Happy Chinese New Year! (And a step by step art)

In which Hong Meiling teaches English and not Chinese,
due to lack of skill in the artist...

Step-by-step, how I make my art!

Believe it or not, I'm supposed to be Chinese. I'm just exceptionally bad at it!

My parents are from Hong Kong, but I'm British-born. Apparently when I was a toddler I spoke Cantonese, but my father thought I'd end up continuing this at school, so decreed that no-one was allowed to speak to me in anything other than English at home.

I never regained Cantonese, and I'm slightly disappointed in this. I think my father's worries were misplaced - like anyone pays attention to what a four-year-old says matters anyway. I could have been jabbering away in Urdu and the Reception teachers would have probably have just smiled and nodded and handed me a tub of Play-doh.

But here I am today! A splendid specimen of a banana ('yellow on the outside, white on the inside') and probably the least-Chinese Chinese person you'd know.

Anyway, I drew the above art in celebration, of Hong Meiling from Touhou, perhaps the only Chinese thing which is even more unconvincingly Chinese than me. It was a relatively quick piece, for me. Originally, I intended her to say 'Happy New Year', so I just scribbled it down as the direct translation.

Then I remembered something. Don't we usually say 'Kung hei fat choi' for Chinese New Year? Eep. Do all people say that? Or maybe... it's just the thing I am obligated to say before I receive my red paper packet (my yearly 'Congratulations, you did not get married' bonus). What do other people say? Would it be weird to write that here?

I tried to Google it, but alas, trying to read the debates on this was like wading into some kind of grammatical, Mandarin VS Cantonese shitstorm where people were hurling Chinese dictionaries, anecdotes and accusations of being culturally insensitive everywhere.

So I just chickened out and wrote 'Happy Chinese New Year'.  ;__; I am sorry, ancestors, I bring great dishonour to famiry.

Les Misérables - 'If you're poor in France, you're gonna have a bad time.'

Do you Hear the People Sing?

Ah, Les Mis. The story of a convict who breaks parole, adopts a little girl and gets swept up in a revolution. I must confess that I'm still too afraid to pick up the book (it is of impressive size and would probably result in broken toes on the first attempt to lift it) but I enjoyed the stage show, so I was looking forward to seeing what the film had made of it.

The first thing that became clear was that the song style is a lot more conversational and less operatic, characters sometimes reverting to flat-out speaking their lines. All the performances were recorded live, with the actors and actresses singing to each other at their own pace while some poor fellow on the piano played into their earpieces, trying to keep up with their irregular tempo changes. Less grandeur maybe, but a more natural style.

Touching of faces.

Hugh Jackman, playing man-on-the-run Jean Valjean, put in an energetic (if occasionally slightly Aussie) performance, managing to pull off both 'dangerous convict' and 'protective father'. Co-star Anne Hathaway's performance as self-sacrificing mother Fantine was far from the rousing musical version of 'I Dreamed a Dream', which is oddly placed before everything really goes to pot. The film's version is an utterly crushed, defeated, lonely rendition, complete with voice cracking and sobbing.

Amongst the post-timeskip cast, Marius, played by Eddie Redmayne, was fairly endearing with his quavering, tremulous delivery. The object of his affections, Amanda Seyfried as stock ingénue Cosette, is stuck with a character with all the depth and fieriness of wet cardboard, but pipes her lines in a sweet little hummingbird voice. Meanwhile, Samantha Barks puts in a heartbreaking performance as poor friendzoned Éponine.

Years on, more touching of faces.

But none for you, Éponine.

Russell Crowe has been getting a lot of flak for his turn as the relentless Inspector Javert (or 'LAWBOT 2.0 *bzzt*' as my friends put it). I can see where the criticism stems from - compared to Philip Quast's steely, fierce rendition of Stars, Crowe crooned it out in a less convincing, yet oddly soothing monotone. That was a little disappointing, but I loved the escalating counterpoint of 'The Confrontation'.

'Damn, I wish I could read French.'

It was very enjoyable experience, seeing all these songs played out with the benefit of real backdrops and closer-up than would ever have been possible on stage. Very close, in fact, due to a very... er, personal filming style which bordered on claustrophobic at times, introducing the audience to the dubious pleasure of being able to count nose hairs as a grubby peasant snarls about his poverty.

My highlights were probably 'One Day More', 'On My Own' and 'Empty Chairs at Empty Tables'. I don't really know what it would be like for someone who wasn't already familiar with the material, but anyone who liked the musical should give this a go. :D

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.