cosplay

A little Change

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In my post a few days ago about my Equalities Journey, I talked about the amazing trans man in my life and I realised that for some if you it may not be immediately obvious who I’m talking for about. Given that I’m polyamorous it may even have seemed a possibility that it was announcing someone new.

I was in fact talking about myr s, who has been socially transitioning over the last year. During this time, by his request, I’ve been using gender-neutral terms on the blog to talk about him and this was in part because there were people to whom he had not felt able to talk to about things.

This changed last week, and so while asking if he minded my referring to him in the Equalities blog posts at work and here, we also talked about evolving his title here as well. With his being my sub, we felt that the usual Sir or Lord that I tend to use would not feel right and he wanted to keep the lack of capitalisation as well.

So as of today, may I introduce you to boy s, and what a relief it is to be catching up here with how we talk to him in the real world.

As a cosplayer, there may be a temptation at some point to do a dad-bod Kratos just so I can shout “boy!” across a crowded hall…

A Delivery

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A while back I took part in an impromptu competition in one of the cosplay groups I frequent. The challenge was to draw or represent the various admins of that group; so I put together a composite drawing of various cosplay elements they were known by. And then I was deemed to have won.

Well, despite the best efforts of various couriers to fail to deliver it, my prize arrived yesterday at one of my libraries. Admittedly they abandoned it outside the back door, but technology is a wonderful thing, and I was able to get a message to staff at that library to check for it and bring it inside.

Today I got my hands on it.

I have a new project to work on.

South Coast Sauntering

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Its been a good day today, albeit one with a lot of driving. myr s invited me down for breakfast, and this coincided with Lady B having arranged to pick up a vanity table from a friend, so we thought we’d make a day out of it, kidnap Lady J too, and bustle over to Eastleigh for the morning.

My sat available decided that with all the local roadworks on the motorways that it would try and ratrun us cross country, so we had an enjoyable bought of trying to work out where it was trying to take us and then willfully ignoring it based on my passengers’ local knowledge.

If nothing else it made for cheery conversations as people recalled past jobs, workplaces, or relatives in places we passed. We duly picked up the vanity table, tetris’d it into the car with only one seat needing displacement, and went on search of food before myr s could turn into the hangry hulk.

The last time I was there was for Pride a couple of years ago, so bits of the street layout started to come back to me, enhanced by Lady Best memories of working at a now defunct club that seems to now be an empty space. We allowed the mental stretch of imagining reworking it as a split use site with an LGBTQ+ coffee/bookshop space during the day and club/bar space for the evening. Maybe when the best sellers and/or lottery wins roll in…

Oh, and we hit Poundland, partly for sugary drinks, and partly to raid the Halloween supplies. We’re all cosplayers, it’s what we do…

I also got told that the cub had explicitly demanded I not leave until we’d picked him up from school, so we did that and treated him to McDonald’s for his supper before I headed home. The grins and hugs were well worth it.

And so home, with a bag of goodies for Lady M from myr s, for a curry, mindless nonsense on the TV, and more tinkering with scenario details for the next game.

Can’t complain really…

Mod Mode

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I can write about this now its been announced: I’m trialling being a moderator for the UKCC Facebook group for a few months to see how it goes and how it fits with my other commitments.

The UKCC is the UK Cosplay Community group, and I’ve been involved with them over the last five years or so as a positive and family friendly bunch of folks. I’ve made good friends both at conventions and just generally during the lockdown as online support has become more prominent and helpful.

Purely by coincidence I turned down an invitation to become an administrator for Squad UK about the same time because I knew I wouldn’t be able to give it the attention it really needed. By even bigger coincidence one of the UKCC admins has just taken on that role with Squad, further proving how small the cosplay world really is.

Good luck everyone!

The Great Cosplay Punch-Up

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One of the things I am taking encouragement from is that large numbers of my fellow geeks and cosplayers aren’t letting the lockdown get in the way of community, support, or even common sense. There are increasing numbers of videos doing the rounds of showing people’s makeup, or cosplays, and even stuntwork – and so we decided to pick up on it and combine all three. Its by no means a unique challenge – as of the time of writing I know of at least one other group who have released on – but with 46 different cosplayers presenting 51 different costumes, we think this is the biggest one so far. The original facebook post by TJC Cosplays can be found here, but I’ve uploaded a high definition copy here too:

Hope you enjoy, if only for the sight of me getting punched in the face to start it all off.

The full list of cosplayers and their instagram pages is at the end of the video – and here’s a copy to save you scrolling through – go have fun looking these people up as they’re an amazing bunch of people and I’m very proud to have been able to join in on all this together with them:

We’re also planning a follow up with new characters and extra faces, and I’ll post updates and results here as that takes off

Sinuses and Silliness

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Today’s weather has been all over the place between rain and sunshine, and as a result my sinuses have been sore and irritated as the air pressure and pollen have combined.

Most of my messaging stream is full of chatter for the various video projects I’ve chipped into at the moment, and its probably no surprise to hear that it then prompted me to do some extra cosplay silliness. To that end I enlisted Lady M to variously hold props, camera, or pose while I grabbed a mask to do a casual lockdown Michael Myers on our balcony.

Messing About On The Balcony

Our neighbours on the estate seemed only moderately bemused as they walked by; but no one called the police so I can only assume they were just shrugging their shoulders and hoping we’d tidy up after ourselves.

Now the only problem is that my head and hands still smell of the latex of the mask four hours later, so Im off to have a shower now.

Tired

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I’ve been quite productive today but I’ve noticed a growing sense of anxiety and exhaustion around the work I’ve been doing – so I’ve opted to take some leave. This may seem odd given there’s a worldwide lockdown in place, but for my own wellbeing I feel I need to commit to not dialling in to work remotely for a few days next week.

Lady M has also booked some time off from her work for similar reasons. We would have been going to Portsmouth Comiccon and possibly looking at next week off to recover anyway, so in the grand scheme of things its not too different from what we would have been planning.

Its thoughts like that which remind me just how the convention and cosplay circuit has been hit, and by extension our little hobby and our connections with the friends we’ve made there.

Its why I’m continuing to get involved with daft cosplay collaborations – yes its fun to dress up and be silly, but the conversations and planning behind the scenes have been wonderful for keeping in touch and celebrating the creativity and oddness of us all.

If it raises smiles and lightens people’s days during lockdown then all the better, and I can take heart from that.

And then…claws…

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I’ve been thinking about doing a version of Wolverine based on the film Logan, possibly crossing over with the comicbook Old Man Logan – after all I’ve got the grey coming through in the beard and am nery twice the age if some of the cosplayers around me.

So I bit the bullet this week and after asking around for recommendations bought a set of claws that would be Con safe as they’re made of plastic. A couple of days later, they arrived:

Nose picking not recommended

I think I’m going to have fun with these… oh, the bruising is makeup rather than Lady M attacking me for making her jump with moving so quietly around the place. I quickly threw this test together after filming for the Nerd OD project. Not pictured: the grey tracksuit bottoms I was wearing to slob around the flat…

Costume Day

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Yesterday I got my backside into gear and dressed back up as Captain Boomerang for the next Nerd OD video, singing some lines for a rendition of We’re All In This Together from High School Musical. I toned down the blood and gore for a more nuanced healing black eye and duly prance around for the camera for a few minutes to try and do a one-shot grab of footage.

That mostly worked, but there is an outtake and blooper or two included in the footage I’ve uploaded to the guy compositing it all, so we’ll see what ends up in the final version.

Included in all that was the following addition material thats gone towards the fight video:

When unicorns attack

All in all, not a bad diversion, and I’ll link in the finished result when it gets completed in the next few days!

Oh, hello there weekend

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Wait, what, how? I’m not quite sure how the week has managed to drag and and yet zoom through at breakneck speed, but here we are and I’m two glasses of gin down with Great British Menu on the TV.

So I really can’t complain, and I even have some spoons rattling in my mental drawer.

I still need to do the singing cosplay filming, but the plan is to do that tomorrow. What I have done though is taken steps to assemble a version of Wolverine as per the film Logan. I just need to find a suitable wig.

I think we may do some online nattering tonight, draw the DDC together to talk nonsense and possibly play some Cards Against Humanity. Here’s to relaxing for the weekend.