With the slow sad demise of twitter, I've been thinking about starting to use this thing more regularly again. But in the meantime, here's a Yuletide letter. 

( Read more... ) I had forgotten how much I hate how DW does cuts. Anyway, I hope whoever gets assigned to me finds this useful and not excessive. For some reason I talk a lot when I write these.

Okay so a few days back I was puttering about Twitter with the idea of putting out a mass email for people who might want to accompany me on some nerdy tourist shenanigans for a day or two immediately before (or possibly after) next year's PMC. Well, long story short, there were a lot of responses, I decided I didn't want to eff around with multiple email addresses, and I decided to put it here instead.

At this point, obviously, nothing is set in stone. I'm roughly 90% sure, finances permitting, that I'll be tacking an extra 1-2 days onto my PMC trip for the purposes of doing stuff in California beyond just "Arrive, recover from jet lag, do con stuff forever, go home." Obviously I would really like some form of company for this. But I see it less as a case of "Let's get a big group together and Plan All The Things" because I hate having to coordinate people. HATE. It's more like "I wanna do X, Y, and possibly Z stuff, feel free to come with me if you're around and interested."

Possible stuff I would be doing with this time includes:

- Notorious Ameritoku site pilgrimage. I wanna go to the Command Center. I wanna take cosplay pictures at the Command Center. I would also not say no to a trip to the temple from VR Troopers. Bring your own vest.

- Beach trip. I want to splash around in the Pacific Ocean because I never have before. (Also POSSIBLY cosplay photos as Delphine, particularly if a Command Center trip falls through.)

- Random LA area touristy stuff IDK.

- If David Yost announces another pre-PMC Hiking With Fans expedition, I'm going. End of discussion. Don't care if other plans were made or not. My Billy fandom trumps literally everything.

And stuff that will be required in order to make any combination of the above events possible:

- Hotel space. Because the hotel(s) for PMC are stupid expensive when not at con rate and I doubt I could tack additional days onto my reservation at this point anyway, the plan would be to reserve a much cheaper room elsewhere and 'move in' to con space on (IIRC, Bats correct me if I'm wrong) Thursday night.

- Transportation. Guys, I have SUPER BAD driving anxiety. While I theoretically could rent a car and tool myself around the greater Los Angeles area, I REALLY do not want to. So if you're driving to the con or renting a car, and you're willing to have a Pocky in your passenger seat, you will be my hero. Also I will totally chip in for gas and/or car rental expenses. Failing that...IDEK anything about public transit in the LA area, but I'm willing to try. :P

So TLDR, nothing is set in stone as yet, this is basically me just shouting my thoughts into the void as usual for the sake of gauging interest. Hit me with a comment or tweet at me if you want in. Let's go have adventures together.

So awhile ago I made a placeholder post for my Yuletide letter. Tonight I tried to edit my placeholder post with my actual Yuletide letter. And Dreamwidth ATE IT. It is GONE. 

Nevermind the fact that the URL for that placeholder post is what was linked in like, my entire signup?

WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO NOW?

BEHOLD, LIKE A COSPLAYING PHOENIX I ARISE FROM THE ASHES OF FAILURE AND ACHIEVE...VICTORY!











Congratulations, Pocky! It's a head!

This morning, in a last-minute surge of motivation, I went to Michael's, bought a whole bunch of new crap, and then spent all afternoon assembling it into this. No more molding. Fuck molding. This was BUILT, out of craft foam, Model Magic, and a mutilated baseball cap.  I've accomplished more on this costume today than I have in the past three months. I'm not going to say it's perfect, because it's not. The proportions are off and it's rougher than I'd like. But it's SOMETHING. And right now that something is drying in preparation for paint and detailing. 

Meanwhile, for the first time since I started work on this godforsaken thing, I got to work on something OTHER than the stupid head:



Here is a brooch-thing. It wasn't a seashell after all. I might never have known WHAT it was, were it not for tptigger and her shiny screencaps. Right now it needs baking, painting, and a pin back.



Seashell belt. I could weep for joy.

I'm not out of the woods yet. The head still needs a lot of work, and I've not even started the tunic yet. But there's hope, dammit, and there wasn't much of that before. 

 And letter for Femslash Ficathon goes here. 

 So my contact lens appointment happened, and...fuck, I don't even have anything funny to say about this. It was not funny. It was unpleasant and frustrating, and after roughly 40 minutes of attempting unsuccessfully to get a contact lens into my eye I wound up leaving and crying in my car. 

Yay.

So here we are, less than three months until the con, and not only do I not have a costume, I also would not be able to SEE anything in my costume if it did exist.

While I appreciate and am heartened by all the cheerleading these posts have gotten, my persistence is beginning to wear thin.

At this point, I've decided to give the molding one more shot since I have all the supplies anyway. I may or may not give the contacts another shot; part of me is inclined to say "fuck it, I'll be blind for a few hours, cosplay is not about comfort" because the entire thing was just that traumatic. 

And this post is so much less witty than the other ones. Sorry, folks. 

 Ha. Hahahahaha.

Fuck.

Back of head mold was so glued to the wig head that I broke both of them trying to get it off.

Front of head mold grew a bunch of MOTHERFUCKING BLACK MOLD on the inside over the past week.

Both are now in the trash and I am back to square one.

Again. 

Really not sure how to proceed from here. Make another go with the paper mache? Try a different material? 

My knee-jerk reaction is to want to return all the other supplies I bought last weekend and abandon this project entirely.

See guys, this is why I don't do 'real' cosplay.

 ( Last time, on Power Rangers... )