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trishmishtree · 2 years

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An outfit made entirely by me

(pardon the hideous lighting. I'm tired and sleep deprived and it's making my hand tremor when holding my phone, so it took me forever to get a decent picture)

It occurred to me today that since I started making my own clothes earlier this year, I've made enough stuff by now that I've somehow accumulated an entirely handmade outfit that kind of works in combination as some kind of ren faire outfit.

The purple skirt was one of the first things I sewed back in March. It's a full circle skirt that I somehow did the math wrong on so it came out a little too big, so I pleated the extra and now I have adorable pleats in the back of it. This skirt I actually do wear regularly (like once a week in the office) and it's swishy and fun and I get loads of compliments on the fabric.

The pink corset was made last month. This was a thing I did for fun to see if I could make a corset by hand, which you may have caught the making of on my blog since I decided to document my descent into this madness. The result is this cute thing that is whimsical, not exactly historically accurate to any era, and definitely not something I plan to wear out in public. (And yes I am calling it a corset and not stays, even though it laces in both front and back, because it's hourglass shaped and doesn't have tabs at the bottom, and the construction methods are same as the ones I've seen used for corsets, minus the absence of a busk. No, I am not tight lacing, and no, I am not asphyxiating. It is literally just sitting on my body.) It does give me amazing back support though. I tried wearing it to work under my scrubs but I didn't like the feeling of extra bulk in my chest (since I was wearing a camisole, covered by the corset, covered by an undershirt to smooth out lines, then covered by my scrubs and jacket). In the future, I plan to make a single-layer underbust corset that closes with a zipper, which I can then wear to work in the hopes that it'll help with my back pain in the fifth straight hour of rounding in the hospital. I hope the new design will feel less bulky in the... everywhere, and eliminate the need for an extra undershirt layer under my scrubs.

The white peasant shirt is actually a dress that I made, also on a whim, about 2-3 weeks ago. The aim was to see if I could shirr fabric by hand (since no sewing machine and all that) since it's something I hadn't tried yet. Now that I've had the dress finished for a week, I think I'm going to add a lining layer to the bust and skirt, since the fabric is slightly sheerer than I would have liked, even with the gathers. As it is currently, it does make a nice shirt and petticoat for the purple skirt. (And when paired with a brightly colored sash around the waist and a large hat, it looks remarkably like the 1780s chemise à la reine that originally inspired its design.) My one gripe about this dress is that it doesn't have elastic in it, so the sleeves keep wanting to slip off my shoulders which is not the effect I was going for. This dress is also something that I do not plan to wear regularly e.g. to work, because the neckline is a little too low and it's just frilly and over the top enough that I wouldn't want to wear it in front of other humans.

More stuff (mostly dresses) is currently in the early planning stages, but they're more in the historical costuming/cosplay realm. More on that later.

#tricia sews (kind of)#fashion #sewing #hand sewing #cottagecore

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 3 years

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Episode 41 Review: 78 Pick-Up

{ Youtube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Hello and welcome back to my Garden of Evil, where today we begin an especially weird week of Strange Paradise. This is Ian Martin’s final week writing the show, albeit with heavy executive meddling at this point. In previous weeks, some of the things mentioned in the Lost Episode summaries still happened, or certain plot points still appeared with a different outcome, but that mostly stopped last episode and will only happen once more with one more plot point. For reference, here is the Lost Episode summary for this episode:

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer (November 7, 1969), p. 84.

That doesn’t happen in this episode. Actually, not much does compared to a typical Monday episode--or does it? Usually, Martin reserves the most important events or revelations for Mondays and Fridays and uses Tuesday through Thursday for less important plot points, recap, and building suspense, but this time we get a Monday episode that’s mostly focused on the latter. This breaks with the previous weekly structure of the show and underscores how hasty his rewrite of Episode 41 must have been.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of the most important events that occurred on previous Monday episodes:

1: Jean Paul releases Jacques 6: Jacques gives Alison her first dream about him 11: Alison writes to Dan for help 16: Matt arrives on Maljardin 21: Dan suspects Jean Paul of murder 26: Alison uncovers her first clues about Dr. Menkin’s experiments 31: The cryonics tank leaks 36: The 1st séance

And on Fridays:

5: Dr. Menkin dies 10: Tim and Holly arrive on Maljardin 15: Jacques fires Dan 20: Alison's second dream about Jacques 25: Raxl and Vangie learn that Elizabeth is a witch [didn’t amount to much in the aired version, but foreshadows her original plotline] 30: Jean Paul decides to arrange first séance 35: Vangie foresees her death on Maljardin 40: Jean Paul's emergency meeting

For comparison, here are the biggest events from Tuesday-Thursday episodes: (brackets indicate events that I believe were originally intended to be more significant)

Week 1: Holly escapes Westley House (3), Jacques signs his name on Dan's documents (4), Alison arrives on Maljardin (4) Week 2: Holly flees to Caribbean (7), Dan shows Vangie Jacques' signature (8) Week 3: Elizabeth arrives on Maljardin (12), Tim begins Portrait of Doom (13) Week 4: Conjure Man dies and makes Vangie Conjure Woman (17), Jacques brings Dan to Maljardin (18), [Holly discusses her nightmare about Tarasca (19)], Erica's funeral (19) Week 5: Raxl and Quito show Matt the temple (23), Jean Paul steals the bottle of cyanide (23) Week 6: [Jacques cements his relationship with Elizabeth (28)], [Raxl predicts the possession of other characters with her cards (29)] Week 7: Jean Paul brings Vangie to Maljardin (32), the guests learn that Quito is a zombie (33), [the Holly portrait is damaged (33)] Week 8: [Holly starts searching for the secret passage (37)], [Jacques gives Alison more notes (38)]

So what happens in Episode 41, which feels more like a mid-week episode? Let’s explore it together and see what took the place of the beginning of Elizabeth’s mental descent into the 17th century.

When Dan enters the Great Hall and tells the other guests where he’s been, both Matt and Vangie give him the side-eye.

Dressed in a dirty black turtleneck, Dan returns from his exploration of the eponymous garden of Maljardin, where he was searching for the missing cyanide and/or the way out (I don't care about either subplot--give me Jacques, dammit!). "What are you all planning?" he asks as Vangie, Matt, and Tim eye him with suspicion. "Another séance, Vangie? Or a prayer meeting, Reverend, to save us all by communication with the infinite?"

Matt asks him where he was and he says that he was searching for the way off the island. "Like Holly," Tim comments, which is the only reason why he's even in this scene. Cue recap, although surprisingly little from Mr. Boring Artist, whom Martin seems not to know what to do with anymore. Considering how bland Tim is, I don’t blame him.

Vangie making her favorite facial expression.

Uh-oh!

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is upstage right, and the gorgeous but volatile Jean Paul has arrived to bitch out Dan for wanting to leave Maljardin! “Have you been on a journey, Dan?” he asks. “Here on Maljardin, they all meet the same end.”

“And some end in death,” adds Matt, which further angers the master.

“Is that a prediction or a predilection, or perhaps a threat?” Jean Paul asks, because he’s the only one allowed to make death threats on Maljardin. God Jean Paul forbid the Reverend return the favor.

“A fact, Mr. Desmond.” Too bad Jean Paul doesn’t care much for facts.

Holly is safe for now!

Both Alison and Holly(!) follow him upstairs. Holly says she feels fine now, which she attributes to Alison’s arrival just in time to show Jean Paul Dr. Menkin’s notes at the end of last episode. And then Jacques torments Jean Paul in front of all the detained guests:

Jacques: “Yes, be discreet. If I make you seem mad, they will betray you...”

“...and your sleeping Erica in her vulnerable cryocapsule.”

Holly: “Look at him. It’s like he’s in another world! Just like he seemed to be another man down there in that creepy crypt.”

He reminds everyone that visits to the crypt are off-limits and marches off, ignoring Elizabeth’s attempt to calm him down. Alison shows the notes to her increasingly estranged fiancé Dan and recaps to him about how she now only has five weeks of notes left. Meanwhile, in the dining room...

In a trance, Vangie solemnly lays a spread of Tarot cards on the dining room table, when suddenly she crushes one within the palm of her hand:

Matt notices that she is in a trance and Alison rushes over to get her out of it. When she does, Vangie is confused:

As is the tradition on this blog, I will attempt to interpret the Tarot cards that Vangie has drawn to determine the message. I suspect that Ian Martin deliberately chose specific Tarot spreads to subtly foreshadow planned events (see also my Episode 29 review where I analyze one such spread) in addition to all of the other Tarot symbolism he uses. Let’s start with the cards on the table:

And their possible meanings, taken (mostly) from Tarot.com and The Tarot Guide:

The Devil can also refer to the id, chaos, sexuality, obsession, or abuse, but I believe that it’s more likely meant literally here. Death may be meant literally (which is not how it’s normally used in the Tarot), but change would make just as much sense in the context of Jacques’ plans for Maljardin. I had trouble identifying the card at the top, but I think that most likely it’s the Ace of Cups in reverse. Ace of Cups RX can mean (among other things) sadness, unrequited love, or pessimism, but it could also mean a shadow version of Alison, whom Vangie’s previous readings represented as the upright Ace of Cups. Sounds like Rahua, although that’s doubtful because the show has all but forgotten about her. More likely, it foreshadows Alison’s death or another form of undoing.

As for the card crumpled in Vangie’s hand,

The Eight of Wands seems a very odd choice in combination with the others, because of its positive meaning:

Success--but for whom? I’m guessing Jacques, which would explain her reaction. The spread implies that Jacques’ plans to steal Jean Paul’s body for good (the change), followed by discontent, sadness, and loss, will succeed.

In the Great Hall, we hear Dan tell Tim and Matt about how, while searching Jean Paul’s bedroom, he found a map drawn by Jacques of the only escape route through the channel. “They’re probably false and intended to lure sailors to their watery grave,” the Reverend speculates, given the cartographer in question. Unfortunately for them, Jean Paul overhears their conversation. “The Reverend knows the Requiem,” he threatens passive-aggressively.

Jean Paul must have contact with his Erica, even if it kills him as Vangie predicts it will.

Then Jean Paul visits Vangie in the dining room to insist once again upon another séance. She reluctantly agrees, although she feels very uneasy about it. By now the Conjure Woman has laid another Tarot spread, consisting of a different combination of cards:

And my interpretation:

The King of Swords--which we know represents Jacques--is reversed, and so is the Knight of Pentacles. As with the reversed Ace of Cups from the first spread, the reversed Knight could either mean the revival of Dan’s 17th-century counterpart d’Anton or (more likely) Dan’s demise. Whether the reversed King of Swords still means Jacques or instead refers to his reversal Jean Paul is unclear, but I think the latter is more likely. The King’s characterization on The Tarot Guide is very negative, but “power-crazed,” “controlling,” and “ruthless” do describe the man Jean Paul has become, and Vangie does predict in this scene that he may soon die. The Queen of Cups, which has previously represented both Elizabeth and Holly, appears upright, as do the Knight of Cups and the Queen of Swords. The Tarot Guide’s description for the Knight of Cups mentions an “artistic, creative” man, which sounds like Tim: the only male guest in Maljardin to not have previously been associated with a Tarot card. The identity of the Queen of Swords is unclear, but I have a feeling that she is meant to represent Erica. The Nine and Ten of Swords indicate that at least some of these characters will die, and there will be no way of preventing it.

Later in the episode, she lays a third spread while talking to Elizabeth:

My interpretation:

Elizabeth asks what the cards means, and Vangie gives this curious explanation: “That a woman who seeks love will receive what she gives...Nothing else.” Evidently, that includes burnout (Ten of Wands reversed) and regret/missed opportunities (Four of Cups). But which woman could these cards be about? Is it Elizabeth, Holly, or someone else? Could it even be...Erica?

Elizabeth suggests that Vangie invite her to tomorrow’s séance, then leaves when she sees Matt. They discuss the upcoming séance and Matt tells her, “I will certainly not consent to take part in the circle a second time.” But the Tarot cards say otherwise:

“What we say is one thing,” says Vangie. “What takes place is another. The Fool. The cards say you will. They cannot change it, and neither can you. The cards do not lie. Forces join the battle. Which is good, which is evil, who knows? You can’t change it, in spite of yourself!”

Vangie lays two spreads of Tarot cards in this scene. The first is too blurry to interpret, but appears to include either the Nine or the Ten of Swords:

The second--which Vangie implies relates to the events at tomorrow’s séance and which includes the Fool as its fifth card--is interesting:

My interpretation:

I did not expect to see the Hierophant--which represents tradition and conformity when upright--in any of her spreads. It just doesn’t seem relevant to any of the themes of the Maljardin arc, unless we count the generational gap between Holly and the establishment. The Tarot Guide gives “reversed roles” as one suggested meaning for the Hierophant reversed, which fits neatly with Ian Martin’s original (now scrapped) plans for at least one additional possession (but probably more). Five of Cups reversed is pretty straightforward: Jean Paul is trying to move on from his wife’s death by contacting her spirit. Likewise for the Hanged Man, whose trapped state could represent anyone on the island except for Jacques. The Ace of Cups here could represent idealism or compassion, but it has always meant Alison in previous episodes, so I’m sticking with her as my interpretation.

As I’ve written above, I don’t actually know if any of these cards (save the Fool) were mentioned in this episode’s script. There’s no way of knowing if any of these arrangements were deliberate or if Angela Roland was actually just drawing random cards in her scenes. Mostly, I’m interpreting these cards because there isn’t much else to do in February in the middle of a pandemic. It keeps my mind busy and it gives me something to talk about re: this episode other than weekly plot structure.

There’s one more scene of her pulling cards. The three cards in this spread appear to be the Five of Cups RX again, the Ten of Swords RX (either a total disaster or one narrowly averted), and the King of Wands RX (most likely Jacques). She has just pulled another when she lets the rest of the deck slide out of her hand onto the table. She has a nervous breakdown:

The combination of the Tarot spreads full of omens of doom lead Vangie to a nervous breakdown the day before the séance.

This episode serves the function of building suspense to the second séance, which we know will happen soon. Vangie does not want to hold it because of the danger that the cards have foretold, but she knows that there’s no way out of it and (according to her) the cards don’t lie. What doom awaits Maljardin in the coming weeks? Only time will tell. It won’t be Tarasca, but it will be something seriously strange.

Coming up next: A mysterious black rabbit appears in the Garden that has not known wild animal life in three hundred years.

{<- Previous: Episode 40 || Next: Episode 42 ->}

#strange paradise #review #ian martin #maljardin arc #week 9 #episode 41 #analysis #lost episode summaries #passive aggressive jean paul #plot structure #speculation on ian martin's original story #suspense building #tarot

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kitschcats · 3 years

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The Cynic v. Astrology v. Faith v. More Astrology v. All Other Forms of Alleged Bullshit

I’m going to be reposting some older pieces that never made it here. (1/9/2019)

Astrology? Bullshit.

--or so I've been predisposedly conditioned to believe, at least. It might just be my skeptical side, being an all-hatingly pessimistic INTP (at least according to the last 20 times I retook the same MBTI test over and over just to make sure?) in all my sunshine-and-rainbows-and-happiness-allergic, rationale-above-all glory and everything, but astrology Twitter could never quite sell me the idea of the positions of the constellations and the retrograde motions of the planets having any kind of influence on the state of human affairs. The cynic in me could dismiss the idea as too wishy-washy for my tastes, but I think part of me must have thought it was bigger than just that, much bigger--the stars themselves, as well as the very idea that they could directly interfere with our lives. The stars just seemed too far away for that. Wrapped up in bigger, more important dealings of celestial bodies, too distant and too pretty to bother helming such pivotal positions to humanity, and for centuries since, at that.

Perhaps the thought of having someone, or something, so transcendent have a say in our lives in ways we don't, perhaps carving for us predestined paths we can do all but nothing about; the very idea of something bigger than me having control, absolute and unquestioning, over me--over us as a collective species--scares me. A little like faith. (It's curiously ironic--I always thought I'd never be able to rest easy if I didn't die working for or working towards something bigger than I was. A cause, a movement, a fight, a revolution, I just know I'd toss and turn in my grave if it were anything but--and that I'd rather die before I willingly let myself get caught in the rat race and submit to the corporate world so highly favoured by our capitalist society--yet here I am, cowering in fear of the governance of something bigger than me, over me.)

God--if she/he/they/such an entity exist(s)--and I have had a complicated relationship ever since I was told by my ustazah to keep the questions I had about dinosaurs in the Qur'an to myself. There was a lot of questioning of my faith and even more committings of blasphemy, and to tell the honest-to-God-capital-G (ha!) truth this seems like the perfect spot in a sentence to interject a "but," but there is no real but. Sike. We use "but"'s as conjunctions for when what we're about to say contrasts with what was just said prior, but in this case there are no contrasts, no opposites, no contraries, no nilai-nilai murni, no pesan moral cerita, and there is no happy ending to forgive my unpious doubts.

A good chunk of my time I find myself questioning what I believe in and what I don't and why. Suppose I be a good Malay-Muslim girl, get lots of pahala, and masuk syurga, where it's sunshine and rainbows and happiness forever--and then what? Is the promise of forever all there is to it, to drive believers to do good deeds and not commit sins and continue to fear God? Hollywood clichés may be a stale comparison to this, but we've seen it in movies, it's a painfully repetitive trope: poverty, suffering, Miracle Magic, fame, wealth, drunken indulgence, wear-tear, boredom, dissatisfaction, greed, The Big Mistake, followed by The Bigger Crash, regret, The Retribution-and-Subsequent-Begging-for-Forgiveness Arc, then Sudden Wisdom-Beyond-One's-Years, and finally, a lackluster ending--and this is one's reward for painstaking worship in the mortal world, but for all eternity? How many lifetimes worth of promises of forever can you endure before you're driven mad by all the happiness in the world? If the only thing slower and more painful than being condemned to an eternity of dosa-induced punishment in Hell is being rewarded a pahala-blessed eternity of happiness in Heaven down a gradual descent into insanity, does that make being sent to Heaven a form of punishment of its own?

And suppose I traverse the path less trodden here in totalitarian-Islamist-Malaysia, are we to assume that we've all got one shot, and that lives we're living now are the only ones we'll get before dissipating into universal matter at best, nothing at worst, priests and rapists, CEOs and pedophiles, pastors and serial killers, believers and non-believers, men, women, children, all things in between, good, bad, black, white, grey, all alike?

(After pressing enter here, I stared blankly at this document, half-written and half-formulated and not a word proofread (as if I were planning on it!) for the longest time, my fingers hovering over the keyboard and doing that funny little ritual dance of hesitation, unsure if it would be right to break the paragraph here, seeing as my word count has been very (clearly) unevenly distributed thus far. I decided there was no right or wrong, and carried on writing, no line breaks backspaced in the process.)

What an optimistic thing to think about.

My natal birth chart tells me I'm a Pisces sun, Virgo moon, and Libra rising. At first completely foreign terminology to me, a little bit of digging had me finding out that my sun and moon signs were at complete odds with each other; polar opposites; and that I, in other words, am very much susceptible to constant internal struggle. "Blessed" with the wishy-washy, flip-floppy nature and escapist tendencies of the Pisces sun and the critically anal-retentive groundedness of the Virgo moon, the strange combination most definitely makes for a walking contradiction, i.e. me. (Fun fact: Kurt Cobain, too.)

(And, completely contrary to my fear of the divine and unknown as mentioned earlier, Pisces suns tune in to higher purposes and have dreams that transcend individuals, avoiding the harsh realities of otherwise by indulging in escapist self-delusions. I wonder if this sounds familiar?)

I still don't quite know what to make of the concept. I've heard stories of individuals feeling more in sync with the universe after getting in touch with their starry sides, but the idea of it all but makes me fear the universe all the more------but there must be a reason as to why astrology, for millennia upon millennia, in every culture, every great era, every ancient civilisation worth its salt, spanning continental boundaries, has been so closely intertwined with human lives; why the history of the celestial calendar dates so far back yonder; why it had always borne such significance to generations of nobles, to highly-revered priests, to merchants at sea, to humble farmers, to lost travelers, and to ordinary peasants alike; why the stars have always been our milemarkers and the constellations our compass and the sky our map to the entirety of our tiny, observable worlds; and who was it who first looked up and sensed the presence of something greater than them, whispering answers from the sky above? What did our ancestors, spread out across each far corner of the earth in a time of isolation and the unknown, know that we didn't?

Perhaps it's just too infinitely all-knowing a concept for me to be able to properly wrap my head around. In short: the universe is a great, big, incomprehensibly mysterious thing, and it fucking terrifies me. As I write this, sitting in the quiet of a 3AM night and in the darkness of my room, illuminated only by my night mode-tinted laptop screen and by the lights of neighbouring windows outside, I wonder: do I enjoy the possibility of being at its (the universe's) merciless whims after death, as with everyone and everything else I had ever come to know of in existence during this lifetime, as opposed to a fairytale God and Devil and Heaven and Hell? Possibly.

All irony aside, I do feel optimistic about one thing. An enthusiastic "update that damn blog" has been on my to-do-list for the longest time, and finally no longer in vain. I've been simultaneously feeling a lot of things as well as none at all--both at once, curious as it is--which is what I blame for my frustratingly stubborn inability to put thoughts to words to document this past year, as well as my horribly demotivated self. Dramatic as it seems, the year-long dry spell (I mean, a year? Togashi Yoshihiro, anyone?) had me thinking I'd never be able to write again. But here I am now, writing about it. Writing and translating my thoughts into real, letter-by-letter words. I feel strangely light. Perhaps all I needed was a little faith.

#p #thoughts

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