We're still alive!

Um, long time no blog.....
We are all alive and kicking!

Happy Easter!  I love how Josh has his standard family portrait face and I am trying to pose. And how all the kids ham up either appraoch, either going with Josh [vaguely disgusted with this form of mild torture] or my approach[note the posing arms, I don't know where they learned that].
Except for Isaiah, who is experimenting with new ways to eat his lips doing a family portrait, like Calvin.

Battles have been fought.

Anastasia is the world's happiest baby.

 She puts up with everything other than getting a Templar Helmet lovingly put on her by her big brother. We had to make a new rule "No helmets on the babies younger than 1"

We went to the library for Star Wars Day. Jenny was a padawan, Keziah was  Mara Jade, Mariam insisted on being "Pwincess Leia in a hobbit dwess", and Sarah Grace's R2D2 dress was, alas, lost in the wash.

Mandalorians have a child-friendly side :)

Brightwater!

Every time I see clones I feel weepy, like they died for my freedom or something. They're like pure unselfish goodness.

Giving high fives to kids too. Dying for the children, other people's children. <3 Loved that episode.  (where the Neocon Captain Rex and the Libertarian deserter Clone both defend the Libertarian clone's kids from the commando droids)

There was a cool lady there who let Mara Jade try on her helmet.

 Not sure what the random Padawan is doing there, but I'm pretty sure that's Larone helping out Mara Jade.

 Yoda made a brief appearance....

Princess Leia showed up too :)

Supportive sisters watching Isaiah play Lego Clone Wars...

Movie Review: Thoughts on the New Star Wars Film Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Spoilers ahead.

Completely glossing over the total disregard for science (absorbing a Main Sequence star in an hour), Adolph Shmitler & his Shmazis, Gollum on Sauron's throne (how did he get there? Did the Shmazis vote him in?), and Han "losing" the Falcon, I will cut to the main things that stuck with me as I walked out of the theater.


I liked the new characters. What I loved best about them were that the good guys were good. Rey and Finn both seem to be driven by doing things because "it was the right thing to do." But the emotional pacing & connectivity seemed kind of "off." That is, the timing, their crises, their lines--it felt horribly rushed, and that I wasn't given enough information to really care with the characters, but merely at them. When Rey was crying and running away from the lightsaber, instead of crying with her, I felt like an awkward person on public transportation witnessing a stranger's meltdown in the seat next to me. Pity, yes--connection, no.

Emotional pacing is basic script-writing, so I have no idea why it seems to be so lacking in recent movies in franchises (Age of Ultron, Voyage of the Dawn Treader). In short, I wanted to care about the new characters, but it felt like more of a cerebral choice.

When the Disney franchise decided to jettison one of the most compelling badguys in science fiction history (Thrawn, a highly intelligent & heroic alien, whose fatal flaw is that he believes evil must be done to achieve salvation of the galaxy), and create their own, I wasn't expecting much. Which goes to show that there is always something far, far, lower than rock bottom because GOLLUM ON SAURON'S THRONE was not even a faint image in my wildest nightmares.
I really have nothing to add to that, other than, naming him "Snoke" was the icing on the cake.

Weirdly enough, my least favorite scene of the movie was the one in which we meet Han again, caught between 2 pirate gangs he's ostensibly working for. It was the scene in which my suspension of disbelief crashed (even more than slurping up the sun in an hour)---because that scene was impossible for so many reasons. Once you leave the fringe, get all respectable, join an army, become a general, and marry a princess, there really isn't any going back. He's walking hostage-money to every gang, pirate, crime-ring, and bounty hunter out there. When he'd had Jabba's price on his head, you at least needed to get the slug to cough up the dough for a corpse, but when you've got a Han now with army intel in his head, and Princess/General Leia's heart---he is pure walking cash.

The fringe is all about who you know. When working with men who no longer fear the law, it all comes down to connections. Which rival gang will exact revenge if you torture him? What are the repercussions for not paying him for his work? How many real friends has he got who will come after you if you shoot him and take his stuff? Han has far too many connections now, even if his marriage is on the rocks and his generalship resigned, he's obviously worth something to somebody---too dangerous to operate as a free agent. The fringe is very unforgiving, respectability stains permanently.

And finally, at 70, you have neither the quick wit or physical agility that surviving in the fringe demands. Seeing them trying to make old Han act just like young Han hurt, like watching them trying to carve against the grain of the wood. Old Han is a much more interesting character than young Han, he's gone through life, suffering, fatherhood---Old Han is who we want to see. I wish they let us see him, they were stingy with the couple real glimpses they gave us of him between the one-liners. The two glimpses we got were his interaction with Leia about their son and his half-way apology for running away, and his interaction with Finn on the Death Star II, when he tells him a bit about the Force and how people are counting on them. I wanted more of that---real scenes with the Old Han. But what I desperately wanted was some actual fatherly dynamic with Rey. Instead, we are simply told that Rey feels that way about him when Kylo Ren is ripping info from her mind. (lazy scriptwriting! First law: Show, don't Tell!) Han barely interacts with her, merely on a proffessional/aquaintance level, before he's dead. All I needed was a 20 second scene, of Han teaching Rey something, or handing her tissues when she cried, or trying to encourage her to keep her chin up, and it would have been the emotional center of the movie for me...

Ok, one more thing that bugged me about Han back in the Fringe, I can see an embittered broken Han running away from Leia when things went south, but for crying out loud, he would have left Chewie to protect her. (Remember how protective he was of her he was in the Battle of Hoth?) And that is assuming Chewie would even let him run away from his wife. Chewie is a loyal sort, and also, over 7 feet tall. With claws.

When Carrie Fisher came on screen, I cried because she was so beautiful----etched in her face & eyes, the time passed, the pain, the struggle---life. I couldn't not care about all the horrible things they put her through, even though I tried not to be manipulated as they cavalierly sent her through a mother's worst nightmare. I cried in spite of my best attempts not to.

Which brings me to the biggest flaw in the movie, Ben didn't work. What would convince a kid with loving parents, his very own lightsaber & knighthood, and the reins of the rebellion to throw it all away to join the status quo empire? There had to be a compelling reason (perhaps a belief that this was the Only Way To Save The World, like Thrawn. Or a strange religion, like the Inquisitor. Or a desire for order & devotion to duty, like Agent Kallus. Or even a cynical child of idealists who thinks this is the only way to end the destructive conflict.). The scene where Kylo rips from Rey's brain, and thereby unwittingly opens his mind to her, could have been so compelling. But as I leaned forward to hear what secret drives Kylo/Ben/Jacen it fell completely flat.
"Afraid you'll never be as strong as Vader"

Sense this makes none.


Even supposing being the next Jedi of the Universe wasn't cool enough, or that everyone forgot to mention to him that Vader repented, and that Vader had repented out of love/weakness for his child in pain (bad role model for brutal strength), there has got to be an easier way of achieving awesomeness than being the pawn of a giant Gollum who makes you leave a crying Mom, ditch all your friends, execute civilian villages, and kill a loving Dad.


So what made him turn? Because I'm sure as heck it wasn't Snoke's charisma & vision.

The film completely lacked a compelling villain. Tarkin believed in what he was doing ("the fear of this battle station will keep the systems in line"), Vader believed in what he was doing ("join me...together we will end this destructive conflict and restore peace to the galaxy"), the Inquisitor believed in what he was doing ("There are things far worse than death"), Kallus believed in what he was doing (jumping on a moving train alone to fight jedis who had previously force-thrown him, to stall for time). Thrawn believed in what he was doing (unifying the galaxy under an empire to face an external horror).
So far the Force Awakens has given us a bunch of Shmatzis ruled by Gollum with an insane kid vaguely reminiscent of a school shooter.

The stormtrooper with the mask and the lightsaber-proof weapon that shouts "Traitor!" is a runaway fan favorite. Why? Because he obviously believed in what he was doing. He had conviction. It says something when a masked actor with a single word overshadows the entire cast of badguys.

Lastly, I never realized how much I loved Han until he got skewered. (Luke was my hero)
But seriously, Han is a gambler. A gambler knows exactly what he's wagering when he walks out on that bridge to an insane son with force-throwing skills waving a lightsaber.
His life: Ben's repentance.
So when he loses the gamble, he wouldn't have looked shocked, only sad.
I resented the shock, as if he were the pathetic dad blindsided by this awful turn of events. Han knew what he was doing.
But at least he touched Ben's face. There was that small crumb that kept me from turning over the theater chairs.
I would have preferred bopping his nose and saying "God'll get you yet", or whatever the force-equivalent is in this galaxy far far away. Because even then, Ben felt like such an incredibly pathetic little kid, even legally changing his name to something jazzy trying to feel cool.

Patricide is incredibly dark, to me, it is on the level of rape. If they actually want to hash out this incredibly dark thing for the benefit of truth and repentance and hope, then yes. But if they were flippantly throwing it in for shock value, then shame on them. Time will tell.

Then of course, there was all the recycled material from Episode IV. But look, if you're going to recycle Ep. IV then DO A GOOD JOB. When Han thinks Ben is too far gone that even Luke couldn't save him, and Leia says "Luke's a Jedi, you're his Father", I was deeply moved....and then he gets bumped off.
In the spirit of Ep IV, if they wanted Kylo Ren skewering someone for dramatic effect, it should have been Luke---his mentor and a great Jedi. And then Han, his lowly mechanic father, would have gotten him to repent in Ep IX. I would have cried. I would have cared so much.

And if you're going to jettison Thrawn and Mara and everything from the books, but keep creepy Jacen, you may as well keep Jaina. If Princess Leia is going to Eve crying over her dead beloved and her killer-son, then you need Seth. Rey needs to be Ben's sister, needs to be Han and Leia's lost daughter, and put a beautiful grandbaby into the empty arms of the grieving Leia. We need some new hope here.

Ultimately, what will jettison or salvage these movies for me, is if Han's final gamble pays off, and at the end of everything, Ben repents.

In the words of one of my best friends "If Kylo Ren is saved, I'll forgive a lot."
And there is a lot to forgive in Episode VII.

Brunette Eowyns and Human Heras: Thoughts on Cosplaying

Cosplaying is fun. I admit, I spent a good chunk of the last 5 years, saving pictures of really cool cosplays to my computer. I like dressing up, and I like stories. (Full disclaimer, despite spending hours of my life saving & researching cosplays, I have never actually been to a conference, or even a midnight showing, alas)


However, something I realized, sorting out the cosplays I particularly liked, is there are 2 things I value if I did cosplay--to look like the character, but also, to also be kind of like the character---if they were me. Sort of like capturing the "ethos" of the character, translated into the modern day me.


For example: An hours worth of make up on Princess Leia? Totally. Princesses have to keep up appearances. Princesses need to be careful how they dress, how they walk, how they look. So a princess would totally spend a lot of time on make up. Yes, Princess Leia is cool and independent. So that means she puts on her own makeup, and doesn't drag along a make-up assistant before battles. She's still a princess, you know.

So if I was pretending to be Princess Leia, then yes, I'd put on make up.

More than a minute's worth of makeup on Mara Jade? Think about it. Her idea of looking presentable when Luke was coming, was to wash her face in an icy creek when she hadn't had a shower in 2 weeks. (Specter of the Past). If Mara used make-up at all, she probably wouldn't put on any more than took 60 seconds....unless she was impersonating a duchess or something like in Allegiance. But most of her work seemed to be of the hijacking pirate ships and leaping over roof-struts to rescue hostages type of things.

I like this picture of her I found on the internet. Red gold hair on a blazingly idealistic 18 yr old.

So if I were pretending to be Mara, I wouldn't bother with make-up. (And whomever illustrated the cover of Choices of One should have thought about that triple-applied mascara....)

So for portraying an alien (like Hera Syndulla), a human girl wearing a realistic & weathered aviator suit feels much more "authentic" to me, than one wearing hours worth of make-up and prosthetics to look like a Twilek. (Because a Twilek wouldn't need prosthetics.)

That said, I think when I do get round to making Josh a Grand Admiral Uniform, we will go the whole 9 yards with the blue skin and red eyes and all, because Josh basically is Thrawn already. (minus the superhuman IQ. And Josh is a Christian. And a sort of imperialist libertarian. So not the totalitarian part either.) But when we do give Josh blue skin, we will do it authentically. So I will feed him colloidal silver, to turn his skin bluish-grey naturally.

That was a joke.
We will use make-up.

Ok, back to my pointless ramble....

When trying to be like Tolkien's characters, I feel like it somehow isn't really the ethos of the Elves of Middle Earth to be wearing lots of make-up or wigs.
To me, Tolkien's world is about the natural beauty of things, the grain of the wood, the rustle of leaves, the tangle of rocks and trees and stars, elven maidens clad in simple dresses, water bubbling over rocks from a mountain brook. (As much as I love the complicated velvet gowns of the movies, they don't seem to really match the people in the book). When cosplaying Lord of the Rings characters, I like it when cosplayers just showcase the beauty of their natural hair (even forgoing their "usual" modern hair products, straighteners, curling irons, etc) go light on the make-up, and leave the artificial wigs alone.
To me, a brunette Eowyn or a blonde Arwen is so much more "authentic" than one with a wig. And an Arwen or an Eowyn climbing a tree or making breakfast feels more "authentic" to me than one at a convention playing dress up (which I imagine would be very very fun, hanging out with like-minded people, and I would love to do some day. However, it's not capturing the "ethos" of the elves).

this cosplayer "Mela"dress made by "Gen", captures more of the "ethos" of the elves for me than any of the elves in the movies did with their make up artists and fake trees.

Same for medieval looks. I feel more medieval by trying to capture the ethos of it in my everyday clothing. For me, that means having Isaiah wearing a medieval tunic with his jeans as he climbs a tree, and wearing cotton tunics & belts with my modern day pants, as I play with the kids in the back yard, make dinner, and pray. Also while learning how to shoot. But we haven't got there yet....

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-------A long ramble on the subject of hair, probably of interest to very few-------------------------------

I prefer dark haired Eowyns to Eowyns with yellow wigs. (Practically, because you have to drop a good bit of money into a blonde wig for it not to look fake.) But also, I don't think Middle Earthers wore wigs, at least, not the rough-and-tumble early-medieval-Saxon-esque people of Rohan, living in wattle & daub halls (maybe flax or hair extensions, but definitely not wigs. That would be Roman).


For Star Wars, their technology is obviously very advanced, so wigs definitely existed. Princess Leia would be following in a long line of royal tradition to be wearing hair extensions & hair rats/padding. (Also, hair extensions have been around for as long as women have been able to cut off and save their own braids.)

Cosplaying realistic red hair is an issue unto itself. Sadly, a good chunk of awesome women in fiction have red hair :(
Black Widow does obviously dye her hair all sorts of colors, so dyed red hair for her makes perfect sense. (But why she straightened it in Cap 2, when they were running for their lives and hiding at Falcon's house, no one knows. She probably used an actual iron though, because she's awesome like that.)
However, with Mara, I wouldn't use dye. Firstly, because for a dark brunette to pull of red-gold, it would take something far far beyond my skill (probably professional chemicals at a salon). Secondly, because Mara would never have bothered to dye her hair, even when it would have been practical for camouflage (When she gets caught flat footed by a bounty hunter in Dark Force Rising who recognizes her by her hair). She wears a hood, though (Choices of One),so I would be a brunette Mara with a hood. But if you have blonde hair, and can pull off natural-looking red-gold hair......

Halloween 2015

This year, I had a baby in September. So I forwent the Ithilien Family Idea (Josh as Faramir Ranger, me as Eowyn, the kids as either little Rangers or Shieldmaidens), and the Star Wars plans (Josh as an Imperial from the Empire of the Hand, Isaiah as a Stormtrooper or Luke, Jenny as Mara Jade or Princess Leia, little ones as droids), and had Josh's mom and sister do most of it this year.

So we had a Fairy Princess, or a "Fawwy Pwincess Buttuhfly" as she called herself. I think she stole a few hearts, saying "twickohtweet" or "Thankyou" at the doors intermittently.

Alas, this is the little grimace she trots out whenever you ask for a smile. She is, in fact, saying "CHEESE!"

And a little cat. She matched her Aunt, also a cat. She drank a bottle during the trick or treating, prompting one candy-giver to request seeing her teeth as proof of her ability to consume the candy, before putting a handful into her little purple bucket. It was pretty cute.

And a Stormtrooper. Although he went against protocol, and took his helmet/mask off for the duration of the adventure. So I guess we can all assume he lives to the end of the episode. Which he did. And then ate so much candy his mouth was blue.

 And a last minute Princess Leia who, due to clothing constraints of what was white, is sort of a praire-school-teacher version of Princess Leia. Which was cool enough it made me which I had a six-shooter in lieu of a blaster. A Space Western, you know.

This Alas, is the only group shot. Josh, as you can see, went as "Josh." He was probably the most convincing of all of us.

And the crowning glory, was the "Queen of Cheese." So named because of her habit of producing prodigious amounts of cheese, to rival the title of her elder brother who held the position of "President of the Cheese Club" for the duration of his infancy.

Grandma was Queen Elisabeth II, so here are the Royalty pictures...

Aunt Cathy came up with the concept for the Queen of Cheese, and made the costume.

She made several big smiles, all of which seemed to happen between the autofocus' "reload" time....

Just as we were returning, a car pulled up in the dark, and a woman held out a bag toward us saying "This is for you!" I hung back, with brief thoughts of horse heads and strange mafia and voodoo stuff fleeting though my head, before we realized it was our neighbor, giving a baby gift for Mariam.
It was an abundance of beautiful handmade burp cloths, a tribute which the Queen of Cheese readily accepts.

Much candy was consumed, and Isaiah even flattered me by having a little meltdown when I changed out of my Princess Leia costume. "Mommy! Be Princess Leia!"
So I think there's going to be a lot of Princess-Leia themed clothes in my future :)

Thoughts on Making a Mara Jade Outfit (Emporer's Hand) & Blaster Packs...

My awesome little sister has been kicking around the idea of dressing up as Mara Jade one day. Earlier this week I sketched out some ideas.

I love Mara Jade. She's just so...real.
 
I mean, you've got your stock sci-fi/fantasy women who run around with weapons & perfect makeup while doing cool things. Sometimes they don't make much sense.
The better written ones, the girls like too...
And then there's Mara.

She's so incredibly real. She thinks like a real girl. She acts like a real girl. She even picks fights (with Luke) like a real girl. I feel like I know her in real life. Actually, she constantly reminds me of my said younger sister...

Mara has self respect, is incredibly loyal but holds grudges more than she should, always keeps her word, can be a little bossy but knows how to take orders, outwardly seems unsentimental, has a thing about protecting families & babies, can be rather grumpy, and really really really cares about doing the right thing.
She's exactly who you want at your back in a firefight.


Anyways, I had some preliminary ideas for what her outfit would look like.
I looked up cosplayers versions and was underwhelmed. I don't think a lot of people understand her. They try to make her look kind of sexy & femme-fatal-ish, like Black Widow. Mara isn't Black Widow. (For one thing, she's a blazing idealist who crushes any feelings she has, and also whose version of letting a guy know she likes him is by listing all his faults and lecturing him on his character development...I love her)

And she doesn't have time to look sexy. She's too busy killing pirates. And she sure doesn't want them to think she looks sexy. She wants to be respected, and feared.

She does wear a tight-fitting black combat suit for practical reasons. But I didn't really like any of the cosplay versions I saw....they were all too busy trying to look hot, and didn't seem to think through the practical ramifications of it. I think the whole point of a leather combat outfit is to give minimal armour with maximal mobility.

But I thought this picture I thought was decent.

Mostly because it gets her face right, idealistic and not covered in make-up (seriously, who would Mara be trying to impress? I just can't see her pausing mid-mission to reapply lipstick. I mean, Princess Leia had to wear makeup because she was a Princess and all. But Mara was an judge & ninja & executioner. Its a different job description)


To maximize mobility, but still have some protection, I thought it would be a leather suit with padded leather panels in key places where they wouldn't hinder mobility as much. So that would be around her torso and thighs. (the calves would be protected by tall boots).

Because the removable sleeves did hinder mobility a bit (in Allegiance she keeps them in her backpack because of this, while taking out the pirate ship) I figured they would probably have more serious armor on them, like pauldrons and long bracers.

So here's my ideas

We'll see if I every manage to make something like this for my little sister. I know with all the leather, it will be hours of handstitching leather padding, etc. But it would be a labor of awesomeness, like the Imperial Grand Admiral uniform I hope to make for Josh one day....

I thought I'd start with the much more humble goal of working on a blaster pack/ thigh holster/ glorified non-dorky hip-pack.

Some thigh holsters from the star wars universe...

I loved the first season of this show so much. I really wasn't expecting too, but its so refreshingly heroic & idealistic, and the old-married-people vibe in it is priceless. A post will probably come soon.

The basic design is 2 straps from the belt, coming down at an angle to the holster/pack, which itself straps to the leg just above the knee.

on a person.

Han's holster, laid flat.

My idea, laid flat.

 So, off to find leather belts and learn how to sew and rivet leather....

I will probably spend a good amount of time on duck cloth mockups first. These are my (non-secret) Christmas Presents for my younger sisters, so I have a good bit of time to figure this out.