Skyrim First Impressions

Skyrim has been out for 3 days now and we've been playing it whenever we get the chance. I got a PC version and Andy and Jesse got Xbox.

I started my attempting to play on the computer but due to the high system requirements I could hardly play with the settings at the very lowest, so I had to suck it up and play on an Xbox. I've never liked a controller as much as I've liked a keyboard and mouse, so I don't fee as comfortable playing on Xbox but I get by. But at least I can comment on both versions.

Graphics
I've played this on a PC with the lowest settings and it still looked quite good. Unfortunately the mouse was lagging just enough to make it hard to play, so I abandoned that until I have a better computer to run the game on. The graphics on the Xbox is pretty great. I'd say it's the prettiest game I've ever played. The lighting is the best I've ever seen in any game. Objects have shadows, the glow from candles looks very realistic, if you look into the sun it temporarily blinds you, fire spells light up the room. People look very good too. Skin looks very detailed, clothing fits well, smoke and mist looks fantastic. Fire even has that heat a distortion look above it, as do the right kind of spells.

Landscape
Water looks great and they really made the rivers feel real with rapids, waterfalls and even a current if you hop in. The wilderness looks amazing. They put a lot of work into the landscape and it feels very rugged and realistic. Skyrim is very mountainous and rocky. It doesn't feel like a bunch of land with some rocks and trees plopped onto it. It feels very natural. Grass is done similarly to how it was in Oblivion but I think it looks better this time around. Also long distance views are fantastic. You're constantly surrounded by treacherous, snow covered mountains that you can really see. You can see the snow drifting off them in the harsh winds.

Weather
The weather in this game is freaking awesome. It snows a lot, and boy does a blizzard really feel like a blizzard! Visibility is reduced, the wind howls fiercely and snow drifts off of the ground. If you go inside during a storm you will hear the weather outside fade away as the door closes behind you. Even the lighting inside changes according to what is going on outside so if it's sunny you see sun coming in the windows. If it's night time or cloudy it's dark inside. I haven't seen rain as much as I've seen snow, but it's very good. Also, sometimes at night you get to see the Northern Lights. I used to want to see them so badly when I was a kid, and I've never really gotten a good look at them to this day, so to me that was particularly awesome. As you move around the world the weather changes according to the geography so if you're up North in the mountains it's snowing almost constantly wheras one of the lower valleys in the South is sunnier and snows less often.

Dialogue
Dialogue is greatly improved. Not longer do you 'zoom in' to someone when you talk to them and the world around you does not pause. Instead when you talk to someone they just start talking, and it's very common for others in the area to join in on the conversation. When it's time for you to say something a simple dialogue menu appears. Your conversation may start with you talking to one person and end with you speaking to someone else and it all feels very fluid. When NPCs walking about strike up a conversation it's much more realistic than in Oblivion. Children now exist and you will often see them playing in the streets and talking with each other. There are more voice actors this time around so not every Nord male sounds the same, like in previous games. You still hear the same voice for multiple people if you pay close attention, but it's much less noticeable. Also, there are now accents for each race. Nords have a viking-like accent, Imperials sound kind of Italian/Roman, Redguards sound American. Khajit still have their usual accent and I assume Argonians do as well but I have yet to run into one. Also, as you walk around people will notice if you are sick or tired and comment on it. It makes it easier to realize when you have a disease or need to rest, since that's not easily apparent when you're playing.

Culture
You can tell a lot of time has been spent on further improving the culture of each race. I get much more of a sense of the difference between races in Skyrim than in any of the other games. Although always present, it was never as apparent as it is now. With added accents, differences in appearance, manner of dress and names it's not hard to pick out what race an NPC is. Imperials feel and look more Romanesque than ever with slightly darker skin and hair and names like "Avendicci". You notice the most difference between the Imperial and the Nord cultures because in this game these two races are at war with each other. Redguards appear more Middle Eastern. I ran across two who were carrying scimitars, the only scimitars I have seen in the game so far. Their names also sound kind of ancient Persian or something. Weapons and armor also show a market difference between cultures. Imperial, Nordic, Orcish, each has its own stylistic feel to it that fits that culture. Orcish weapons are jagged and menacing, Nordic weapons have a rugged beauty to them, Imperial weapons are stately, etc.

Fighting System
The fighting system in Skyrim builds upon improvements made in Oblivion. You have the ability to block like before which added a much needed tactical element to Morrowind's never ending slash fest. But now you also have ability to control what you put in each hand. You can have a spell in one and a sword in another, or a mace and shield, or two daggers. You can even duel wield spells and use two of the same together to create a more powerful spell. Depending on what you choose your fighting style with vary. You will also see your character do occasional "finishing moves" and the camera will zoom out as the game slows down a bit so you get to see yourself bash in someone's face or run your sword through them. It adds some fun to fighting and it's just kinda cool. If you hold down you can build up a power attack which will stagger your opponent and can give you the edge you need to get a good hit in. Stamina also plays a larger role. It depletes faster and without it you can't do power attacks or run and your hits will not be as sure. Your character will actually become out of breath to let you know. You also have the ability to sprint which depletes stamina. Fortunately your hits seem to do more damage so you don't have to mash the key 100 times to kill a bandit. Fights are shorter, but more intense. Another thing I noticed is that NPS don't just run up and attack you as soon as they see you. If you come across a bandit camp they may not want to fight you and will simply draw their weapons and stand ready. If you walk away, they won't attack. Of you get too close, they will. This make it handy for when you're just trying to get somewhere and don't want to deal with fighting bandits. It also feels more realistic. Similarly, there are a lot less aggressive creatures attacking constantly while you're just trying to go somewhere. Wolves, lions and bears still attack but you don't have to deal with rats, cliff racers, and every other little creature you come upon.

Skills
Skills have been streamlined a bit. For example Mercantile and Speechcraft and now rolled into one. When you speak and trade with people it increases on its own. You no longer have to do a minigame to get people to like you, nor do you need to haggle with them. You can improve people's opinion of you by talking to them and doing things for them. When you trade your Speech skill automatically determines how much they will pay for items and how much they charge you. Unarmored is now completely gone and mage's robes don't appear to give any protection, so mages will have their work cut out for them. However from what I've seen Destruction spells are now quite devastating and there are still lots of spells and potions for improving defense so perhaps it evens out. Pickpocketing has been added as a skill which Andy is obviously rather excited about, but we haven't yet had a chance to use it so I can't comment much on it. Alchemy is also changed quite a bit. It's more streamlined in some ways. You can only create potions with 3 ingredients and creating potions shows you what ingredients do. There seems to be less variation in potion strengths and effects. Cooking has been added. This allows you to make food which heals and restores stamina. You can cook foods yourself or purchase them. Blacksmithing has been added which allows you to make and improve weapons and armor. They no longer degrade and need to be repaired! In Oblivion it used to be so annoying because one quest would degrade my equipment enough I would leave fully repaired and come back with half my armor broken. You no longer need to worry about that. You can mine and smelt metals or tan leather to create things. You can even make jewelry. Combined with enchanting you can theoretically custom make everything on your person.

Sound
Sound in this game greatly improves the overall feel. When you're in a blizzard you hear the wind howling, when it's night in a more temperate are you hear night time bugs chirping, if you're underground you hear the rumbling of the earth. Voice acting is very well done. The music, ah the music... not only are there many new songs that have a Nordic feel to them but they have also brought back music from Morrowind and Oblivion. I love Morrowind's music and being able to hear it as I am playing is very nostalgic for me.

Menu System
The menu system has gotten a big overhaul. Quests, Save and Settings are in one menu and Map, Inventory, Magic and Skills are in another. To get to your map you have to go to that menu which brings up a compass-like menu. Press down to go to the map and it kind of zooms out. The map is very pretty and impressive because it looks like you've literally zoomed into the heavens to look down on everything, but it's much harder to see details like terrain and bodies of water because of the clouds and 3D effect in a mountainous area. Major point of interest have icons to make it easy to find things, but if you're exploring and using your map to look around it can be a bit difficult.

The Inventory much simpler in the way that it's listed, and more organized. There are more categories for items. Before it was just Weapons, Armor/Clothing, Alchemy, and Misc. Now it's Weapons, Apparel, Potions, Ingredients, Food, Scrolls, Books, Keys, and Misc. FINALLY! No more going through all your keys to get to everything else! Your books are in their own section, handy for all you book collectors out there. Potions in their own place... so much handier. Also, you can see each item in your inventory in detail and even zoom in/out and pan around it. Because of this you will sometimes have quests in which you need to actually look at the quest item to figure out what to do. You also have the ability to favorite things so that you can switch fairly easily while playing. I don't feel like you can switch as fast as if you use hot keys like in Oblivion, but that's really only an option for PC anyway so on Xbox you're not missing anything. But at least the game pauses while you switch, so although the action does stop you don't lose any advantage by using the quick change menu. The Magic menu is similar to the Inventory menu.

The Skills menu is the opposite of the map where you look upwards. This zooms you up to the stars where you are int he center of a circle of constellations. Each constellation is for a skill and each star in the constellation is a perk. When you level you get a perk which you can put into any skill. Each skill has a starting perk and then branches off into other. Some perks allow you to put multiple points into them. The level of the skill determines which perks are available to you so as you level the skill more perks open up to you. Also each time you level you choose to up either you Magika, Health or Stamina. This system allows you to level what YOU want. There are no classes, no limitations to what you can do. If you want to have a skill you just do it or train it and it will improve.

There are some things about the menu I'm not too keen on. The way it's set up isn't always as fast to use as past interfaces. On PC you can get through most of the interface on the keyboard, but then when it comes time to use a Yes/No menu you HAVE to use your mouse to choose. Or when picking up or putting away stacked items anything with 5 or less you do one by one instead of choosing how many you want. While this made sense in Oblivion for stacks of 2, for 5 it's just kind of annoying. And if you're putting away multiple stacks it's easy to forget you have to do the smaller stacks individually and hit the wrong button, which may make you eat or equip the item instead. I also don't like that the Save area doesn't categorize saves by character so ALL of your saves are in one long list. It makes it really easy to accidentally overwrite another character's save so you have to be very careful. And if someone else starts playing after you their autosaves overwrite yours.

Character Creation
The opening of the game is pretty great. It feels like the start of a movie or something. My only caveat is that if you have been through the beginning of the game before and want to skip ahead and just make a character, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. But when it comes to creating your character there are a lot of options but it's simpler than Oblivion. You choose your race and gender, then you can alter the specifics of your look. You choose from a preset, then alter it by changing skin tone, hair color, eyes, scars, warpaint, etc. You have some options for altering the shape of the face, nose, chin, eyes, mouth, body shape which let you make a slightly more unique character. Each race has a different look to it and although you can alter your look a lot you will most likely and up looking similar to others the same race as you. I made a Nordic woman and their features are very strong with high cheekbones and angular features. She certainly LOOKS Nordic! I haven't yet played around with character creation for other races yet, so I can't comment yet on specifics of character creation for other races.

After choosing your race, gender and appearance that's it. You don't choose your Skills or anything like that. From here you just do whatever you want to do and the Skills will improve according to what you use and train. It feels very fluid to do it this way. Your character's creation is much more organic that forcing them into a certain class.

Interaction with the game world
Traps are back, and there are more puzzles which gives dungeons more to do that just hack and slash your way through. Spells will burn walls and blast objects of tables. If you sprint by someone they will be shoved and scold you for it. If you are sick or haven't slept in a while people will ask you if you're feeling alright or say you look tired. When a dragon attacks and breathes flames at you things around you will catch fire. Some dungeons even have oil spills that can be lit on fire to burn up your enemies (or yourself if you're not careful). If you wear Imperial armor into a Storm-Cloak camp they will mock your attire. When you use a forge, alchemy table, cooking pit, etc your character actually uses it while you fiddle with things. You can pick up and move a lot of different items and even bodies (yeah, you can stack a bunch of dead men in loin clothes and have a childish giggle). NPCs will go about their day with chores, work, eating, drinking, etc. You can see them splitting wood, working at a shop stall, healing in a temple, hunting in the wilderness, cleaning the bar at a tavern, entertaining with singing or playing an instrument, reading, sleeping, studying war maps, sweeping in the Jarl's hall, etc. They will sometimes meet with other NPCs to discuss rumors or personal things. When you walk by them they may ask you something about you depending on where you are in the main storyline. There will be bards in taverns who will play instruments and sing songs about different events and heros so you get a bit of lore along with some ambiance! Another thing I really like is when you pick a plant, the plant changes to show that you harvested it. So a thistle will have lots of purple thistle flowers but after picking the flowers are gone. It's an easy way to see that you gathered the ingredient and you won't try to gather from it again until you see the flowers have grown back. You also can harvest ingredients from animals and bugs by catching them such as fish or butterflies. You still can't sell stolen items as far as I can tell, which I think is annoying because how can someone tell the dagger you have is stolen?

Player homes
As in Oblivion, you can purchase and furnish a home. So far I've only seen the home in Whiterun but it looks great. You can have an alchemy station put in so you don't have to go anywhere to do your potion making. There is a shelf for books which works like a container, but when you put books in it they are automatically lined up on the shelf therefor solving the problem of displaying books that was so annoying in Morrowind and particularly Oblivion. For some reason the weapon racks don't work like the book shelves do so I'm not sure why they bother to put them in player houses. I'm sure larger homes will have more features!

Glitches...
It's bound to happen that some glitches will pop up, but all things considered I haven't seen many. I watched an NPS walk off a wooden walkway into a river, but they didn't get lost at least. I haven't seen items falling oddly and dancing which used to happen in Oblivion a lot. Things fall and roll around but they seem easier to move and place than before. Although one time Andy was trying to place a weapon and it disappeared on him. In Oblivion is was easy for things to bounce around and knock stuff over, that seems to be fixed. I also once was unable to activate a puzzle, but rezoning solved it. The only major glitch all three of us have seen so far is when the game froze once on Xbox.

Overall
So far we're all having a lot of fun playing and there is still a lot to discover. Overall this game is very entertaining and I see a lot of improvements and new things being done.

The Last Airbender Movie

I really wanted to like this movie. Jay and I both really wanted this movie to rock. We loved the cartoon series. LOVED it. That's why we caved and actually bought it at Best Buy and watched it last night.

Let me just show you one of many youtube videos about this movie:



I think the only love I have for this movie is how badly I WANT to like it. And maybe a few little things. I'll attempt to list them:
1) I liked the actress who played Yue, I felt like she was a really good fit.
2) I also liked the kid who played Aang, I just felt like the movie didn't let him do a good job.
3) The guy who played Zuko seemed fairly good at being emo. But really, how hard is that?
4) Uhm... the bending was kind of cool looking sometimes?

Now for the really long part of this blog post. Things I didn't like:

1) Many of the character's names were mispronounced. Aang, as the main character, is the WORST name to change. You don't change the main character's name. It should be pronounced just the way it looks, instead they pronounce it like "ahng" which just sounds so awful. Also mispronounced are Sokka, Iroh (pronounced like ear-oh which really makes no sense) and the word "avatar" is pronounced "auvitar" with a weird emphasis on the A... why? It sounds stupid.

2) Fire benders can no longer create fire. This changes the ENTIRE story. Not only that, but when the Fire Kingdom attacks the Southern Water Tribe they say they will put out all the fires in the city to give the fire kingdom less to work with and yet you see torches lit everywhere anyway. WTF? Another thing that bothered me is when they attacked the water benders didn't do shit. Not a damn thing was done when the fire started flying. There was only the occasional water bender making a lame attempt at fending off a single fire bender. Aang then appears and despite having very little water bending experience he totally shows up a city full of water benders who aren't doing squat to protect their home. He litterally makes a HUGE ASS wall of water that could easily destroy the entire fire kingdom army. Effectively killing any future conflict because he could just tsunami the fire kingdom whenever they show up.

3) The acting sucked. I can't even really describe it... it just sucked. The character would be crying or something and I would be like "Oh fuck... I just don't care!" It was like watching a highly dramatized play where the acting is supposed to be really bad. You know, like Broadway. But instead it was a movie. I feel like the acting could have been a lot better if the rest of the movie was more supportive and less sucky. It was like a downward spiral of suckiness. A domino effect of suckery.

4) The saved earth benders are LAME. The story goes that the fire kingdom put all the earth benders in a concentration camp to keep them from bending. Mind you, they are sitting ON EARTH. There is nothing to prevent them from bending and the camp has more earth benders than fire benders. And remember, fire benders can't make fire. What snuffs out fire? DIRT DAMMIT. Plus the earth bending was really lame looking. It supposed to be very grounded movements, because it's earth and all. Instead they look like... well look at this video:



It takes seven men flouncing around to move one rock. And not even a huge rock. A rock that a man could probably pick up on his own. WTF? This leads me to my other complaint..

5) The bending movements are too intricate and take too long. As you can see in the above video the earth bender girl Toph uses very simple movements to bend, and she's hands down the best earth bender in the land. Even highly complicated bending still uses faster movements. It has to, otherwise it takes too long to do anything. In the movie people will flail around for 5 seconds or so before anything even happens. The exception to this is a few shots of Zuko tossing fire like an angsty highschooler. Which is actually ok, cause that's pretty much what Zuko is. And now and then when someone needs to pull out a bend quickly. Otherwise it's mostly prancing to look cool, instead it just looks lame.

6) The story moved too fast. This is an hour and a half long movie that could easily use another 30 minutes of story. EASILY. Everything feels glossed over and rushed. Characters are missing, of course. Entire side stories are gone, of course. But the main story itself is a mess. Half the time I was thinking "why are they doing this again?" and I know the story!

7) I noticed several continuity errors. I usually don't catch that many the first time I watch a movie. One that happened a lot was Aang's glider/staff would show up and disappear as needed throughout the movie.

8) Yue and Sokka's romance was pathetic. The changes made and the whole thing... it just sucked. In the end when she sacrifices herself it was like "good riddance" just so I didn't have to watch the horrible acting by the guy who played Sokka. Yue was better, but the whole thing just sucked.

9) The Avatar state is never explained, and appears to be summoned from nowhere without any consequences other than Aang gets a little tired. This is a HUGE piece of the series and the life was sucked right out of it. Learning to control the Avatar state is what half the story is about. GONE. Just... gone from the movie. What is this movie about again?

10) The many character changes made the characters into one dimensional puppets. Zuko is made into a nearly pointless character. It feels like he shouldn't even be in the story when in fact he's a key character. He has hardly and dialogue. His banishment story is all screwed up. His scar is hardly even noticeable. Uncle Iroh is nothing like the series character aside from poorly written bits of wisdom that make him annoying instead of enduring. He's younger, thinner, fitter and has no sense of humor. Matter of a fact, no one in the movie has any humor. Aang never, EVER makes even the slightest joke. He's incredibly serious the entire time and not even in a good way. Katara just cries and wines the whole time. Sokka makes maybe 2 jokes and they are BAAAADDD and not even typically Sokka bad just regular bad. I think the only main character that is true is Zuko, because he's emo and that's easy.

11) Scenes in the trailer don't exist in the movie. They appear to have been made simply for the movie. Why? Did they think their movie sucked too much to use it for the trailer? In one Aang is practicing in a ring of candles at an air temple and the camera pans outside where a shit ton of fire nation ships are showing up and attacking. This doesn't happen in the movie at all. Not even close.

12) The effects were sub par. Sometimes it was really obvious there was a green screen. Momo looked really fake. He didn't even serve a purpose and may as well have been taken out.

OK I think that's enough hate for one day...

The only thing I have left to say is that I am never seeing another M. Night Shyamalamabama movie ever again. I should have stopped at The Happening. Never. Again.

SL's new 2.0 Viewer is a Step Backwords

I've been using the 2.o viewer for a while now, so I feel I know it well enough to comment on it. Usually a new viewer brings many improvements, but overall 2.0, and up to the current version 2.3, seems like a step back to me. Let's weigh the pros and cons.

PROS:
1) Added tattoo layers. Before people used undergarment layers which could sometimes interfere with their outfits, but generally people got by without this. It's great to finally have it, though.
2) Added Display names (2.3). Allows an avatar to change the name displayed, while their avatar name is shown below. This seems handy in a few cases but I think it might also cause some confusions and I don't really see much of a need for it. Another thing is that it can only be changed once a week and it changes your name on your items (as the owner) which to me seems to take away the usefulness of it. I would use a display name to show my RP character's name but if I can only do it once a week and can't change it on the fly as needed I can't use it for that and I don't want, say, all my store items to show my display name of whatever RP character I am that week. Don't see a use for this.
3) Added outfits. Basically allows you to have preset outfits you can easily change between. Handy to have, but kind of limited since they can't be easily edited after being created. Want to change the skin for all your outfits to that fancy new one you got? Sorry, you have to redo every single outfit.
4) You can display a webpage on an object's surface. Like in my shop I have a wall that shows the blog for my store. Nifty, but honestly I haven't seen this really getting used. Plus it's kinda slow and it's much smaller so it's almost easier to just use your regular browser.


CONS:
1) Slower and laggier than 1.0. This is not just me. I have seen many other people say 2.0 or the latest update 2.3 has significantly slowed their computer down and been laggier than before.
2) Search is so slow it's almost unusable. Before it was pretty straight forward and simple, although not very well organized. Now it's neither well organized nor fast or easy. Every time you search you have to do a totally new search. So if you're hopping sims looking for a certain type of shop you can't pull up the search you just used and go to the next. You have to start over. And it's painfully slow to search. I can't even explain how painfully slow it is because it's so unreasonably slow it's hard to believe. As a result, many people avoid searching now which leads to less people finding new places on a whim which was supposed to be the major goal of 2.0 - making it easier for new people to get around and find things to do. Now no one can find things do to!
3) New GUI is frustrating. As a content creator I now have to go out of my way to do things that were fairly simple in 1.0. The new viewer has shoved a lot of the old controls aside to make it simpler so as not to overwhelm newbies. Well that's great for newbies except a) it's not any easier to use and b) what about your existing users?? I have to detach windows and go through more menus to do the same things that used to take a simple click. It's much more time consuming. Also a lot of the menu drop downs are missing so there are less options to fiddle with.
4) Chat limit is MUCH shorter (2.3). Before you had a decent sized paragraph. Now you can get in 2-3 short sentences. As a Role Player this is REALLY inconvenient. If I want to go into any detail about what my character is doing or if she says something that is more than a sentence it no longer fits in one post. And because many RPers go in turns to keep things from getting confusing once I post my turn is over and at my next turn I may not be able to say whatever else I wanted to say.
5) Extra avatars are now pixelated. There is a setting which allows you to save processing power by having more than x amount of avatars on the screen display at a lower quality. This is handy when you're in a crowded area because all those avatars being processed can really slow your computer down. With 1.0 it just meant their shape and texture was more blocky and their animations were not as smooth. With 2.0 they are literally flat and pixelated like monsters from the original DOOM. Sometimes you will see this even when there are not a lot of people around and you shouldn't be seeing it. It's really crummy looking and just doesn't look right at all.
6) IM's no longer tab with chat. In 1.0 your IMs and local chat were in the same window with tabs. I liked this because it saved me space on my screen. Can't do that anymore. Now IMs are a separate window from main chat. Why would I need to see both at once? I can see when someone has sent me an IM without having the window open, so why not consolidate? I think they did this because it used to confuse some noobies.
7) Incoming messages are easy to miss. Now all your IMs, group notices and messages from objects are shown as small icons in the lower right hand corner. I have actually missed many notices this way because I just don't see them there. When group notices come in there is not sound, popup, anything to tell you they are there. Same thing if you are given an object. Sometimes you miss it because of this system. It also automatically gives you the item which is an easy way to grief someone, by sending them an item over and over and filling up their inventory with something before they can block you.

Overall, to me it seems like the pros are mostly semi-useful gimmicks and the cons are mostly legitimate downfalls that should never have happened. *sigh*

Portsmouth Halloween Parade 2010 (Orion Slave Girls Unite!)

Photo by John Huff from this Foster's article

(I stole it cause their pics tend to disappear)

Another article from Seacoast Online that mentions us

A youtube video where you can kind of see the bellydancer army

(more pics/videos as they become available)

Taken from the Seacoast Online article:

Some went to extreme measures to stay in character despite the cold and windy night, including a group of belly dancers who had stripped down to a few thin pieces of fluttering fabric to showcase their dancing abilities.

"It's a beautiful day!" exclaimed Sophie Wolford of Somersworth, one belly dancer from Lotus Fire Studios, while shimmying along the road.

I love how our costumes became "a few thin pieces of fluttering fabric" we were certainly wearing more than that! But yes, we were cold. It was about 40 degrees plus the chilly wind coming off the river. All night people kept saying "you must be so cold!". Were it not for the wind I would have been pretty warm because I was dancing and my 3 layers of tights kept my legs pretty warm. By the end of the night my hands were the coldest. But I had on a pretty full skirt that kept blowing around in the wind. I hope I wasn't flashing my tights too much but I couldn't stop the wind. My vest kept my back warm and the mesh over my stomach helped a bit, surprisingly.

So to recap the night, here is how things went.

We met at Sophie's Mom's around 5:00 and slathered green paint all over ourselves. It looked splotchy in real life but came out great in the photos (at least I think, since I haven't seen a large photo yet). Once I finished smearing on mine I exclaimed "I'm BLUE! No.. wait..." *facepalm*. My epic fail of the night. I had that song stuck in my head... you know the one. "I'm blue dubba dee dubba dah de dubba dee dubba dah..." and now it's stuck in your head too! J wore his new leather mask and spaulders (am I spelling that right?) and Andre has his fro going and said he was Huey from Boondocks. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "What are you?"
Andre: "I'm oppressed! I'm also Huey. Sabrina wouldn't let me bring my katana because she said I would get arrested for being an armed black man. You white people oppress me! I'm the most oppressed person in this room!"
Me: "Hey, I'm Native American!"
Andre: "How upset are you that the while man took your land?"
Me: *shrugs* "Dude... I'm GREEN right now. I don't give a *#($!"

Anyway, I did Sophie's face makeup and then rushed to do my own so we could arrive at the parade meeting sight around 6:30. The starting point was at Pierce Island this year. We found the drummers that we dance with every year and the parade left at 7:00.

We met up with several other dancers and made a group of maybe... 10 - 15 total. Myself, Sophie and Sabrina were the green Orion Slave girls but there was also Lisa, Holly, Gina, and a gang of dancers she brought and a few I'm probably forgetting... there were so many of us! We spotted Karina later in the parade and there was much rejoicing since I haven't seen her in about a year when she moved.

As we were going over the bridge back to the mainland at the start of the parade a photographer for Fosters found us right away and started snapping shots, then took down our info. Soon after another photographer did the same. People would Oooo and Ahhhh and "Oh look the bellydancers!" plus a few "shake it baby" comments which we just ignored. People were snapping pictures of the green bellydancers and calling us "zombie bellydancers" and stuff we were not... I wonder if anyone figured out what we were? I tried to pay attention to the crowd and who was taking pictures and give them a nice shot. I even had a few people ask me to stop and pose for them.

I'm told the whole trip was about 2 miles. It took about an hour because the parade kept stopping for the "Thriller Dance" the zombies were doing up front. There were a lot of people with large props on wheels and strollers there were clogging up the works. A group of Alice In Wonderland kept getting between us and the drummers and making it hard to get back to them. J kept getting run over by people in strollers behind him. It got really congested at times because the front of the parade would stop for the dance and everyone would crowd up forward not realizing we had stopped. Then of course they wouldn't back up either, because there was so many people you couldn't shout to the back of the line to move back and the people in the middle couldn't do anything. But there were breaks in between where the crowd dispersed well, particularly in the main square area which is where most of the onlookers are gathered.

I really loved the women in the crowd who would cheer us on like "you go girls!". They seem to "get" what we do and really enjoy it instead of being catty and assuming we're just trying to get men's attention. We're having way too much fun dancing to care if all the guys are oogling us or not.

The parade ended at Prescott Park where we hung out with the drummers briefly before deciding we were beginning to turn into green bellydancercicles. The area down by the water is the coldest! So we said goodbye and started running for our cars yelling "We're not cold!" in Spanish and "Orion Slave Girls are never cold!" (my mantra for the night) in English. We got some interesting looks from people... 3 green bellydancers running through the park like that...

As J and I were trying to leave Portsmouth we had to drive back by the park and the paraders were swarming across the street at such a rate it was impossible to get through. They wouldn't look at us or stop for us so we could get by, they just kept going. J managed to get a few feet through in a break in the crowd only to find our car head on with the beginning of the Zombie Hoard and their speaker system on a tow trailer. There wasn't enough room, so we had to back up to let them through. But people were now streaming behind us and not stopping. Finally a bunch of the zombies had to go over there and make people stop just so we could back up. They went by (yes, our car was surrounded by a swarm of zombies) and then people were in front of us again not letting us through. We're talking parents with like 4 kids letting them run out in front of us cause hey... they're pedestrians they won't get hit! We literally had to inch our way through and try not to hit anyone because they just would NOT STOP. Not a single person, like we were not even there. It was infuriating!

We finally got through and J and I stopped at Friday's for a hot drink and snacks then headed home. Got home around... 10:00 ish and hit the shower. The paint came off pretty easily with a bit of scrubbing and I was back to being a pink skin! We were both totally exhausted and went right to bed.

Costumes
I made everything for my costume but the vest and the stockings. It was actually pretty easy. Basic panel skirt and strips of fabric pinned into place.
For J's costume he made the shirt, mask and the things on his shoulders.
We're a very crafty couple!

Sabrina, myself, Sophie

J giving me a massage?

J being creepy behind me...

Goofing off at the docks after the parade

Orion Slave Girl Costume!

For the Portsmouth Halloween Parade myself and some of the other ladies are going as Orion Slave Girls from Star Trek. This is a whole new level of geekdom I have yet to explore... and I'm so excited!

Here is a video clip of Orion Slave Girls:

(if you're reading this on Facebook and can't see the video be sure to use the "View Original Post" link at the bottom)

Closeup of the face makeup. It's pretty light and simple considering she's supposed to be incredibly beautiful.

I went out and bought a bunch of new makeup for the look. Here was my first attempt at the makeup, which I did tonight:


I did a darker eye look than in the video because I want the eyes to stand out at night and in photos. They used a more yellow-green for the video, but throughout the Star Trek series they have used many different shades of green for Orion Slave Girls so I'm not too worried about the color not being just right.

I also did heavier shading to make a more alien sort of look. It came out a more dark green and less splotchy in real life but you get the idea. My eyes and nose were running like FAUCETS while I was doing this... which really didn't help either. The green foundation was also giving me some problems and was rather hard to get even. It was separating even as I was doing my makeup. Perhaps I will skip the Rimmel foundation next time, or mix the green into my foundation. It may also need to set more before putting anything on it since it seemed to dry slowly once applied. I might also make a green setting powder to use with it. It will take some experimenting, that's for sure.

This whole look probably took me about 45 minutes to an hour and I only did half of my face! I tried to add fake lashes but my eyes were watering too much and they just were not cooperating with me.

STEPS:
1. Applied Hard Candy Glamoflaughe heavy duty concealer all over, concentrating on dark/redder areas. Also a bit of Rimmel Stay Matte foundation over that. This gave me a really even, light face so that the green would look more uniform.
2. Applied green foundation with finger, blotting all over. Used heavy application on hallows of cheeks, temples and jawline. NO dragging, smearing, smudging or use of a sponge works for this.
3. Lightly used ELF HD Powder to set green foundation. NO dragging of the brush as it takes the green foundation off! Blot on only!
4. Wet n Wild eyeshadow in Envy to darken hallows of cheeks, jawline, temple and to shade side of nose. I had to apply this very carefully so as not to smudge the green foundation.
5. Green highlight stick (a Halloween costume makeup find from yeaaars ago) to highlight.
6. Small amount of red lipstick used as a blush, applied with fingers and blotting to apple of cheeks. Not too much or it looks weird. Also any peachy or coppery color just looks WRONG. Has to be RED.
7. Touch up green makeup before another dusting of powder to set everything.
8. ELF Mineral Eyeshadow Primer on eyes including under eye area.
9. Wet n Wild eyeshadow in Envy in the crease of eye and to line lower lid. Also used to darken brows.
10. Victoria's Secret shadow in Gilded Fierce on outer corner of eye and lid, enough to darken.
11. Coastal Scents 88 Warm Palette shimmer light green for brow highlight. This worked really well!
12. L'Oreal HIP in Intrepid packed all over lid. This color is AWESOME and so perfect for this look. It's a dark brown that shines this cool blue/teal color and looks very sci fi.
13. A touch of L'Oreal HIP in Visionary on inner corner of lid.
14. Coastal Scents gel liner in True Black to line eyes.
15. Dabbed on the VS black shadow over the gel liner and smudged slightly.
16. Hard Candy Curl Up & Dye curling mascara in Venus, 2 coats. Then 1 coast of Hard Candy 1,000 Lashes in Lush Green.
17. Lined lips and used a mixture of Manic Panic Kiss of Death lipstick and Maybelline Lip Polish in a light nude color. I think next time I will use a more unnatural lip color like dark green, dark teal or black. I think the red stands out too much against the green.

Now for the costume...
The Orion Slave Girls, at least in the latest Star Trek, wear a mix of a bellydancer/Leia Slave costume and a more rugged, earthy sort of look.


I really liked the look of the cut up, one sided fishnet skirt on the dancer in the center. I also like the shimmery fabric the one on the left is wearing. They are also wearing leather, velvet and metal. It's a pretty eclectic look, but you will notice none of them are wearing any sort of fringe, coins, etc. which keeps it from looking too bellydancerish and more slick.

I rummaged through all the fabrics we have hanging around the house and found this blotchy green/brown stretchy fabric that doesn't fray. I'm using that as a base for my costume. I will make a top using a 1 strap black bra and wrapping the fabric around it to cover, then tying/pinning/tucking as needed. A long triangle of this same fabric tied at the hip will serve as a skirt. A torn up pair of large net fishnets in black will go under it, and green tights under that. Pieces of a black fishnet fabric will be draped in the front and back from the top to the skirt, covering about half of the stomach. Then misc bits of fabric as needed to cover and add decoration. All in all, it's a pretty simple but effective costume.

I tried to take pictures of a rough start I have but it was too dark and I was like whatever... so pictures will have to wait until it's done.