It's Epiphany!
Jan. 6th, 2013 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_plays_simsThe Feast of Epiphany on January 6th marks the day the wise men showed up to bask in the glory that was Mary's twelve-day-old baby, Jesus Christ. It also traditionally marks the very end of the Christmas season (yesterday was the twelfth day of Christmas), and is the very last day you can give a Christmas preset without it being technically late. (In fact among some Catholic families today, it's a tradition to wait for Epiphany for Christmas presents, adding almost two weeks of sales to the shopping season, on the grounds of "Baby Jesus had to wait for his presents; so do you.")
And I wouldn't really know about any of that if Disney hadn't written a damn song about the holiday-- in Medieval France, this would've been the Feast of Fools. This was a real thing. ... Probably without the pole dancing.
So, here are my not-quite-late presents to you guys.
1. The Front-Laced Lady (83 simple kirtles for assorted body shapes based on Sherahbim's Lady gown)
2. Du Lac Revisited (Du Lac tunics for CM, and cotehardies for Maxis CF Aquilegia's Androgyny AF, AM, TF, and TM)
3. Bundles of Joy (my first offering of non-default infant clothes) PLEASE NOTE: Sexyfeet smocks and diapers seem to have fallen prey to Mediafire's nonsense. I have submitted a ticket but their 24-hour turnaround time is not so very fast at all. Please be patient, I'm trying to fix it (as even when I re-upload with different file names, they get taken back down)
4. Cross-Pollination (Cocomama and Kittylynn's Plantsim content smushed together like chocolate and peanut butter)
5. Baby Steps (82 toddler kirtles with Aligeth textures, plus bonuses)
6. Home is his Castle (48 mostly-Maxis recolors of Buggybooz's Nooks and Niches)
7. Scraps Post (the bits and bobs that didn't really fit into larger posts. No in-game pics.)
Only seven posts, but there's a LOT of content in them.
Please let me know if I screwed up any links anywhere-- I've been through everything repeatedly, but fresh eyes are always good.
And I wouldn't really know about any of that if Disney hadn't written a damn song about the holiday-- in Medieval France, this would've been the Feast of Fools. This was a real thing. ... Probably without the pole dancing.
So, here are my not-quite-late presents to you guys.
1. The Front-Laced Lady (83 simple kirtles for assorted body shapes based on Sherahbim's Lady gown)
2. Du Lac Revisited (Du Lac tunics for CM, and cotehardies for Maxis CF Aquilegia's Androgyny AF, AM, TF, and TM)
3. Bundles of Joy (my first offering of non-default infant clothes) PLEASE NOTE: Sexyfeet smocks and diapers seem to have fallen prey to Mediafire's nonsense. I have submitted a ticket but their 24-hour turnaround time is not so very fast at all. Please be patient, I'm trying to fix it (as even when I re-upload with different file names, they get taken back down)
4. Cross-Pollination (Cocomama and Kittylynn's Plantsim content smushed together like chocolate and peanut butter)
5. Baby Steps (82 toddler kirtles with Aligeth textures, plus bonuses)
6. Home is his Castle (48 mostly-Maxis recolors of Buggybooz's Nooks and Niches)
7. Scraps Post (the bits and bobs that didn't really fit into larger posts. No in-game pics.)
Only seven posts, but there's a LOT of content in them.
Please let me know if I screwed up any links anywhere-- I've been through everything repeatedly, but fresh eyes are always good.
Disney nerd time!
Date: 2013-01-07 02:12 am (UTC)Disney Post!
I lived right outside Annapolis, Maryland for four years- and as said actually visited Williamsburg and the Jamestown reconstruction (It was about a mile or so from the real site because on-going archealogical dig). So while I will say Appaliachian Mountians are dramatic and gorgeous- especially the Cumberland Gap- Jamestown was founded on the bit of swampland Pohatawan's empire (and those English settlers had the misfortune of picking the one area on the Eastern Seaboard where the Native population has recovered -remember the exposure to European diseases had just swept through North America and there are estimates that put the population extinction in the 90%- and was carving out a strong nation of conquest through the area. Bravo, Virginia Co.) In a word- geography = flat. (And the folkloric reason Pocahontas was such a figure in American mythos was her conversion to Christianity...)
On the true to location-ness: that's one of the best things about Lilo and Stitch. And the making-of background info in Lion King and Mulan where they point out parts of the film that came from the location scouting (That song Rafiki sings? Silly song sung by their guides and the children when in Kenya. Flags along the Great Wall and fluttering before the stampede scene? Yep. And the hair styles of the other girls in the matchmatching scene actually came from period architectural details...)
Emperor's New Groove was once a very different film. And Eartha Kitt is a boss.
My sis and I had summer-long quips about 'Odin's School of Parenting', with appearances by John Winchester and others. (I love Thor. Even if I have to adopt the headcanon that this pair of Thor and Loki are actually named for 'older dead red-head brother Thor' and 'we don't really talk about him uncle Loki'. Which would totally fit the 'have no plan on how to divulge family history' parenting style of movie!Frigg and Odin)
Oh boy- biting and sarcastic senses of humor that turn like wolves after a lame pack memeber and other internal issues of living with a dysfunctional family... I know. I'll spare any details- but the only point my holidays felt like the holiday season was when I was sobbing upstairs because of fallout from the first of not-the-last family fight I sat through. And I tend to graviate to characters in those dysfunction-junctions just as much as I love stable family supportive love stories.
Brave, for an example of an excellent parent-child relationship film. All my sympathies were with the mom, even when I could see Merida's frustrations.
Rapunzel's bio-parents? Okay, feeling flat here, give me more. Because, yeah, the political reprocussions are the most interesting part. And Eugene was raised by his momma Chel and two daddies Tulio and Miguel. I think it was Max the
doghorse that broke me.Now I do want to start gushing about the finer points of Princess and Frog....
Re: Disney nerd time!
Date: 2013-01-07 04:08 am (UTC)White people can be pretty stupid. (Said the white girl.)
Large swaths of Agrabah were based on real-world locations, too. Less so the palace, but I don't think that much Disney royalty lives in actually historically accurate or architecturally plausible castles and palaces. (Prince Charming might get away with it, because their clothing puts them at the 'palaces are fine, we don't need to brace for siege engines' end of the housing spectrum.)
That headcanon is not unworkable. I feel worse for Frigga than for Odin-- Renee Russo put such... sad relief into the Frigga-and-Loki scene that I feel like she's always wanted to be honest with her children, but can't, because Odin forbade it and because she's Frigga and already knew she wouldn't. (Although my own headcanon, mythology aside, is that black-haired Loki figured out at least seven hundred years ago that his bronze-haired parents probably couldn't have pulled off that particular genetic trick.) ... You know, your headcanon means that adopted-Loki gets all the backlash from the stuff Uncle Loki is actually famous for and would make him a /d/ sensation today-- Sleipnir, Fenrir, Hel, eight years as a milkmaid... ... Maybe they don't talk about Uncle Loki because he's the one who dressed Thor up as Freyja to steal Mjolnir back again?
Yeah, my Christmas Eve tradition now that I'm an adult is to spend it at home, alone, wearing whatever I want, eating whatever I want, and not getting yelled at even once. It's an awesome tradition. So I hear you on dysfunctional families. I actually haven't seen Brave, though-- I was all excited from the trailers (and I still want ALL THE HATS), but when more of the plot came to light I got a little frustrated. Why does it always have to be magic, Family Entertainment? Can't we find some way BESIDES turning people into bears to move the plot forward? (Originally I thought Rebellious Archer-Princess Merida ran away from home, encountered a raging bear, killed the raging bear, discovered the bear was a mother with cubs, and then there were lessons in Responsibility and animal shennanigans.) I'll admit I'm also a little bit tired of the Rebellious Princess trope. Dear Disney, I would like to see one princess born and raised who, in her initial appearance, appears to give a crap about her kingdom and/or people and/or political responsibilities. Because the last one of the ten official Disney Princesses I can think of who knew she was a princess (which discounts Aurora and Rapunzel) but was born of the blood royal (sorry, Cinderella, Belle, and Mulan) and DIDN'T rebel in some story-driving way... was Snow White. Who ran for her life in a story-driving way.
Ariel is a major offender, but Ariel has six sisters, so her running away isn't exactly kingdom-threatening. Jasmine, on the other hand, is apparently her father's sole heir (and ohhh the headcanon I have about that). I love Jasmine. I love her a LOT. I know she's sixteen (at the END of her movie) and teenagers' brains aren't finished growing yet, which tips their risk/reward balances heavily toward 'this will get SO MANY YouTube hits.' But her scarpering puts the succession in jeopardy.
The scenes with her bio-parents were good for me because... okay, words. Words are a thing. Because I kind of liked the artistic decision to keep them silent (like Philip and Aurora never say a word after she finds out she's a princess and he finds Maleficent standing where his pretty peasant girl should be), because their expressions and interactions made it obvious that not only did they love and support each other very much, even after eighteen years they never completely gave up hope. They send those lanterns up every single year not knowing if they're lighting a beacon or a memorial. They're a big purple wall of silent, sad, loving hope. ... And that hope, that knowing that there are Good Parents, that she should have had good parents is... a sort of reward for Rapunzel, really. I mean, at the end of the story, she's got her freedom, she's got her man, she's got her lizard, she's got a dashing white charger, she's got a pretty frickin' secure tower, and she's got that very expensive crown. She and Eugene (Fitzherbert. So who's Herbert, that's what I'd like to know) could have sold the tiara, bought that private island Eugene's always wanted, and spent the rest of their days having exploratory sex on a great big pile of money. But she's seen the "lantern thing for the lost princess," and she knows that somebody out there wants her, even without knowing her.
That's why I like Rapunzel's parents. That eighteen years of not giving up hope, even when it was hard. I mean, in Into The Woods, when Mother Gothel showed up to claim Rapunzel in exchange for rampion, the Baker's mother died and the Baker's father ran the hell away to go live in the woods and narrate part-time. Hope can be a hell of a struggle.
If it weren't for Eugene's Sad Orphanage Origin Story, I would totally back you on his parents. Totally. But I don't want a sad ending to Road to El Dorado, so I fear I can't back you on that one. (Having to leave your small child at a foreign orphanage and go on the run from whatever counts as a sad ending.)
Keith David is one of the finer points. Mmm, Goliath. (Even if he was acting more like Thailog.)
Re: Disney nerd time!
Date: 2013-01-07 05:45 am (UTC)See- that's what feared about Brave from the descriptions -ugh, rebellious tomboy princess- and the movie gives her the point about arranged marriages right this sec for her not good, but at least for me the movie comes firmly down on the side of the mom teaching how to lead a country and history and- trying not to spoil, but watch it for Elinor, not Merida.
I have so many Disney fan art where they attempt to give a more definate time period... Fun.
Nah- Tulio and Miguel and Chel adopt him out of the orphanage. Then he leaves them to go do his own thing, spread his wings for a bit. They get the royal invitation in the mail a few monthes/years later. "What has he been up to?"
Re: Disney nerd time!
Date: 2013-01-07 06:32 am (UTC)... So, apparently I want a movie about Hatshepsut or Elizabeth I as princesses. *facepalms*
Ahem. More definite time periods for Disney stuffs, you say?
Oh, so that way we still get the juicy story of just exactly who this mysterious Herbert is, too! I like it.
Re: Disney nerd time!
Date: 2013-01-07 06:50 am (UTC)(And seriously, watch Brave. Because, actually, that is sort of what her speech rejecting the suitors is. Except it isn't something 'just rejecting the suitors speech'.)
And yes- that is one of the series I have saved in a folder that is half tolkien art and half disney princesses or sailor moon in period clothing (w/ a tiny bit of Austen). I call it my "inspiration reference folder" aka pretty art, let's be honest.
FitzHerbert, so we have a good clue how Eugene ends up in a orphanage. But as I said- this is honestly the most thought I've put into Tangled. The movie really did as much for me as Emperor's New GrooveGroove.
Hey- I loved Princess Elionwy- and the book series more, for all that in the movie you don't hear about her kingdom you don't get the sense that she was running away or rebelling against anything internally. Talk about obscure.
Oh, I love to make happier AU explanations for stories. The problem with doomed couples only reunited in the afterlife being one of my story-telling hooks -as I was chatting about at the forum- and the dearest one to my heart is one of those doomed before it had a chance to begin and doesn't even have the 'reunited in the afterlife possiblity'... When you have those, almost as a coping mechanism, you learn to make "that happier world where things worked out a little better".
Like our family joke of, "No, no. Palpatine was eaten by the Zillo Beast. Anakin quits the order, never such a thing as Vader. Happy endings la-la-la-covering-my-ears; you still get the awkward family dinner where Leia brings new boyfriend Han and Dad is all "Where is your brother? He's late" aka Cloud City....
It's that classic trope problem of the princess never upgrading to Queen.
Kida? Is she the only one I can think of?
And I keep forgetting to type out half the points I want to make each time and sending off on tangents.