The mute button. :x

'....'

 I am currently mute! I think some wizard stole into my apartment in the middle of the night, and now I cannot cast magic or clear my name if anyone says 'So I heard Jenny sucks, what do you have to say against these accusations?'

In honour of this, some half-arsed cosplay of the deaf-mute Shizune, from Katawa Shoujo. Man, my hair is long, I would have done better as Hanako.

(In fact, can this even be called half-arsed? It probably doesn't deserve even half an arse. Maybe a quarter, if I am lucky. I would happily settle for 'more arsed than white-top-and-jeans-L or ninja-headband-and-normal-clothes-Naruto.')

Anyway, apart from that, I have been resting, making weird, inhuman noises in an effort to regain speech, eating leftover chicken-and-sweetcorn soup and taking far too many Strepsils. Why do they taste so good? ;w;

Cosplay Diary: Bra top!

References for EVA 01's chest armour, and the final thing!

More work on my Evangelion Unit 01 cosplay, which has been on the backburner a while. Eva 01 has a few layers of armour plating over its chest, and my idea was to convert this into a bra top. 

For a base, I used some kind of cotton training bra meant for 12-year-olds to cover up their new mosquito bites with.

Cups covered with blue PVC (bottom half.)

Blue PVC, red PVC and some black rubber washers were used to cover up the cups.

Somehow my covering of the cups appeared to have eaten half the centre gore, because I have no idea what I'm doing. However, a little still remained, so I covered that too, and glued on a red glass cabochon to act as the Eva's 'core'. It's not very noticeably red - think the damage counters from Pokemon. But the intention was there...

An uncovered armour plate, made from interfacing, Rigilene boning
and definitely not my neatest stitches...

Finally, the external armour panels. I created a framework from interfacing and Rigilene boning. I then covered this with black cloth, then purple and green PVC, and attached them.

And the final result looks like this! Gratuitous filth incoming.

Bra on.

Bra off.

I'll be making a cropped jacket of some sort so the straps and underbust strap (which are all uncovered at the moment) won't be visible on the final cosplay.

I'm pretty happy with this though! My only worry is that the bra is a little small. This means I can't really jump around excessively or I will risk a nipple cheerfully poking out over the top, which would be pretty disastrous. I think I might wear plasters over them like last time I cosplayed, just in case of such wardrobe malfunctions - it would still be pretty bad, but less so than the alternative.

New Year's Eve

The only time of the
year that one can wear
a dress that appears to
have been patterned
on an ostrich and get
away with it.

Hooray! Against incredible odds, we all survived the Mayans. And that means we get to ring in the new year!

This year, I was spending it with my English friends. Slightly dubious about the idea of a pub crawl when the divines fortold rain, I flexed my Google-fu and found a whole bunch of modestly-priced, well-dressed events. These ranged from the bizarre (supperclub - a fairly arty experience seeming to involve pole dancing, fire breathing and latex gear) to certain disaster (Casino at the Empire - because who needs money anyway?). We settled on Zebrano's on Carnaby Street.

My outfit was easily the most excessive I have ever worn - the dress's skirt was a frothy mass of gradiented netting, paired with white tights. I spent a good while debating whether it was a good idea to step out of the door looking like a fairy reject, but I failed to realise that the dress would actually be the least of my worries.

When I left for pre-drinks, I was experiencing a little discomfort in my toes. I waved it away - beauty is pain, right? Unfortunately things only got worse. The little discomfort turned into a sharp sting every other step, and then the feeling of blood seeping into my tights by the time I was on the Tube to Holborn.

And so I became that typical woman you see hobbling away from a club at night, wincing and gritting her teeth with each tiny, mincing step... except it was about 7PM and I hadn't even made it to the party yet.

I chose not to admit defeat, but to advance in the opposite direction. Upon my arrival at Holborn I informed my comrades of my crushing defeat in the battle of womanhood, and took the Tube straight back home. Upon removing my tights, I was greeted with the discovery that the skin on each of my fourth toe knuckles had regretfully parted ways with the rest of my feet. Ah, and we used to be so close...

It was a short battle, but I still bear the scars.

After performing toe surgery, disinfecting the wounds and slapping a plaster on each, I slipped on a pair of flats. They were not quite so elegant, more on the functional side, but man, I only have ten toes to give.

Back on track, I joined up with the others at Zebrano's. It was a pretty cool place - non-sticky floor and nice decor. Everything was relatively quiet at the time - it was about 8PM, so not a lot of activity yet.

In order to avoid drinking on an empty stomach (which went really well last time) I'd managed to grab a McChicken Sandwich on the way there, but it turned out I didn't actually have much to fear on the food side. The ticket included a glass of champagne and canapes, which were actually delicious! Duck pancake rolls, breaded chicken on sticks, mini spring rolls and some little pieces of steak.

I stuck mostly to Asahi over the night, but did try a few new things. Paid a little more to try cocktails - Strawberry Kiss was sweet, fruity and creamy, tasting very similar to Baileys, if it came in a fruit flavour. I also tasted a little of an Espresso Martini, which tasted like coffee, to no-one's great surprise. Tim didn't manage to finish his spiced rum and Red Bull, so was passing it around - it didn't really taste of alcohol at all and more like the blood of Jelly Babies. I must have more of this delicious, cruel mixture!

As far as music went, they started off with more sort of... background music, which was nice to listen to without being intrusive, and then evolved into more danceable stuff as the night went on, causing the creation of dancefloors. It was a mix of newer things like Gangnam Style, and the sort of thing I had dim memories of hearing on the radio when I was about twelve. (Ten years later, I am finally In Da Club, who could have guessed?) 

We also discovered a DDRX2 machine at roughly 4:30 a.m. on the way to Leicester Square while passing Las Vegas (the amusements, not the city), so Matt and I had a go. The panels were pretty terrible and unresponsive, requiring very rough handling to register a hit, but we still passed everything. I am not entirely sure what the mainly tracksuited locals thought of a group of guys in suits hanging around watching a fellow in a tux and a girl in a fluffy dress violently slamming panels on a dance machine, but it must have looked hilarious.

I had fun! I hope everyone else did. And a happy new year to all! :3

Some kind of... multi-person selfshot, because we're just that cool.

'What, there are dancefloors without coloured arrows?!'

I think I fell into some kind of... disco time portal.

  Whew, it has been a tiring, yet fun weekend!

Friday evening was the Christmas party with my work colleagues, held at Sway, a restaurant/club in Holborn. To be honest, the place's organisation could have been a lot better - everything seemed rather unprepared, and the food took a while as well. The upshot of this all was that I ended up having to leave fairly early, when I had been expecting to be done with dinner ages before then, but I did have a really good time seeing my colleagues outside of work!

While I didn't go down there after dinner due to leaving, I managed to get a quick glance at the club section as well. It was 70s and 80's disco themed, and cheesy enough that I would not have been surprised if the entire ceiling of disco balls split open and oozed molten cheddar onto that ridiculous dancefloor.

Due to my double-booking, I then headed off to a gaming party/sleepover/cat safari at Matt's house. Unfortunately, I was struck by stomach pain which rendered me tired and immobile, so I spent a painful first half of the night upstairs lying down and waiting for painkillers to kick in. My mood was improved by the tuxedo kitty Mork, who seemed in a caring mood (which is odd - he is usually a bit of a treat-whore and so demands food for cuddles). But it was nice, he purred and nuzzled and curled up next to me, which was welcome company. Luckily I recovered in time to return to the living room and see the success of Tim, Anders and Matt's collaborative efforts at Megaman 3. 

It is a little known fact that Kenny is the archmage amongst kitties.

Mork on the piano!

The next morning, Anders was sadly not feeling very well and so went home. The rest of us met up with Jake and had a session of karaoke in Earl's Court, followed by the hearty meal of... a KFC family bucket. We were a fairly multicultural and similar-aged 'family' to say the least, but damn, it was cheap.

After that, a trip up to Embankment to snatch some DDR time. I've been trying to branch out a little, so we tried out the non-vocal of SEDUCTION, which was nice, and then used up two songs on Xmix1, which is three minutes long and includes sections of Dance Celebration, Votum Stellarum, Poseidon and Uranus. In total I played three games in a row - at my comfort level, instead of above, but I wasn't even exhausted afterwards, so perhaps I am getting less fragile! Hooray!

By contrast, a photo of me taken two years ago after a single DDR session.

Aaaand after that, a pub visit or two. I only felt like drinking right at the end, but I tried rum and coke for the first time and that was okay! I was pretty tired after all this, so I am glad today is a chill day, but that was all good fun. :3

ASOS money-off codes for all! Wheee~

 It's that time of year again! That time when I realise that I've been carelessly washing my jumpers until they have shrunk to doll-like proportions. And that the way things are going, I'll be wearing a burlap sack to New Year's. At least it won't matter if I spill things on it. ;__;

So it's a good time to be able to get money off things, right? How about at ASOS? :O

For once, given the level of reward, I've actually used a Facebook app - Fashion Bingo. It's basically 'spot the item, frame or lyric' with a card like the above, with rewards ranging from 5% to 30% off codes, or £1000 if you get crazy lucky somehow. I'm an Ellie Goulding fan, so I generally choose her. She is so cute. ♥
 

You can only click on items which show in the video, and only after they are shown. You win if you make a horizontal line.

I've played four times, and so far, I've managed to get two 10%'s and a 15% off code, so the returns are good! It looks like they might only work on full-price items (perhaps?) but that's still pretty decent. The codes will last until 30th December, but this game only runs until 14th December, so time to squirrel away some codes...

Here be spoilers (for Ellie)

 

Only you can be

The aching in my heart

My enemy

The only animal I couldn't fight

You hold me in the dark 

when storms arrive

...

And then she sings 'Only you' about 5000 times, in case you didn't click that panel yet.