Halloween LOTR Costume Series #5: Grey Wizard (”Gwendolf”)

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For tonight, here is my version of a female wizard. (My husband called her “Gwendolf” and the name stuck. My apologies.) None appear anywhere in the series, but it is for Halloween and I thought it would be fun… And it was fun, even if I used up a year’s worth of French Grey pencils, even if the end result is a little boring.

My husband heard me complaining and warns me “You should watch out. You don’t call wizards boring. They’ll transform you into a little toad!” I should not like to be transformed, into a toad or otherwise, and so I added cute little hem designs and dialed down the criticism of the grey. If I was sticking to canon I could have given her a blue hat, but the more I look at it, the more I think, well, she looks kind of cool in her desaturated glory… Actually, playing around with hue/saturation in Photoshop, I can make “Gwendolf the Off-White,” “Gwendolf the Lime Green” oh and you don’t want to see “Gwendolf the Electric Blue,” trust me…

I’m afraid this one is going up a little late tonight, but it’s still the 8th where I am. So far I think I’m doing better than last year in terms of paperdoll consistency.

There’s not much reason to put up the poll today too, but I might as well. Don’t worry, fairy fans, I would place money on them taking the third week, if I was a betting sort of gal…

Spring Green Top and Split Skirt Embroidered with Daisies and Yellow Ribbons over Cream Shift with Daisy Garland inspired by Prince Caspian: The Chronicles of Narnia

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I’ve had the second Narnia movie recommended to me a couple times because of the costumes, and finally Brian and I got it from the library and watched it. I sort of made Brian watch it with me, mostly because he’s so funny when his picky English major nature is all riled up.

He says “You didn’t make me watch it with you. I volunteered. It’s true that people often volunteer to make bad decisions, but I volunteered. I enjoyed it, except for those times where characters were talking, or moving, or engaging in eight-hour long bloodless swordfights. I also enjoyed watching Susan throw arrows into the hearts of warriors.”

So there you have it, the Brian review. I liked it better than he did (I like just about everything better than he does) but I too am not thrilled by the creepily sanitary fight scenes. Not that I want to see bleeding battle elks and warriors or anything, just that in the books the fights seemed to me important and unavoidable, but also not so glorified. I like the books where the fights aren’t the focus, like the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I’d add A Horse and His Boy which is my favorite, but I fear when they get around to that one about half of the time will be spent on the fight scene at the end. It reminds me of the Watchmen comics’ ambivalence about violence and the movie’s celebration of the same.

I did enjoy the costumes, of course! I’ve always envisioned the clothes of Narnia as being comfy and practical as well as beautifully made and graceful, and I can’t quote chapter and verse but I’m quite sure that there’s more than one part in the Chronicles where Lewis rails against stuffy, confining clothing, often preferring rather pagan garb. (There’s just enough costume description and scope for imagination in the books that I’ve often thought of doing a Narnia paperdoll series…) I especially liked the split skirts over flowing pants that Lucy and Susan wore, so I borrowed the idea for today, although it looks more like a plain old overskirt and underskirt combo if you didn’t know what it was supposed to be.

In other paperdoll news, I’ve figured out what colors to use so that I can take one hair style and change it in Photoshop to make a bunch of different hair colors. It’s not as easy as it sounds, unless you like really tacky yellow instead of blonde. So far I have ten realistic hair colors and eleven rainbow colors (those are, of course, easier to do!). Do me a favor and look at the hair colors and tell me what you think of them. If you have any suggestions as to what other colors I should try to do, I’d love to hear them (and if you have any reference pictures, that’d be great too). I think I’ve got more than enough blond colors and I need more shades of brunette.

Red Tank Top and Gray Yoga Pants Inspired By Echo in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse

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So Brian and I watched Firefly and Serenity earlier this year, and I completely fell in love with the show. I haven’t yet seen any of Buffy or Dr. Horrible, but when I heard about Dollhouse I decided that this time I wouldn’t let Joss Whedon’s next potential hit pass me by, and I’ve been watching it on Hulu. I watched the first episode with Brian, and the next few on my own (my husband having bailed muttering jokes about “quantum leap with spas” and so on). Just as the hype had it, the second episode was better than the first, the overall beginning was kind of weak and episode six was tons of fun. The show is about an organization (the Dollhouse of the title) that removes the memories and personalities from their “volunteers” and hires them out as perfect human beings implanted with the personality and skills necessary for whatever job the client wants. In between jobs, the “dolls” are returned to a childlike state (one poster on the Whedonesque blog noted that they sounded a lot like lolcats — I has a book! — and I wish I could unread that because now I can’t not crack up at some lines) and spend the days in comfy clothes, doing yoga and eating lettuce. I’ve liked the subtle costuming so far, even if there aren’t the opportunities for fantasy like there were with Firefly.

I think Topher’s rather put-upon assistant Ivy is going to end up being the programmer Topher talked about in, I think, episode four — Topher seems to think that his rival Yuma Takahashi is definitely a guy, and rejects the idea that whoever disrupted the programming could be a girl when his assistant suggests it, but Yuma is a suggestive sort of name. “Yuma” seems girly to me, and there’s at least one actress with the name, but “Yuuma” seems more like a guy’s name; I wouldn’t expect Topher to know the difference. (The captions had it as “Yuma,” but that doesn’t signify much, I think.) Anyways, that’s my contribution to the rampant speculation, and I hope I’m right because I look forward to her smacking him down at some point. (For some reason I can so see a bewildered Topher with a line like “I thought all their names ended in ‘ko’?” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.) For her to be the person who contacted Ballard seems like it might be too obvious, though.

Edit, April 6 – on rewatching Grey Hour, Topher says, I think, “Yumio” while the subtitles say “Yuma.” Yumio being a pretty manly name, I’m not so attached to my theory as I once was!

Hillary Clinton’s Orange Pantsuit from the 2008 Democratic National Convention

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For someone like me who is enamored of skirts and frills, Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits are alien, but I suppose if I was a tenth as busy as she must be and people were following me around hoping for a picture of me looking unkept, I would probably switch to the pantsuit as well. Also, after looking at dozens of pictures of her in pantsuits, this picture of her jackets being checked against stage lighting completely cracked me up. It’s not like there’s anything inherently funny in it, but just the fact that the jackets are all the same except for the color made for an amusing tableau. It feels like online shopping for clothes, where you select a different color on a skirt or something and the color switches but the picture stays the same. You can almost see the intern fussing around with Photoshop sliders. (I tried changing this image that way, but had mixed results.)

Anyways, this is a rendition of the pantsuit that she wore on the second day of the Democratic National Convention. Not quite right, as usual — the doll’s body is too long, which is a lot more forgiving to work with for skirts than for pants!

And don’t forget to vote…

Two Fourth of July T-Shirts from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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For those of us in the USA – happy 4th of July! (And for those of you outside the USA, do enjoy the fourth of July anyways…) These are old 4th themed shirts (plus a pair of khaki capris) from the Boutique.

We haven’t seen any fireworks, but I might try to talk Brian into going to see the parade downtown…

Calamity Jane in Fringed Leather Jacket and Buckskin Breeches

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I’m listening to Deadwood Dick’s Doom, or, Calamity Jane’s Last Adventure, a dime novel western by Edward Wheeler. At three hours long I will probably be done with it by tomorrow, but if you like westerns or Deadwood, which I do, it’s an enjoyable three hours. The reading is a mite uneven, as with a lot of LibriVox books read by many readers, but overall it’s great, and some of the readers really put some life into it. I mean, how can you not love this line:
“Yes, I am Deadwood Dick, the celebrated cuss from Custer clime– the diabolical devil-may-care devotee of road-agency, from Deadwood the hunted hurricane, Harris, just as you see me. And according to a recent act of Congress, if you or any other two-legged individual attempts to harm yonder girl, whoever she may be, I’ll agree to furnish him with a free pass over Jordan by the most direct ethereal line. I mean business, so let some pilgrim of enterprising disposition open the market.”

Bullock couldn’t pull that off, but just imagine Swearengen chewing on it, preferably while waving around a pistol, even if the chivalrous sentiment isn’t quite his department…

Anyways, this is a drawing of Calamity Jane’s outfit, based off of this picture of her scan courtesy of this Calamity Jane site, Calamity Jane gets to show off in this book, putting a bullet through the neck of a bottle midair, but at the moment she’s in mortal peril. I’m not worried, though, Deadwood Dick has a 3 for 3 record of protecting helpless women, so far, and I predict that tomorrow she’ll be out of her predicament and back with him.

Red, Black and Gold Captain’s Outfit based on Puzzle Pirates

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I downloaded Puzzle Pirates the other day — it just looked too cute not to give it a try. And indeed it was very cute, and I played a good deal of it for a couple of days. There’s a lot of puzzles to try, although I only really liked one or two of them, and the world is fun too: you can do puzzles by yourself, but you can also do them as a team, everyone working on a different kind of puzzle to make your little pirate ship sail smoothly, and it’s a lot more fun doing puzzles when you feel like it’s contributing to the speed of the ship or patching up the holes. You can also buy items for your house, or cute clothes to wear, which is where today’s paperdoll comes in.

The game has a lot of different items of clothing you can buy, and then the colors can be customized. Today’s paperdoll is based on a captain’s hat, a buccaneer jacket, flare pants and buckle shoes. One interesting thing about the clothing system is that different colors cost different amounts; this ensemble uses two of the most expensive colors, black and gold, making the estimated cost well over $100,000. Changing the colors to brown, green and white lowers it to about $7,000. So, of course, Sylvia is an admirable pirate, very skilled at plundering and puzzles, and wears plenty of black and gold. (My in-game character wears plenty of white and a shirt she got for free.)

I found this site when thinking about this paperdoll: Quid Pro Clothes, which is the website for one of the in-game tailors. (Players can just do puzzles, like me, or they can get into the metagame and the economy and start their own stores, buy their own ships, etc.) This site essentially removes much of my need to play the game, because of one reason: if you sign up for the site, it lets you play with the clothes without having to spend hours and hours saving the money first. You can also look at other people’s creations; I like this take on the Greek gods.

On a side note, apologies to Mom for driving her crazy today as I enlist her help in resume creation. “Remember it goes like this: letter first, paperdoll second” she says.

Tamryn’s Outfit from Emerald Dragon

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This is from a game called Emerald Dragon, and is the outfit of the main female character, Tamryn, a mystical cleric sort. The game appeared on multiple platforms, but the SNES version was recently translated by Eien Ni Hen and released by Nightcrawler of TransCorp. So if you happen to have a fondness for fun, emotional SNES RPGs, download the patch and play it for a bit, it’s a very enjoyable game.

Tamryn herself is very much the RPG maiden archetype — mystical, gentle, indispensable caster of healing spells. (And is there some sort of mysterious, special background possibly involved? No fooling you, RPG fans) The horn at her waist is from her best friend Atrushan, who gave it to her so she could call him whenever she was in danger. The hat? No comment on the hat.

Nightcrawler also hacked Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori which I did the translation for, and it looks as if that might be the next project he gets to. I’m very excited about it, because it’s such an odd, sweet little game. Where Metal Max Returns attracted fans very easily (tanks! wastelands! tanks! dogs with guns! tanks! what’s not to like?) I think a game based on a love story and plot twists you can see coming a mile away might be a harder sell. But I love the game and can’t wait to see it released. There’s a long ways to go, though, independent of whatever work Nightcrawler still has to do — all the town, cutscene, shop dialogue is done, but there’s some things that didn’t get dumped: special cutscenes, chats with monsters, a ‘talk’ section where you talk with your group, weapon and item names, who knows what else. So even with the main translation done, this could be quite a job.

Red and Black Devil Costume (based on a costume from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique)

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Still feeling uncreative, and anyways I have a weak spot for my old Boutique costumes. This is an update of this devil costume, even if it is months until Halloween. The tail is designed more to be cute than to be easy to cut out; my apologies.