Facebook page!

Hey, so I know there's like no one on this blog but just incase. I made a Facebook page would be great if you could add it.

http://facebook.com/kukiesiren

Accidents...

So I finally finished up Haruhara Haruko's Rickenbacker 4001 bass today. The neck to the body was very flimsy and kept breaking and so I decided to add dowels into the cardboard to make it sturdier. And I used a drill to bore the holes into the material and everything was going very well until I decided to test the dowels in the holes. So they fit all snug and nicely but then as I tried to get them out one of them was too tight and when I pulled it out I ended up pulling it into my chin. Still hurts 6 hours later and then I kept stabbing my fingers, it was not a pleasant night...

Well here is my finished guitar (minus logo because I haven't taken a picture of that) and my battle wound (which looks more like a puncture mark than anything else but omg did it hurt):

Youmacon 2013!

So with Youmacon coming up in just 3 days I wanted to let people know what my plans were.

For Thursday, not sure what time I will be there but I plan on being Hipster Ariel and just wearing that all day until I probably put my kigu on.

Friday, I will be in Haruko from FLCL with CT Graphy for a couple hours while I get a photoshoot done in her. After that I will change into Setsuka Heel from Skip Beat for a shoot. I'll hang out in that for a bit until I maybe change into Yuuko Ooshima the 9th possibly for YoumaIdol which I will be judging. And then probably kigu rest of the night if I don't head off to bed.

For Saturday, I will be Shana from Shakugan no Shana for a shoot with elleontheradio and then I'm changing into Spike from Tinkerbell: Secret of the Wings and I will have a Periwinkle (xanimekingdomx fb), and a Vidia (KoriStarfire fb) (I think there was a Silvermist too?). We'll do a shoot in out pixie gear and run around for a bit. Then I plan on changing into Yuuko Ooshima the 9th from AKB0048 with an Aachan (nuck-n-futs tumblr), a Takamina (dipshiit tumblr), a Sae and Mariko (White Noise Cosplay fb). Getting some shots of our AKB group with elleontheradio. I think there may be some dancing, I probably won't because I didn't memorize the dance. Then kigu the rest of the night.

And Sunday, I will be Hipster Ariel again because it's easy and fun. Or I'll be in kigu, I guess it depends on how lazy I am.

So that is my plan for Youmacon!

Attack On Titan Harness Review

So about the beginning of the month ish I bought some AoT harness from a seller (Redstar Cosplay) on Etsy instead of the ones on Ebay everyone else was basically telling me to get because they were gonna be over 100 and I spent under with these.

So they were just sitting at Chicago for a while and then they sent it south instead of North East and they finally got here (almost late). And I wanted to post some shots of the harness.

This is what it looked like online:

So it looks nice enough in the picture. But once I got it I noticed some differences. If you look at the belts you notice all the nice belt holes well mine didn't have any of that. It was one of those you put the leather through the belt clasp twice and slide it through. Which is okay, its fine until you get to the suspender part where there isn't even anywhere for me to attach the thing to the waist belt. And the elastic on the leg portion is too long for me so I will have to take that in. And the overall harness is a bit too big on me from the waist down and so it doesn't lay very well on my back (basically it doesn't lay flat on my body). The belt clasps have sharp corners so it hurts just to try and get the leather through them. Oh also the lower leg part where it kind of "X"s they're attached with velcro. I tried to be thrifty and look where that has gotten me T-T.  Here are some nice pictures of my harness:  

look how the back doesn't really lay flat.

elastics are too long, the knee part is too wide.

You can see how I had to put the belt clasp on the waist
belt and how much higher it had to go because
there was no way to attach it really. 

another back look.

Its already tearing after just trying on once.

once again too wide

the back of the harness and the leather ripped off the thing.

so overall I give this a 2/10 I give them a two because shipping was quick with some minor issues not really their fault. And because the top grey back part is nice. Probably about it. 

Shaming no-nos...

So I recently read an article about someone who was fat shamed for cosplaying characters she loved. And I would like to point out that it was a very good article about how she felt about people shaming her but she still continues cosplaying (you go!) and her cosplays are nicely done.

And I would like to say as a cosplayer, that it is completely okay to cosplay outside your race/gender/religion/skin tone/etc. I don't know why this is still an issue, we live in the 21st century!!! I don't care if the president himself came up to you and told you you can't do that character because the character is skinny/"white"/an alien for all I care you do what you want. Most anime characters are based off japanese people so in retrospect white people shouldn't be cosplaying either BUT no one cares when white people cosplay asian characters. So black/native american/Indian/whatever you may be should be given the same freedom to cosplay the characters they fell in love with.

When I first heard about cosplaying I was a young person, I can't say how old I was (maybe middle school age). But when I started looking at it, all I saw were these gorgeous Asian cosplayers and people would post the most "horrible, badly done" American ones and I was biased (being Asian) and thought Americans couldn't cosplay. I will fully admit it! Need I remind you I was young at the time and now that I have grown and cosplay myself, I take back my childish thoughts. It's a lot harder to cosplay than I probably thought when I was younger. And the fact that now that I'm older I know those Asian cosplayers' photos were manipulated and made to look cooler (not saying some of them aren't).

So whether you're overweight/black/have to wear a headpiece because of your religion I say you should be able to cosplay whatever you want. If you are overweight and want to cosplay a skimpier character than you normally would, more power to you! Or if you're overweight and you want to cosplay a skimpy character but modify their outfit to fit your body type better, I say go for it. Or if you have some sort of headpiece (the names of them elude me for some reason) and you want to incorporate that into your cosplay, do it!

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent" those are wise words to live by. Because the minute you feel worthless about yourself because of what some douche-bag said about you or your cosplay that is the moment that you gave him the permission to hurt you. So if and when someone says something hurtful, don't let it (I know harder said than done), just walk away and be the bigger and better person that I know you are. That person will walk away from you knowing that their hurtful words couldn't penetrate your thick wall of self-confidence (even if you were pretending). Because I promise you the more you let hurtful things slide off your shoulders the more confident in yourself you will be (this is coming from experience).

And for instance, in the article if your friends are shaming you because you're "fat" or "black" or whatever and telling you that you shouldn't do something because of what other people may say (or what they will say) maybe you should reevaluate your friendships. I would never tell my friends that they shouldn't do something just because of superficial reasons. You will never get every single person to like what you've done. You could have spent a whole year and spent over $1000 and have the best looking thing and someone will hate it. There will always be a critic somewhere telling you you're not good enough. But FUCK THEM! As long as you (YOU!) are good enough for yourself no one should ever have the leverage to make you doubt yourself. It's all about you, it has always been about you. You don't cosplay for the masses and the douche-bags you cosplay for you and because YOU want to have fun.

And let me tell you something some of the most impressive stuff I've seen may not have been canon to people, but its still impressive to me. If you can spit out cosplay after cosplay (or even one a year) and still look amazing in it, honey you have my respect as a fellow cosplayer, a craftsperson, and a decent human being.

So sweetheart, cosplay on!

Welcome to my blog!

So hello to my blog.

I'm not really sure what's gonna happen here. I'm a really boring person (kinda lazy too) so its not like I'm gonna post a bunch of cosplay stuff on here. But I still may put some pictures on here.

So a little about me business, I am from Michigan and I am 26 years old. I go to a community college and I am a vocal performance major, so basically I'm trying to make it my career to sing (I'm doomed). But yeah and when I'm not at school I'm working at a hot, boiling drycleaners. And when I'm feeling motivated I will work on cosplay. I have a huge list of cosplays I would like to do but usually I don't get hit with motivation so it just sits there for probably a few weeks until I do. And when I do its like "DO ALL THE COSPLAYS AT ONCE!" So yeah. That's basically my life in a nutshell I guess.

Oh and I will probably post pictures of my dog because he's cute.