for the AMA: what compels you most in a fictional character!
rage as a trauma response.
it compels me when a character spits in the face of god. when the response isn't "why did you let all this happen" but "how dare you let this happen." something about the assertion of agency in the wake of un-meaning. something about "there was never a Purpose, the point is what you make of it." this is undoubtedly because i was raised evangelical and continue to struggle with what i believe vs what i want to be true. pero also i think i was denied anger for so long (and even now my reflex when i'm hurt is to divert/repress/hide/sublimate anger) that it's cathartic for SOMEONE to get to be mad at the powers that be.
misogyny means it's usually (white) male characters who get these narrative arcs. this is evident in my blorbos: astarion from bg3, the corinthian from sandman, will graham from hannibal. (my immediate first thought was actually emilio sandoz from the sparrow, very literal autistic brain serving me well here lmao, what does it mean to be god's whore.) but my favorite female and genderqueer characters have this, too. saga anderson from alan wake 2 (LITERALLY tells both the in-game narrative force and the meta "fuck off, i'm done with other people writing my story"). essun from the broken earth trilogy (everyone who says they can't connect to her...i need you to examine yourself for misogynoir). vic from nos4a2. eurydice from hadestown. erica slaughter from something is killing the children. jade from my heart is a chainsaw.
(horror is obviously a huge medium for this...the final girl is a figure of righteous anger, the avenging angel, the woman who mows down the ultimate horror with a baseball bat or a butcher knife and she's right, she's in the right, she's the monster slayer, fuck you fear me.)
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Mini VITD Sims Lookbook (Largely Alice Focused Edition)
Hi all -- I ended up downloading and playing with some more Victorian and Victorian-esque CC for Sims 4 last Saturday, looking for some new looks for my Valicer In The Dark versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler (mainly Alice, as per the title). And, as I'm still getting the next Chill Valicer Save update ready, I figured I'd share the results, in case any of you were interested/wanted some more CC to download! Here we go:
First up, we actually have something that I downloaded from someone’s lookbook post for their Alice Sim a little while ago (I'm afraid I don't remember whose at this point ^^;) – a conversion of Alice’s London dress from Alice: Madness Returns! As in, one Mimoto-Sims ripped this dress straight from the files of that game (along with a bunch of others) and turned it into an outfit in Sims 4! :D I’ve been looking for this for a while, and I’m quite pleased with it, though it is a little weirdly shiny – and if you think Alice suddenly looks a LOT thinner than usual in this dress, she is. Apparently I didn’t make my Sim Alice underweight enough! I think I prefer my Sims 4 version having a waist that doesn’t look like it could snap in half at any moment, though. XD
Okay, onto the CC I actually downloaded on Saturday, with Alice modeling the Ever Elegant Blouse v2 and the Rather Ravishing Skirt v2 from Gilded Ghost’s New Woman set! I ended up pairing these two together because, with the apron, I thought this made another good “maid” Alice outfit – though she looks like she’s working somewhere fancier than Houndsditch in this set, that’s for sure. (Now I’m tempted for her to somehow get her hands on a maid’s outfit from the Van Dort estate when her and Smiler’s attempt to return Victor to his parents ends up in them robbing them for being shitheads who don’t care about their son...) But it’s a nice look for her, and I am THRILLED that this and the other tops from that set worked with her necklace! :D Seriously, so many outfits hide that necklace, and given that it’s suppose to be her wearing Lizzie’s room key, I’d like it to be visible more often than not!
Case in point, the necklace is also visible in this outfit, which is Alice wearing the Jacket Jubilee top with the Perfectly Plain skirt from the New Woman set. This set I just thought looked nice on her, and made a nice – semi-formal? This feels fancier than casual, but not fancy enough to be formal. Like, maybe this is something she’d wear if the gang were heading to the Golden Plum for a nice dinner, or to a park for a trio date. That sort of thing. Not “fancy neighborhood” wear, but a step above hanging around the house.
By contrast, Alice is definitely not leaving the house in this outfit. XD This is dzifasims’s Bespoke Corset, paired with a plain Get Famous skirt that I thought looked like a shift or underskirt (I thought the corset CAME with one, but apparently I was mistaken). It’s nice to have a plainer corset that doesn’t look like it was bought for sex purposes, unlike the base game one. Though I do like the “bought for sex purposes” one too. XD Alice probably prefers this one, though – it’s more her style, and I think it makes good underwear for her.
Onto the masc stuff, with Smiler showing off pandorasimbox’s Azariah’s Sacksuit. I have mixed feelings on this – the basic shape of the suit is okay, and I liked pairing it with the bowler, but as per usual this suit did not have any of the right swatches I needed for Smiler. The problem is, people do a lot of muted colors for Victorian-style clothes, and even the ones that include brighter swatches tend not to do a lot of yellow. Meaning I often end up with poor Smiler wearing beige because that’s as close as I can get. *sigh* I mean, I do rather like the look on them – they kind of look like they’re auditioning for a Charlie Chaplin movie – but it’s gotta be BRIGHTER, you know? *sigh* I gotta learn how to recolor clothes... (Also, amusingly, the boots are actually from Moschino – they actually look Victorian enough when you cover up the tops with a long pant.)
Fortunately, while [LonelyBoy]’s TS4 Solardius Outfit doesn’t have a yellow swatch, it DOES have a black swatch with gold decorative details, and that I can work with – especially when paired with the High School Years shoes I love so much for Smiler in the “black with yellow stitching” swatch. :) Not sure how much I like the high collar on Smiler, but this is certainly not a bad look for them!
And it CERTAINLY isn’t a bad look for Victor, who suits that high collar much better. XD As you can see, Victor got the nice dark blue swatch with the red tie, which is kind of the inverse of his tie/vest color scheme in the movie. XD But it suits him, and again, this seems like a nice, semi-formal outfit he might wear for an outing with his partners where he wanted to look a little more put together. :)
And there you have it – me playing with my favorite trio like dolls again. XD What can I say, it’s fun to dress them up in new outfits! And these particular sessions help inform me of what I’d like my trio to wear in the Valicer In The Dark universe. Since, you know, I’m pretty well obsessed with that these days. XD So don’t @ me, downloading CC is writing research, okay? Okay. :p
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I can't believe I still have to see posts about how much better ROP would be if Celebrían was the lead vs. Galadriel. As someone who has Tolkien Brainrot, I understand the appeal, I really, really do. As someone who has had to interact with so many people who either do not care about Tolkien Lore but are interested in fantasy television shows or are Jackson film fans first/foremost/only, y'all. Galadriel is a known character and a decent intro to lesser known characters.
Hate to break it to y'all but Celebrían is OBSCURE. I'm pretty confident in saying that if you get outside of Tolkien Fandom online circles, you could tell people that Elrond was married to Galadriel's daughter and the response you would get would be, "oh, I didn't realize that" because it's touched so lightly in the films. Celebrían isn't even MENTIONED by name. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure if anyone mentions that Galadriel and Arwen are related at all!
My point is the show is meant to appeal to more people than us over here with Tolkien Brainrot!!!!!! I love Celebrían, but Galadriel was an easier sell to the potential of a wider audience as a lead. For a show that needs to go through so much lore very quickly, having Galadriel as the lead because she's 1) female [the overwhelming amount of male characters vs. female characters in the Legendarium is another post], 2) relatively familiar, and 3) has a set characterization to lead toward for an arc vs. her barely-even-mentioned-in-LotR daughter is a no-brainer.
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