#heaven forfend i actually need a wheel of time tag

[aeide-thea]

really feels like robert jordan could've left the things he took from tolkien in the blender just a little bit longer

[marinedecoder]

oopsie whoopsie, i bought dolls. now in my defence, my partner enabled encouraged me, and also i freaked out when i saw them. why?

because i never thought i'd see these in the uk. they had them all for the current rainbow vision dolls, minus the k-pop group obviously. they had the Storm twins. they didn't, weirdly, have Ainsley. i am eternally bewildered by how the decisions are made on what gets into the UK and what doesn't when it comes to dolls 🤷‍♂️

anyway! i chose Sabrina (because she's Pink and her face mold really caught me in person) and Uma...because i wanted Mara but there were no electric pink gals without weird issues with their faceups - Harley suffered the same issues, and i love Uma's style so she was the one this time.

Sabrina is gorgeous, her colour scheme is so soft and i love it. her little accessories have me enchanted (especially the suitcase! its wheels turn in every direction on proper casters like a real suitcase! both handles work! the doors are stiff as hell, and i need a tool to remove the inner drawer but it's all very cute!), her fur coat has genuinely won me over this time when i'm generally not into the RH fur coats (and it's lined beautifully), and i adore her shoes.

she didn't have any body defects for a change, though i think her lipstick is a touch too much on one side so i'll need to fix that. i'm assuming i can use acetone and a fine brush for that? her face is super charming to me, and her nails and tiny rings are so cute! her hair is a bit of a state, though. it's all over the place, caked in product that's made it feel almost greasy as well as crunchy somehow, and tonnes came out just with a gentle brush (including a whole plug's worth, so washing will be interesting lol)

that's too much loose hair for one gentle comb through! Sabrina also, like Delilah, didn't come with coathangers. which i'm genuinely bummed about! i love the little coathangers! i am not above learning to resin cast exclusively so i can make hangers for all the girls missing them and have a complete rainbow of coathangers!

moving on to Uma, now!

i am totally in love with all her clothing pieces, her makeup, and her face mold. like Sabrina, she has a rare case of zero flaws!

her trousers have a nice, loose fit - a total novelty for RH! i discovered this is because they've made her skirt tight as hell instead. clever move on MGA's part, keeping me on my toes, heaven forfend i have an easy time dressing a doll and more fool me for assuming i could do so! also, i wish doll companies would stop using tiny tags to hold clothes onto card and stuff, it's a nuisance.

bafflingly, Uma comes with coathangers?? i'm sure i heard that w1 of SH didn't have them, so why are we getting them here? why with the Neon Shadow dolls but not the Rainbiw Divas?? why did they stop putting them in with the RH girls at w4?? who is making these decisions??? i'm not mad that Uma has them - very happy, actually - just. perplexed by the decision making!

also, Uma's face mold is stunning - i sort of wonder if she has the same mold as Georgia? she captures me in the same way, where i can't stop staring at her.

overall i'm super satisfied eitu these girls and can't wait to give them their little salon day and get them ready for display. i adore them.

[aeide-thea]

a cool thing abt the wheel of time show is that i just saw a gifset of lan by himself and was like. where's moiraine. that's like the salt without the pepper.

[aeide-thea]

.

[aeide-thea]

also: continuing to watch wheel of time (thru ep 5 now) and i have three (3) thoughts:

they really should've gotten in touch with like. the folks who did the lotr cgi back in the day bc i feel like gondor was a lot realer-looking than the aerial shots of the white tower/whatever the city surrounding it is called??

i continue to extremely extremely love the aes sedai-warder relationship, or as soph said aes sedai[punctuation????]warder relationship. it's SO queer in the sense of like. defying categorization. and just like. so much quiet subtle gorgeous communication happening. also lan continues to be SO beautiful to me but so much of that is bound up in his [depressingly i think i have to call it a little gnc] capacity for empathy, so much of which is bound up in this relationship. please can they just be quietly gorgeously maturely queerplatonic forever and ever amen. please can i just steep in that energy like a thrilled little bergamot teabag.

they sure did go for the 'predatory queer attempts to intimidate hero(ine) by homosexually hitting on them' trope!! and like. i don't always even 100% mind that, it was a little bit fun and sexy in skyfall, but here it really just felt like 'oh, the creepy sorceress is also a creepy lesbian, which makes her extra-creepy!' i think bc neither actress seemed to be enjoying it?? like. kate fleetwood gives me vibes i don't know how to categorize except as 'str8 rich b*tch trophy mom,' and rosamund pike just came over all frozen prey animal for a sec which was surprising bc honestly you wouldn't think her character would be so easily/visibly shaken? and so i didn't get the sense of like. lazy comfortable flirty leonine pleasure at sizing each other up that gave such a gratifying frisson to the scene in skyfall, and it really just became a cheap weaponizing of the way straight culture fears and frames queerness. (although like. that said: potentially also something to tease out here abt the dye job and makeupping on liandrin sedai and how as a woman ages those things increasingly paint her as, like, desperate and offputting in a certain way—so like, arguably misogyny getting weaponized as well as homophobia here: Painted Woman vs Sedate Madonna. and potentially worth squinting also at whether some internalized misogyny is a factor in my inability to read the interaction slashily!)

[aeide-thea]

wot liveblog, ep 7:

if mat's, like, moral poisoning was going to draw him to the ~dark one~ in problematic ways, so it's good he stayed behind after all, then... shouldn't they have thought that through before asking him along in the first place??

it's a fantasy so they had to go thru moria ig?

the cgi here continues to be. really underwhelmingly mediocre lmao

the costuming is like. sometimes quite good and sometimes really plain? glad lord agelmar is joining moiraine in the fabulously-shouldered coat club tho

continuing to think abt soph's underlining of the ways questions get like. gestured at rather than asked, etc

[aeide-thea]

like i guess i wouldn't say no to fic but i kind of feel like. it's on the screen already. absolutely wild.

[aeide-thea]

really fascinating to watch a scene last night and then see a slowed down gifset of it this morning and decide my initial read on it was like. just really extremely wrong wrt vibes/emotional beats! love 2 be just wildly off-base about things. that said Room For Growth is presumably good or w/e and possibly that's what i shd be leaning into rather than my actual 'oh great can't trust myself to see or think correctly!!!' reaction. why do that when you can berate yrself instead tho.

(note 2 self: update episode response post later maybe.)