#67 Cosplay plans

Hiya!

It's been a while again, what a surprise. I was so busy for a couple of weeks there it isn't even remotely funny. I visibly lost weight - but I was able to get my cosplay done barely in time for Tracon X and had a great weekend, despite some people-related hiccups and this time not even popping into a single program or lecture... I gotta work up to that next year. I'm genuinely bummed because I didn't go listen to some stuff. Ugh. Oh well.

I might go to Desucon Frostbite next year, as well as Tracon XI of course and maybe the summer Desucon as well.  Oh, and Popcult Helsinki. We'll see. I honestly have no idea as to what I'll be doing after the year is over and I graduate, so here's to hoping I guess?

Anyway, my cosplay plans are as follows:

Desucon Frostbite: repeat Tracon X:s Archmage/Krosis cosplay from Skyrim. Finally I get to wear this costume in more appropriate weather!

Popcult Helsinki: Repeat of said Skyrim cosplay, but with a friend who's going to make a cosplay of the Saviour's Hide (F) armour in Skyrim.

Desucon: Nux from Mad Max Fury Road (possibly with Capable? not sure yet)

Yes, he is bald. Yes, I will be shaving my head.
Yes, I'm going to try and send my hair to a charity
that could make wigs out of it for people
who deal with hair loss and need hair pieces. Yes.

Tracon XI: Groot on one day, a Nux + Max + Capable/other wife group cosplay on the other

Currently I'm trying to work out how I could build the steering wheel from the movie for Nux and how I could possibly get the Groot costume to work... because I need platforms and the planning will need to be good to make sure I can still walk and remove some parts to go to the toilet etc. And I need to be able to DO SOMETHING with my hands while in costume. Ugh. We'll see. But at least it looks like I'll be able to order some specific car parts to build this thing:

I could build it entirely out of foam or other more easily available materials, but it a. wouldn't look great and b. would be considerably less durable. If at all possible, I want to be able to attach this thing to my costume so I don't actually have to hold it in my hand the whole time. Obviously I also have to buy some silver decorative cake spray for funsies (and Valhalla).

I'm also getting some decent body camouflage palettes now, and looking at what I could use to build Nux's scarifications and how I could conceal my binding when I wear the costume. I'm doing a Nux that is wearing Mad Max's jacket just in case I end up simply going with sports tape, but I really want to build a "prosthetic skin" part that I could stick over the binding to make it blend with my skin better. I'll see. Probably will be posting updates here sometimes, since I actually have a year's time to work up to the cosplay! I already went and bought a used leather jacket for ~15€ that I can use to distress, it just requires some modding and the shoulder pad. Most of the other stuff Nux wears ("army"-esque pants, pilot goggles etc) I'll be able to buy off a used army equipment reseller in Finland, so that's great. I also have some super dinky old army boots I can use for the costume, even though they're not completely accurate to the source material (you can see on one of the Nux pictures above, he's wearing some sort of laced shoe alright, but it doesn't look like an iron-toe boot). At least I'll get use out of them.

I'm of a relatively proportionate body type, but I want to be able to pull of a "shirtless skinny man"-look in a decent way - so I started working out. Nothing too grand, a 5km jog and bodyweight/muscle exercise every other day. I'll see if I progress into something more challenging at some point. Really I just want to work on my stomach muscles and arms, but I figured why not build my base fitness level up while I do that.

That's mostly what I've been up to... I don't know whether or not I should make a cosplay-building post similar to the one I did on Star Lord with my Skyrim cosplay? I have pictures from the process, I just did it so quickly (a similar-length preparation period as with Star Lord, only about 5 times as much to build and get done) that I don't know the process will be very coherent.. but if someone is curious about, say, how I did the Daedric War Axe or Wabbajack, since I didn't go exactly according to a tutorial this time, I could do that? I don't know. I'll probably end up doing something to that effect anyway, since I want to keep the posts as reminders to myself as well.

For now, bye!

#66

I'm not sure I'd even be able to recap everything that's happened since the last post, seriously.

Mad Max was freakin' epic, though. Also I'm now through with my summer job - in other words, the thing that's taken most of my time since late May. I have my wages to save and spend, and now I have to get on with my Skyrim costume for Tracon X big time. We have yet to figure out parking for the weekend in question (aka whether or not the cost is reasonable enough for us to even drive up there) because the Internet is being a contradictory little shit. What a surprise.

Between the 3rd and 4th camps I worked at, I replaced my old-as-balls-iPod with a new iPod Touch. I've gotta say, I really didn't need any features besides playing music, but the Nano and Shuffle (or whatever the tiny ones are called, I don't even know) only come in up to like 16GB max, which... well, suffice to say, in 7 years I've grown used to 120GB+ and by default my library has about 60+ gigs of music that I want on a player. So. There's that. Also now I have like about 1000 songs I've apparently misplaced (on my computer) and I need to re-download a bunch of music from like 2007-2010. I've probably changed computers enough times to have lost the oldest music files...

I'm struggling with some concert stuff - there's a Pariisin Kevät concert the day we're supposed to travel to Tre for Tracon, and I kinda sorta REALLY REALLY WANT TO GO. But then I'd have to drive up at night and conventions tend to be very tiring even with a solid night's sleep. Sigh. Also, later in the year, Children of Bodom have a gig with Lamb of God as their support, which kind of makes me drool - and Sabaton is playing at Barona Arena apparently on the day I'm supposed to graduate. If that's not a sign saying I should go, I don't know what is.

Today I was downloading some random stuff I wanted back on my iPod, and since I just watched the latest Teens React - Lyrics Breakdown and it was about twenty one pilots, who I've been meaning to check out anyway, I decided to look into them a bit. And basically now I have their entire discography. Oh dear. Lane Boy in particular appeals to me - both the aesthetic of the video and the song. 21PFTW!

Wow, that acronym was so lame.

Anyway, my weekend is full of activity - Saapas patrol on Friday, mass training and Ant-Man on Saturday, and on Sunday there'll be confirmation mass and parties plus my friend's send-off to study in Hong Kong - and school's officially starting on Monday, so it might be a while until I post again! Toodles!

// I'll try to document the making of my Skyrim costume here as well, probably I'll end up doing a gigantic post like the one I made about Star Lord. Since that's pretty much the only post that sees any traffic on this blog, I figure it might be a functional way to kinda show what I'm building and how. 

#65 - Age of Ultron, Popcult & Star Lord 3.0

Okay so two months in recap.

- Finished my last trainee period and did pretty well
- My thesis work is moving forward at a decent pace
- I'm only a bit behind on schoolwork
- My summer job is going to take almost all of the 2,5 months I technically have off from school
- Said summer job is also going to pay a decent wage so I can save up some money and replace my phone, though, so there's that

I've been pretty much drowned in schoolwork, really. I have over 30 book loans just from the campus libraries of my school, plus others from various city libraries. Sigh. But I've also been moderately productive so that's great.

I finished reading It's Kind of a Funny Story. It wasn't really up my alley I guess? Some of my friends were praising it but it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. I don't really even know why. Some of the characterisations and the protagonist's narrative just irritated me too much to enjoy it a lot, I guess.

I bought Majora's Mask 3D which is great, because it has those "older LoZ games"-esque qualities of actually having some interesting puzzles and other things that are very satisfying to figure out as you play. I haven't played through it yet, because first I started trying to catch up in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (which I hadn't played since mid-November and I wanted to not lose all my fancy hybrid flowers. Hashtag priorities.) and went on a sort of Fantasy Life binge in between all of that as well.

Moviewise: Cinderella was super clichéd (I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise to be honest) but really cute. Richard Madden was a prince to die for. Also I enjoyed Into the Woods immensely.

Then. THEN.

AVENGERS - AGE OF ULTRON FINALLY CAME OUT! This has been expected for 3+ years. So awesome. I've seen it 4 times in the cinema so far. I really enjoyed it - although there were some less-than-awesome aspects that I do recognize. The Maximoff twins were amazing, too. Sigh. The Vision is basically my life now. I cosplayed Wanda to the premiere (we went with a Marvel cosplay group) and essentially I channeled the heck out of her by having all of the feels. I've never considered myself much of a Paul Bettany stan but damn. Afterwards I realized that the same man has also played Silas in The Da Vinci Code, who was kind of a weird character to root for but still. And he played Dustfinger in the Inkheart film adaptation, which means that he literally is my ultimate literary mancrush. The whole Vision thing makes a lot more sense after that. Ha.

Here is a picture of our group on the night of the premiere:

The weekend of the AoU premiere was Popcult Helsinki. I really enjoyed the event! I went as Scarlett Witch / Wanda Maximoff on Saturday and used my Star Lord cosplay on Sunday. I took my portable speaker with me and blasted some tunes from Awesome Mix Vol. 1, naturally. We also had a sort of informal "Marvel photoshoot" in the park near the venue on Saturday, and a more planned photoshoot with my friend who was cosplaying Doctor Strange on Sunday. I don't have pictures from the Marvel shoot as of yet, but here's us on Sunday:

I kind of really like the pictures... I do wish the person who had those pictures from Saturday would upload them somewhere though. Oh well.

A Finnish youtuber called eerahwave also included me in her video collage of Sunday's cosplays! Being included basically made me irrationally happy, ha.

Right now I'm looking forward to finishing my remaining schoolwork, seeing Mad Max - Fury Road in theaters, and enjoying my almost 2 weeks off before I start working.

Bye!

#64

OH GOD, MY BACK IS SO SORE.

Also, I didn't notice I had Caps Lock on at first. Well, in retrospect I figured the emphasis was only appropriate.

I was at a student bar/pub crawl thing. We had fun. I ate the best hamburger I have ever had before we went to bed.

Also I watched the 100 season 2 finale today, it was so bomb. I can't wait for season 3 to start in the fall. I have lost all hope for any redemption of Teen Wolf's future, it's just been a downward spiral since the second season ended, basically. Eh. I'm sad, because I feel like the early days of the show were phenomenal and it had so much potential. Thankfully it introduced me into really great actors and some awesome people from the fandom as well - before all the drama started to really hit the fandom, too. It was a wild ride, I actually originally went on tumblr. specifically because of TW. Sigh.

Today I received It's Kind of a Funny Story and High-Rise in the mail... they were the exact same size, which was very pleasing to me, ha. I'm trying to finish The Infinite Sea right now, and then I might move on to one of those.

I'm going to see the new Cinderella on Friday aka tomorrow, probably. I don't know yet. We'll see...

I don't even know what I'm thinking right now, I just felt like making a post here although I don't have much to say really. Ha. Oh! I think I might don my Star Lord costume again for the Popcult event next month - assuming that I can even afford to go. There are two birthday parties I gotta go to on the next 2 weekends. I think that I might actually just mainly stay sober and party on like that, because I don't have too much money to spare. And since I've been on a cruise and then 3 separate party/dancing events and occasions this year already, I feel like my quota has been filled for quite a while. Of course I'm going to go and have fun with my friends on their birthdays, but I just won't drink. I did it for tons of people's housewarming parties back when I started at uni, it shouldn't be too hard now. And I kind of want to use money for some other things except pouring it down my throat, let's be real here.

Okay, I really have nothing else to write about now.

Bye!

#63

I feel like I always start my posts by whining about either how long or how little time it's been since the previous post. Hashtag so original. IT HAS BEEN QUITE A WHILE THOUGH.

I watched season 2 - or what I thought was the entirety of season 2 - of the 100 on Couch Tuner, only to find out the whole thing hadn't aired yet. Anyone else who has bingewatched shows at a pace of like one season a day knows the struggle of suddenly having to wait a whole month for the remaining 4 episodes. Still, I haven't been let down yet - even though the start of season 1 isn't that strong except for an interesting premise (even the characters are pretty weak in the beginning, in my opinion) it's only been improving the further we go into the second season. The writers of the show have this knack for the characters staying true to themselves and still managing to develop, and there are lots of dramatic plot twists. They are always supremely painful yet completely logical and reasonable. One of my favourite things in this show, really. I ordered the books the show is loosely based on: for once, the show is like way better. If post-apocalyptic slightly YA-ish plots and shows interest you, definitely check out the TV version in stead of the novels. I've only read 1/3 so far, and I'm not too impressed.

Speaking of being impressed by books: first of all, I've been reading more Joe Hill. I don't remember if I talked about NOS4A2 yet, but it was  a m a z i n g. A definite recommendation for someone who enjoys horror and/or Stephen King-esque novels. I also read The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, which is some more post-apocalyptic YA thing. Notice a theme here? Hah. Anyway, it has aliens and shit. It's great, especially if you're like me and like to consume entertainment at a pretty rapid pace instead of overthinking it. I think the novel's plot is good, but apparently some of the twists are really obvious to people. I whisk through books so fast it wasn't an issue for me, but maybe something to think about. There's also going to be a movie about it, which will be released sometime in 2016. I have the sequel, but I've been dreading starting it because the third novel won't be released until somewhere in the fall. Hng.

We went out clubbing for a bit last weekend, again. I also caught a cold again. Thankfully I didn't do any significant damage to tendons anywhere this time, though. I did wear some heels (like barely 2" since I usually don't wear heels, but it's still quite a change from flats/combat boots) so basically my thighs and calves were sore as hell the next day. It felt like quite a workout. Also I think the same young-ish Turkish guy tried to snuggle me on the dance floor like 5 times. Sigh. But hey, J's little sister turned 18 (that's why we were partying) and apparently she had a lot of fun, so all's well that ends well! I kinda want to revisit my favourite gay club at some point, too. Have to drag my friends there sometime - we've been going to the same place lately, because they have free entry until midnight and that's just... handy as heck. So. We'll see.

I don't know if I was going anywhere with this. I kind of really want to buy some NYX cosmetics right now, though. Or maybe Sleek would have some nice highlighters? I have tons of eyeshadows and even some lip colours now, I kind of need to get on track with lip pencils though. I don't know. And I haven't been able to find a more natural-looking foundation that suits me yet. Ugh. I'm thinking about trying some BB/CC cream by Gosh that someone on the internet recommended because it's vegan. Oh dear. Also, can I just point out that it's super irritating when I watch some US/UK beauty vloggers talk about their favourite (especially drugstore) products and there is literally no way to get them to Finland? The stores don't carry them, online drugstores don't ship to Finland and neither do most Amazon or eBay sellers. The struggle is so real. Well, I'll see if there's a NYX foundation some people like, maybe I'll just accidentally order some other products on the side too.... Tee hee.

Bye!

#62

Hey!

I just felt like typing something right now. I haven't exactly been on top of my stuff for this past week. Last Saturday we had a kind of collective birthday/cocktail party. It was very icy outside and I was wearing Converse (smart, I know) and walking really carefully. Then on one of the few areas where there was no ice aka on some stairs to the subway, I stepped sideways on my ankle and something snapped. We were headed out and I - obviously - didn't stop to do anything about it until about 4 hours later when we got back home. By then I had a fist-sized bruise on the outside of my ankle and it was swollen to about twice the normal width.

I tend to get quite a lot of minor ankle injuries because of the 6 years of track and field I did a while back. I snapped tendons left and right - which means that while I might be more likely to injure myself on the ankles, the injuries will rarely result in torn ligaments or tendons because they're stretched from before. But yeah, I've been wearing a support bandage on the bad ankle for most of last week. Then on Tuesday I noticed I'd caught a cold, so I've been doubly indisposed. Ugh.

Luckily this week was kind of our unofficial winter holiday - we don't actually get one at Uni levels of education, except for Christmas - so I didn't have to try to internalise new information at school except for about 2 hours on Wednesday, ha. Also I don't have a lot to do when it comes to our current group assignments so all I'll have to do is take care of an old, overdue thing that's just my own.

I started watching The 100 on Netflix yesterday evening, and I'm about half an hour away from the end of season 1. Thank Jeebus I can continue to the second season my loyal streaming site, and I don't have to wait for months until it appears on Netflix... Eh. I'll get over my slight moral aversion to watching series illegally at some point I guess. Next plan is to watch Agent Carter on Hulu, maybe, because I believe certain TV networks also count Hulu views as legitimate views on shows that I couldn't legitimately watch yet. Eh.

I'm also going to get the Fifty shades series into my hands, so I can make sure my arguments about Christian Grey & Anastasia Steele's abuser/victim relationship are legitimate. Don't get me wrong now, BDSM is a-ok to me (I also like reading fiction that includes elements of it, except I have some criteria when it comes to quality and character archetypes) but Fifty shades is just abuse cloaked as responsible BDSM practice and even romance, for fuck's sake. Whatever, there are plenty of reasonable sources who take apart the entire series for it's horrendous misrepresentation of BDSM not to mention romanticising and idealising a toxic relationship that seems to mirror, for a majority of the time, very closely what an emotionally manipulative abuser does to their victim. Seriously, it's so cringe-worthy. I feel bad. But I'm still going to read them so that any of my arguments can't be "refuted" (in the defenders' minds) as ill-informed. Again, as with any other problematic media, I'm not telling anyone to boycott anything they enjoy - go see the movie, buy the books, whatever floats your goat.

What I want is a media-critical stance where consumers a. are informed enough to recognise problems when they see them or b. they are suspicious enough to do research about things they are interested in. Boo-hoo, it's harder to enjoy things that way. But it's also the only way to be an actually responsible media consumer.

Anyway, that's enough ranting for now, seriously. I'm going to go back to watching the season 1 finale of The 100.

Bye!

#61

Oh my god, I am so caught up on my ish, you wouldn't believe.

Only one assignment left, and that one I just have to improve it a bit by actually sourcing things. Ay.

Also I finished reading the Finlandia Literary Prize -winning novel of 2014, and it was really good. The three main characters all had distinctive, realistic narratives and the plot development was great in my opinion. If you can read Finnish, I definitely recommend it! He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät by Jussi Valtonen. Ugh. Really good though. I've read two Finnish novels in a row this month, it must be a record. Ha. But now I'm starting Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, so there goes that streak.

Our lectures were kind of irritating and mind-blowingly dull today. We have to write a communication plan and some kind of article-like piece and actually try to get it published in some local newspaper - because our Uni of AS is funded based on published works. So they make us write up articles 90% of us don't have a relevant subject to work on for, just in case it'll improve the funding. Great academic goals they're setting, huh? Oh well, that must kind of be the reality of difficult economic situations, I guess.

I started actually playing AC:Pirates on my iPad. The writing is atrocious (as was to be expected, it's not like it's and actual AC game) but the character design is pretty nice, and I love the gameplay where you get to sail your ship around. All in all, I think it's a pretty good tablet / mobile gaming format, and the graphics you can run on tablets and smartphones surprise me positively sometimes.

Right now basically the only reason I'm writing a post is that both my tablet and phone had software updates available, so I'm waiting for those to finish downloading and installing. We'll see if the phone update makes all my keyboard shortcuts disappear again, like they've done with all past updates since iOS 8. FYI: If you have this same problem with keyboard shortcuts (the list) disappearing from your Settings > General > Keyboards > Shortcuts, try turning Predictive keyboards off and on again. It seems to work for me. Some people have also reported that the problem of the shortcuts remaining in the phone as a list but not showing up when you type can be sorted out with the same solution. Of course, all of this information and various other possible solutions can be found on the Apple discussion forums but I thought I'd share it here in case someone else is struggling with this.

I'm sorry I keep talking about how "well" I'm doing at school right now, I'm just really proud of myself. Also, in case someone is interested, I added all of my social medias into my profile.

Bye!