, acceptance of personally chosen gender reassignment and generally cool kid and parents. Tagged "stupid cis people" for the medical establishment against which they are fighting.
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I strung Carter and dressed him this evening. Here he is with Isabel, aspiring toward unobtrusive average normalcy. I love how he and Isabel are obviously identical twins, but his facial expression is so much more open and sincere than her perma-skepticism.
Carter, like Isabel, has a faceplate from Elfdoll Doona Ryung for a head and a 5StarDoll tiny girl body in NS with modded neck. Still need to add his lightning bolt sideburns, bags under his eyes and shading around his nose.
Apparently there’s a [mini?] series coming up this fall on NBC called Dracula. Based on the sluggish, exceptionally uninteresting preview, this adaptation shares a lot in common with the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, including the concept of Dracula as a tragic, wronged individual, the characterization of Mina as the reincarnation of Dracula’s dead wife, reliance on expensive set dressing and costumes and casting of a sexy actor from across the pond as the titular vampire. Wow, looks like a snooze.
What is it with the idea of Mina as Dracula’s reincarnated wife? Where does it come from? To me, it appears to be a modern ploy to make Dracula less of a sicko rapist predator who just goes around collecting women and children and more of a Tragic Lover who has a flimsy pretext for stalking Mina. Whatever. The Reincarnated Lovers trope bores me to tears because it establishes intimacy between characters with no narrative work whatsoever; the author just claims, "Oh yeah, they knew each other in a past life!" and thinks that such an empty Insta-Relationship will actually be accepted by the audience.
It would truly be interesting to start off with a Fated/Reincarnated Lovers relationship that is eventually exposed as bullshit. The woman begins believing that her partner’s status as her Reincarnated Lover means that he is her One True Love. However, she slowly realizes that they end up getting together in life after life because the partner is a manipulative asshole who repeatedly engineers the protagonist’s dependence on him. He keeps her with him by using just enough niceness as intermittent reinforcement, but mostly by threatening and gaslighting her until she believes that their relationship represents True Romance As It Is Supposed To Be. The protagonist eventually figures out that just because things have happened this way before does not mean they must happen this way again and just because things have happened this way before does not mean that is the best way for them to go down. She goes off to live her own life, which of course the ex-partner can’t stand, so he begins stalking and harassing the protagonist. He breaks into the protagonist’s house and tries to rape her. She kills him, possibly with the help of her current partner. The story ends with the protagonist and her current partner watching out for the reincarnation of her ex so that they can insure intervention such that, this time, he doesn’t grow up to be a total waste of a human being. To be clear, this is not about the protagonist gentling the beast with her virtue, but declaring that somehow she would like to give her ex-partner the opportunity to break the cycle of violence.
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Love his headsculpt, love his green/green eyes, love his purple and pink palette and delicate, translucent ears. I do not, however, dig his default pale grey faceup. I am currently thinking about redoing him with some nice bright pinks and purples, similar to Jareth’s colors. He just looks so blah right now.
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The latest Soom Faery Legend’s pale green resin sparked the idea that such a color should belong to a vegetation sprite. I thus invented the following dryad concept, growing from greenish-brownish bark [possibly sculpted?] on calves and forearms, through general green across most of the body, crowned with a little forest for hair.
The tree hair would be either sculpted the way that my friend Erica does her 1:6 scale bonsai trees, or it would make use of moss, crinkle paper and plastic leaves, like my forest set. Knowing me, it would probably be the latter, as that is easier and more my style.
Clothing would ideally be a brown, lightweight, crinkly cotton, preferably ombre, like broomstick skirt material.
Bright green eyes [I like Flower’s green/green ones], faceup in green and brown, eyebrows and miscellaneous shading brown, lips and eyelashes green.
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He gets people high. Also happens to be green and pretty damn hot. Mmmmm, very nice.
Fuck off, fairies! Stop invading my house!
EDIT: Are those fangs I see???
Continue reading Latest Faery Legend: Boehm the Smoke Sprite
About six months after I acquired a base for a 1:6 scale walker for Peter, I’m finally assembling it. Here’s its current status.
Continue reading Walker in progress
I just caught the first owner pictures of Iplehouse Doria’s vampire head — i.e., Yamarrah’s sculpt. Her tongue curls up a bit at the tip! Adorable!
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Ellery goes to the home of Jamisia, a character from her childhood who is standing in for absent muse Lucian.
Thinking again about who to bring to Dollism. Even though Sardonix has a slightly loose headcap, she may be the best 1:3er to bring. Since she’s bald and barefoot, she doesn’t have any wig or shoes to slip off and lose. She also has a nearly indestructible faceup. Her body is balanced and engineered well, so she poses easily, and she’s not particularly heavy. I could always temporarily hot glue her headcap for the trip.
Possible 1:6ers are Mellifer and Timonium at this point. Who knows if there will be others by then? Right now I’m leaning toward Timonium because I like him better.
Mellifer: 🙁
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Doll club time arrived again at last this afternoon, with me, vermont chick, goldi, Lyrajean and Megan attending. 5 whole people! Not to mention all the small populations…
Continue reading Chittenden County Doll Club, 05/18/13: everyone’s dolls!
Since some of the photos from my previous census saved at a very low resolution, I’m doing another census with better pictures.Continue reading All my dolls, 05/18/2013
I really need to put him together. He’s a cool guy, and Isabel needs her twin brother/best friend.
In one of my trades that has yielded an extensive wardrobe designed for fat bodies such as Isabel’s [and Carter’s], I got a button-up, collared shirt with blue dictionary text on white background. This strikes me as very Carterish: formal, but also offbeat and nerdy. I wonder if I still have a tie?
I’m seeing Carter as more conservative [not politically!] and quiet than Isabel, which cracks me up because, when he went to college, he was a radical dyke with multiple piercings and various hair colors who went bare-breasted in marches. It also cracks me up because he works as a tattooist at Champlain Valley Body Art, and employees of tattoo/piercing parlors frequently have lots of tattoos, piercings and other body mods. However, Carter eschews these.
Now that I think about it, Carter values stability, routine and peace. In pursuit of these goals, he strives to be unremarkable. He just wants to be a normal guy with his normal girlfriend. He really wants to marry Novella and have kids and be a normal dad. Normal normal normal, which neither he nor anyone around him really is.
As I mentioned, he has a past of radical activism, which he has set aside. He characterizes his time in college as a "selfish period," during which he was "wrapped up in identity politics." His break from activism coincided with his graduation, move to Vermont, realization that he was trans and anti-trans experience with some former friends, fellow Smith alums, who started crabbing about "butch flight." He no longer wished to be part of an acrimonious community; to him, they seemed jejune and puerile in their attacks, so he removed himself from those particular people, as well as the activism associated with them.
Frankly, he also started caring less about "women power rah rah rah" [his words] when he was trying to figure out how to become the man he had always wanted to be. He thought of his and Isabel’s dad as a model for masculinity, a dude who was a stay-at-home father for the first 7 years’ of the twins’ lives and who always said that the measure of a man was not in his toughness or his strength, but in his respect, loyalty and love to those around him. He wanted to be like his dad, who thought that being a father was his most important job ever. He wanted to settle down with the right woman and have a family, which seemed to him incompatible with "running around and protesting shit all the time" [his words].
Carter’s desire to be a good man is also strongly affected by pop cultural conceptions of masculinity. This mostly manifests in his long-running preoccupation with exactly how to marry Novella. He is currently hung up on what type of engagement ring to get for her and how to propose to her.
Novella and Carter have known each other for about 5 years and been living together for about 3. They have cats together. They co-own their condo and their car. They have joint bank accounts, and they have set up their wills, health care proxies and powers of attorney to default to each other. Everyone who knows them treats them as a pair, and friends and extended family have been bugging them about the possibility of having kids. In other words, they’re pretty damn committed. They also obviously love each other and demonstrate it frequently, so they don’t have the "Does he/she even love me???" question.
The thing is that both Carter and Novella are pretty shy and kinda passive. I mean, they didn’t officially call themselves a couple until after their friends kept assuming that they were one, which led to the following conversation:
"Hey, Carter, are we dating?"
"I dunno."
"Everyone thinks we’re together."
"Well, we DO hang out a lot." [Understatement: At this point, Carter was spending 5 nights a week at Novella’s.]
"And like each other a lot."
"Yeah, and have lots of sex."
"Isn’t that dating?"
"Okay."
"Okay."
This is what happens when you have two socially awkward people who find it difficult to talk about their feelings. :p
Novella currently has the exact same obsession as Carter: how to marry him, starting with what kind of engagement ring to get him and how to propose to him. Carter and Novella do not know that they share preoccupations, but Isabel does, since she is close to both. This secrecy is integral to the subplot, its climax and its fallout.
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Fox just coughed up an extended trailer for one of its new fall shows, Sleepy Hollow, in which Ichabod Crane is a brooding hunk who sleeps into the present day and teams up with a police detective, who is a Sassy Woman of Color [TM]. Together the two of them track the murderous Headless Horseman, who is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Wait a minute…they canceled Alcatraz, starring a tough-shit woman and a fat guy of color who kick ass and solve mysteries without having sexual tension, for some genre-confused mess that’s already manifesting racist and sexist stereotypes in its goddamned trailer?
Well, Sleepy Hollow certainly looks stupid. I can’t tell, though, whether it’s in the "so bad it’s bad" or "so bad it’s good" category yet.
P.S. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow actually concerns a slight, silly love triangle story, written by Washington Irving, in which local dipstick Brom freaks out schoolteacher Ichabod so badly that the latter leaves town, removing himself from the competition for the affections of rich Katrina Van Tassel, who naturally has no personality, agency or function besides that of walking plot point.
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So it looks like Dollism Plus, a gargantuan BJD convention usually held in Hong Kong, will occur in 2014 in the US, specifically Niagara Falls, New York! That’s just a 7-hour drive away! I’ve already buzzed to Janna about this, and we look forward to taking a DOLL ROAD TRIP WOOOOOOO HOOOOOO there and back.
I’m really excited to have a BJD con somewhere close by. In the past, many interesting BJD events have occurred in the South and on the West Coast, but very, very few in the Northeast. While I have been to shows for all types of dolls, as well as large BJD meetups, I’ve never been to a con dedicated to BJDs, so I look forward to meeting people, taking lots of pictures, playing with unfamiliar dolls and buying some stuff. Of course, I have to save up quite a lot of money for travel, lodging and, uh, doll stuff.
I’m already thinking about who to bring. Members of the Me and My Muses or Zombieville universes are not eligible, so that reduces the pool of available attendees to those dolls who pester me in my universe:
Jareth is out because I’ve decided that, while he may go out in public with me, he’s never going to any meets. I’m also leaning toward eliminating people with fragile or fiddly parts, like Flower with his hot-glued ears, Ginevra with her detachable wing and Janvier Jett with her articulated fingers. I won’t bring Jujube either because she is so small, likewise Submit.
That leaves me with Araminthe, Mellifer, Sardonix, Timonium and Yamarrah. [There may be some other options by next September, depending on who I acquire before then!] I’d like to bring a 1:6er, especially if people are selling sets and accessories in that scale; then I will have a basis for comparison. I’d also like to bring a "standard" 1:3 scale BJD because she could serve as a fit model for any clothing I’m interested in. Hmmm…
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After experiencing violent allergies, Flower tells Epona why he’s really hanging out in the fake forest. Jareth butts in.
Continue reading The continuing adventures of Flower, Epona and others
Reading a paper on operations that trans persons may choose to undergo as part of their bodily transitions…
Authors go on and on about "sex reassignment surgery." No, dipshits, it’s not "sex reassignment surgery." Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what the most accurate term is at this point, but it’s not that. I think the general term I’ve heard is "gender transition surgery," which encompasses a variety of procedures.
"Transexualism is a gender identification disorder…" A) Authors can’t even spell "transsexualism." B) Cissexism is a disorder in which people think that there are only two categories of people, "men" and "women," and that all people in each group must have bodies that look exactly the same.
Authors are obsessed with penetration, defining a neopenis as one that can successfully achieve penetration and a neovulva as one that can successfully be penetrated. They apparently think that the only type of sexual activity available is penis-into-vulva penetration.
ARRRGH!
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Just purchased a secondhand scanner from a person who said she was getting rid of it to "liquefy" unwanted possessions. Is it just me, or can English be an exceptionally confusing language, even for people who speak it as a first language?
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I finally got some green crinkle paper of the right shade to act as ground cover for my forest set! I was just going to take pictures of it, but Flower and Epona started chatting, and this happened…
Do NOT get three weeks’ worth of burritos at once. They don’t keep well in the small freezer at work. 🙁
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These little shits have been everywhere in our pantry recently. In our attempt to evict them, we jettisoned 25 lbs. of rice and 10 lbs. of pancake mix. This incredible waste of food seems to have removed their source, though several of them are still flying around, waiting for me to hit them flat with a blank book. We need airtight storage for our cereal-based foods.
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My previous list of wants included Soom Auber, Soom Cylin and Lumedoll Koit in tan. I have now acquired Soom Auber [= Timonium] and a tan Lumedoll Koit elf head, so there’s two of three old wants satisfied. New list:
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Ellery meets her new muse Jamisia, whether she wants to or not!
No thanks to the Canon EOS 30D Digital Field Guide I bought to supplement my manual, I finally figured out how to adjust my camera’s shutter speed, which should take care of my long-time bane: washed-out photos.
The Digital Field Guide [an independently produced book] went off on a tangent about the philosophy of shutter speed and what every different mode does, until I eventually wanted to yell, "Just tell me which buttons to push dammit!"
Turns out it’s as easy as hitting the DRIVE ISO button, then turning the main dial on the camera to the left to increase or right to decrease the ISO.
With my new knowledge of autofocus points and ISO control, I’ll be unstoppable!
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The Monster High character Arachne’s Daughter appeared as an option in a popularity contest during the 2011 San Diego Comic Con. Mattel showed prototypes of several MH dolls and asked voters to choose their favorite, which would then be commercially produced. Sadly, Arachne’s Daughter lost…but Elizabeth Jr. just sent me word that Arachne’s Daughter will be an exclusive at this year’s Comic Con! Nifty! She is the only MH doll I would consider getting, although she would definitely need a repaint…and possibly a rehair.
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December Diamonds makes painted, glitter-encrusted ornaments of resin, including a wide selection of mermaids and mermen. They would sell extremely well in Provincetown, especially since most of the merdudes look like they’re about to strip. I like how they’re clearly sculpted with a certain level of realism and a sense of humor. There’s a definite queer sensibility at work here. Simply faboo!
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Doll in Mind recently came out with several new BJDs in their DIM Honey line. Adeleine, Alana, Angelica, Flavia, Freda and Ruiru are all female, double-jointed and 30cm.
I like the headsculpts, though they aren’t conventionally pretty. The plush lips and large, slightly droopy eyes cry out for stylized, experimental faceups. Adeleine and Freya, two of my favorites, remind me favorably of Soom Minigem Uyoo — the same big, wide-eyed, open-mouthed features on a small head.
I’m not a fan of the body, though. While I like the sleek and well-engineered shape of the double joints, I think that the abdomen is too narrow. And the feet look ridiculously small. I understand the the proportions represent an attempt to make these dolls fit into existing fashion doll clothing, but I think that the Soom Minigem female body does this much better.
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Inspired by the striking effect of Timonium’s dried-blood choker against his pale and black palette, I redid his ears in the same color.
Continue reading Preying in the night
…into whatever medium I’m working with. Timonium exemplifies these rare and welcome occurrences.
When I last photoed Timonium, I had glued up his final wig and then enjoyed how much he reminded me of Jareth from Labyrinth.
I’ve been laboring intently over him yesterday and today. I did his ears and his face in a limited palette of Prismacolor watercolor pencils [French grey 20%, French grey 50%, black and white] and some diluted snow white acrylic paint.
Comments:
Watercolor pencils make mouths so much easier, as I can wet my brush and push color into the creases between lips!
I’ve finally figured out my faceup style: sketchy and impressionistic, but also bold and stylized, in narrow palettes. I don’t do subtle!
Now painted, Timonium looks much different. At first, he seemed like a neutral alabaster statue. Originally I thought I would give him a relaxed mouth, but I decided to stick on a smirk, just to see what would happen. Suddenly he came alive with devilish attitude! in contrast to the smirk on my Jareth doll — a playful, devious one — Timonium’s smirk is dangerous and quite possibly malicious. The word that comes to mind when I look at him is chthonic.
Yes, he’s supposed to look like the Goblin King. I was trying to capture that threatening, powerful allure he evinces when he enters Sarah’s room, sneering, smirking and sparkling.
He was originally going to be avian and more grey [and possibly blue], but he obviously wanted to be grey/black/white instead. This starker palette accentuates his pallor, making him look kind of cadaverous.
I put the red choker [a string from Jareth’s shirt] on him because he needed a choker, and I couldn’t find a black one. I like the dark red accent enough that I’m contemplating doing his fairy feets in the same dried-blood color. Maybe splatters, as if he’s been walking through blood. He strikes me as that kind of person. Probably drinks it too.
Anyway, onto the pictures….
Continue reading Sometimes the ideas come right out of my head…
As you may know because I write about it all the time, my next series, Zombieville, is currently developing. Zombieville features people who eat brains and lose body parts, but they are not the mindless, undead creatures of pop culture lore. Rather, they are average, living people with a condition known as spontaneous disintegrative disorder ["spondis"] that causes physical and mental degeneration, which may only be arrested through a diet of at least 50% fresh human brains. Most people with spondis [PWS] see themselves as people with disabilities, while most of the public sees them as pop culture zombies. Conflict ensues.
In one planned episode, Isabel, protagonist and PWS, encounters a vending machine filled with zombie dolls. The manufacturers model the dolls after pop culture zombies [drooling blood, chewing severed limbs]. However, the dolls also have mobility aids that many PWS actually use. Isabel’s response to these toys forms an entire story arc.
The foregoing explains why the creation of these zombie dolls did not just entail slapping red paint on some miniature figures. I wanted to make zombie dolls with electric wheelchairs, walkers and canes of the type that PWS would use.
Another muse barges into Ellery’s life! [Oops forgot to resize the panels.]
I added some green crinkle paper to my forest for ground cover. After I placed the green paper on the ground, I realized that it was too blue for the forest palette. SHIT!
I really like Asleep Eidolon’s 1:3 scale mer-BJDs. They’re really expensive, though! Maybe I can get one off the secondary market.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1503979.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Brought to you by cotton print fabric, dried moss, sticks, acrylic paint, plastic greenery, Sculpey, Aves Apoxie Sculpt and brown crinkle paper.
This is a test of brown crinkle paper as undergrowth to break up the rectilinear lines where the sky fabric means the ground board. I think I need some green crinkle paper too. The brown alone does not provide sufficient variation.
Continue reading Flower’s bucolic reverie
Hey peoples! Remember Ellery and Lucian? They’re back! Well…at least Ellery is.
Before Me and My Muses went on hiatus in mid-February, Ellery had banished her muse Lucian at the ultimatum of her long-distance girlfriend Kristin. Then Kristin visited Ellery at Wintermere College. Ellery felt numb and sad, but attempted to have sex with Kristin, who couldn’t stomach Ellery’s kinky desires. The two then broke up, leaving Ellery feeling truly alone.
A helpful Figurvore member has identified doll "I" from my recent lineup. She is a member of the Smaller Home and Garden family made by Tomy. I happen to have all 4 family members in well-loved [and chewed-on — the dad and daughter have human teeth marks in their legs :p ] condition. Here they are.
Continue reading Dolls for dolls: Smaller Home and Garden figures by Tomy
I need to get these for Isabel! Fat peoples for O gauge model railroads!
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Jareth is currently hanging out in the window [open for the first time this season!], wearing the final Corset Thingie of Awesomeness from Isabeau [+ matching miniskirt]. No underwear…hence the post title. He looks almost sweet in some of these pictures, but don’t be deceived.
Outfit 1
Blouse, corset and wrap skirt rely heavily on Souldoll’s Ruvo-Z with some differences. Jareth’s version of the blouse has bigger shoulder poufs and no dangly ruffle things, but is otherwise the same. Corset is the same. Wrap skirt takes the tulle and ruffles that are part of the Ruvo-Z shirt and makes them into a separate item of clothing. There are about 5 to 7 ruffles to make it fuller than Ruvo-Z’s. Colors of blouse and wrap skirt uncertain.
Cape is a full circle of very lightweight black fabric with slight train. Dull gold metal hook clasp at throat. See picture of NECA Jareth action figure below for design of collar only.
Continue reading Collected commission info for Round 2 for Jareth
Pandora thinks they are. I always thought they were Brit punk. Maybe they’re New Wave Brit punk?
EDIT: And the Ramones? My definition of New Wave must differ from theirs.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1502106.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This photostory started off as a simple showcase for my latest 1:6 scale accessory, a blood bag, but then changed into something longer and more pointless.
Continue reading Mysterious blood bag
This is why I got Timonium: he looks Jarethian.
[Remade his wig last night with less bulk around the crown.]Continue reading This — right here —
I had some time on Monday to get around to some of those doll projects that have been in suspension since my packing and moving.
Among other things, I made improvements to Timonium. I moved the snap on his skirt so that it fits more snugly around his hips.
I also rewired him with two thick pieces of wire down his neck, through his upper torso, lower torso, then one wire down each of his thighs. After drilling channels down each of his solid fairy feets so that the wires could run past his knee joints, I found him a much more solid poser.
Timonium got a new wig too. My wig skills are definitely improving, as this one fit snugly around the edges. However, the scalp is too deep. I’m not sure if I will correct this, as I like the bulk of wild hair springing from his head and surrounding his face.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
April 17th: Scrounged online for more phone numbers and called them. Off the hook.
April 22nd: Got E-mail from her saying that she had mistakenly shipped my order to another customer. Said that she had prepared a replacement unit and would be "leaving for UPS in about two hours."
April 23rd: Read E-mail [as I currently have no Internet at home >:( ]. Asked for confirmation of shipping, as well as tracking number.
This is going down in history as one of the most frustrating transactions ever.
Do not ever buy anything from Bella! Studios/ CleaBella / Room With A View sets / Christina Bougas.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1500745.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
…was purchased for the sole purpose of illustrating the joke below. Coincidentally, it also happens to be perfectly 1:6 scale, so, now that its express purpose is finished, some musically inclined 1:6er may appropriate it.
We all know that I like to play with dolls [or otherwise I wouldn’t be here]. Well, not only am I a doll enthusiast, but so are some of my dolls! Yes, my dolls like to play with dolls too.
I moved last weekend to a new apartment, so I took the opportunity to take pictures of everyone in their new digs.
Continue reading All my dolls, 04/20/2013
15" h x 23" w magnetic dry erase boards from Three by Three x 3 = $60.00
perhaps some magnetic strips to extend height of boards
some way to prop them up
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Shortly after I guessed that the maker of my magnetic trifold had fallen off the face of the earth, she replied to my inquiry, saying that she had been sick for the duration of her radio silence. She said that it was "ready to go out" in the next day’s UPS run and that she was "catching up on [her] shipping." I asked if I would get a shipping notice with tracking.
That was a week ago. Since then, I have heard absolutely nothing.
I asked yesterday for confirmation that the trifold had shipped. No response.
I am never dealing with this individual again. I’m also going to do what I can to warn off everyone I know from dealing with her. Her unprofessional lack of communication gives me no confidence in her business or services.
Do not ever buy anything from Bella! Studios/ CleaBella / Room With A View sets / Christina Bougas.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1499532.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I have 58 of them, running from 1987 to 2013. 36 [!] of those are from 2000 to 2013. My overarching goal is to scan all of them to greyscale PDFs in 600 dpi [except for the one with all those color pictures of angels in it — at least the illos for that will be full color!], but my current priority is to digitize 2000-2013 first. Tedious….
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1499244.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Christina Bougas has probably fallen off the face of the earth.
I’m making my own trifold backdrop. It will be just a foamcore display trifold with fabric pinned to it, so it’s not magnetic, but it will do what I need it to do, which is more than I can say for my FUCKING NONEXISTENT CLEABELLA MAGNETIC TRIFOLD.
Do not ever buy anything from Bella! Studios/ CleaBella / Room With A View sets / Christina Bougas.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1498880.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
On March 4th, I ordered a Clea Bella Room With A View basic wall unit with double-sided metallic walls. The order went through fine.
About a week later, I got an E-mail [which I have since erased] from Christina Bougas, saying that it would be done in two weeks’ time, which puts us at the last week in March.
On March 15th, I realized that I had deleted this message, so I wrote to her again, asking for updated status information.
On March 21st, she replied that it would be done "this week," by which I assumed March 24th at absolute latest.
Since then…nothing. No updates about postponement, no shipping alerts, nothing. I just wrote a few minutes ago [April 10th] inquiring as to my order’s status.
The Room With A View page clearly states that the units are made to order. "Please allow 2-8 weeks for delivery." That’s reasonable.
What’s unreasonable is getting a message from the maker saying that the item would be done by March 24th and then hearing nothing for 2.5 weeks. This makes me frustrated and worried. I’m frustrated because of the poor communication from the seller and because I’m waiting for this item so I can shoot photos. I’m also worried because I wonder if she took my money and ran.
At this point, I cannot recommend Clea Bella.
Do not ever buy anything from Bella! Studios/ CleaBella / Room With A View sets / Christina Bougas.
EDIT: Oh that really instills me with confidence: The phone is making that dee-doo-dee-doo off-the-hook noise when I call her number.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1498835.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I have a really early version of Lesbian Couples by Merilee Clunis and Dorsey Green, which I picked up in a used bookstore because I find [relatively] old advice books fascinating, especially when they have to do with queer people.
I expected very little from this book, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that even the first edition was surprisingly down-to-earth and practical. It spends a lot of time discussing how feminine enculturation, socioeconomic differences, race/ethnicity differences, disabilities and illness, age, fatness, outness, feelings about one’s body, familial opinions, etc., etc., may play out when women are involved in relationships with women. It offers standard techniques for respectful communication and listening with an acknowledgment of how the aforementioned factors may complicate them for women. It’s very matter-of-fact, unsensationalized and sensible. The clear, calm writing style, combined with its mostly successful efforts to include people with a wide range of identities, makes it a refreshing change from trendy, narrowly targeted bullshit [‘s’up, Rules series?].
Anyway, I see they updated the book after about 20 years. ^_^
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NBC is covering the story! Bullshit ahoy!
I don’t have the energy to parse this right now, but I do have to say that my favorite quote is this:
…Women may be looking for orgasms, which, in turn, Mautz suggested, may serve a pair-bonding function. In the recent book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction Bullshit Topped with Bullshit with Bullshit a la Mode for Dessert (which I co-authored crapped out of my ass), Emory University neuroscientist Larry Young argues that the big human penis evolved into a tool meant to stimulate both the vagina and cervix as a way [to] trigger the release of oxytocin in a woman’s brain, activating bonding circuits.
BONERZ = WUV. It’s science, dipsticks!
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in the city of Winooski. The one that I expected to be within walking distance of our new place is closed. That means I have to get in my car and drive somewhere to wash my clothes. Having lived with laundry services either in-house or within walking distance all my life, I find this prospect objectionable. We really need a washer!
A city [hah!] of over 7,000 people can only support one laundromat?
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Last year I discovered the quintessence of pinkitude, the Platonic Form of froofy pink dresses, and loved it [except for the price tag]. Now that I have the opportunity to commission Mr. Demandypants some clothes, the froofiness returns to my mind temptingly…
My version would be less lacy and flowery, but the same style.
The bolero thing is like a short leather vest with exaggeratedly large pauldrons.
I’m thinking a neon mesh tank for the top.
Color scheme undecided, though the bolero with pauldrons is definitely black.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1497613.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I also have the following ideas for items to commission from Isabeau:
He definitely needs underwear [so he can stop flashing me :p] and the black leggings, as Yamarrah is taking the pair that he has worn in the past.
Outfit 1
Outfit 2
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Almost as amusing a phrase as "tonsil hockey!"
…Lace vomit is what happens when makers of BJD clothes get really excited about adding ruffles and frills everywhere to their pieces, ending up with results like Souldoll’s ACH-ZM or Ruvo-Z, which are kind of stupendous in their commitment to rufflitudinousness [which is now a word because I just made it up].
I’ve been thinking about lace vomit in the back of my mind as I try to work out what outfits I’d like to commission Isabeau for Mr. Demandypants. He requires copious spills of scrunched-up trim.
So far I’m thinking about something combining elements from ACH-ZM and Ruvo-Z.
The Ruvo-Z shirt appeals to me, especially with the leg-o’-mutton sleeves and gratuitous slashing/lacing, but I’m thinking pale pink instead, although the white/pewter look is very classy. Jareth’s version needs to have bigger poofy parts on the tops of the sleeves.
I also like the Ruvo-Z corset because certain individuals can never have too many.
The best part of the outfit is that lace vomit of raggedy tulle and raw ruffled fabric coming off the lower hem of the shirt. I’d make it separate from the shirt and more like a wraparound skirt: fuller, more of a distressed slashed black tulle petticoat understory, topped with at least five or six raw squizzled ruffles.
From this outfit, I select several elements:
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I mostly blame his faery feets.
That said, I know he’ll be very nifty-looking when I do some work on him. I have ordered a 36-color Prismacolor watercolor pencil set. I’ve also ordered some longish silver grey faux fur for his wig, and I plan to do his faceup in shades of grey [possibly 50 of them :p ]. He’ll be a muted greyscale doll, a change from my usual bright palettes.
Uh, anyway, I took a few pictures of him tonight. Not very well shown is the articulated Obitsu stand that I spent 1.5 hours putting together, only to have it fail on me because Mr. Wobbly can’t keep his legs straight so that his en pointe feets can serve as load-bearing points. >:( Continue reading Timonium’s pissing me off.
Since I got some 1:6 scale tombstone magnets from them last year, Dellamorte Co. has come out with more beautiful, detailed artwork.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1496492.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I made her eyebrows thicker. As is my wont, I’ll most likely end up doing her up based on what I think will look best when I have her and my colored pencils actually in front of me. Well, and my paints too. There’s no way I’m scribbling on the inside of her mouth. Continue reading Yamarrah’s edited faceup concept
No, not making smart remarks. Being beautiful. :p
Look…boring pictures. Continue reading Hangin’ out in my closet, doing what he does best
Pages 202-206: "Like it or not, we live in a thin-obsessed world where guys have their pick of girls, so most prefer a thin girlfriend, not an overweight one. …
"We are not trying to make you feel bad — and please don’t get upset as you are reading this — we just want to be honest about how your appearance can affect you socially. …
"…[H]alf the battle is changing the way you eat. The other half is changing the way you think. … Instead of thinking that nothing beats doughnuts dipped in butter cream, think nothing beats being in a bikini on the beach. Think long term. Being disciplined with food will help you be disciplined with … everything else."
"We live in a thin-obsessed world," but let’s not bother to examine critically the problems with this obsession, nor even the possibility of alternatives. Let’s just parrot its scripts unthinkingly.
I like how they pretend to be so compassionate and realistic about their fat readers’ dating prospects. They’re just concerned for those poor tubs o’ lard.
Note that Fein and Schneider’s view of fatness is that it is an entirely voluntary state achieved by wretched slobs with no willpower. The idea that involuntary factors affect one’s fatness never occurs to them. We don’t give a shit if you’re a woman with PCOS, a slow-burning metabolism, generations of fat ancestors and a regimen of antidepressants with a side effect of weight gain!! None of these attributes have anything to do with your fatness! You’re fat because you’re lazy and disgusting, no exceptions.
Page: "You can make simple but effective decisions, like choosing the stairs over the elevator or walking to campus instead of taking the shuttle bus."
People with mobility impairments need not apply.
Page 247: "With all the attention paid to gay marriages today, you may forget how to behave in a same-sex relationship. There are still Rules; they just promote a little more camaraderie and mutuality; there’s some more balance. The spirit of the Rules still applies: you should never show all your cards, pursue anyone relentlessly, or erase all boundaries."
What the hell is up with that first sentence? Some of us might be really excited about marriage equality, but that doesn’t mean that our personal interest in the subject wipes our minds clean of how to do whatever type of relationship we feel like doing. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible for queer people to think about two things [or even more!!!!] at once.
As for the rest of the paragraph, it doesn’t actually say anything, except, "If you’re queer, what we just said doesn’t apply to you, except when it does, but we’re not going to tell you when it does because we have no flipping clue." Here’s a thought, Fein and Schneider: Leave us out of your heteronormative manipulative dating bullshit. Your token attempt at inclusion proves its irrelevance to us, and we’re not impressed.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1495742.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Pages 35-37: "We tell clients to grow their hair long or even to get hair extensions. … Also, curly dos can look messy, while long, stick-straight hair looks more like one of those luscious shampoo ads.
"…We often tell women who feel blah with brown hair to try highlights or go blond.
"…If you have a lot of facial hair — a unibrow or even a mustache — you should get it lightened or waxed. If you have weak nails or bite them, get a gel French manicure that can last for two or three weeks. … Get your teeth whitened… Wear contact lenses [try blue and green shades!] instead of glasses."
Hate your race. Pursue Aryan perfection.
Pages 39-40: "…[A]ny Rules girl’s best accessory is big [three-inch] hoop earrings in silver or gold. … Little or big diamond studs … are too dainty and suburban-looking when you are single. …
"Another great accessory is a chunky gold watch. It’s bold, modern and reeks of self-confidence. …
"Big sunglasses and the au courant bag are also smart investments…"
When did "suburban" move from neutral adjective to sneering insult?
"Reeking" of self-confidence doesn’t seem particularly attractive to me.
Page 42: "Sometimes successful women are the biggest Rules breakers. They argue that their MBAs or graduate degrees give them license to pursue men like they pursue careers and condos."
This anti-MBA theme is becoming tedious.
Page 43: "Abby, a twenty-one-year-old journalism major, thought the Rules were so yesterday."
The best way to relate to today’s youth is to make sure that your musical references are at least ten years out of date. Lollerskates!
Page 99: "Few guys want to read paragraph after paragraph about a woman’s feelings, thoughts, wants or needs."
Shut up! You are a fuckhole, nothing more.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1495399.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Not Your Mother’s Rules, the latest in the Rules franchise of advice books by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, came out this January, approximately 18 years after the original Rules. [Why won’t it die????] As soon as I heard that Fein and Schneider were repackaging their shit for a new generation, I immediately purchased it.
SPOILER ALERT: This is only "not your mother’s Rules" insofar as het women reading the original didn’t have to deal with the same technology that het women reading this version face. Other than that, it’s completely the same.
Onward!
Cover: Wow, they really cheaped out on the cover design. That rhinestone-studded key pendant is available at Claire’s, your neighborhood purveyors of tacky shit, for ~$3.99. I know because I have one. Makes a great 1:6 scale key. Is this an indication that this is some sort of half-assed, shoestring project?
"Now with their daughters, too!"
Oh jeez, what fresh hell is this? Some marketing peon no doubt thought that a Rules update should include actual perspectives from the target demographic, so they hauled Fein and Schneider’s kids in to shill for their moms’ insecurity industry.
Page 3: "But the truth is, all the old Rules still apply!"
Then why does this book exist?
Page 4: "In fact, one of the guys we interviewed said, ‘I could never be a girl — you talk about relationships too much!’ LOL!"
You can tell they’re totally hip to the millennials’ jive because they’re using chatspeak.
Page 4: "…[M]en are extremely visual and cannot be attracted to a girl just because she is nice, smart or funny. … It may sound bad, but physical attraction is everything for a guy."
"May" sound bad? It does sound bad. It portrays het men as stupid subhumans with an inability to think critically or perceive anything beyond the surface. It also perpetuates the bilgey stereotype that men only think about sex, and they do so constantly; thus they are pretty simple-minded.
You know what also sounds bad? Throughout their series, Fein and Schneider refer to woman as "girls," but never to men as "boys." Men are always "men" or "guys." But women are always infantilized and trivialized through their terminology.
Page 8: "We’ve also included special commentary from our daughters, who grew up with the Rules and can help you apply them to a younger generation and the latest technology. Sometimes a twentysomething can best understand what another twentysomething is going through."
Translation: We brainwashed our kids into accepting our retrograde heteronormative dating bullshit. Also we’re woefully out of touch. OMG! LOL!
Page 10: "Our moms never pushed this way of dating on us, but we both have traditional values and believe in old-fashioned courtship, even today."
That’s "their daughters" talking [supposedly]. I bet they’re contractually obligated to say that.
Page 13: "We … have come to the conclusion that those who became promiscuous or acted out sexually did so because they did not get enough attention, affection or approval growing up. … [W]e … have been shocked to find out how many of our clients who have trouble dating had disapproving or absentee mothers."
If your daughter’s a slut, it’s your fault, you frigid bitch.
Page 18: "Don’t react or overreact when your daughter tells you something you don’t like. … If she tells you, … ‘I’m pregnant’ or ‘I think I’m gay,’ just say, ‘I’m so glad you told me. I love and support you no matter what. It’s your life, so how would you like to handle it?’"
Being queer: now just as horrific and shameful as becoming pregnant while a teenager!
Page 24: "When your mother or friends suggest the Rules, do you say, ‘I have an MBA. No one is going to tell me what to do’?"
Wow…they’re still harping on women with MBAs, even two decades later. Someone ought to tell them that holding grudges is a waste of life.
Page 30: "Alexa, a 32-year-old MBA, called us crying after her boyfriend of 3 years walked out. She was up all night reading the Rules and hysterical after finding out that she had broken every single one of them."
Holy cannoli, here we go again. Will you please stop displacing your own personal frustrations onto women who don’t even know you exist? Quit having an external locus of control and take some responsibility for your life.
Yes, I understand — you have no control over the fact that you didn’t get into Harvard Business School. However, if you’re that hung up on the concept of an MBA, you do have control over whether you waste your life raging about it or instead do something constructive with your piss.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1495214.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Page 120: "…[H]ighly educated girls have the hardest time with the Rules. They tend to think all this is beneath them. They’ll say, ‘I went to graduate school, I’m not playing these games…’ … If you think you’re too smart for the Rules, ask yourself, ‘Am I married?’ If not, why not? Could it be that what you’re doing isn’t working? Think about it."
The authors rag so persistently on women with graduate educations that I suspect there’s some sour grapes going on.
Also [say it with me!] CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.
Page 126: "Abuse doesn’t happen in a Rules relationship because, when you play hard to get … , he thinks you’re the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world…"
It’s always the wife’s fault that her husband abuses her. She didn’t do the Rules and make him love her enough.
Page 139: "Don’t be stupid about safety! Date rape has become quite rampant in college these days."
If you get sexually assaulted, it’s all your fault. You were probably just asking for it anyway, you whore.
Page 144: "Rule #31: Don’t discuss the Rules with your therapist. … Some therapists will think that the Rules are dishonest and manipulative."
La la la I can’t heeeeeeeeear you la la la!
Page 167: "Always try to show utter contentment with him, yourself, the world."
Frank N. Furter has words for you.
Page 168: "Remember that, if you want a good marriage, the Rules never really end!"
So you’re telling me that I have this heteronormative manipulative dating bullshit to look forward to every single day of my life?
[runs for the hills screaming]
The End.
Watch this space for the actual Not Your Mother’s Rules later.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1494856.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Page 66: "The Rules are about opening up slowly so that men aren’t overwhelmed by us. It’s rather selfish and inconsiderate to burden people with our whole lives on a three-hour date, don’t you think? Remember, the Rules are innately unselfish."
They are not! Technically, they’re a manual about self-abnegation practices that supposedly further one’s goals, assuming that one’s goals involve het marriage to an emotionally clueless jerk.
Page 70-71: "Rule #12: Stop dating him if he doesn’t buy you a romantic gift for your birthday or Valentine’s Day. … Flowers, jewelry, poetry and weekend trips are the kinds of gifts given by men in love. Sweat suits, books, briefcases, toasters and other practical gifts are the kinds of things men give you when they like you … but don’t really want to marry you."
The rigid expectations of the Rules do neither the women who are supposedly reading them and the men they are supposedly dating any service. The Rules assume that there is only one right way to perform marriageable het masculinity — by coughing up flowers and chocolates on designated occasions — and only a single way to perform appropriately responsive het femininity — by accepting only flowers, chocolates and jewelry as sufficient tokens of romantic love.
In the Rules world, it is truly impossible for a briefcase to signify romantic love, even if the giver and the receiver’s shared private connotations of briefcases make them giddy with lustful, infatuated, affectionate glee. Anyone who gives their dating partner a briefcase, no matter how thrilled they know this will make the recipient [beyond flowers, beyond chocolates, beyond precious metals!], is a Horrible Failure Who Should Be Dumped Pronto.
Page 82: "You have to trust that, if you relax and let him explore your body like unchartered [sic] territory, you will have fun and be satisfied."
Fact #1: Men always know what they’re doing in bed.
Fact #2: Communication kills boners.
Page 91: "Of course, a playboy type who falls in love with you because you did the Rules will automatically mend his ways."
I don’t think that’s how it works….
Page 100: "Before he comes to your apartment, tuck this book away in your top drawer… Hide in the closet any grungy bathrobes or something you don’t want him to see, such as a bottle of Prozac."
Censor! CENSOR!!
Page 115: "When you meet a man at a dance or social situation, it really isn’t necessary to mention your children at all. …[W]ait until he calls …to gently weave it into the conversation … Just casually say, "Oh, that’s my son playing the piano," or something like that…"
This one in particular blows my mind. Kids are huge parts of parents’ lives, especially when their children are dependents. Most parents identify strongly with their role as parents and do feel it necessary to talk about their kids because their kids are important to them. To ask a parent not to talk about their kids is, in effect, asking someone to be something they’re not. How does this deception promote trust and love in a dating relationship?
Furthermore, as a child-free person, let me just say that kids are a serious subject, even if one doesn’t have them. Maybe one’s dating partner doesn’t want any extant or future children. Being truthful about one’s important roles, relationships and values when one is dating [e.g., "I am a parent; I love my kids and spend lots of time with them, not to mention thinking and talking about them a lot!"] bespeaks consideration and respect for one’s dating partner.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1494749.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
"Pet me! Pet me! Rub my ears! My ears…My — AHHHHH THAT FEELS GOOD."
Cutest begging kitty cat ever.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1494451.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Page 22: "Rule #1: ‘Be a ‘Creature Unlike Any Other’"
Look — "unnecessary" "quotation marks!"
Page 22-23: "It doesn’t matter if you’re not a beauty queen, that you never finished college, or that you don’t keep up with current events. You still think you’re enough. You have more confidence than women with MBAs or money in the bank."
I do not understand the authors’ sneering fixation on women with MBAs.
Phew! Now that I’ve successfully passed Rule #1, I’m doing some serious skimming.
Page 43: "Life has enough pain without our adding man pain to it. We can’t control cancer or drunk drivers, but we can restrain ourselves from dialing his number."
In their authors’ sordid worldview, random events cause women misery, to which the only acceptable response is to not reach out for companionship when one wants and/or needs it. Hmm, I see they’re advocating the social equivalent of aiming a loaded semiautomatic at your shoes and leaning on the trigger.
Page 46: "Remember, early on in a relationship, the man is the adversary (if he’s someone you really like). He has the power to hurt you by never calling again, by treating you badly, or by being around but indifferent. … He runs the show. The best way to protect yourself from pain is to not get emotionally involved too quickly."
There’s such bitter, painful resignation in this passage. The authors recognize the damaging, unfair nature of the heteronormative dating status quo. However, they cannot imagine an alternative model for social interactions, so, with a heavy heart, they resolve to play the game with a vengeance. They’re gonna achieve "happily ever after" if it kills ’em, dammit! [Pay no attention to the corrosive misery and internalized misogyny behind the curtain.]
Wow, now I’m depressed. 🙁
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1494156.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I’m trying to progress past the first chapter here…
Page 6: "If you follow the Rules, … your husband will treat you like a queen, even when he’s angry. Why? Because he spent so much time trying to get you. … [H]e thinks of you constantly. He’s your best friend, your Rock of Gibraltar during bad times. He’s hurt if you don’t share your problems with him. He is always there for you — when you start your new job, if you need surgery. He even likes to get involved in mundane things, like picking out a new bedspread. He always wants to do things together."
This paragraph implies that the standard het marriage consists of a woman who wants more personal attention and emotional connection and a man who doesn’t supply it. I’m very distressed by the authors’ insistence that a) the standard husband is a neglectful, self-absorbed clod who has no capacity to respect and sympathize with his partner and b) the only way to counteract this is through playing constant head games.
Page 9: "We understand why modern, career-oriented women have sometimes scoffed at our suggestions. They’ve been MBA-trained to ‘make things happen’ and to take charge of their careers. However, a relationship with a man is different from a job. … [T]he man must take charge. … We are not making this up — biologically, he’s the aggressor."
Pay attention to this mini rant against women with MBAs. Fein and Schneider have a particular animus towards Masters degrees in business administration, presumably because any education beyond a BA irreparably damages a woman’s marriageability, which, I guess, is like some sort of psychosocial hymen.
Don’t look at me. I didn’t write this shit!
Whenever I see the phrase "I am/We are not making this up," I think of humorist Dave Barry. He frequently prefaced especially absurd — but completely true — details in his columns with this earnest disclaimer. Then, of course, whatever came after the disclaimer seemed extra hilarious. I therefore cannot imagine this phrase as being said with anything else other than tongue in cheek.
"No REALLY!!" is not a convincing clincher for an argument.
Oh look — essentialist claptrap!
Page 13: "…[W]e were offended by what seemed to us to be downright trickery and manipulation. The Rules would send women back twenty-five years. What would the feminists say? On the other hand, Melanie had what we wanted: the husband of her dreams who adored her. It made sense to rethink our offended psyches!"
Those poor, deluded, man-hating feminists! They’re all just bitter because they think that het relationships should contain honest and direct communication. Hah! Where are they now? They’re joining lesbian separatist communes where they don’t pluck their chin hairs.
…Oh wait. You say that some of them are, in fact, in marriages with the husbands of their dreams who adore them? Well, that’s because they clearly recognized the truly passive essence of femininity and faithfully practiced the Rules.
Whaddaya mean — some of them base their marriages on equality, respect, mutual friendship and affection? That’s just… That’s just…
[head explodes]
Page 15: "But First the Product — You."
Just in case you weren’t certain that this book is the product of a capitalist culture that not only objectifies women, but also commodifies relationships as economic transactions, here’s your proof.
Page 16-17: "Men like women who are neat and clean. They also make better mothers of their children — the kind who don’t lose their kids at the beach."
Well, someone clearly had a traumatic experience at the age of 4 after purchasing an ice cream cone independently and turning around to see where Mom was, only to experience momentary panic because she had moved 12 feet to the left to enjoy the respite of a shade tree.
Page 17: "Personal shoppers can help you find clothes that look good on you and that hide your flaws, as opposed to clothes that are perhaps trendy but not flattering."
How much money do the authors think their readers have? Do they know how expensive personal shoppers are?
Page 18: "When you’re shopping in a department store, stop by a cosmetics counter and treat yourself to a makeover."
Shills!
Page 19: "…[G]row your hair long. Men prefer long hair, something to play with and caress. … It doesn’t matter that short hair is easier to wash and dry or that your hair is very thin. The point is, we’re girls! We don’t want to look like boys."
God help you if you’re bald, either out of choice or necessity. We can’t help you there. You’re just screwed. Resign yourself to dying an old maid.
Page 19: "Don’t act like a man… Don’t tell sarcastic jokes. Don’t be a loud, knee-slapping, hysterically funny girl. … Don’t talk so much."
Wait…I’ve got it:
The men up there don't like a lot of blabber They think a girl who gossips is a bore Yes, on land, it's much preferred For ladies not to say a word And after all, dear, what is idle prattle for? Come on, they're not all that impressed with conversation True gentlemen avoid it when they can But they dote and swoon and fawn On a lady who's withdrawn It's she who holds her tongue who gets her man
Ah, you say that Ursula the sea witch was being rather sarcastic in Poor Unfortunate Souls when she was singing this in Disney’s animated Little Mermaid, trying to convince Ariel to trade her voice for a pair of legs?
Well, no wonder Ursula’s still single. Hmph!
—
Holy shit, I haven’t even gotten to the actual Rules yet.
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It’s the question that everyone’s asking.
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In prep for my evisceration of Not Your Mother’s Rules, I felt it essential to revisit the toilet paper classic, the original Rules, or The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, a 1995 tree murderer publication by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. It is ostensibly a advice book for white, bourgeois, U.S., 1990s, het, cis, non-disabled, college-educated, professionally employed, [sub]urban, monogamous, single women who want to have lifelong, loving, satisfying marriages to white, bourgeois, U.S., 1990s, het, cis, non-disabled, college-educated, professionally employed, [sub]urban, monogamous, single men.
So apparently the target population is like 3 people.
Anyway, I will not be eviscerating The Rules in detail, merely making snide remarks on bits that catch my attention. My excerpts should easily give you an idea of the content and its retrograde ideological underpinnings.
Let’s go!
Page 1: "No one seems to remember exactly how the Rules got started, but we think they began circa 1917 with Melanie’s grandmother. … Back then, they called it ‘playing hard to get.’"
‘Kay, I’m done. That’s all I need to know. This book is going to tell its audience to sit on its collective asses and…wait for it…do nothing! [Why this requires a multi-book series, I’m not sure.]
The concept of courtship/dating/relationship formation with partners as that of a man aggressively chasing a desirable, passive woman goes much further back than 1917. The active man/passive woman binary appears nearly everywhere around the world as a standard feature of kyriarchy, but acknowledging that would require research and facts, two things that this book clearly can’t be bothered with.
Page 2: "Deep inside, … we really wanted to get married — the romance, the gown, the flowers, the presents, the honeymoon — the whole package."
Notice the complete absence of a marriage partner from this fantasy. Instead, the authors focus on the material trappings of the wedding industrial complex that they are culturally expected to want. I am not disparaging anyone’s interest in these trappings. [I like presents!] I am merely pointing out that, already, this book is really, really, really hung up on achieving mainstream societal markers of successful femininity.
Wow, this is going to take forever. At this rate, I’ll never get to Not Your Mother’s Rules! :p
More later….
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I’m very excited. As previously mentioned, I ordered Not Your Mother’s Rules for evisceration. To make sure that my disembowelment of the turd was truly comprehensive, I also ordered the original Rules, as well as The Rules II. My copy of the original Rules is out for delivery right now!!!!! I can’t wait!
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I have two major purposes in mind for a scanner:
My necessary tools are a) a flatbed sheet-fed duplex color scanner, b) Adobe Photoshop Elements and c) Adobe Acrobat.
Here is a scanner that could perform my required functions: Xerox DocuMate 3220. Not that expensive….
EDIT: Epson WorkForce GT-1500 is cheaper.
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I have plans to digitize selected scrapbooks, photos, writing and other ephemera from my youth in an effort to get rid of the heavy paper versions. I therefore brought stuff to work, thinking to use the scanner integrated in the super duper printer/copier/fax/egg timer/dishwasher at the office.
Today I discovered that the scanner maxes out at 300 dpi. This resolution is acceptable for text documents, but it will not serve for photos or artwork. So either I’m going to buy my own flatbed scanner or borrow my parents’, which they purchased for their own memorabilia digitization project several years ago.
…Unless the egg timer over here has some secret high-quality scanner settings I’m unaware of.
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Great Harvest makes big and little bunny breads the week before Easter. I picked one up Friday because it was so cute. It freaked out the local doll population.
Continue reading Bunny bread from Great Harvest
A test of the forest against the deciduous background reveals that it needs more filler.
Continue reading [Isabel] Forrest in the forest for the fifth time
I finished the large trees tonight.Continue reading [Isabel] Forrest in the forest for the fourth time
The Helsinki Complaints Choir makes melodious art from the daily annoyances of white bourgeois capitalists. Brb, crackin’ my shit up.
Sarah: "That’s not fair!"
Jareth: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is?"
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Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye
With cloud for shift
how will I hide?
Swenson does the best poetry of the body. I love the enjambment in "Body my good / bright dog is dead." It’s like the speaker loves life so much that she actually breaks off in the middle of the thought before getting to "dead" because she’s so stuck on the goodness and brightness of being an embodied being. I also like the phrase "wind for an eye" because it implicitly continues the house metaphor by subtly recalling the etymology of "window," from Old Norse "vindauga," or "wind’s eye."
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…which is A Christmas Tree, which I think somehow cheapens the whole thing by making it some trite, pallid God metaphor.
A Christmas Tree
by William Burford
I like the personification of the astronomical body, the begging of warmth across the chill of space, the abject genuflection of the insignificant people [who are so insignificant that they can’t buy another vowel for "Huddld"]. It’s a desperate and rather hopeless plea.
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The dude generally pisses me off with his fucking stupid misogyny and gender essentialism, not to mention racism, but I do love this poem:
Death Is Not Evil, Evil Is Mechanical
Only the human being, absolved from kissing and strife
goes on and on and on, without wandering
fixed upon the hub of the ego
going, yet never wandering, fixed, yet in motion,
the kind of hell that is real, grey and awful
sinless and stainless going round and round
the kind of hell grey Dante never saw
but of which he had a bit inside him.
Know thyself, and that thou art mortal.
But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal:
a thing of kisses and strife
a lit-up shaft of rain
a calling column of blood
a rose tree bronzey with thorns
a mixture of love and hate
a wind that blows back and forth
a creature of beautiful peace, like a river
and a creature of conflict, like a cataract:
know thyself, in denial of all these things —
And thou shalt begin to spin round on the hub of the obscene ego
a grey void thing that goes without wandering
a machine that in itself is nothing
a centre of the evil world.
Frankly, I ignore the fact that someone’s been reading too much Freud and return to this poem for the middle part: the quintessence of glorious, vacillating humanity. "A calling column of blood" — what a perfect evocation of our physicality and our longing for emotional connection.
D.H. Lawrence really hates machines… He especially has it out for electric wheelchairs [ref. Clifford Chatterley]. Fuck off, D.H. Lawrence!
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A word sticks in the wind’s throat;
A wind-launch drifts in the wells of rye;
Sometimes, in broad silence,
The hanging apples distill their darkness.
You, in a green dress, calling, and with brown hair,
Who come by the field-path now, whose name I say
Softly, forgive me love if also I call you
Wind’s word, apple-heart, haven of grasses.
I love the language here, especially the "wind-launch," with its connotations of air caught in the depths of long grasses. And the apples, "distill[ing] their darkness" — what does that mean? I think of tangy fermentation, cider, fall, secrecy, something somber, witnessing and slightly menacing.
And that enjambment in the second stanze — "whose name I say / Softly " — wow! A word sticks in the speaker’s throat as a word sticks in the wind’s throat. It’s such a regretful poem, a melancholy evocation of thwarted feeling.
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Translated from Russian by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.
My favorite paragraph is, incidentally, the last:
And it seemed as though, in a little while, the solution would be found, and then a new and glorious life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that what was to be most complicated and difficult for them was only just beginning.
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…for my local forecast, I seriously query their pride that Mark Trail, terminally dull protagonist of the long-running eponymous "comic" strip [since 1946 — shoot it already!], champions NOAA weather radio. As Mark Trail would say, "What th — ?" Pretty much any character has more charismatic cachet than Mark Trail.
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Previously excoriated sight unseen here. I got it for throwing against the wall scientific purposes, I swear!
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The seller’s photos of the creemee appliques for Yamarrah’s sweatshirt do not encompass the sheer tackitude of these decorations, so I have scanned my own appliques.
You’ve heard me and Jareth talking about her, but, unless you’re Janna, you haven’t seen detailed renderings of Yamarrah’s mockup. Here they are.
Continue reading More detailed mockups of Yamarrah
Lemax Collection makes several different sets of little decorative tabletop resin fantasy villages with [all white] people, vehicles, buildings, animals, plants, etc. They have a "Victorian" village [in quotes because it doesn’t look Victorian to me], a "coastal Massachusetts" village [ditto], a Halloween village, Santa’s village, etc., etc. Am I the only one who thinks it would be hilarious to cross-pollinate elements from one set [mostly the Halloween one] with others?
Think of the possibilities:
Then again, these ideas are coming from someone who thinks that vampire + 1989 + ice cream = cute, so your mileage may vary. :p
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Okay, so technically Isabel’s not in these pictures. Let’s pretend she’s standing just out of frame. :p
Behold the understory! Yesterday I harvested some slender twigs from the nearby woods, then turned them into the understory for my forest set. I made bases for clusters of twigs using the same principles that I used when making them for my underbrush this weekend. This time, though, I did things differently.
First, I didn’t use polymer clay. I used Aves Apoxie Sculpt. It is a two-part sculpting medium that requires manual blending in 50/50 composition before use. It then has a working time of approximately two hours before it dries rock hard. When pliable, it may be tinted with acrylic paint. When dry, it may be sanded or carved.
I really like Apoxie Sculpt. I find it easy to use, with the caveat that hand-mixing just about three-fourths of a handful of it at a time is best. Otherwise I hurt my hands in an attempt to blend huge wodges at once!
Once blended, Apoxie Sculpt starts off slightly tacky, soft and very pliable, slowly stiffening and drying as time wears on. It responds readily to tools, cut it’s also easy enough to form with one’s fingers. [The instructions recommend wearing nitrile gloves and make it sound like the stuff is difficult to get off, but it’s really not. The second time I used it, I didn’t wear gloves, and I removed the sticky bits from my fingertips with soap and water.] Unlike polymer clay, it cures on its own, so no putting things in the oven, then juggling hot items as they come out.
Second, I didn’t glue the twigs into guide holes the way that I did with the underbrush. Instead I just stuck them in the Apoxie Sculpt bases and let the Apoxie Sculpt cure around them. As much as me and hot glue are BFFs, sometimes it’s nice not to have to use it.
Continue reading [Isabel] Forrest in the forest for the third time
As I mentioned last October, the Chinese BJD company Magical Angel combines low prices with extremely responsive customer service, a rarity in the BJD world, where language barriers and time differences regularly contribute to sporadic, frustrating communication with doll makers. Though I have none of their dolls, I really like them because they seem ready to do all sorts of custom things that most companies either don’t do or charge exorbitant amounts for, like sculpting custom heads or making custom resin matches.
Anyway, I’m just making some notes for myself based on PMs that have been hanging around in my DOA inbox for a while.
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I have really disliked Jareth’s default hands. As much as I find the sculpts elegant, they have wrist balls separate from the actual hands, and the hands frequently popped out of joint from the wrists.
I therefore thought that some substitutes with integrated wrist balls were in order. I really wanted a set of exaggeratedly elongated, slender hands to go along with the stalklike shape of the Doll Chateau adult male body. The fantasy hands that Soom issues with some of its female Monthly Dolls appeal to me, as they often have extra-long fingers and nails, but they are hard to find, given their limited editions.
Anyway, I found a set of Soom Breccia’s Foxie [=fantasy] hands on the DOA marketplace and snapped ’em up. At first I wasn’t sure about the brownish pink blushing on the fingertips, but it goes with Mr. Demandypants’ style.
As a bonus, they’re posed in a perfect position to facilitate nefarious plotting!
I also remembered how to create my own speech bubbles and how to make them automatically white with a thick black outline and a drop shadow.
I got a pair of Keen sandals last summer, and they’re already going smooth on the soles, but I expect that, as I wear them about 3.25 seasons out of 4. I did not, however, expect the casing on one of the laces to wear out, leaving the narrow elastic exposed.
At first I thought, Goddamn, I’ll have to get another pair of shoes. I then realized that I really only needed to replace the lace, if I could just figure out how to do so.
Fortunately, the Internet has the answers! Either I could request a replacement set of laces from Keen, or I could follow the instructions and attempt it on my own. I have some BJD elastic that should be the correct diameter. I suppose that, if all else fails, I can just restring my shoe with doll elastic and tie it off, removing the adjustability.
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…to get a person accustomed to a looooooooong view of scheduling. I just slated an article for publication in January, 2014!
The award for the article I have scheduled furthest from its pub date, though, goes to one that I designated in October, 2012 for publication in October, 2013.
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When we last looked in on my forest in progress, it was pretty much uniformly green. In the mean time, I have made some improvements.
An entirely pointless photostory in direct continuation of that posted earlier!
Continue reading Waiting for Yamarrah with Jareth and Araminthe
The rest of the story, such as it is.
Continue reading Testing my comic panels with Jareth and Sardonix part II
Erica’s end of a trade — a bunch of commissioned clothes for Isabel — arrived earlier this week. Forthwith, pictures of selected items.
Continue reading Clothes from Corsetkitten/Erica
Well, that was arduous. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I created custom panel layouts in Photoshop Elements and then figured out how to stick photos in the panels so that they wouldn’t overlap and/or block out other panels or photos.
I thoroughly frustrated myself in research about transparency, layer masks and clipping masks until I discovered that Elements has a Paste to Selection tool. I therefore just selected the interior of the desired panel with the Magic Wand tool, then copied my desired photo and Pasted to Selection.
After the photo is pasted, I can resize and reposition it, although this feature goes away as the panel and photo layers merge when I move to work on another panel. I’m sure there’s a way to Paste to Selection or its equivalent, while retaining the ability to resize and reposition the pasted photo, but this method suffices for now.
So here’s me experimenting with my new pages with the help of Jareth and Sardonix. I need to create custom shapes for speech bubbles with different orientations and also figure out how to make the bubbles default to white with black outlines and the text default to black, but, again, this suffices for now.Continue reading Testing my comic panels with Jareth and Sardonix
From head to toe:
She will also, of course, have actual non-clothing creemees to eat. 😀
I sure hope this split goes through! 😀
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Iplehouse Doria’s special edition fantasy head amuses me to no end [as does the phrase "tonsil hockey"].
…I have no dolls on order. I’m waiting for doll-related stuff [come on, magnetic trifold!], but not any dolls.
Feels weird. :p
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Iplehouse’s EID special edition Doria The Addiction is sticking out hers, at least on the fantasy head. She and IOS Infernale should get together and play tonsil hockey.
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Gaystarnews is running an article based on an interview that Richard O’Brien recently did with the BBC in which he’s talking about gender identity. GSN’s title for the article is "Rocky Horror writer Richard O’Brien believes he is ‘30% female’ after taking hormones," which is NOT WHAT HE SAID.
This is what he said:
"It’s my belief that we are on a continuum between male and female. There are people who are hardwired male and there are people who are hardwired female, but most of us are on that continuum and I believe myself probably to be about 70% male, 30% female."
He was also talking about having been on estrogen for a decade, but he never made the causal connection between his hormones and his 70/30 split. Given what he says about his history, it’s possible that he experienced this 70/30 split well before taking estrogen and therefore started estrogen because of it. That makes for a much more complex, much less lurid headline, however, and GOD FORBID that news outlets reflect the complexities of reality.
O’Brien’s experiences with gender provide instructive background against which to interpret RHPS.
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My recently purchased Groovy Girls did not yield any outfits for Isabel. However, two of the Groovies told me that they wanted to join Verity and Kami, who are currently hanging out at my work. So here are the newest members of my small population, Karly on the left and Bindi on the right. Awwwww! The cars on Bindi’s pajama pants are adorable.
Continue reading More Groovy Girls
I did a quick mockup of my spring/summer forest set. I used a moss table runner for the ground. The backdrop is North American Wildlife 2011 Forest Green cotton print by Elizabeth’s Studio [no really!]. The trees are my aforementioned sticks.
As far as I was concerned, the crowning jewel of the Vermont Rails Train show was, naturally, Barb Pitfido’s Lego layout. I enjoyed her work immensely when I first saw it at the Dollars for Scholars Train Show last year, and yesterday was no exception. We recognized each other on sight :p, and she pointed out to me the humorous details of her layout this time around.
Continue reading Vermont Rails Train Show, 03/16/2013: Barb Pitfido’s Lego layout
Lewis Buchspics set up the layout below at about 3 feet off the ground so that kids could easily view it. Since most layouts were at least 4, if not 5, feet off the ground, kids flocked to this one, attracted as well by the copious flashing lights, sound effects, fake smoke and motorized set pieces.
Janna and I went to the Vermont Rails Train Show at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex Junction, VT, yesterday. Woo hoo! We enjoyed ourselves immensely. I took 273 pictures in the hopes of getting at least 25% of them to develop acceptably.
Continue reading Vermont Rails Train Show, Essex Jct.., VT, 03/16/2013: Adirondack RR and VGRS layouts
This fabric, to be precise.
Based on 2009’s invention, cold chili glop.
The following makes 4 to 5 servings.
Ingredients:
Optional:
NOTE: I have never included browned meat, tomato paste or hot sauce in my own experiments, so I just stuck them in the recipe at what seemed like the appropriate point. I claim no responsibility for any disgusting results you may incur by following my instructions.
Steps:
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Hmmm, I appear to have acquired 7 Groovy Girls and their closet off of craigslist at $2.50 per item. The dolls do not come in the closet. They are definitely out of the closet.
I am purchasing them to see if their clothes fit my fat dolls. If they do, hooray, more meretricious clothes for Isabel and friends. If they don’t, they’ll hit Ebay, unless they tell me they’re too cute to go, which Groovy Girls have a way of doing. >_>
Washed-out pictures from seller below. Continue reading I BLAME THE DOLLS.
The Groovy Girls Swank Sofa is spectacular. I would like a human-size version.
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I swapped Megan onto Pippilotta’s body, that is, a tan CG 1.0. Her outfit fits without any trouble! She grabbed my Pride flag and immediately staked a claim…. Continue reading Megan’s third body
I hit Lane Bryant’s clearance rack yesterday and got three pairs of pants to replace the ones that have been expiring left and right. Because I like the style, I am recording all their pertinent details in case I want to buy more in future.
One pair is pointe knit Classic Trousers, size 14/16 average, in grey. Needs hemming.
I also got Tailored Jeggings, size 16 average, in the exact same grey as the first pair. Does not need hemming.
Finally The Jeggings, size 16 average, in cranberry. Does not need hemming.
Total damage: $34.50.
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…how no one chit-chats on TV shows? I was watching Grimm this morning [back from its winter hiatus and as gloriously stupid as ever!], and yet again I noticed how no one ever stammers, stutters, repeats themselves or says hello or goodbye. [Apparently meaningful stares take the place of these conversational markers.] Everyone says everything just once, in the most condensed, pithy, comprehensible way possible, and the listeners always comprehend perfectly and let their interlocutors go without saying goodbye.
I understand that TV represents a stylized view of human interactions, but we spend so much time saying hello, making small talk, repeating ourselves, going "uhhhhhhh…" and saying goodbye that TV’s persistent refusal to even acknowledge the actual form of most modern conversations just kills my suspension of disbelief. Instead of following the story, I’m too busy thinking about a) how actors are apparently paid by the world, so cheap studios limit their lines so they don’t have to pay them too much and b) how rude and socially inept all the characters would be if they acted like this in real life. Then I become irritated with the whole enterprise and start wanting to throw things at the screen.
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Vitra, a company that designs furniture, issues 1:6 scale replicas of famous modern chairs — their Vitra Miniatures series. Meticulously crafted and true to scale, these pieces are truly beautiful. I happen to have a yellow Vitra Mini Panton chair, shown in the foreground below, only because Andrea gave it to me.
You always mess up my sleep schedule for at least a week. >:(
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An orgy of hot pink, lime green and electric blue! I’m gonna pretend Isabel made it for her. ^_^
Here she is with her BJD, played by Jujube. Isabel is about 11 inches tall [28cm]. Since 2 inches = 1 foot in 1:6 scale, Isabel would be 5.5 feet [1.67m] in real life. Jujube is about 5.5 inches tall [14cm], which would make her 2.5 feet high in real life. That’s 76cm in real life, on the huge end for a BJD. 1:12 scale [Jujube] is like 1:2 scale for 1:6 scale [Isabel]. Therefore, even though Jujube is minuscule to me, anyone who sees her in Isabel’s arms will certainly remark on how huge she is! ^_^
I improved Jujube this evening by wiring her limbs with 22 gauge wire, repositioning her wig and removing her way-out-of-scale shoelaces.
Continue reading I think it’s adorable how much Isabel loves her dolls.
…that Isabel needs some wig stands for her immense collection of wigs. In practice, this means that I I need 2 or 3. I can make these very easily out of fashion doll heads mounted on dowels in blocks of polymer clay or something. Knowing Isabel, she would repaint each of her heads and give it a name and a personality. ^_^
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Isabel got the two shirts and dolls shown from Andrea today. Isabel clearly likes coordinating her hair with her outfits.
Farking around with the "bloom" effect in Photoscape produced the halos of light around her head. Continue reading Package from Andrea!
N’Yenya sold and paid for [$25.00].
Elfdoll Doona body, wig and outfit sold and paid for [$75.00].
BTVS DVDs still at $30.00, Labyrinth lot still at $32.50.
EDIT: As of 4:50 PM, two sets of Faery Legend wings + outfit + wig have sold [$55.00]. BTVS DVDs up to $31.00, Labyrinth lot still at $32.50.
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Whether by recycling, trashing or donating, I got rid of the following today:
Good riddance! I feel like I have so much space now, and I have never had lots of stuff to begin with!
Quick!! Buy more dolls!! :p
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I’ve been holding onto it for all these years, when all I really want is the track listing and order, so here it is:
Side A
Side B
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Sold N’Yenya [$25.00].
BTVS DVDs up to $30.00.
Labyrinth lot holding steady at $32.50.
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Back in my less discriminating days, I used to acquire stuff more easily that I thought looked great, but which I did not immediately have a use for. Now that I’m older, pickier and possessed of much less space, I have winnowed my collection of set pieces and accessories down to those that I can use in multiple situations. [Well, with the exception of my Shoezies shoe display rack — it’s so cool that I will write shoe stores into my photostories just so I can use it for its sole purpose!] Though I have drastically reduced my 1:6 scale stuff to the most practical and useful pieces, sometimes some stuff hangs around that I’m not sure what to do with.
Take this 1:6 scale cork scene, for example, with which Isabel is posing below. It’s a cluster of miniature, carved, wooden buildings in a glass case with black trim.
Continue reading Really nifty 1:6 scale things that just sit around
I conclude that Slate keeps around certain commentators [Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, William Saletan] precisely because their uninformed, reactionary blatherings piss people off. That’s the only reason I can think of. I mean, surely no one takes these clueless blowhards seriously?
This week’s bloviation comes from William "Pointless and Sententious" Saletan’s column on The Trouble with Bondage. That’s bdsm, by the way, and the article discusses the reasons why bdsm will never go mainstream.
I thought the reason was that the majority of people weren’t interested in it. But no, silly me. Saletan’s article, as near as I can figure out, goes something like this:
blah blah blah lifestyle blah blah blah voluntary pursuit of pain wtf?! ewwwwwwwww blah blah breath play is dangerous blah blah anti-feminist sickos who like rape scenes blah some people take it to extremes blah blah I have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’m just going to call bdsm "consensual domestic violence" and cash my paycheck blah blah blah lifestyle choice.
As a human being with a functioning sense of decency, I find it repulsive that Saletan trivializes intimate partner abuse by using it as a metaphor for something it has nothing to do with. Way to go, you picayune, misogynist fuckhead. I’m glad to know that you’re more interested in making false equivalencies than dealing with actual deleterious symptoms of kyriarchy.
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Well, the BTVS DVDs are currently at $17.01, while the Labyrinth memorabilia lot is at $20.00, so at least some of the stuff is selling.
EDIT: As of 1:30 PM, Labyrinth lot is up to $35.00!
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All my 1:6 scale dolls, sets, medium-size things and accessories are now in one place: my house! Here are all my sets and medium-size things. Blue upholstered chair, bed, car, white framed window and two-tube lamp are new since last inventory. Trees, weapons and tombstones have been around for a while, but were never documented till now.
Thinking about getting rid of 12-pane window, antique phones, wooden scene in glass case, round starry chair and fish tank.
Continue reading All my sets and medium-size things, 03/06/2013: all in one place!
Let’s see…I’ve seen BJDs with swappable faceplates, ears, hands, feet, penises, legs, wings, torsos and eyelids, but I have never before seen a BJD with swappable tongues.
Behold Immortality of Soul’s Infernale, a very pointy, stylized dude with narrow eyes and an open mouth done convincingly. He has two optional magnetic tongues; one is just sticking out [:p], while the other is licking his top lip [:d]. I admire his adherence to the angular, squinty bishounen aesthetic, as well as the obvious joy with which he was sculpted.
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All I want is a piece of comic creation software that has an intuitive, user-friendly UI, customizable, reuseable panel templates, decent documentation and/or tech support, word art and graphic insertions [like sound effects or hearts over someone’s head], thought bubbles with the appropriate stems [dots connecting to people’s heads, not stems like speech bubbles!] and a price that doesn’t break the bank! Is that so hard? 
Yes, apparently.
I am this close to giving up on specialized comic creation software and making my own templates and such in PhotoShop Elements or equivalent.
I used to do very basic layout in PhotoShop Elements by stacking panels in a long column, then adding speech balloons from Elements’ premade selections. I then tried a variety of comic layout programs. All of them have saved me some time by automating panel creation, balloon formatting, sound effect creation, etc., but none of them have been exactly to my liking.
Planetwide Games’ Comic Book Creator was simple, intuitive, cheap, customizable and possessed of the sound effects and thought bubbles I wanted. However, it offered limited resizing of imported photos and no customizable speech balloons. Thankfully, this program is out of print, so I don’t have to warn you to stay away from it.
I moved on to Comic Life by Plasq. More complex than Comic Book Creator, Comic Life was still cheap and somewhat customizable, with more sophisticated speech balloons and options for photo manipulation. Unfortunately, Comic Book Creator lacked adequate documentation, especially on creating reuseable templates. Plus Plasq didn’t give a shit about Windows users, so tech support was nonexistent.
Then I tried Manga Studio EX. A bloated Japanese import translated and licensed by Smith Micro, Manga Studio EX came with a huge manual, but that could not compensate for all the little details lost in translation. Manga Studio had the capability to make and save custom page/panel templates, and it could do sophisticated manipulation of imported photos. However, I couldn’t stand the cluttered, user-hostile UI and the fact that all the thought balloons had stems, not dots, connecting to the thinker’s head. While under $100.00, Manga Studio was also the most expensive of all the comic creation software I had used so far.
I’m currently testing Summitsoft’s Comic Creator. It’s cheap, simple, pretty intuitive, with word art and graphic insertions. But I cannot figure out how to create and reuse my own custom page templates or avoid the stupid startup screen. There’s also no tech support and ridiculously basic documentation.
In conclusion, I do not recommend Comic Book Creator, Manga Studio or Comic Creator. Of the four specialized programs I’ve tested, I hate Comic Life the least, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.
And this is why I’m almost certainly going back to PhotoShop Elements…because everything else STINKS! 
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Soom’s latest theme for Monthly Dolls is Fairy Tales, so they just came out with some characters from Thumbelina, including Thumbelina and the Flower Fairy Prince, as well as the Toad and the Field Mouse.
Thumbelina and the Prince are Neo Angelregion Timps, which means that they are ~11cm tall. [Other measurements are here.] Like the mature 1:6 scale Faery Legends, Thumbelina and the Flower Fairy Prince come with faery wings and faery feets in translucent resin. They are pretty cute and also good for adding diversity of age to one’s Faery Legend troupe.
…Nope. All my fairies are adults.
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