Title of a True Cosplayer, which are you?

Before i start, i would like to make some claims.
* This blog entry is only but my mere opinion.
* It is in no way directed at anyone, anywhere, any society, any government, any whatever.
* Not an entry to flame, not an entry to troll, but an entry to be pondered upon.
* It is an entry made for the love of cosplay and also to argue back on my own thoughts.
* It is my blog, you abhor what i say, you leave. As simple as that ^_^
* I welcome comments and constructive debates. Trolls can just GTFO ^^
* This will be one heck of a long entry.

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 hmm.....i've been pondering on this once again and everytime i see this crap pops up, i'll be thinking ' AW MAN, not another one of this..?!?!'

but then this time, it has indirectly been directed at not only me, but most of the other cosplayers out there.
heck cares if you cosplay, cosmodel,cosmanequin, cosfuck, coswhatever.........
it's a hobby to be shared by all. Our community is already a minority and if we divide ourselves even more by categorizing, wouldn't that make matters worse?

What happened to ' We should stick together, we should enjoy this together, sportsmanship in competitions '.....where are those values now?
5 years ago, although the cosplay community was small, it was one of the best i would say. Although not many knew about cosplaying, it was, in my opinion, at it's prime.
We'd see a whole lot of variety in cosplay....from old schools to newly released series. Now? well....it is always that ' IF-IT-IS-NOT-POPULAR-I-M-NOT-COSPLAYING' mentality...or 'IF-IT-IS-NOT-EPIC-ENOUGH-I-M-NOT-COSPLAYING' mentality.

I thought cosplaying is about the love for the series and character? correct me if i'm wrong, but all i see now is kiasu-ism....
i have to be more AWESOME than you, my costume has to be more poofy...blablabla...
and now, well...there's a certain arguement that popped out in a certain social networking system.

let me quote and summarize

a cosplayer who only does photoshoots = CosMODELLER
a cosplayer who does photoshoots + joins competition = TRUE COSPLAYER
a cosplayer who buys everything and nothing DIY-ed = CosMannequin

hmm.......what do you think?
if i were to categorize myself in this context, i'd be a cosmodeller (WOOT! I AM A MODEL!!!! XD)
yeah, i only do photoshoots and NEVER had i joined any competitions on my own name. I did help out for friend's performance but that's it. Does that make me a fake cosplayer?
however, think about this...

I never participated in competitions, but when i cosplay, i immerse my mind, my body and soul into the very character i'm cosplaying. HECK, it was so scary that i even picked up loving desserts and sweet food after cosplaying a certain character.
I try my utmost best to understand that certain character before i actually put on that costume. So, does that still make me a cosmodeller? (if that word even exist..LOL coz i see red lines underlining it..LOL)

I do not sew my own costumes, but i make alterations.....
i researched on the costume, trying my very best to make it as accurate as possible....
I lose weight, i pile muscles, control my diet so that when i cosplay that certain character, i'll be logically be as accurate as possible.
I do not choose famous characters, rather characters that i love and has little screen time (Heine Westenfluss..T^T died in 3 episodes, tell me...how many of you actually remembers him?)

i'm not trying to blow my own horn here (well, even if i am, heck! it's my blog...*sticks tongue out*) it's just that.... i was a little bit insulted and annoyed when i read that sentence.
There are a few reasons as to why i do not participate in competitions....
1. Too hectic
I go to events to have fun, not to compete. BUT i salute you guys out there who joins the competition.
2. Time constraints
I do not wanna be under time constraints when i go to events. I wanna wander everywhere, anytime and at my own pace. I was involved in competitions as a fellow helper once, and for us to hang around the place with schedule being delayed wasn't a very pleasant experience.
3. Same faces
hmm......well, nothing much to be said here except i always see the same faces during competitions. Not that that is bad, because you guys have the fighting spirit to join over and over again.....kudos to you guys, but well.....i'm not that type of a person you see...

ALSO, i do not consider myself a veteran, intermediate, master, pro, whatever......
I'm still a beginner.......we're all still learning and we help each other out during the times we get together.
We make mistakes, we learn from it.
We face problems, we solve it together.
We laugh together, We go through difficulties together.
We share skills, we teach each other what we know individually...

Isn't that all part of cosplaying? isn't that what makes cosplaying a beautiful hobby?
So, ask yourself......are you a :-

1 True cosplayer A
Joins competitions
Does photoshoots
REALLLLYYY popular

or

2 True cosplayer B
Cosplaying for the love of it
Getting together with friend who share the same hobby
Learning as well as teaching others at the same time

What are you.....A or B?

also, i would like to quote from a friend's FB..

You do not claim yourself to be EPIC. Others tell you that you are EPIC

Listening to : Tackey & Tsubasa - Yumemonogatari
Mood : .......lazy....

A day when everything could go wrong, WENT WRONG!

This is an entry i mustn't forget. why? because, everything that i couldn't imagine could happen, happened!!! it's as though we were jynxed..!!!

It all started like this...
Last weekend, we (the team) decided to have a photoshoot (ok, we kinda planned this a WHOOOOLLLEEE LONG TIME AGO)
all of us didn't bother to pack until the very last minute, something which i hardly do because when it comes to packing, i would've finished doing so the week before. But you see, i was so freaking busy this month and almost every weekend, i have something on.

SO, the day came and it was Friday. After work, i went over to pyramid to pick up Riko and Relyss who have been waiting for me since .....i think 3pm? not that sure..LOL.....(oh, and my mom hitched a ride from there too. She miraculously found her way to cheras and all the way back to pyramid with her friend, who is also a master when it comes to being lost.)

After the excruciating ride back from Sunway Pyramid during the rush hour, we finally reached home at about 7.30pm. So, we began out final packing and checking.....we were loading stuffs into the car and i slowly remembered stuffs that i forgot to pack.
i almost left my laptop and speakers. It hit me when i went to the toilet when we were about to leave. Then i walked past my room and saw the speakers and laptop sitting happily on the table.
So, no harm done, i packed those 2 and loaded into the car.

when Tsu arrived, we left for my new house which, coincidentally was also the photoshoot location..LOL.
blablabla, we went there, unloaded the stuffs and head over to bukit tinggi for our late dinner. (nope, not supper yet, it was 8pm-ish)
Ok, this is when everything started.....

The service in the cafe was so freaking slow, i was so hungry i could swallow that waiter whole. And to top things up, that stupid guy had difficulties understanding English...goodness me, i had to speak mandarin with him (which i didn't like much because my mandarin sucks). After waiting for like 30 mins, they finally served me my food.

See wah then called me saying she was around bukit tinggi area and i thought, why not she met up with us and then go to my house after that....She was around that area looking for bandages for her bindings and we went to watsons, guardian and also tesco....it's either they ran out of bandages, or the bandages costs a bomb. (who the hell would pay RM16++ for bandages?!!?!)

THEN, i noticed my car petrol is running low, so i told see wah to meet me back at the house and i went and pumped petrol for my car. As i approached the petrol station, i finally realized the most important thing.....
THE CAMERA..!! WE LEFT THE CAMERA IN MY OTHER HOME!!!!
HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO A PHOTOSHOOT WITHOUT A CAMERA?!?!?!?!
i got so frustrated, i started cursing in the car.....and then to make matters worse, my bro had already left the house, or i could get him to bring it over.

So, we went back to my new house, and then planned out something. That was when Riko realized that she also forgotten her toiletries and bath towel (also left behind in my old house)....and also See Wah, left her entire luggage bag at home......
thus, we decided that Relyss and Tsu stayed behind in the new house, clear up the room a little and the rest went to retrieve the forgotten items.

See Wah drove, and first stop was her house to get the luggage. It was so hilarious because the luggage was practically staring back at her....She left the luggage at the most prominent place...seriously, i didn't know how she could've forgotten, judging from the spot she left the luggage..LOL!!
anyway, after that, next stop was my old house. When we reached my house, it finally started to pour......it rained so heavy all of a sudden!
I had to shield the camera with my body....=_=
ANYWAY, we went back to the new house.......and well, we started styling the wigs for the photoshoot the next day.....i really went OMG because.... i styled the wigs till it was almost 3am in the morning.....Hakkai's wig was the toughest to style because i didn't know how to spike it up, and given the situation and time, i was much too exhausted.

At that night, omaigod....everyone in the room was practically frozen because of the full blast from the air cond. Tsu and relyss pulled the comforter so much that i only had half of my body covered. and the air cond was directed at me....DIRECTLY!!!!
See Wah and Riko had to pull the mattress AWAY from the aircond..LOL (not that THAT made any difference..LOL!!!)

SO, morning came and well...we wanted to get breakfast from the burger king drive through, but SHITZ, it wasn't a 24 hour outlet and we had to go to McD instead. good thing it wasn't THAT far away.
The shoot was pretty fun (i get to thwack goku..LOL!!!) but we had to cut short the shoot because we started late, and See Wah had her japanese class to attend. (so, it's bye bye gojyo..T^T)
the 3 of us continued on (Sanzo, Goku and Hakkai) for a little while more before we switched to our C2AGE plans.
so it was.....

Sanzo = Tezuka
Goku = Ryoma
Hakkai = Kida
Photog Relyss = Suzaku

nothing much about the event...it was to me...kinda boring but we found a spot on the 2nd floor which was kinda cool for shoots.

After spending some time at the event, we left the venue and went in search of a park. Good thing it was near my old office, so finding it wasn't difficult..we had wanted to go down to look at the place but there weren't any parking space left, so we just went home.

That night, i started packing for my 10km run the next day. Whilst packing, i finally realized...OMFG...i left my hands free kit at home and without the rhythm of the songs, i couldn't run! (well, i could, but i'd suck so bad...)
Also, i also left my gym card at home.......fuck rite?
so we had to wake up extra early the next day (around 4am) and head on back to the old house before i could finally leave for KL for my run.

The bad luck streak lasted almost the entire saturday......and MY GOLLY, was i glad that this all was over.
Yup, it was a long entry but hey........it was a day when everything could go wrong, actually WENT WRONG!!!!!

p.s...ok, no more photoshoot-today-10km-run-the-next-day anymore for me....
p.p.s...ALSO, gonna avoid morning runs now..!!! (goodness, waking up at ungodly hours kills)

Listening to : FullMetal Alchemist - Link
Mood : =_=