1893 Bathing Suit in White and Blue with Bathing Cap

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I left it until too late, so I wanted to do something simple for today… This is just based off of a fashion plate of an 1893 bathing suit that I thought was extremely cute, even the silly little cap.

Still no one has guessed my favorite Prismacolor…

And also, the voting for the first week of Halloween costumes is still on, so don’t forget to vote! Feel free to suggest topics for the other weeks, too…


Whiskey’s White Gown from Dollhouse, Epitaph One

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So I did a Dollhouse-themed yoga getup earlier this year during Season 1, at which point I was enjoying it well enough to keep going, but maybe a little dubious, and I still liked Firefly better. As the season progressed, though, it kept getting better and better, ending with the unbroadcasted episode Epitaph One, a depressing preview of the Dollverse’s future. Now we’ve seen where the show is going, I’m dreadfully curious to find out just how it’s going to get there; luckily Fox renewed the show – unexpectedly, I should add – and the second season started yesterday, although I’ll be watching on Hulu tonight (yep, I’m one of those coveted new media viewers).

Epitaph One had Whiskey wearing this dress, although I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the hem really ought to be blood stained and I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it tonight. So far I’ve really liked the costumes for Dollhouse – I bet it’s got to be fun picking out what to wear for all the different assignments. (There’s a sort of meta-costuming aspect to it, too, as we’ve seen a huge costume warehouse in the Dollhouse itself. I would guess that there is some sort of costume director position in the Dollhouse, as I somehow can’t see Boyd picking out those crocheted thigh-highs for Echo…)

So, it’s the 26th, let’s talk Halloween. Like I did last year, I want to do a month’s worth of Halloween costumes. I really like the idea of four “themes,” a new one for each week, and I got a lot of great suggestions, so now I’m putting it up to a vote! This is just for what I’ll do for the first week, so feel free to give me more suggestions for weeks 2-4.

By the way, no one has guessed my favorite Prismacolor yet…


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.


Nera’s Dress from Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

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Brian got Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride a little while back, and we traded off turns playing it for weeks. In terms of overall plot it’s pulled straight from the big book of RPG cliches – evil dude wants to take over! only the legendary hero can defeat him! queens are kidnapped! – but there’s two things that really make it great. One is “party talk,” where in different situations (entering a new town or dungeon level, for example, or after talking to most NPCs) you can talk to the characters that are in your group. The amount of dialogue this game must have is staggering – imagine writing a different response for all those different characters! It’s amusing because a lot of the time it’s stuff that you, the player, are probably thinking, so hearing it from another character in their own voice can be a little startling. It really helps make the characters real, too, when they have their own takes on situations or wonder about things that you might not even have noticed. That leads into the other thing that makes the game great: the generation system. You start out as a little kid, then time skips forward and you play as an adult, getting married, and then time skips forward again and your children are old enough to go adventuring with you. So it’s not like your character is accompanied by some random red mage, fighter and white mage: you’re almost always with friends, often with family, and they always have some interesting thing to say. For someone like me, who likes story and character interaction better than battle systems and so on, the game was great fun.

In the DS version of the game, you have the option to marry three women: Bianca, your childhood friend, Nera, the kind and gentle daughter of a rich family, and Deborah, Nera’s haughty and blunt sister. The game pushes you to choose Bianca (you have adventures with her in your childhoods, Nera has another guy that loves her, heck, in the old versions of the game if you didn’t choose Bianca her father died) but you can choose any of them. So I did choose Bianca my first time around, but Nera definitely has the prettier dress, and anyways she’s more my type, if I was a male RPG hero. (Although I suspect that playing the game with Deborah around to talk to is the most fun.)