I write everything down except what's on my mind
1. I came to the bizarre realization the other day that, out of all the things I'm presently into (I'm not counting Community, despite how desperately I love it, because I am so fucking behind I don't even count as a viewer anymore), Archer is the one that passes the Bechdel test. And a female POC is one of the main characters, and a majority of the main cast is female. How the actual fuck did this happen. Okay, I totally know how this happened: nobody working on that show gives any fucks about mainstream appeal, and the only reason they've gotten away with it was because it was completely a sleeper hit. It's one of those shows where everyone is a fucking horrible person and does and says fucking horrible things, so don't go looking to it for enlightened ideas or anything- but that's the point and the source of humor.
Fucking love me some Archer. But I still haven't seen the last episode, because I've been too down to properly appreciate it. Plus there are only two more episodes in the season and I don't want it to eeeeeennnd. But I do randomly shout "SOY EL CONTADOR" and ask people if they want ants (observe that my AIM status is currently, "Is that how you get ants, Barry? Yes it is, Other Barry."). Frequently.
2. I have been wanking up and down on the tumblr the last day or so- not because I want to get into a fight, because I don't, but because people just KEEP ON being wrong on the internet. And someone finally calls me out and it's over... critiquing bad fanart? That the OP didn't even do? Oh tumblr. (I'm not engaging, and I'd rather no one engaged in my name. The OP was snide but civil, so fuck it.)
While I was writing this someone else I kinda wanked at showed up, and I did engage with him. But he wasn't the person who I was actually pissed off at, so IDGAF. He can believe me or not, whatever helps him sleep at night.
God, the number of fucks I don't give lately. I never say anything remotely wanky, because I freak out really, really easily when I think people don't like me and don't take criticism well at all. But apparently being depressed and tired makes me just wanky as a bastard, because I no longer feel the need to keep my Thoughts to myself.
3. I am procrastinating a bunch of personal posts I want to make and a bunch of fic I want to write- okay, I'm not procrastinating the fic, I'm just in that space where, for example, the other day, I opened the gdoc that has all the new Blood Money stuff in it, left it open for, like, four or five hours, and literally wrote 29 words the entire time. Granted, they were good words- there was lip-licking- but that was fucking it. That was two days ago, and I haven't written anything since. But I am writing the dialogue meta- which is not like real writing at all. And I feel vaguely dirty for quoting David Mamet in it, but it is, officially, the most awesomely true thing anybody has ever said about writing good dialogue.
4. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I have my costumes for this year picked out. One of them will be really complicated (a redesigned Scarlet Witch), one of them will be simple but expensive (Jonas Venture, Sr.), and the other one is a "we dressed him in the car on the way to the con"* costume (Pam from Archer). I am pleased about these costuming choices.
1. Scarlet Witch is gonna be the big one, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, because it will be the biggest costuming endeavour I've taken on- the Orpheus costume is fucking enormous, but not that hard, since everything came from a pattern and a lot of corners were cut (oh blanket binding, never leave me). I can't pull off any of her costumes except the House of M costume, and fuck a bunch of that, seriously. It is fucking amazing looking, but 1) looking at it, I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to sit in 2) it has a face covering, and I swore, after my admittedly totally badass Question costume, never to wear a face mask to a con again (even though I would not have to glue the House of M one to my face, and even though it was hilarious to scare people who stared at me not thinking I could see them).
So fuck it, I'm redesigning the costume. If I wear a lot of red and pink and have the ridic headdress on, it will be identifiable. My first thought was steampunk, because I can see EXACTLY what it would look like in my head- and because I have only ever seen one other steampunk Scarlet Witch and she was fucking awful- but I don't have the chops or the money to pull it off. It would take serious work that I am not willing to do.
So I have two competing options now:
a. I have an idea for a haute couture (note that my couture will not in any way be haute, because I fake the shit out of everything and cut ALL the corners) evening gown version of the traditional costume. I'd probably do it with the cape- cape, goddammit, because I am not making another motherfucking cloak this year- and make the dress relatively simple, because her costume is itself simple.
It's a really cool idea that's really true to the character, but... from a costumer's standpoint, it's kind of boring. Like, making an evening gown isn't easy, but it's not fantastically hard, either- the main thing that makes it hard is the knowledge that you're working with motherfucking expensive fabric and you literally cannot afford to screw up. So. Still a cool idea. I may come back to it if it's June and I haven't made my costume yet.
b. The idea I'm leaning towards instead is just doing a ground-up redesign; I figure if I keep the goofy headdress and wear enough pink and red, the idea'll still come across. What I'm really thinking about doing is trying to do like a movieverse-appropriate version. I envision borrowing a lot from the Magneto costumes (but no horns, and none of that goofy cape he wears in X2 and has to carry around the whole film- I know that's how it's worn, but it mostly just looks like he's tired of lugging the damn thing around and regrets his fashion choice) and the shape of the Storm costumes.
IDK. The idea is still coalescing. I kinda think I would push it in the direction of the Evo costume- I was gonna do just a straight-up Evo costume, but I forgot she inexplicably wears a catsuit, and Lawd I cannot wear a catsuit. I would look a little more like Catbus. But then, the Evo costume has a coat and not a cape and, for real y'all, it is fucking hard as a bastard to find a red trench coat- we have tried, but there are no Giant Red Coat Shops in America. And I sure as hell ain't gone make one, because I'm willing to cut a lot of corners, but I'm not gonna be caught dead in a great costume but an unlined coat. So fuck aaaaall of that.
So I am considering. Thoughts are welcome on this subject.
For this one I will have
arymabeth as Night Nurse at my side. She does not have a choice in this matter.
2. Jonas Venture, Sr. Okay. The availability of Venture Bros. screencaps is such that I have to direct you to the action figure for reference. The silhouette of the character is a lot thinner that it appears here; in Careers in Science, it looks like he's wearing a jumpsuit.
IDK why I have a thing for playing tall male characters. But, I do, in fact, wish I was a little bit taller (and I do wish I was a baller, wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her, etc).
So- and I need to post about this, because I need to finally make the Orpheus tutorial post, if only because Venture Bros. Blog is collecting cosplay tutorials and
shadowen is already on there- there are two ways to do a costume for some characters (not all) that come from a cartoon or a comic book. You can go cartoony, or you can go realistic. For Orpheus, I threw it out and went super cartoony- big broad lines, bold colors, etc. So for Jonas I'm going to go realistic. I found some great fabric for it today, but it was $15 a yard at my favorite fabric store (Textile Fabrics, the most accurately named fabric store in existence), and I'm not committed to a pattern yet. Neither piece of it will be particularly time-consuming, although I don't have practice in matching patterns (but it's pinstripes, BFD) and I hate making pants.
I also think I'm going to femme it out; I can't get that silhouette (I like using this word because I am proud that I can spell it off the top of my head), but what I can do is wear my corset (which I have NOT gotten to wear) underneath it. This will have the effect of pushing my bazongas (I am trying to stop saying the word titties so much. j/k I'm not) up out of my vest. Then I'll do the same thing as the Orpheus costume- skip the tie and just let it all hang out.
And seriously, fuck my hair, because I'm going to have to buy at least one wig- and probably two.. The goggles may do nothing, but they will distract from the fact that my hair is nothing like Jonas's.
I believe for this one I will have the accompaniment of
shadowen in her sexy speedsuit. Awww yiss.
3. Pam! This one is not hard at all. Have the sweater, probably need to make the skirt, think my top will let me borrow a petticoat, can probably find some kind of brooch to go with it. Then I just need a dolphin puppet- surprisingly easy to find, the internet has taught me- and a wig. The wig is the really hard part. It's almost impossible to find a wig in the shape of a bun (I'd settle for a beehive, but that's not working either), and I am not willing to style a wig myself. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for with wigs, so I'm looking at dropping like $50 min. on this. Sigh. But it will be fucking awesome. I will, once again, have
arymabeth, filling in as my Cheryl. (I have designs on making her boyfriend into Krieger if he happens to come to D*C. They do not know this yet. Shhhh.)
So. Costumes. I think I'm pretty much set.
*Like a thousand years ago, me and
arymabeth tried to do some Hellsing cosplay, which kind of fell flat; my Integra costume is still in the closet, but it just kinda... didn't work on me, and I couldn't afford a wig that wasn't a fucking mess. But we did a lot of research for it, and we were going to dress one of our friends up as Walter. And somebody posted a bunch of pictures of their cosplay, and they went into depth about Alucard and Integra (and I think maybe they had a Ceras), and then they got to Walter, and all they said was, "This is our friend [whatever] as Walter. We dressed him in the car on the way to the con." And forever after that has, like, been a thing between us, a descriptor of certain very easy costumes. It amuses me how people pick up things and incorporate them into their private lexicon, when the source has probably forgotten all about it.
And oh my actual god, why did no one ever tell me about Burda patterns before. Where the fuck have they been all my fucking life. I have been trying like all fucking week to find any fucking useful patterns, because Simplicity and BMV (Butterick-McCall-Vogue, they all bought each other out and they are now all equally crap, just different levels of hard) have, like, decided they're not into making money anymore and discontinued pretty much everything above size 30. They go up to US size 34W (look, you have to understand something: take your ready-to-wear size and up it by two to four sizes, and that is your dressmaking size- I wear a 24-26W ready-to-wear and a 32W pattern size) and US size 54 men's. And their plus size designs, oh my god you guys. IT IS NOT ALL MUMUS AND CAFTANS. THERE ARE CLOTHES WITH ACTUAL STRUCTURE. THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL.
I haven't opened one up yet to see if it's ridic, but I don't care if the directions are in German, the sizes are in metric, and you have to mark the darts in goat's blood. I love these GQ motherfuckers already.
So. That is a long entry. It has very brilliantly distracted me from all the other long entries. Excellent, excellent.
This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/396601.html.
comments over there.
Fucking love me some Archer. But I still haven't seen the last episode, because I've been too down to properly appreciate it. Plus there are only two more episodes in the season and I don't want it to eeeeeennnd. But I do randomly shout "SOY EL CONTADOR" and ask people if they want ants (observe that my AIM status is currently, "Is that how you get ants, Barry? Yes it is, Other Barry."). Frequently.
2. I have been wanking up and down on the tumblr the last day or so- not because I want to get into a fight, because I don't, but because people just KEEP ON being wrong on the internet. And someone finally calls me out and it's over... critiquing bad fanart? That the OP didn't even do? Oh tumblr. (I'm not engaging, and I'd rather no one engaged in my name. The OP was snide but civil, so fuck it.)
While I was writing this someone else I kinda wanked at showed up, and I did engage with him. But he wasn't the person who I was actually pissed off at, so IDGAF. He can believe me or not, whatever helps him sleep at night.
God, the number of fucks I don't give lately. I never say anything remotely wanky, because I freak out really, really easily when I think people don't like me and don't take criticism well at all. But apparently being depressed and tired makes me just wanky as a bastard, because I no longer feel the need to keep my Thoughts to myself.
3. I am procrastinating a bunch of personal posts I want to make and a bunch of fic I want to write- okay, I'm not procrastinating the fic, I'm just in that space where, for example, the other day, I opened the gdoc that has all the new Blood Money stuff in it, left it open for, like, four or five hours, and literally wrote 29 words the entire time. Granted, they were good words- there was lip-licking- but that was fucking it. That was two days ago, and I haven't written anything since. But I am writing the dialogue meta- which is not like real writing at all. And I feel vaguely dirty for quoting David Mamet in it, but it is, officially, the most awesomely true thing anybody has ever said about writing good dialogue.
4. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I have my costumes for this year picked out. One of them will be really complicated (a redesigned Scarlet Witch), one of them will be simple but expensive (Jonas Venture, Sr.), and the other one is a "we dressed him in the car on the way to the con"* costume (Pam from Archer). I am pleased about these costuming choices.
1. Scarlet Witch is gonna be the big one, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, because it will be the biggest costuming endeavour I've taken on- the Orpheus costume is fucking enormous, but not that hard, since everything came from a pattern and a lot of corners were cut (oh blanket binding, never leave me). I can't pull off any of her costumes except the House of M costume, and fuck a bunch of that, seriously. It is fucking amazing looking, but 1) looking at it, I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to sit in 2) it has a face covering, and I swore, after my admittedly totally badass Question costume, never to wear a face mask to a con again (even though I would not have to glue the House of M one to my face, and even though it was hilarious to scare people who stared at me not thinking I could see them).
So fuck it, I'm redesigning the costume. If I wear a lot of red and pink and have the ridic headdress on, it will be identifiable. My first thought was steampunk, because I can see EXACTLY what it would look like in my head- and because I have only ever seen one other steampunk Scarlet Witch and she was fucking awful- but I don't have the chops or the money to pull it off. It would take serious work that I am not willing to do.
So I have two competing options now:
a. I have an idea for a haute couture (note that my couture will not in any way be haute, because I fake the shit out of everything and cut ALL the corners) evening gown version of the traditional costume. I'd probably do it with the cape- cape, goddammit, because I am not making another motherfucking cloak this year- and make the dress relatively simple, because her costume is itself simple.
It's a really cool idea that's really true to the character, but... from a costumer's standpoint, it's kind of boring. Like, making an evening gown isn't easy, but it's not fantastically hard, either- the main thing that makes it hard is the knowledge that you're working with motherfucking expensive fabric and you literally cannot afford to screw up. So. Still a cool idea. I may come back to it if it's June and I haven't made my costume yet.
b. The idea I'm leaning towards instead is just doing a ground-up redesign; I figure if I keep the goofy headdress and wear enough pink and red, the idea'll still come across. What I'm really thinking about doing is trying to do like a movieverse-appropriate version. I envision borrowing a lot from the Magneto costumes (but no horns, and none of that goofy cape he wears in X2 and has to carry around the whole film- I know that's how it's worn, but it mostly just looks like he's tired of lugging the damn thing around and regrets his fashion choice) and the shape of the Storm costumes.
IDK. The idea is still coalescing. I kinda think I would push it in the direction of the Evo costume- I was gonna do just a straight-up Evo costume, but I forgot she inexplicably wears a catsuit, and Lawd I cannot wear a catsuit. I would look a little more like Catbus. But then, the Evo costume has a coat and not a cape and, for real y'all, it is fucking hard as a bastard to find a red trench coat- we have tried, but there are no Giant Red Coat Shops in America. And I sure as hell ain't gone make one, because I'm willing to cut a lot of corners, but I'm not gonna be caught dead in a great costume but an unlined coat. So fuck aaaaall of that.
So I am considering. Thoughts are welcome on this subject.
For this one I will have
arymabeth as Night Nurse at my side. She does not have a choice in this matter.
2. Jonas Venture, Sr. Okay. The availability of Venture Bros. screencaps is such that I have to direct you to the action figure for reference. The silhouette of the character is a lot thinner that it appears here; in Careers in Science, it looks like he's wearing a jumpsuit.
IDK why I have a thing for playing tall male characters. But, I do, in fact, wish I was a little bit taller (and I do wish I was a baller, wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her, etc).
So- and I need to post about this, because I need to finally make the Orpheus tutorial post, if only because Venture Bros. Blog is collecting cosplay tutorials and
shadowen is already on there- there are two ways to do a costume for some characters (not all) that come from a cartoon or a comic book. You can go cartoony, or you can go realistic. For Orpheus, I threw it out and went super cartoony- big broad lines, bold colors, etc. So for Jonas I'm going to go realistic. I found some great fabric for it today, but it was $15 a yard at my favorite fabric store (Textile Fabrics, the most accurately named fabric store in existence), and I'm not committed to a pattern yet. Neither piece of it will be particularly time-consuming, although I don't have practice in matching patterns (but it's pinstripes, BFD) and I hate making pants.
I also think I'm going to femme it out; I can't get that silhouette (I like using this word because I am proud that I can spell it off the top of my head), but what I can do is wear my corset (which I have NOT gotten to wear) underneath it. This will have the effect of pushing my bazongas (I am trying to stop saying the word titties so much. j/k I'm not) up out of my vest. Then I'll do the same thing as the Orpheus costume- skip the tie and just let it all hang out.
And seriously, fuck my hair, because I'm going to have to buy at least one wig- and probably two.. The goggles may do nothing, but they will distract from the fact that my hair is nothing like Jonas's.
I believe for this one I will have the accompaniment of
shadowen in her sexy speedsuit. Awww yiss.
3. Pam! This one is not hard at all. Have the sweater, probably need to make the skirt, think my top will let me borrow a petticoat, can probably find some kind of brooch to go with it. Then I just need a dolphin puppet- surprisingly easy to find, the internet has taught me- and a wig. The wig is the really hard part. It's almost impossible to find a wig in the shape of a bun (I'd settle for a beehive, but that's not working either), and I am not willing to style a wig myself. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for with wigs, so I'm looking at dropping like $50 min. on this. Sigh. But it will be fucking awesome. I will, once again, have
arymabeth, filling in as my Cheryl. (I have designs on making her boyfriend into Krieger if he happens to come to D*C. They do not know this yet. Shhhh.)
So. Costumes. I think I'm pretty much set.
*Like a thousand years ago, me and
arymabeth tried to do some Hellsing cosplay, which kind of fell flat; my Integra costume is still in the closet, but it just kinda... didn't work on me, and I couldn't afford a wig that wasn't a fucking mess. But we did a lot of research for it, and we were going to dress one of our friends up as Walter. And somebody posted a bunch of pictures of their cosplay, and they went into depth about Alucard and Integra (and I think maybe they had a Ceras), and then they got to Walter, and all they said was, "This is our friend [whatever] as Walter. We dressed him in the car on the way to the con." And forever after that has, like, been a thing between us, a descriptor of certain very easy costumes. It amuses me how people pick up things and incorporate them into their private lexicon, when the source has probably forgotten all about it.
And oh my actual god, why did no one ever tell me about Burda patterns before. Where the fuck have they been all my fucking life. I have been trying like all fucking week to find any fucking useful patterns, because Simplicity and BMV (Butterick-McCall-Vogue, they all bought each other out and they are now all equally crap, just different levels of hard) have, like, decided they're not into making money anymore and discontinued pretty much everything above size 30. They go up to US size 34W (look, you have to understand something: take your ready-to-wear size and up it by two to four sizes, and that is your dressmaking size- I wear a 24-26W ready-to-wear and a 32W pattern size) and US size 54 men's. And their plus size designs, oh my god you guys. IT IS NOT ALL MUMUS AND CAFTANS. THERE ARE CLOTHES WITH ACTUAL STRUCTURE. THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL.
I haven't opened one up yet to see if it's ridic, but I don't care if the directions are in German, the sizes are in metric, and you have to mark the darts in goat's blood. I love these GQ motherfuckers already.
So. That is a long entry. It has very brilliantly distracted me from all the other long entries. Excellent, excellent.
This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/396601.html.
comments over there.