In which there is a tale of many coats

 

I will tell you a tale of a coat. It's a very short and simple, yet moving tale. I saw a beautiful coat in a charity shop window. It was grey and long and flared out like a dress at the bottom. It fitted nicely and had many good features. It was however, more money than I really have to spend. I went to a charity shop looking for coats after all and it was £125! It was down from £500, an incredible bargain, as the shop assistant insisted.
But I walked away from it.

It was way more than I had, was ready spend, or have floating around in spare cash. I was resigned and accepting, but two weeks later I am still thinking about it and regretting it. I went back yesterday and it was forever gone. Now I've been punishing myself by looking at the coats I could get instead. However, I have decided that after Christmas is over and all that big spending done, I might treat myself to one. After all, this is Britain. There is months more cold to go.

That being said, here are my favourite coats from across the Internet I am lusting after. If you have any good suggestions of coats in this kind of style that somehow are under a hundred, please let me know!

Fit and flare ebay coat

DaWanda Camel Coat
Classy and smart. 

 Double breasted ruffle coat. This one is funny because of how utterly different the model shot and then the normal shot look. They don't even look like the same coat. I am putting this up because the whole thing here is beautiful, but I don't trust it at all! I found it on ebay I think.

I don't even care that it's a men's coat. It looks well sexy. From Etsy. Except I definitely have boobs so I don't think thats an option

Also Etsy find below. By BritishSteele.

I really love the style, but I would prefer it in another colour. Like a burnt orange or burgendy.

 There is a shop called YL1 dresses I discovered on Etsy today and seriously, every single coat is amazing in different ways. The next 2, and the green one at the top are all from this designer.

And this from etsy shop Lixme. I love how smart it looks. Except, let's be honest, that many buttons would take half the morning putting it on.

So in summary looking back at what I picked out. It seems like I want to look that is miliary-with-ruffles. I am trying to cultivate a look that is a little more edgy. I've recently got bored of my cuter clothing and I want to have a more grown-up style. Which is about bloody time to be honest isn't it? :P

In which it was the Day of the Doctor

 

Yes, the Day of the Doctor, that much aniticipated moment in British television has been and gone. If by any chance you happen to have completely missed what all this was about, this was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the British sci-fi classic.

I had to wear a suitable outfit for the occassion so got out my only Doctor Who t-shirt (the one that I never wear because it doesn't fit me) and one of my many space-print items. Plus, I'm wearing an item of clothing which feels remarkably like a cape. And that is just awesome regardless. 

Please act as though this is a picture of Mulan, being distracted by the TARDIS, rather than a picture of my boobs. Woops.

This is the image my t-shirt is using. From a series of pictures of Disney Heroines meets Doctor Who by Karen Hallion. They are amazing.

And this was the t-shirt design I nearly bought. A very difficult choice. You can buy the t-shirts here, but they do run small. I really like it, but it's quite tight under the armpits and around my boobs. She also sells notecards and prints with lots of Doctor Who themed things!

I know the photos and the background are not among my best. This is because the park we were going to take them in was closed off, and it was also really bloody freezing outside. It was hard to take a lot of photos and smile when my teeth were chattering. I know I complain about it every year, but I have a very low weather-endurance stat.

Anyway, back to the Doctor! The all-important question, how was it? Oh and obviously *spoilers*

The
The episode was attempting to do a number of things at once and I think thus shouldn't be taken too seriously. It was
 1. A Doctor Who episode with adventures in space and time.
 2. A celebration of 50 years of Doctor Who.
3. A remembrance of all the Doctors who had gone before.

As a 50 year special they wanted to include a lot of Doctor Who elements and they crammed the time with them: Rubbery space monsters, U.N.I.T, big scarves, silly hats, historical characters, TARDIS malfunctions, sonic screwdriver saves, running, statues coming to life, the Brigadier and plot holes...

Well. It was a lot of fun. Which is interesting considering it was about the decision whether or not to commit mass-genocide. They showed how the Time War has shaped all their experiences and personalities, and I don't feel like the ultimate ending has undone that. Rather it has shown how the last few seasons have changed him. How they have allowed him to reach this point. It will be interesting to see him having purpose more than aimless wandering in the future.

 Bad things: Clara was a little annoying as usual though. Osgood with the scarf spent too much time saying 'The Doctor will save me' when she seemed clever enough to try and do some saving of herself. Time Lords seem weirdly primitive with their machine guns and violence. And remember, this is Moffat. Plot holes are like candy to him.

Top things: I loved seeing David Tennant back because he is my doctor. I thought the interaction between all three of them. I loved seeing Billie Piper back, but I felt incredibly sad that DT's Doctor never got to see her. I liked the multiple-copies as a theme for the episode. I liked the changing TARDIS interiors. The 3D paintings are beautiful. The Tom Baker cameo. David Tennant's last line in the episode was touching. Actually, screw it. Go to iplayer and give it a watch yourself.

In which I look at tropes vs Lego

Female scientists proposed set on Lego CUSOO. The original post is here.

It has been far too long since there was anything approaching a toy post on this blog.  You will start to forget that it is one of my key interests.

The truth is for a while I've not seen much Lego or Playmobil that is screaming for me to buy it. However, I went into the toy shop at the weekend with money ready to spend. Christmas presents in mind, maybe a small wee thing for me, toy time!

But when I went to the Lego section I couldn't see a single set with a girl figure in. I mean, I've complained about the sexism before, but this was amazingly bad. I've bought Wolverine and Deadpool and I'm not exclusively about the women-sets before you say it. However, it's simple wish: I like to get sets with women in. Doing cool things or doing normal things. But when I looked around, perhaps to get my sister a Christmas present, there weren't any. Nada.

A surfer, a robber, a knight, a life guard, an eagle-man, a roadworks guy, a policeman, a lighthouse keeper, duelling wizards, hobbits, racing car drivers, and several superheroes. All men.


So with this in mind I thought I'd respond to Anita Sarkeesian's latest in her tropes vs women video series. The Feminist Frequency video today was an interesting look at two tropes in women's gaming: The Ms. Female Character and the Smurfette Principle. I decided to do a little look today at how the first can beat the second - when it comes to Lego.

So the Smurfette principle is basically where you have a team of men, and one token female character. The Smurfette. Or the Toadette even. It's where women exist as a gesture, a platitude, but not real representation. The Ms. Female Character trope is where the creators offer a feminised version of the male protagonist. Think Amy from Sonic, or as Anita Sarkeesian suggests - the original Ms. Pacman. These characters usually look much like the male version except they have some standardised icon, like a bow or pink hair to show you they are a girl. Watch her video for the full explanation.



 Lego is one massive Smurfette principle. You have to hunt far and wide to find the single female minifig in a given series. You have to go to several shops in fact it turns out to buy a girl minifig for your sister.

My beloved Monster Fighters steampunk-esque Lego sets have one women fighter in a team of six (Ann Lee) and two female monsters (Zombie Bride and Vampire's Bride.). The imbalance is self-evident. However, the thing I love about Lego is that I can use the Ms. Female Character idea to mess with their system.


For example, here is a classic male minifigure:



And then I made this brand new secret agent.

I make the 'Ms. Waiter' into something awesome using the exact male template they sell.

I'd also like to introduce you to what I call the Cap-Problem. The Cap Problem is where you have a minifigure with no gender signifiers at all, an old-school Lego figure, but the assumption is that the figure is male because of the cap. Where there is no hair or outfit to tell by, the very lack of any signifier tells you it's a guy. Because people are male. Duh.  In order to make the figure female you have to add a made-up face or a pony tail. They are rather like the game heroes, handed out gender stereotypes in the form of big lips and eyelashes because they illustrate womanhood.

Got to be a Mr. Builder right?

Simplistic shapes change everything.

In my mind this could be the same person, just with a different hairstyle, or wearing make-up for work one day. They can be in gender neutral form, or various presentations of womanhood. But the gender signifiers change the original massively. 

I have bought into their own presentations and assumptions. For instance I didn't count the surfer set I nearly bought as having a woman, despite the fact that there were no male signifiers on the life guard or surfer. I end up thinking in that way, that man is a default setting. The aforementioned builder could be a gender neutral figure but I feel that the system I've grown up in says it is a male figure by its neutrality.

I nearly bought this set, because of shark!

However, the truth is I often don't mind that Lego choose to represent women in over the top ways. I use these stereotypes of women in make up they provide to make way more interesting characters.To make female characters that don't otherwise exist in the universe, and to make more of them. I don't really think an arctic explorer would layer on the mascara (who knows) but I like making it clear that women are here. I've had this one set up exactly the same since I was a little girl.

I used the lipstick from a minifig at the beach in her bikini to make my lovely arctic explorer. I just really want to get the Yeti for my monster sets to go with her.

It's all rather silly really. Yet, one of the things I love is being able to take a female figure and let a few pieces of signifier populate a whole set of characters. Almost all of my female Monster Fighters team have make-up on, big massive lips and silly eyelashes. But I've used male body parts (shocking) and accessories to make them the awesome team I have now.

One female figure can be divided up into her made-up face, her long hair and perhaps even a skirt or boob outline. I can then make many new types of people, chucking all my stubble faces away in the box. Therefore of the other things I love about Lego is that in its nature I can subvert the gender stereotypes it produces.

This was a motobrike daredevil figure which I made into an engineer for my alt Firefly team.

It's not just about changing the male knight to a female knight - the Ms. Male Character starting point of nearly all the sets I buy. It's also about messing around with the characters, the stories and the genders. I have very much subscribed to gender binaries in my descriptions here but my imagination when I play with them gets a whole lot more creative.
t is that creativity I can apply which makes me love Lego the toy. Lego the company however seems to be confused about gender representation. I've written my conflicted thoughts on the Friends series over on Bad Reputation, but the best example of their internal issues for me is the description of Nya, from the Lego Ninjago series:

"Make no mistake - this girl is no damsel in distress. She proved that when she and Flame the fire dragon helped rescue Kai from Lord Garmadon.

Nya is fed up with the ninja's boy's club syndrome and is determined to show everyone that she can do anything they can do - only better. She trains hard to beat her brother's records and Sensi Wuu constantly reminds her that if she is patient her time will come". 

So how about it Lego? You recognise a problem enough to write it into her back story, but can you sort out the ninja's Smurfette syndrome and give Nya a hand?

In which there is a last bit of light

 This last week I got interviewed for television for my work... It's my first media appearance and it was very scary. Just like an essay or an exam I thought of much better things to say as soon as it was over! I had to do lots of takes and say the same thing in as many different ways as possible. It was actually incredibly exhausting in the end, but I'm looking forward to seeing the end piece. Even though I fear the cringes.

We took these photos in our local park back when there was still a reminder of daylight. These past few days it has only been grey and then black. I hate how little sun we are having.  I always feel down in the winter without the bright light and the warmth of the house. It gets dark around 3.30pm and so afternoon walks with photography have become impossible. I can't even get any good shots of toys in my house for some upcoming posts because it's just not letting the same light in. However, it does make for some cosy evenings and excuses for hot chocolate and cake.

I just bought the new lipstick I'm wearing and it seemed perfect to go with this rich red dress which I fall in and out of love with. I wore almost this exact same outfit earlier in the year but with the same shirt over the top of the dress, not under it. Sorry for my lack of imagination with it!

 I want to develop a more sophisticated style, but I still find myself wearing these very girly outfits. They look good, but they somehow don't feel quite like me. This look is a little bit like wearing a past version of myself. Have you any suggestions to toughen this dress up?

I bought these chunky boots recently and I love them to bits. They are fleece lined, very warm, and you can fold them over to make them shorter and show the contrasting fleece. Plus they work well with more femme items.

Pumpkin necklace is perfect for Autumn outfits.

In which I can be a spy, a singer and a swordswoman

 

I've missed blogging. I've just come back from holiday and sitting down to do a blog post and read some blogs feels really refreshing. I've missed you guys! 

It was a lovely holiday break. I went to Indiecon, a gaming convention, with a bunch of friends and did much of the same things that took place one whole year ago when we went before. The event takes place in a holiday resort full of fake log cabin chalets all booked up by the gamers. I played so many role play games, although this time with a little less dice and a little more acting, having got more into the Fiasco type, and a great game called the Marquis is Dead; if you do play indie table-top RPGs I recommend them. Over the days there I played an eighties ghost, a Renaissance duellist and singer, a Medieval Russian spy, a 1930s Nazi-fighting Egyptologist, a Viking beserker and, very briefly (in a freakishly twee game), a cat. There were three full days of gaming, although also a few opportunities to skip the games and go to the sea. It was beautifully relaxing, no Internet, no phone signal. Just time for games and drinking and a lot of hilarity -including my first go at Cards Against Humanity.

I didn't actually take any photos of the games this time. I didn't really want to be carrying my camera around all the time. Plus as most of what makes them fun is in speech and acting, it's very hard to capture and share the moment. I did find time to at least do one outfit shoot on the beach when we went down to watch the sunset. It was a small break in a lot of rain and a rather cloudy sunset in truth, but even when the weather was horrible it was a really good time.

Quite happy with my picture-postcard shot

A very well-used umbrella and some very muddy new boots.