Your weekly dose of vampires, melodrama and pink hair.

As I now have a job, Waverley is on her way to me, bringing with her from Denver Doll Emporium some crack cocaine Rement that I have long pined for, such as Eggs Etc. [eggs! bacon!] and Mexican dinner [tacos!]. Also on its way is a Dollmore Banji, bought secondhand so as not to support a cheatin' doll company. The Banji was an impulse buy and, as such, it does not have a designated character. It may become Will's cherished Bru doll. Then again, maybe not.

Alfred de Musset's La Nuit de Mai is an extended poetic dialog between the Poet and the Muse. The Muse urges the poet to sing/write in the efflorescence of spring. The Poet keeps moping, saying his sadness is too intense to be spoken. The Muse hits some seductive, sexual raptures, but the Poet, too busy immured in his melancholy, seems not to notice. Idiot.

In La Nuit d'Aout and La Nuit d'Octobre, the relationship between le Poete et la Muse continues with erotic charge, but I won't go into those parts now. I'm just happy that I have rediscovered La Nuit de Mai, especially now that I'm thinking about Anneka and Will's muses, who probably use de Musset's Nuits cycle for their own devices.

If Will has a somewhat intimidating, very playful Captain Thunderpussy for a muse, Anneka has Leonyssus, a finicky, rather crabby merdude who severely dislikes her control freak tendencies. I have a feeling he's the sort of person who spends lots of time looking in the mirror and combing his hair just to piss her off. Then, when she least expects it, he blows his conch horn, calling her to work. Her constant labors on her mermaid story make him complain that he's overworked, but, when she tries to leave him alone, he demands attention. He's very high maintenance, which translates as Anneka's drive and compulsion to constantly write.

Lest we think that he's some whiny, annoying drama queen, I should state that he's more imperious, arrogant, sarcastic and snotty than whiny. He constantly thinks that he's awesome, and he's always trying to teach Anneka lessons, which don't really work because she is ultimately in control. He would call himself "arch and slantwise;" she'd call him "someone with a delicate constitution."

I know the perfect construction for Leonyssus. He is an Obitsu Slim Male top with a bottom from a Mattel Mermaidia doll. He has a generic Slim Male head with askance eyes, half-closed, long eyelashes, and a smirk. Ideally he should have long flowing green hair. In my dreams, it's in a very complicated net of braids interspersed with pearls, but I don't have the patience for that. He has an incredibly impractical amount of pearl jewelry, cuffs, earrings, necklaces. He has a golden mirror and a golden hairbrush. He uses the magic mirror for scrying ideas.

CLEARLY I need to write a season in which muses run amuck.

Remember Cindy? In anticipation of my forthcoming Captain Thunderpussy doll, I tried to get an idea of possible outfits for the good captain. Cindy is modeling her bloody duds with the Aoshima fetish nun vinyl wimple. [Vinyl keeps bloodstains off, doncha know? :D ]

In other news, I am gonna either have to preserve Cindy better or throw her out. Like a real zombie, she keeps falling apart. Her head detaches from her body and, every time I squash it back on, her face paint chips. The end result does make her look more aged, however. ( Read more... )

Season 6 kicks off with a reunion between Anneka and Michaela and a disturbing piece of news on Michaela's part.

Comments: As you may recall from the flashbacks in season 5, Michaela played a pivotal role in Anneka's death. She warned Anneka that Dom was out for her blood, and she taught Anneka how to protect herself from vampires. None of this ended up helping, of course, but Anneka and Michaela did become friends. The two haven't seen each other for a few years, though. In that time, Michaela has been doing some stuff that shocks Anneka....

In LHF 2.1, "Homecoming Costumes," Anneka and Will consider what to wear. They have just heard that Anneka's grandmother, Minerva, is on her deathbed, so they must hurry up to Vermont to attend her. Unfortunately, if direct sunlight hits them, they, being undead, will burn up. Thus they turn to their extensive collection of fetish wear to find suitable cover-ups.

As they sort through their dress-up box, they try to alleviate their tension by clowning around. Will pretends that he's "Captain Thunderpussy, the kitty pirate nun!" Anneka says that his character is no match for "Tex the harem starlet cowboy!" Will's Captain Thunderpussy costume is a wimple, cat ears, an eyepatch and a cutlass. Anneka's Tex the harem starlet cowboy is a pair of bunny ears [lost in translation], a cowboy hat, a dancing girl veil, star-shaped sunglasses and a six-shooter.

CLEARLY I need a Captain Thunderpussy doll. Fortunately, there is a kitty nun doll who only needs piratization to complete her transformation into the character. Recently a 12" doll of a Dr. Who character, Novice Hame of the Sisters of Plenitude, was released. Novice Hame is a nun from a race of cat people, so, as you can see from this review, she looks like a bipedal humanoid cat in a wimple and full nun robes. She just needs an eyepatch, a cutlass and some more piratical flair to make her into Captain Thunderpussy.

The more I think about it, the more amusing it would be for Captain Thunderpussy to actually appear in LHF as an overbearing muse figure. Will obviously has a weird, pornographic, parodic imagination, but he keeps trying to write poetry. Maybe Thunderpussy ["That's CAPTAIN Thunderpussy to you, ya swab!!"] can point him in the direction of his true calling.

No, my "print to action figure" button still ain't working. The mask was rendered separately, then pasted in as a separate layer and merged with a photo. Close enough for government work! I still want a real one though.

Still, now I know I can paste simple Daz objects into real scenes. This is good to know. ( Read more... )

Fortunately it won't actually be worn, but it needs to be a prop. It's a combination face mask/ball gag/blindfold, and YES, it does have narrative relevance in LHF. Pictures below. Anyone have ideas? Maybe I should just cut off a Barbie face and sculpt from that?? [The different colors in the pictures are just so the different parts can be seen, although I do think those crazy colors are kinda cool.]

( Read more... )

I made some potted plants today for my 1:6ers by scrounging leftover bits of 1:1 plastic flowers from AC Moore, then gluing sprays of them into 5/8" spools. I wish I had gotten some larger spools, but I think I did well with the plants shown. These will be great for Mark, who can never have too many plants, or for Waverley, an easy way to decorate her studio apartment.   ( Read more... )

I hope to get an Elfdoll Tiny Kai soon, 14cm of awesomeness, to be Waverley Parker. An unplanned character in the LHF universe, she will become a regular main character because, like Absinthe, I like her so much!

Since I do not know when I will be able to afford her, I content myself with thinking about Waverley's room. For most of my 1:6 sets, I arrange a selection of my furniture, backdrops and decor, but this won't work in Waverley's case. Waverley is 1:6 for a person with her form of achondroplastic dwarfism, which means that she's more like 1:3 scale in 1:6 scale. In other words, she is the 1:6 equivalent of a 60cm BJD's height. Anyway, that means that, in absolute scale, she is more like 1:8 or even 1:12, much smaller than my 1:6ers.

So almost everything in Waverley's room needs to be on Waverley's scale, 1:8 or 1:12, except for a few items for her guests. I imagine that she has a 1:6 chair and some pillows for guests, but, as in a traditional Japanese house, she spends much of her time sitting on the floor. Nevertheless, I have been thinking about existing pieces of mine that I could use in her set:

• I have pillows and blankets for seating on the floor.
• Chow and Baozha have a low table that could double as Waverley's.
• My ring box could work as a small end table.
• My Rement lamp [from the yellow dresser] would be the perfect scale to go on the end table.
• I have that pink tricorder that I can use as her computer.
• I have a cell phone that she can use.
• She can watch the Merry Strawberry TV.
• I have a small necklace box that could be a bed for her. It just needs padding.
• I'm sure she would use the mushroom and puzzle mats as throw rugs to keep the floor warm.

Rement offers plenty of accessories on the smaller side for Waverley's use:

• Flirty Pink #3 has a nice little dresser.
• Merry Strawberry #4 has a little dresser with mirror and hairbrush, while #8 has a low table and a mat.
• Mushroom Paradise #7 has a little chair, while #8 has a shelf and a clock.

It is entitled "I Do Not Like..."  ( Read more... )

...the Baby Supia Sena is the most engaging, probably because the baby fats are expressively sculpted. The wide eyes and open mouth also make it look like it's in mid-gaga. I can't decide whether this is a 1:3 baby or a 1:6 toddler.

If I bought all the 1:6 kidsy dolls that attract me, I'd have a whole school from daycare through grade 6!!!!

In which Velvette delivers a smackdown!!

Comments: Over the course of Anneka’s epic tale of her own death, Velvette has become increasingly dissatisfied with her social life. Now she’s finally doing something about it.

As I mentioned earlier, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have started a vampire trilogy with The Strain, first of three books about vampire-as-virus infesting New York City and the Holocaust survivor and public health official who beat back the plague.

In two words: don't bother. The thoroughly pedestrian prose takes way too long to get into the story. [Why NO, we don't need 50 pages about the strange airplane full of exsanguinated dead people; just tell us that it was creepy, but they're dead, exsanguinated, filled with white stuff instead of blood, and there was a weird coffin onboard that disappeared. You can do that in 20 pages, 15 even, and ramp up the tension even more.]

The cast is so large and fleshed out only so far as stereotypes allow that it's impossible to give a flying fuck about any of them. Their voices aren't very well differentiated, and, like I guessed earlier, there aren't any female characters worth blowing one's nose at.

Not even the innovative reinterpretation of vampirism as a cancerous sort of virus that is motivated by blood-hungry worms in one's veins can compete with the crashing bore of this book. del Toro's vivid, cinematic, disgusting and memorable imagination apparently doesn't translate well out of the filmic genre, even with the help of a ghostwriter. Stick to movies, Guillermo.

Verdict: Don't catch this disease.

It is an Orient Doll Ye. At 12cm high, it's about as tall as a Kelly doll, but cuter. Its smile looks pleased, rather than the default toothy Kelly smile, which looks kinda vapid. I got a great deal on one with a partial trade. No character designated for it yet, but I'm looking forward to its cuteness.

When I first saw that someone on 13doll was selling American Girl's Girls of Many Lands dolls for a steal, one of them called out to me. Spring Pearl, portraying a Cantonese girl in 1857, charmed me with her sweet wondering look and her beautiful, bright, brocaded outfit. She told me right then and there that she was a Hun type vampire, and she needed to come home and be with Chow and Baozha and the rest of the Hun, not to mention the whole LHF cast.( Read more... )

Kinjou and I were talking about it last night on chat while I was watching the pilot. Our color commentary follows: ( Read more... )

In which Velvette reveals her true feelings.

Commentary: Upon winding up the story of her death, Anneka fiddles with one of Janet’s many robots. It is actually a wind-up toy, Noggin Bops, that dances by swinging its hips! Meanwhile, Velvette takes Anneka’s advice in a different way than she expected.

Make it go away by making an offer. ( Read more... )

So I found a company that manufactures software so that files from obsolete word-processing programs, spreadsheet programs, presentation programs, etc., may be converted to readable version. The company, Advanced Computer Innovations, offers a simple program, WordPort, and a more complex and flexible one, FileMerlin. This page offers a comparison of the two types. Basically FileMerlin is more expensive and powerful, suitable for huge batch conversions and complex documents.

Just so you can see how powerful the software for both programs is, ACI offers free unlimited trial versions of both. The only catch is that the trial versions introduce spelling and numeric errors into the software. I can attest, though, that, even with the introducted errors, ACI's software clearly translates files and their formatting quickly and with 98.9% accuracy. [They messed up the indents on my initial paragraphs.] If you have small files to convert, consider downloading the trial version and then spell-checking the translated docs.

But, if you're like me, you have some files that will take a while to fix if run through the trial version, but not a large enough number of files to warrant coughing up $95.00 [still a steal, though!] for WordPort. How can you get at the precious data inadvertantly time-capsuled in formats for First Choice, Microsoft Works 4.x and other early word-processing programs?

Fear not, for Advanced Computer Innovations offers an online file conversion service for a nominal fee per file. With the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface, the files to convert are uploaded to ACI's server, translated and downloaded, usually within minutes. Billing is made to a credit card, and this service is available any time. Again -- 98.9% accuracy and quick access to your old files! No painstaking retyping or reconstruction!

This is the awesomest thing in retro software ever since I discovered DOSBox so I could play Jumpman!!