Thus do I de-lurk

Soi Fon at dinky backwater Otafest

Sun, 28 May 2006 09:29:39 GMT

So after failing to win the bidding on that wicked awesome Soi Fon costume put up for sale a few months back, I built my own costume, and am freakishly proud of it enough to post pictures of myself on the internet. Pics and details behind he cut.

This the the group of friends I went with to out tiny con. I'm the Soi Fon... I pretty much forced Nathaniel to cosplay Tousen, since how could he not with the mad wicked dreads from Soul Society? Kikki there is my one true real-life otaku girlfriend, and I love her dearly for it. NOT in a lesbian way, despite the yuri Ninja cosplay.

I apologise for having no clue how to rotate photos. This is the only real shot I have of the battle costume, even though I spent most of the day wandering around without the coat on. There was this wickedly cool vendor who was selling a five foot replica of Sephiroth's sword, and I Ashitaka had to measure it against me. As you can see, I went anime-style on the battle costume, since I am frankly not brave enough to hang my butt and boobs out of the costume, unlike...

...This Matsumoto, who is hands down one of the best I've ever seen. She was fantastic, beautiful, and very handy with duct tape.

This is me and the Gin and Kira I came across. Summed up, I think these were the only other Bleach cosplayers I saw there... I heard there was a giant stuffed Kon running around, but I (alas!) never got a picture.

Here Follows the Narcissist Rant of Ridiculous Boasting of Cosplay Prowess

I angsted a lot about what to cosplay at the dinky little backwater con that is Otafest in Calgary (not to be confused with Otakon, that mecca to which I shall never be able to go) for a while, mostly because this was about the only opportunity I had to attend a con since my other grandoise con-hopping plans all got shot down, and I could still only attend one day. Perversely, I put a freakish ammount of effort into costume that I'll likely never have to opportunity to wear again. But I am really, really proud of myself. Or full of myself. Whichever. The reasons for which?

1. I made the entire thing without any patterns whatsoever. Entirely scratch. Okay, that's a lie. I did reference http://www.student.nvcc.edu/home/msiwek/Hakama.htm as a general guide for the hakama, but since it was designed for a doll, I had to modify a lot of it. Namely, I tacked and ironed the pleats before sewing the legs into tubes, so that the pleats would keep straight lines. I was complimented several times on the hakama alone, and since they had previously scared me so much that I wasn't going to cosplay anyone from Bleach, ever, I feel pretty happy with how they turned out.

2. I thought I was so clever with the Captain's coat/kimono/special ops uniform I almost died of it. I was worried about being too hot in what should be three layers of clothing in summer heat (and remember, kids, this con is in Canada, which means I can't stand any heat, at all, ever.), so, like a mad giddy genius of a fangirl, I sewed the kimono sleeves to the captains jacket for one easy transition between Captain-style and Battle-style. That's right. The kimono is totally fake. It's just the halter-uniform underneath and the kimono/coat on top. PH34R t3h l33tn3ss. Also, because didn't want to be yelled at for copping out and only sewing strips of white at the edges of the sleeves, I made a whole white sleeve to go under the black sleeve. But not the whole kimono.... Whatever. Again, totally scratch on the sleeves and halter and coat. No pattern used whatsoever.

3. That's my real hair. I don't know why I'm citing this as a reason to be ridiculously satisfied with myself, but I am. I have a bias agaist cosplay wigs, since you so rarely see really good ones that look natural. Thus, I only cosplay characters whose hair can reasonably be reproduced naturally. This narrows my selection somewhat, but I have also discovered that, contrary to all expectations, Witch Hunter Robin's hairstyle is actually feasible with nothing but elastic and ribbon. Anyway, although my hair isn't entirely accurate, it was when I first cut it-- I grew it out a little so that I could have some flexibility in choosing to cosplay either Yuna or Makie from BOTI or Soi Fon. The L'Oreal temporary black hair dye did not, unfortunately, work at all. No effect whatsoever, and you'd think that it shouldn't be too impossible to turn my medium brown hair black, but NOOOOO. The hair tails were really easy to wrangle, which is why I find that bad hair tails in a Soi Fon cosplay are unforgivable. I'd been wearing this hair around campus all semester, and I got it right the very first time I did it-- c'mon, it takes, like, 5 minutes to do. I tied a couple lengths of fabric around a lock of hair behind my ears with elastic cording, and then wrapped the fabric in ribbons. Gold dreamcatcher hoops at the bottom are still light enough to be held up, provided the elastic is tight enough.

4. The Kung Fu shoes. Okay, I didn't make them, but I found the most freaking perfect pair ever in Chinatown, and thus didn't have to sacrifice footwear quality, which is also a requirement for my cosplay selection: only cosplay characters with feasible footwear.

5. Did I mention that I did this in three weeks? It wasn't so much procrastination as having to wait for semester to end so I could go home and have access to a sewing machine, but still.

6. Did I mention that in these same three weeks, I also made Kaname Tousen's costume and much of Ashitaka's costume?

7. I'm so narccissist that I should win an award for it.

Things I had Issues With

1. I didn't line the coat in orange because it was already double layered in white to be opaque enough, and another layer would have killed any advantage the lack of a kimono gave me in ventilation. Vexation.

2. Curse the abominable L'Oreal "colour mousse" into Oblivion! It dyed my bathroom walls but not my hair!

3. The stirrups/Ninja Socks wound up being the hardest part of the costume-- I couldn't sew the spandex tight enough to stay up without ripping the seams ever time I put them on.

4. No one sells white tights in adult sizes. I had to pretend to be a really chunky little girl to find white tights.

5. I was so giddily happy at the con that I couldn't appropriately maintain Soi Fon's perpetually angry look. I had an artist in Artist alley sketch me angry, though, so hopefully that will preserve the right character.

Crossposted not so much like you're great aunt Betty's china cat collection than as Yoruichi's hairballs.

Flip. I wrote Fanfiction.

Fri, 05 May 2006 05:22:56 GMT

Heck. I broke a two year silence and actually wrote fanfiction. What's more, I wrote Garth Nix fanfiction. I don't know why. The fandom is full of teenage twits who can't write. (On second thought, I'm a teenager myself. Does this mean I can't write?) Oh well. It was fairly inevitable, I suppose; Garth Nix can't write very well, but his fantasy is so fricking original I can't help myself.

****

It will not be easy for them to rebuild the world.

He is King by blood alone, a half-mad bastard that is the best anyone can hope for; two hundred years of regency and twenty of anarchy are sufficient to persuade the people that his blood, watered down and tainted though it is, outweighs his lack of birthright and training. His affected name does not reassure anyone, (can he still not remember his real name?) but when the Abhorsen reclaims the palace and library, the persistent presence of the Dead has reduced the old records of the Guard to mould and dust, taking the King’s name with them. The people once again sigh, and look the other way, and remember that even a fool as a king is better than none.

She is no better. Abhorsen she may be, but one of them she is not. The Kingdom hasn’t been without an Abhorsen so long that they would welcome anyone to the position, and she is more familiar with death itself than the living kingdom she proposes to rule. The towns and people she liberates from the threat of the Dead are grateful, but they can never forget that she probably had to be told that they even existed to be saved from anything. She has learned to be more discreet in checking her atlas whenever a new report of a village besieged arrives; she has also grown her hair long in an attempt to hide her Ancelstierran sensibilities. The people, however, are not so foolish as to actually wish her gone; they may sigh, and they may mutter, but the dead are on the retreat.

Together, they are worse than they could ever be apart. As the binding loosens and tongues are let free, the streets of Belisaere hum with criticism. Who could be so foolish as to combine the first and second Great Charters into one bloodline? The king may be a fool and the Abhorsen a foreigner, but to the people who had believed they had lost both, their reappearance was the reappearance of hope, coming so swiftly it was like a blow to the chest. Both Chartered families were so small, where they had once been great, and to put the hope and protection of two fifths of the Kingdom's power in one child was fool-hardy, absurd, and dangerous. The King and Queen sigh and turn a deaf ear, and think that they could have two children.

It will not be easy for them to rebuild the world. But they had already begun when they first doubted; and neither of them, fool or foreigner, was inclined to give up.
****

Who's gonna read this anyway? I suppose I'll need to go Nix Comm shopping tomorrow.

Heck

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:08:59 GMT

I guess that now that I've delurked I have a place to angst about crap.

I will never learn to sleep properly. Not when there's Oh My Goddess to watch on Youtube. And Archaeology papers to write. But heaven forbid that I should focus on my work and not be distracted by anime. Heck no

I do beleive that my object is to make as lame and angsty a journal as possible, in order to thoroughly drive away any readers.

If I had fanworks this would be a problem. Thank heavens I don't.

Angstity angst angst.

For my own purposes only

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 06:00:13 GMT

Answers to survey questions at 11:16 MST 13/04/06:

Soul_society
a) Female: 57 Male: 12

Fm_alchemist

a) Female: 43 Male: 1

bleach_fact

a) Female: 4 Male: 1

animedotcom

a) Female: 1 Male: 0

Responses are interesting, but more or less useless. Results are in no way indicative of the overall male to female ratio of otaku, given the extremely limited test pool, and the extreme bias of the questions, and the extremely selective fanbase polled. Reasons given for like of anime are pretty much what I expected, and of somewhat more use to me.

In short, however: Totally crappy research. If I tried to pull this on a real research project I'd so be kicked into next tuesday.

Thankfully, however, my prefessor ought to be going into labor about the time this is due. Sweet, sweet leeway.

Crossposting as an excuse for research

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 02:19:43 GMT

Alright. The semester is almost over, and like a fool I've procrastinated writing my research term paper until... now. What the heck can I research that I can write a quick paper about?

Well, duh. Anime. I decided that if I write a paper about anime, then I can rewatch Fullmetal Alchemist and call that research. Sweet.

Unfortunately, my brilliant topic had to be narrowed down to anime fan culture in North America. This means that I need to conduct actual research.

Can you all answer these questions for me?

a) Identify whether you're male or female

b) Explain (briefly) why you like anime and manga

c) If you're a girl, explain why you (may or may not) like shounen series

d) If you're a guy, explain why you (may or may not) like shoujo series, if your masculinity isn't greviously offended by admitting it

This is an informal survey and will never see a printer's press-- my sole object in conducting this survey is to pass my writing class. As such, although I may quote your responses in order to make a point in my paper, it will be anonymous and uncredited and only one other person in the world will ever see it. Thank heavens I don't actually want to publish this, or my university would expel my little hiney for being so unacademic.

x-posted like your Great Aunt Betty's china cat collection