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If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

#Gumbo/Kedgeree/Jambalaya #I've always needed a big breakfast #Make a big batch and freeze it in small bags

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I usually just look at my dolls until a name comes to me but I've been looking at her out of box for three days, and I can't come up with anything.

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I’ve stumbled across an online community of women (mostly) who alter those Precious Moments figures

And I’m obsessed

I love everything about it

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skateboard thing I did.

close-ups under

#Art #Incredible technique #And super creepy while also beautiful

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Here’s a dramatic dancing cat to brighten up your day

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The three of us have a nasty cold, possibly a flu.

I've been reading on my phone for as long as my eyes don't drop from heaviness. I imagine M has her podcasts and J is probably watching youtube streams of scrapbooking and crafting.

We give eachother grunted greetings and sympathies when we meet.

I'm grateful to have not put any of the winter stuff away, gets so cold when you have a temperature. The fluffy winter sleepsocks and vicks vaporub while it's so sunny outside! OTL

I put out the oxymetre on the living room table, if it goes below 90 we get covid tested. We're masking for any contact with anyone else regardless.

Here's to heat blankets and instant noodles.

#Saf #Personal

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Dune Messiah is the one i read as a teen. Must have been after seeing Dune84 or maybe those memories are blurring together because this time around the descriptions of the guild navigator in his tank don't match my memories.

This time, he's a little more abe sapien but in orange than the fleshy admiral akbar that's mostly head of my recollections.

Oddly enough, Momoa fits as Duncan Idaho - that was inspired casting! He has that chill self confidence bordering on cocky we've seen in other roles.

I don't see any of the current actors who've played him as Paul. I assumed he had pale tan olive skin like his dad or they'd have made a big deal of how pink and pale he was, how he'd get red and blistered in even a small walk in the sun, the way you smell slightly cooked. Yeah, we'd moved to southern climes and I wasn't adapting well.

I remembered the absolute slog through the first chapters then the loneliness and grieving of futures, trying to hold back the inevitable. must have been 15-16 because I thought I had MS but wasn't willing to say it out loud.

No idea what language I read it in, I do remember being annoyed at how pretentious the language was. A lot of talking to say nothing then these inspired little moments when he communicated crystal clear.

At first it made sense to communicate the tediousness of ruling, religious speak, business speak and whatnot then you get to a point where you realize the author's just going to be Like That. LMAO.

The price of getting a great story is sometimes having it delivered by the author's voice.

I actually was relieved that this one was more sympathetic to women (which says a lot about the sci-fi and fantasy I was stuck with) and the breeding programs were treated as something nasty.

I really enjoy having the confrontation between old memories and new reading especially as they're so different and changed this time.

As a counter example: LOTR hasn't changed much, it just gets more textured every time you revisit. The films didn't change the sense of it at all. It's not that I get a detailed image of faces and places, it's more a very vivid sense of emotions and characters. The way i don't see an apple when you say apple, i see the concept of an apple, many types and tastes and textures of apple. Gandalf is not Ian McKellen: he's a mess of actors, animation, wizard and mentor archetypes, like there's more Obi Wan in the original trilogy and snippets of Willem Defoe as Jesus (I haven't even seen the full movie) than Ian McKellen despite him doing a great job.

So having less of an attachment to Dune and only having seen 'the full picture' of the saga a couple of years ago means revisiting the one* read a long time ago is more of a collision of ideas.

*I actually don't know if I read any more at the time, I only know I read this one because it's bringing up familiar images.

Like a lot of you, I devoured books where ever whenever, whatever was available, lots of them half read because of skimming to get to the plot details, lots of meh, lots of blurring together of the same tropes.

I had a particular fondness of novellas and collections of short stories because once in a while there'd be one that really packed a punch or made you imagine something astonishing. The internet regularly coughs up some of those: as fiction, as essays or an interpretation of fiction or an event and that's as exciting as finding that one short story in a book of mostly blarg.

#saf #Dune Messiah #Dune reread

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My two Frankies (both skull shores greyscale: I fell head over heels for the design).

Frankie White was rerooted with Siberia/blizzard Nylon and I didn't realize just how badly yellowed she was. I did some bleaching to her face last year but she still looks that yellow in back. It's slightly more matte than Amaya so the white is starker but less shiny in person.

Frankie Grey was deglued using the cif/totally awesome method. She's less yellowed but her platinum/snow saran hair is still darker than the hank of unused hair kept in a drawer. It's worse at the roots where the yellow glue was.

There's a lighter saran called snow, frozen or platinum white depending on the reseller that's slightly lighter but still blonde undertones.

Let's talk about Frankie's yellowing hair problem.

It's unfortunately not the glue seepage as it's also happening to g2, which did away with the dreaded glue head. Saran is already an off-white when it's white, and it wasn't that noticeable at first, especially against her green skin. There is also the fact that I prefer the off-white to the stark white for most of their dolls.

This is a lineup of g1 original elastic hips Frankie, g2 from the dance line, g3 that I got for Christmas, and a g3 skultimate secrets I picked up around Halloween I think? Maybe longer.

The g3 SS doll, as you can see, has the whitest hair of the lot even if it's older [has been outside and in sunlight more. Idk when the batches were made] Then the g3 basic. That's because they unfortunately have polypropylene. I don't have any dolls with white poly hair, so I don't know how long it's going to stay that bright, but I'm willing to bet it lasts longer than the saran.

That being said, I think I still prefer the saran for now due to texture and how well the fiber holds. I will say against their new blue skin tone, the yellow stands out a bit more imo.

Just a wild comparison shot to g1 Frankie

Now some of you who want to avoid yellowing hair might think "Oh, but what about nylon?

Well I wondered this too so I wnt and grabbed my Rainbow High dolls with white hair to check it out and we'll it doesn't seem so bad but it's also not as old as G1 but there is a noticeable difference between Heather and Amaya who are about 3 years apart, though Amaya is a rescue who had been previously played with. So that might factor in some.

Though notably amaya and g3 Frankie have similar shades of white currently so we're already staring off brighter with Nylon as she came out around 2019.

#monster high #dolls #doll hair

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the Dario Argento film Phenomena 1985 has a chimp with a razor knife, I lost it, terrified of and for that chimpanzee.

"During the film's climax, the hand wielding the straight razor hitting Daria Nicolodi was in fact Tanga's (the chimpanzee's) own, which managed to scar her despite the object being blunted. It then proceeded to attack Jennifer Connelly and bit off part of one of her fingers. Further problems arose when Tanga escaped during an outdoor scene and did not return for three days until forest rangers attracted it with food"

the scariest thing about old tv isnt really the racism or the sexisim because you kinda go in braced for that it's all the scenes where suddenly an actress is holding a lion cub or a chimpanzee is in the same room as a toddler, or suddenly theres a lion, or there's a chimpanzee again but it's driving a car, or holding a lighter, or holding fireworks. You just kind of watch in horror as over and over an actress performs with only 1960s tv film shootings best animal handling between her and the opening to Nope.

#ronald reagan #now that's an image i'm happy to have in my memory banks #tw: animal violence

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Till death do us part? Yea no you’re not getting out of this that easily

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Today we get groovy (via my 2024 memories of the late 90s revival of 1970s aesthetics)

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This Deuce I drew in 2022 still get likes here sometimes, so I wanted to share with you that I actually repainted my new son following this old sketches I did. ^^

[I might paint the snakes later but he looks fine for now]

#dolls #dollblr #ooak #custom

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Got screwed by LaPoste again. Flatmate woke me up to pay €11: more than the cost of the item with postage: I'd already paid import taxes, it was tracked so they could have emailed me for the €3 custom fee, it had a CN22 that said both these things but it was folded inwards so their shoddy machines didn't scan it.

A few years ago this would have ruined half my day. But I've been doing whatever therapy technique it is to take your strong emotions and break it down into every single component and examine every facet until it's something you understand, can accept and form solutions

Here's a little peek at what comes out after lots of uncomfortable moments of digging down:

ANGER because this is ethically wrong and entirely avoidable:

If they'd bothered to open the CN22, i wouldn't have to pay. As is I was presented with losing the item and reorder (with wait time) or hand over the money. Their corner cutting on personnel led to this.

Customs fee was actually €3. The extra €8 is a handling fee for laposte. If your parcel has tracking, customs contact you by email and you pay online. I did it last week for the Japan parcel. I was not sent an email for this.

None of that €8 handling fee goes to the postie who has an extra five minutes to make up for. I wouldn't mind if it was a tip, we cash-tip regularly for difficult deliveries.

There's no receipt and most people pay in cash so an unscrupulous postie could ask for whatever whenever. Half of my spam is claims from various delivery companies claiming my parcels are held up and need money, they opened a terrible can of worms

Laposte is not great at what they do and have not operated as a public service for a long time now with massive inflation on the cost of sending stuff. A postcard stamp (in country!) will set you back $1.6

RESENTMENT because I was extremely strict about hobby money.

A €11 loss would have meant two yarn or partial reroots to make up for it. Possibly selling one of my personal collection. At least four hours of work.

Every single supply and unexpected expense like parcel loss or extra fees came from the hobby fund which would be in the red if it wasn't a current sales moment. (My first rotary tool was bought with hobby money even though it had non doll purposes for example.)

I knew at the time that it was unhealthy thinking but hadn't found an alternative or ways to mentally unblock.

IMPOTENCE:

recourse is nearly impossible the post office system is designed that way: no receipt and they can claim bad formatting of the CN22 masked the barcode. It's always something. They sent my australia parcel to austria, billed me, i opened a case and checked in every month and nothing.

poverty mindset: if you've ever felt the sting of removing an item from the conveyor belt to afford the total, you know that someone else's small change is something big and important and painful. Even once you have some money it doesn't go away: donating to others is easy, being cheated by a system is awful.

Solutions:

As much as possible, I don't use LaPoste and their extortionate prices for sending to France and the EU. My two posties get regular tips and cash gifts at Christmas but I don't use the post office unless I absolutely have to. Mondialrelay or Point to Point get my money whenever possible. That feels good and makes losses feel less bad.

I treat unexpected expenses like a lost parcel, disgruntled client or new fees as a tip to myself. I put in the work, did everything I could and something out of my control happened. The expense is marked down but cancelled out from my personal kitty. I have been inconvenienced: I'm not going to let it hurt or work it off.

Hobby supplies that are multipurpose are a third category. I was putting glues, chemicals, thread and needles under expenses when I use them for all sorts of repairs.

More importantly: the hobby money spreadsheet became a guideline not a business expenditure book.

Since about 2019 I've also been trying to integrate the idea of the joy of the hobby having its own cost and reward built in:

If i make no money back from a €30 gunky bundle of dolls, there was still €30 worth of enjoyment in fixing them up. The experience of practising even if it comes out all wrong is also valuable. And you often get a tutorial out of it 😁 (see my "mistakes I make so you don't have to" tag)

There was a time before handicap benefits where every cent counted but even then we all managed to make tough choices so we could save small amounts of 'cushion' money - We'd all learned to be so cautious that the cushions went mostly untouched until benefits hit and something unlocked despite still being under the poverty line: the cushion had gone from €30 (100 if we had a good series of months) to €300 emergency funds and no medical expenses were paid out of pocket (as opposed to upfront with a potential refund later) and that made all the difference.

But also a big change was the mindset:

Normal people's unwinding experiences often aren't free even if it's just eating your own snacks at a local bit of grass.

Really throwing out the idea that hobbies should be monetized (that part was hard to unlearn, not just because it was so prevalent but because of shame at not "having a job"- i know now that my full-time job is to keep this body alive and I get maybe 3 hours max to not be about surviving)

Even in poverty you deserve treats because those make priceless memories. Hobby time is valuable because it's what's makes us human not just productivity/survival machines.

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Anyway I've also been trying to apply this to my rejection sensitive dysphoria, knowing I'm going to lose Lily soon, frustration with how slow core muscle rebuilding is taking, as well as the very real fear of alienating my sister by accident or just clashing needs (NGL I spiralled most of the day when we had the odd confrontation last week).

but I'd rather break down something less personal in public. ^^;

Here's hoping this little thing that would drive me batty from feeling powerless, which now doesn't sting as much helps someone

#saf #therapy by going ''WTF is wrong with you: give me an itemized list" #then taking that list and asking for more context more details more honesty #personal #tw: poverty mindset

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date: April 11, 2022 caption: Aradia (glamour shots) project: The Smuppet Show

In anticipation of the upcoming 4/13 holiday, I took the time to take some nice photos of the finished Aradia doll. I ended up deciding not to include her zodiac sign on her shirt for the film, but it's still in place here.

#dolls #dollblr #ooak #custom

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Jessica pleading for Paul to choose happiness as a fremen and marry Chani. T_T

Paul doing some gender essentialism in the water of life ceremony. No need to nohomo this bro. No need to gender your yin and yang balance.

Alia ILU and your 4 year old murder sass. DUNC2 really should have had a little girl talking smack with her little lisp and killing people while kicking her feet.

DUNC Movie vs dune book continued:

Movie was missing Jessica's admiration for the fremen. Not just as a resource but as warriors and so well adapted to a tough environment (lots of weirdo survival of the fittest vibes in Herbert's books)

Her profound respect for Stilgar's intelligence and leadership.

I'd misremembered Paul having a choice to die to save from bloody jihad during his fight with Jamis, he's so overwhelmed by possibilities he can't see any clearly except his death. He sees that directly afterwards as he's asked to choose a name. He thinks he's subverted the prophecy by being paul-muadib not just muadib. But by the time Jamis is turned into water and given to the cavern. Paul can't see any way out of jihad, even if he died there. He's not fully willing to accept that the prescience is real so he keeps missing the moments where he could possibly turn back and for now since he only knows it'll happen even if he's dead by his mother or sister, he hates Jessica.

The water of life ceremony is beautifully described and probably not easy to convey on camera. A lot more communal than what was shown in dune84 or DUNC2. There's a shifting of power to Jessica over Paul that happens here. Chani has to remove paul from the group ecstacy because he's beaming psychic visions at everyone. It's adorable.

It adds dimension that the fremen have enraged the sardaukar and they'd be at war risking fremen genocide with or without a messiah.

He's made the skull shrine, idiot.

The minor hive mind properties of the spice would sure dispell a bit of the zombie arab trope.

Very different vibes to the Gurney reunion where Gurney finds Paul cruel and calculating instead of inciting the revenge.

It's as I remembered and felt during the film: Paul is different. But while I have lots of issues with the films I totally understand why Villeneuve wrote that treatment. DUNC1 was stopped by the pandemic and if DUNC messiah doesn't make it to completion it needs to be clear this is a tragedy. The final ten minutes work at making the spectacular rise and victories feel hollow and lonely if not as foreboding as I'd hoped.

This is an adaptation for the general public with an emphasis on worldbuilding and spectacle, it made sense to make Feyd as grossnasty as the baron and Paul more pathetic, emphasise Chani as the voice of dissent. Make Jessica more villainous as the representative of BG religious control.

I've got 200 pages left.

#dune reread #saf

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DUNC Movie vs dune book continued:

Movie was missing Jessica's admiration for the fremen. Not just as a resource but as warriors and so well adapted to a tough environment (lots of weirdo survival of the fittest vibes in Herbert's books)

Her profound respect for Stilgar's intelligence and leadership.

I'd misremembered Paul having a choice to die to save from bloody jihad during his fight with Jamis, he's so overwhelmed by possibilities he can't see any clearly except his death. He sees that directly afterwards as he's asked to choose a name. He thinks he's subverted the prophecy by being paul-muadib not just muadib. oh silly boy

But by the time Jamis is turned into water and given to the cavern. Paul can't see any way out of jihad, even if he died there. He's not fully willing to accept that the prescience is real so he keeps missing the moments where he could possibly turn back and for now since he only knows it'll happen even if he's dead by his mother or sister, he hates Jessica.

The water of life ceremony is beautifully described and probably not easy to convey on camera. A lot more communal than what was shown in dune84 or DUNC2. There's a shifting of power to Jessica over Paul that happens here. Chani has to remove Paul from the group ecstasy because he's beaming psychic visions at everyone. It's adorable.

It adds dimension that the fremen have enraged the sardaukar and they'd be at war risking fremen genocide with or without a messiah.

He's made the skull shrine - idiot.

The minor hive mind properties of the spice would sure dispel a bit of the zombie arab/oriental peril horde trope as would showing the many disagreements.

Very different vibes to the Gurney reunion where Gurney finds Paul cruel and calculating instead of inciting the revenge.

It's as I remembered and felt during the film: Paul is different.

But while I have lots of issues with the films I totally understand why Villeneuve wrote that treatment. DUNC1 was stopped by the pandemic and if DUNC messiah doesn't make it to completion it needs to be clear this is a tragedy. The final ten minutes work at making the spectacular rise and victories feel hollow and lonely if not as foreboding as I'd hoped.

This is an adaptation for the general public with an emphasis on worldbuilding and spectacle, it made sense to make Feyd as grossnasty as the baron and Paul more pathetic, emphasize Chani as the voice of dissent. Make Jessica more villainous as the representative of BG religious control.

I've got 200 pages left.

#saf #Dune #Dune reread