You're Not Anything Special

I read something interesting in the news today, about The Law of Jante.

Today we live in a world of perpetual adolescence where the average individual of age tends to indulge in childish notions. I'm no different, I make engine sounds a lot, even when I'm driving my car. The internet is a wealth of knowledge yet many don't get past Facebook, Twitter, or that site where I download porn with hedges and shrubs. It's all so easy for you, yet unless it's linked to you and given on a silver platter in a bitesize format it will be lost to you forever.

The Law of Jante lists a few things that can be summarised in two words; Be Modest. However even this is too difficult a notion to comprehend because it means you've got to utilise your gray matter to work out how to implement and use such advice. We need to break it down further into an idiot sheet of what to do and what not to do, hence why you see factsheets on how to attend a fucking convention by yours truly, goddamn you're welcome.

It makes me feel pretty wrong when I have to spoon feed it to those who need it, because I'm enabling their dependence on babyfood information. Trust me, I feel pretty wrong as standard after seeing an Ent orgy and there's no limit of sodium hydroxide showers that I need to feel clean again. I thought we were getting somewhere, that free hugs and idiots were dying out. Seems someone threw some pocky on that fire and cranked up the Carmeldansen to 11 because suddenly there's a fucking outbreak of stupidity that makes me feel like giving my eyes a shower with a bottle of concentrated Listerine.

I personally think the community in it's entirety has become an Elephant. A grand majestic beast, exotic and huge. But it cranks out so much shit you could almost drown in it. If you're not careful it can crush you. It will devour and consume a hell of a lot then want more. The adolescent males sometime stink like shit and for some stupid reason they just won't start charging at you thinking that's how to get a mate. It's an awe inspiring icon of strength and fortitude, but my fucking hairy Odin-chin it's a slow ass motherhubbard despite it's renowned "intelligence" is still a pungent beast who communicates through grunts, shrills and bad broken Japanese.

Go see what the Law of Jante is all about and remember all of it. You're no better than everyone else, you're nothing special, you're not above anyone else. You got that? Now tell me after all your planning of shit that revolves around you is it worth the hassle and stress you get from it? Do people like you more or less now? Are you the kind who is so concerned over people liking you that you're not even doing it for yourself anymore but doing it it because you want people to like you? This attention seeking irrelevance is choking anything good that we have. 

Well if "likes" were cakes and candy you'd be all full with magical di-ha-beet-us, right? But it's not. Oh shit, sit down, do you feel okay? I better get you some water. Drink it all, good kid. Btw that was neat vodka, man the fuck up.



I've said this before; the true megastars of the cosplay scene are people who have these things in common;
 - They don't care if you like them or not
 - They're doing what they love, for themselves
 - They won't make you feel like shit for not having a professional grade costume
 - They appreciate effort and energy
 - They will freely give advice and encouragement

Hell even I'm too shy to thank Xaerael for his inspiration and knowledge he shares because I think I'll melt into a puddle of giggly shit cus he's goddamn amazing at his stuff. Yet I don't see him waving his shit in everyone's faces or even trying to become famous. He's doing what he loves, just another one of us.

This was never supposed to be a popularity contest, and the stupid thing that those are won by not even trying. I don't envy those with the most attention, or the ones with the amazing outfits. I envy those having the most fun.

Hours, days, years and many years. That's how long it takes to get truly good, when you work on your passion for a sickening amount of hours and you feel like giving in but you push through like some kind of masochist with a sewing machine. It's truly hard to say how many hours because the only real answer to that is how long is a piece of string? Just be prepared for that string to be long enough for Kim Jong Un to fashion into his latest Capitalist message interception net.

Society promotes quick fixes in fame, and that stamps on effort and passion like how my upbringing stamped out basic emotions such as empathy, sympathy and not punching people in the teeth. Quick fixes are as wrong as this list of shite I just pulled from the MCM Expo Group page;

 - Douchebag who posted his mobile number on a public page
 - Dickmuffin who posted something about intended to throw paper shuriken. Law suit in 3....2...
 - Self righteous justice fighters who don't really know what the crapola they're on about
 - A kid who used the N word profuuuuusely (Yeah he went there, ain't nobody got time for that)
 - The axewound disharge who posted for a free hug. I seriously don't know if that is obvious troll or not.
 - The pikachu onesie group that makes me wish that I didn't live on this planet anymore
And lastly the fact that the group is a prime breeding ground for creeps, paedophiles and image whores which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside when shit is deleted without warning. Oooh, nostalgia.

I fucking love bullet points
~Warai

Ps. You're lucky I'm not linking the Glengarry Ross speech.

New Year New Events New Douchery

I'm not going to stand here and pump you all up like a special guest preacher at the Evangelist family redneck special fun day about how great 2013 is going to be, because today is Tuesday and yesterday was Monday and that's how it is for me. Be honest now my little mufflewumps, nothing really changes as if by witchcraft and court orders against that really creepy girl we all "sorta know". (She'll get you eventually mate, and you said being a douchebag to her was just mean. Mate, I saved my own damn hide. Learn how to say no if you wanna avoid 3 years of being the one getting dicked down.)

I highly doubt I'll be going to many Expos by MCM unless I get dragged there to extract the urine, it's a headache in a monkey's vagina that I can very well do without. I may have to take this back if I have a ridiculously good cosplay I want everyone to see so that I can have one day in the year where I don't cry myself to sleep. I haven't seen much change in 2012 as I have done over the last few years. A lot of cosplayers are younger now than we've had before and we're seeing some crazy effort put in; but I'm not too sure if we're seeing that because there's just more people now and by lieu there's a fuckton of half-assed Ls and Naruto's at a Bahmitzva than I've noticed.

New conventions and small events! For me that's where it'll be this year. Gemucon, Tokonatsu, Fushicon and on the other end of the scale I'll try and get to Ayacon (No promises). Being new to an event brings back some of the magic and last Toko was my first. I had high hopes for entering the masquarade for next Toko however my girlfriend is an insanely awesome cosplayer that makes me look like I made my shit out of Animeleague flyers, banana pulp and kleenex; she's been made a Judge for the masq as she keeps winning it and now I'm either gonna have to learn how to weld or sit this one out due to potential calls of favouritism. Now, where's that arc-welder..

I've met more really interesting people by going to conventions than I ever did through expos, and I guess that's where it's at now. Expo used to be a place where you met people, now it's swelled so big it's become a microcosm of the English Society; keep to yourselves, don't talk to strangers and move along there's nothing to see here.

What I really love is the creativity of conventioning. Humans are pretty stupid meatsacks but sometimes this stupidity is an amazing source of entertainment through ingenuity. Last Amecon a friend of mine realised he paid almost £200 for a room he barely used, there's tons of places to sleep and if you can borrow a mate's shower/floorspace for luggage you're all set. I've even heard of the room rota, you get 6 people to a room, they have 1/3 of the 24hour day to sleep in the room. It's so stupid yet my OCD loves the efficiency . I don't know wether to smile or frown and it makes my face ache so hard I want to tear out my eyeballs and fill my sockets with Patron Gold. The same friend who decided to "HoboCon" wants to see if he can pitch a tent. Again my common sense wants to tell him to stop using JD Honey as the water component in his coffee, yet Tokonatsu springs to mind and I'm still drinking my HoneyJack Coffee.

Shameless plug times;
Gemucon 5th April - 7th April - Nottingham 
Places are already at the 250 mark, and it's filling up. FREE CUPCAKE FOR EVERYONE GUARANTEED.

Gemu Pre-Con Party 4th April @Brass Monkey - Nottingham
If you can make it to the PreCon, we've got Happy Hour prices until 3am and single mixers/bottled beer at £3. Brass Monkey is my personal favourite bar and a classy-ass place to be but you don't need to dress up. Cosplay and stupid/in game meme T shirts encouraged.

Looking forward to news of future conventions and as always keep the news/comments/confessions of love/suggestions/ransom notes flooding in. You can get me on my email, twitter and for anyone in Yorkshire I'm three hills north past the pointy rock as the afternoon crow flies.

~Warai Otoko

MCM London Expo May 2012 - "No shit, son"

Coming to my blog and asking for a good review of the Expo is a bit like going to a Halal Butcher's and asking for a pork chop and a pepperami, you may as well be eating a bacon sandwich at the time.

So what are you here for? Ah yes, the inevitable grilling of a meatgrinder for logic that is MCM Expo. Bear in mind, you douches, that certain things here are fact, and certain things here are my opinion. Learn to distinguish the two, or do one.

Now, for all I've said about free huggers, I must say I'm actually impressed that I barely saw any. Sure I saw the shitty signs they made which looked like it was made in the special class with the broken crayons, but for me it felt like a significant decrease. So well done you plebs, your ranking in my books is less negative than usual. I did get glomped, by one little girl but I'll let her off. That level of joy for my character I was cosplaying was genuine, I just wish she could have used words and sentences but when you're a glomper I guess many neural connections are fused solid with stupidity. I'm kicking myself because I never got a picture of her friend's despair face when I turned her down for a hug. Bugger.

I had plans, and actual passion for stuff for expo once. I even had it prior to this expo, but as I got there it faded fast and I found myself pinned under the gravity of apathy. I just wanted to get out, and you know when you get that mini-sick in your throat?

Getting the tickets was okay, but a pointless queue after I got my ticket was just.. wtf.. I feel like asking for that time back. Literally queuing for nothing, I may be delicious with hot sauce but I am not livestock. But let's gloss over that.

Entering expo hall, holy crap I almost facepalmed so hard I tickled my brainstem with my elbow; Yaoi Guy RIGHT THERE. After all the complains about this dude, and they call ME a troll. I am, but I gotta hand it to the organisers for Trolling me and the other 10,000 attendees back. Placing a vile douche who screams and shouts about non-hetero sexual cartoons as the first stall on entering? A family event where you hear "GLORIOUS MAN SEX" Either this really is a troll or someone's getting the world's best reach-around.

The hall itself got packed, ridiculously packed. Wall to wall stupid meat shuffling around, I kinda think that the pointless queuing beforehand was a gentle way of grooming us into being livestock. It was actually interesting to see people walk in, take 5 steps then turn right and head immediately for the exit with a "FUCK THIS SHIT" expression. The Irish guy behind me said, and I quote "Feck me sideways Gary, ye said this was about anime not a clusterfuck. Shall I take me clothes off now, because I know someone's getting shagged in this feckerama."

Feckerama. Irish Guy, where ever you are, you sir are a Legend.

I don't see this problem of volume ever getting solved, it's gonna get packed in harder than that storm trooper and his armour with the 18 stone swagger.

Some other shit happened and some shit didn't happen, nothing really interesting about that. I can say that Security for the swim event, and the swimmers themselves were very pleasant and straight forward. They did have a point for moving the sitting Expo attendees for blocking a through-fare, we can't argue against that.

What did happen that I've just heard about is a little bit more serious than free hugs and that faggot who called my cosplay a Slenderman, lurk moar newfag, is that an attendee of the Expo went home with a broken leg. Put your pocky down, and read that again. Many of you may know a douche who drinks petrol called Crimson (nevermind the fact that he gets his alcohol from me). As they were walking his friend suddenly faceplanted the floor and let out a yell that pretty much told everyone in the 7 mile radius he wasn't fucking around. An open unmarked deep drain, took a couple of hours for the ambulance to arrive and the nearby hotel staff came out, looked at the drain, herpaderped and then covered it up/put signs up/stuffed the yaoi guy in it and cemented it over [/Ifuckingwish.]

Also this from Crimson:

Hotel Douche Staff: Yeah, that's dangerous.
*Geoff is screaming in pain*
Me: NO SHIT ASSHOLE.

Now, I hear this is the jurisdiction of the ExCel, NOT Expo for giving this guy a shattered knee and a bad Skyrim meme for the rest of the term of his injury. We wish him all the best and hope he gets better soon, and that the douchebagel who left the drain open gets a honeybadger to the crotch.

Well done ExCel. Well done.

Something else that hounded me all weekend was that I didn't see many stunning cosplays, sure there were tons of knobheads in wigs, but no amazing individuals milling around in the crowds. I didn't want to stick around for the masquarade, I wanted to go talk to someone about their freakin' awesome costume and all I saw was the same carbon cutout mass produced monkeys that were kicked through Tokyopop. I know for a fact that there are amazing cosplayers at the Expo, yet they choose not to be in the crowds or go round the expo hall much. Instead they have photoshoots away from the event itself. As these individuals create a void, the uneducated masses and have-a-go cosplayers take over the event.

For a moment, think about what just happened in the past 5 years. Anime and Manga got a hell of a lot more accessible, the younger crowd got involved and to those of us who have been in it for a while or from the start it all looks so superficial. That's how elitism begins. It's also how that undying urge to sock an L cosplayer right in the kidneys starts off.

MCM Expo is the event that caters for the masses, from the novice to the intermediate. The hardcore, veterans etc will find it annoying and a pain in the arse. The heavyweight God-Tier cosplayers go to showcase their works of art due to the size of the event.

This is where conventions come in, for those of us that have gone past Expo and need something else. I don't want to promote hatred or incite mob mentality for anyone who works really hard and it's clear that the  Expo staff work pretty hard, even if some of them are arsebagels. However they have a target audience, and if you didn't like the expo then you fall into a minority for them which is outside that target audience.

What I'm saying is support your conventions, and go all out at those events. They give you so much more and they're always a hell of a time. It makes me sad that Kitacon won't run till 2014, as that is by far my favourite. Where else could I get drunk, do a front flip, ruin a game, and win a pony all in 10 minutes?

(Ranzatsu, please do another Con! Hell I'll even do that satirical panel I said I'd do on how to deal with weebs. I'll make it so funny I'll get sued for multiple internal organ rupture from making the audience laugh so hard they have to sign non-disclosure forms and wear mandatory catheters as they'll fucking piss themselves senseless.)

There's so much more love for cosplay, anime, manga, games and the whole culture at a convention that makes Expo feel heavily watered down, drawn out and stuffed with so many idiots that I feel if I stick around any longer than 3 hours I need to get to the bar to kill my braincells with beer before the ambient stupidity does it for me- I'm looking you twats dancing at the exit to the ticket hall, picked a more inconvenient spot to dance? Yes? Go die in a fire, you make me want to tear my spine out through my mouth and beat you to death with it.

Now, if you ever used the line "Expo was like kicking away horseshit with a fine pair of Italian loafers to get to a bar of gold at the bottom, and by that I mean I only endured the feckarama to see my wonderful friends" or similar, then link this blog to your facebook and for the love of David Hasselhoff's glorious chest hair use the word "feckarama" in your daily vocabulary.

~Warai Otoko

Expo Hax

I won't be buying much, if anything at the Expo. I find the notion of paying for overpriced plastic as appealing as buying an ex girlfriend more lingerie she'll wear for someone else, again.

So I'll tell you how I haggle.

Know what you want and how much it costs. Then approach the seller with how much you want to pay in your hand 20% less is usually fair (take into account their mark-up) and an extra £5 or £10 in your pocket. Smile, and be geniunely interested in what you're buying, make it sound like "it's going to a good home". Ask how much it is, or if it's a lot of things, ask how much they are altogether. Then what deal the seller can do for you, this is important, make it sound like he WILL do you a deal; You're not asking for a deal, you're asking him the price of a deal he hasn't agreed to. As soon as he tells you a price, BAM there's your agreement he'll do a deal. With the money you have, say "I've got this much £, and that's me done for today" (Again, assume he'll do it at that price). If you're lucky, you'll have closed the deal there. If they go "Mmmmmm.. I can't let it go for that price" fumble about and get out your emergency £5 or £10 and then go "Okay I really want these" and see if you close it. If you STILL don't get that deal, walk away. You tried, there's no point in paying full price for that now.
Good lines to use:
"It'll save you packing it away and the petrol needed to take it back with you unsold"
"That stall over there sells it cheaper, but it's not as nice as yours"
"What's your best price for me to take them all right now?"
"I'm not coming back to hassle you for the offer if I turn it down, I'll buy it or walk away, so what can you do for me right now?"
"You'd totally make my weekend, and I'll be the only one asking for it"

Should save you buggerlugs some pocky money.

~Warai Otoko

A Fun Game For All!

This May MCM Expo I can't say for definite if I am to attend, however I'd like you all to play a game for me.

If you like Schadenfreude then this is right up your street.

If you are approached by a free hugger or anyone that insists they hug you as if pressing their sweaty body upon you will grant them the strength to plough through another box of pocky, say No and take a picture of their rejection face.

Upload, or e-mail them to me (click here you silly moo) and I'll go ahead and display my favourites. Winner recieves a drawn picture of them beating up a weeb in whatever manner they wish, runners up win a cola, or something.

Extra points if you manage to get one of the following out of them, or anything else that's mega awkward
 - Non-contact hi5
 - Praying hands and bow with "Namaste" (Hindu style greeting)
 - Make them do 5 pressups before a hug (Walk off before they get up)
 - Elbow to elbow touch
 - E.T. Style finger tip touch
 - Russian Cossack dance

Follow my twitter on https://twitter.com/KoheeKuma
For updates and such, along with general douchery and information on what kind of cats I like best.

~Warai Otoko