Nablopomo post no. 19: Playing around with make-up

 It has literally been years since I've worn make-up. It was a part of my LARPing stuff and going out to be social. Yesterday, I went through all of my make-up and nail polish. I discovered in there some funky lip gloss. It is from L'Oreal (I think) and it is called Adrenalyn. It's this really dark navy blue with a tiny bit of gold sparkles in it. 

It transfers to cups really easy and is difficult to get off unless you are using baby wipes. (I swear those things can get everything clean if you are gentle and patient enough. They're magic.)

Still, I have decided I am going to start wearing make-up on a regular basis. I just have the lip gloss on in the picture above. I thought it was kinda cool that it sorta color coordinates with Eeyore. This make up stuff is hard for me because I'm not that great at it. I learned a lot from my late friend R. She encouraged me to be extravagant and spectacular with my make-up. At that time, I was still a bit nervous about that. So she decided to give me a make over. When I saw what she had done, I finally understood the purpose of make-up. It was to accentuate your features and to have fun.

For a really long time, my relationship with make-up was pretty rocky. I could to a passable job of applying lipstick and subtle tones to highlight my face. But I always worried that I did something wrong or that my color choices were all wrong for my skin tone. Growing up, I was mocked horribly by peers and my immediate family for wearing make-up. When I started going out on dates, my mom insisted on doing my make up for me because she decided that I was going to be leaving the house looking like a clown left to my own devices. Instead of looking like a clown, mom's heavy handed application and choices made me look like a cheap whore. It was awful and made me swear off of wearing make up for a few years.

It was hard to trust R. to give me that make over. But the end result was entirely different from what mom did. Yes, the lipstick was dramatic. Everything was tastefully dramatic (which fit the character I was playing to a t.) and I felt beautiful. I hadn't expected that. R. gave me tips and pointers on how to recreate the experience. It helped that she had gone to cosmetology school. (My mother did not.)

So, as I am doing the goth thing, I'm realizing I can have lots of fun with my make up just on a daily basis. Because it all washes off at the end of the day. I'm not brave enough to do eye liner yet, but some day, I'll get there.

Research, yeah, that's what it is.

I've been working on recreating Civil War era patterns. The hood I made this week is similar to a bonnet that I saw in a Civil War era pattern book. That bonnet was knitted. I'm still not at the stage of making circular flat items or flat items that begin in the center with knitting so I knew that bonnet wasn't going to work for me as of this moment.  So, I sat down and started fiddling around with some holiday yarn. I was bored. I was sick and not up to doing a whole lot so I made this really simple hood pattern (posted down feed about two posts earlier, complete with pics).

I have also made my own 'bosom friend' based off of designs I had seen in Civil War era pattern books. Where the sparkly glittery yarn of the bonnet isn't something that would pass for a period era item, the tie-shawl most definitely would. It has the added bonus of being made from handspun wool. Now, I didn't spin the wool, my mother-in-law did. But still, it is handspun wool. Beautifully dyed in shades of brown and russet, the color of late autumn leaves on the ground.

Why am I doing this? Well, partly because I want to eventually make my own entire knitted/crochet ensemble. I have sewn my own medieval gown with some help from my auntie Adrian. That I stitched by hand. I may not have made the fabric, but we cut and pieced it together in an afternoon. In a bout of insomnia, I stitched the thing together for a full 24 hours by hand. It made for wonderful LARP costuming. I loved the characters I played wearing it. I plan on eventually playing another character where I get to wear that again.

My current LARP character is from the Victorian period. This is concurrent with the American Civil War period as best I can recall. So, when I realized I had an excuse to start making these beautiful patterns that I had been admiring for years, I whipped out my yarn and crochet hooks. I am going to eventually knit the underskirt that I've been admiring. I will also eventually figure out how to knit stockings.

My plan is to show up at spinning guild dressed in costume a few times a year. This year, it is going to be the medieval costume with one of my distaffs in hand. I haven't decided which guild meeting it is going to be, but my nerdy butt is going to be there spinning like someone from the 10th century dressed like it. And then I'm going to show up dressed as my Civil War era character, with knitting or crochet in tow. Because I think that 2019 is going to be the year I celebrate my weirdness.

Fiction: The Meeting.

She walked into the parking garage to the accompaniment of thunder. Some of the people there had a primeval warning of danger as she passed. Maybe it was the way the woman moved. There was something feline about how her body passed through the space. Even with her heavy boots, she was quiet. Her long coat wasn't too out of place, though she looked like she had walked out of some kind of bad science fiction. Her hair was cut in an androgynous short cut and hidden beneath a wide brimmed black leather hat. It could have been a cowboy hat, but it was sufficiently battered that it wasn't clear what sort of hat it was.

The long coat was unbuttoned. Beneath it, there was the suggestion of some sort of vest but the dim lighting of the garage didn't help the viewer to distinguish details until they were far too close for comfort. There was a bit of a bulge on the left side and the coat didn't lie quite right, suggesting something long was there. The jeans she wore were black. That was the predominant color about her appearance except for her skin. That was an eerie white that was almost the color of milk. Her lips were painted black. Her eyes were a dark brown that may as well have been black in the dim light of that place.

A late model car sat idling in space J-33. Beside it, a twitch skinny man stood waiting. His hair was ragged and mouse brown. His clothes looked like they were stolen from a poor man's corpse just before the box went into the incinerator. He looked around himself with a combination of timidness and anxiety that annoyed the female figure approaching him. She stepped into the garish pool of light spewed by the faulty florescent light above. The man jumped a little and dropped his e-cigarette. When his foot came down on the narrow tube, breaking it, he flinched at the sound.

"Bradley," she said, "Do you have it?" Bradley winced at the coldness of her tone. He pulled a battered envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her. Her black leather driving gloves were immaculate and somehow managed to gleam slightly in the light despite their matte texture. When she took hold of the yellow stained white #10 envelope, Bradley jerked his hand back as though he had burned his fingers. The woman looked down at the envelope. As he started to move towards his driver side door, the back of her left hand struck him square on the center of his chest. "No," she said, "You're not leaving yet."

"I brought it to you," Bradley whined, "I did what you told me. I'm done." Her hand moved back to the envelope. Bradley didn't go to his car, though he really really wanted to. This woman managed to kill his brutally violent pusher with out breaking a sweat. Bradley watched it all from behind a dumpster. He still had nightmares of how she butchered Howie. Howie tried to fight back, but that just made her angry. And her anger was terrifying.

She opened the envelope and looked within. The forged documents inside looked a bit worn, but that added to their authenticity. The small sum of money was exactly the amount she needed. There was, however, one thing missing. "Bradley," she started in a mild tone when the sound of a vehicle approaching caught her ear. She slipped the envelope into her pocket.

The muscle car purred like some kind of exotic metal monster. She looked over. Sitting behind the wheel was the tall, scarred Italian that she worked with. As she turned to walk towards the black 65 Mustang, Bradley edged closer to his car. She called back to him, "Bring the ring here tomorrow night at this time. If you don't have it, if you don't show up, I'm going to find you." Bradley felt like he was going to vomit out of fear. The woman turned her head and looked over her shoulder. "Don't fuck up," she said before the car rolled to a stop. She opened the door and the sound of deep South blues came out.

The man in the car said, "Watch the leather. I just got it detailed." The woman shifted something under her coat and pulled a sword from beneath it. Bradley shivered as he remembered how she cut Howie to pieces with it. She got into the car and set the sword between her feet. As the door shut and the car rolled away, Howie silently thanked god that she didn't know what he had in his pocket. The diamond ring suddenly felt a lot heavier.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Because I wanted to reminisce about LARPing.

My LARPing career...

With the ending of Open Gaming at Baldy Hall at UB North, I think my LARPing career in the general public is going to come to an end. It has been fun. I have really enjoyed it.

At the same time, I feel really uncomfortable with some of what is going on with the LARP community that I have been a part of for the last decade (approximately). The tolerance of the same kind of bickering bitchiness that I dealt with in high school repulses me. I am finding that there are many people who seem to feel that it is better to be a terrible person to someone rather then sit down and attempt to resolve the problems that arise like an adult.

Add to this that there are many people who simply whine until they get their way and I am finding myself having a hard time justifying my role play gaming fix. Some good friends of mine still do tabletop role play games. I'm probably going to go back to doing that. If I can't, I am just going to have to attempt to live vicariously through my characters.

One of the reasons why I actually liked the fact that the events were being held on UB was because campus security was easily accessible. The times where there had been emergencies, responders were there in minutes. And UB campus security are not your sterotypical doughnut eating rent-a-cops. They are state police.

To be perfectly honest, I don't trust ninety percent of the LARP community. I will smile, be polite, and be civil. I will not, however, consent to being alone in a room with many of them. Because their behavior has left enough subject to question that I honestly don't believe I am safe alone in their presence. And there have been people within the LARP community who have actively attempted to physically or socially intimidate me into doing something they wanted.

I can accept that you may be socially awkward. I can accept that you may even put your foot in your mouth a few times and really insult people. I can even accept that you may be an obnoxious, self centered bastard.

I refuse to accept that I should be meek, compliant, and generally go along with whatever is in the situation because of two things:

1. I happen to be one of the few females in the room.
2. I may not know the game dynamics/system as well as you do.

I'm sorry, but those are not grounds to demand my compliance. And there is a LOT of misogyny within the LARP community. When the feminists are bitching about the problems with how people behave at gaming conventions, these are some of the people they are talking about. And some of these people go beyond being misogynistic morons and leave me questioning if I would be safe if I met them in a dark alley.

So, with the venues for LARPs shifting from the controlled and well policed location of UB to potentially someone's home or some other location where I have less resources to assistance, I am probably going to be forced to give up LARPing. And that makes me kinda sad.

It was a great outlet for a lot of my angst. It helped me tap into elements of my psyche that I generally work very hard not to even look at. In a lot of ways, I used it like a therapy tool and within the context of my characters, I worked through past trauma. (Nothing's more satisfying then killing your rapist in effigy time and time again in as many creative ways as you can get away with.)

I think I'm probably going to be using my artwork as my outlet for that stuff now. I have been feeling the urge to paint again. So, I am probably going to be doing a series of abstracts based on this stuff. Who knows, maybe I'll have something good come out of all this.

Momma's a man!

So, I get myself all dressed up for my turn out at the LARP Beloved and I play in. My eldest looked at me and said loudly (and with a giggle), "Momma's a man!" Apparently wearing a suit turns you into a man. Who knew!

Dear readers, I give you the Malkavian Cathy. One of her quirks is she dresses in men's clothes and always has a hat. It is a bit of a break from wearing scarves, though I feel a bit silly wearing hats. Even though I didn't get to enjoy game (because I came down with the stomach virus that laid the kids low last week), I got many compliments on my suit.

The most amusing thing was the number of people who told me that the flag pin was upside down. It was a subtle point that rankled several folks. At first people wanted to correct it, then I told them that it was intentional. It was, in short, quite the annoyance to others and a source of entertainment for myself.

Oh, my thrift shopping friends- all elements of this outfit, except for the jewlery, hat, and boots came from the thrift store. Total cost (sans mentioned items) $5.00! The suit consists of a blazer, slacks, and a vest in similar material. The most entertaining facet of this ensemble is the fact that the constituent parts were found in different sections and technically do not match. The vest does not button, but rather has a zipper. The tie, however, hides that quite nicely. (Thank you Beloved for lending and picking out the tie for this outfit!) The jacket and the shirt are a tad short in the sleeve, but it fits well enough that you can't really tell.

Aside from this suit, I also plan on wearing male business casual attire. Thus, I will be posting future pictures that go along with this character.

New hat!

I'm going to blog a bit about the costuming I do for my LARP characters. I have one that is a madwoman. She has a few quirks. One of them is that she dresses in men's clothes. I'm not talking about just jeans and a sweater (though it is an option). I have a black suit that looks much like Beloved's. I'm planning on wearing that suit, a button down shirt, a tie (borrowed from Beloved), my leather long coat, and a hat.

Last month, I didn't have the suit. I was just doing the jeans and man's sweater. I had my leather long coat and my leather cowboy hat. As I was out grocery shopping last weekend, I snagged a plastic, velour covered top hat. My plan is to wear it next session with the suit and everything. I'm not going to be making it to January's session for the game, but that's ok. It gives me the time to get everything I need together.

If I can manage it, I'm going to borrow Beloved's tie tack and cufflinks. If not, that's ok. I'll still find away to make it work.

Here's my new hat! If I can manage it, I'll locate a real hat in this style at a second hand shop or something in a size smaller. Either way, this is going to be part of my rotation for this character. I also have my velvet fedora as an option. Who knows, maybe I'll manage to find some other awesome hats for dirt cheap. This thing only cost one buck.

WOOO!

The game last night was AWESOME! :)

I think the best part was the cars going explody but it's hard to decide. I hadn't laughed that hard in a couple of months with the other crazy stuff that came up before the explody incident.

:)