Oh, what else? I think I'm getting better at blogging (my watch just beeped, midnight). I don't really know, though. Gvendolyn just ended her blog. I was quite dissapointed. Not at her, mind you, just at the fact that something like that had come to an end. That was seriously the site I most enjoyed reading on the web. It was blogging without too much nonesense. Because of this, I decided to hunt out more blogs to read. I had stumbled across a rather odd cosplay site from a thread on the ZD forums. The guy who made the post was really freaked out by it. It wasn't nearly as bad as he made it out to be, but it may have just been because i've looked at cosplay sites before. The main difference here is that it's actually a kigurumi site, or 'masked cosplay'. In case you were wondering, the site is sabrina.jp (though I warn you, if you've never seen or heard of cosplay, it will most likely freak you out a bit). Sooo, my initial response to it was a dutiful 'what the..?' I needed a second opinion so I sent the link to CCS and he gave a similar response. He also found an image on their gallery where one of the character's packages was clearly noticable through their unitard. Heh, having typed that, I guess it doesn't make nearly as much sense if you didn't look at the site. Okay, so cosplaying is dressing up as a character from an anime or videogame or what have you. Most of the cosplay that I've managed to find (or more accurately, cosplay that I've bothered to look at) is done by females. Not too suprising. Dressing up is more of feminine thing anyway. However, some guys like to do it too. Now, this isn't all too odd (although I've known about this stuff for a few years, so it probably seems a lot less odd to me than it seems to you [ha, talk about surreal...]). The problem that arises from some guys who cosplay is that most character designs for male characters are pretty bland. There are of course exceptions (i'd give examples but I haven't watched enough anime to know the names of such character). Some male cosplayers realize that cosplaying as women is just a lot more fun. There's more work to do for the costume, and ultimately they get more attention. So, this leads to the question, how can a guy cosplay as a girl...without entirely embarressing themselves. Well, it's pretty easy. You won't get mocked if no one knows it's you. The simple solution: where a mask. So, these guys get themselves some flesh-colored unitards and where some fake breasts of some sort (and whatever else is needed to achieve a female form), use the cosplay outfit with that, and where a mask. Odd? Yes. I won't deny this part. Alternate personality or pretend whatevers, I just can't see a guy doing this without having some kind of psychological condition. I may very well be wrong, and think I am. There is probably something that I just don't get about the whole thing. This thing to get, so to speak, I'm guessing only the guys who kig as girls understand. Meh.
Don't get the wrong idea, now. Kigurumi isn't just some sick way for a guy to dress up as a pretty anime girl. The range for what Kigurumi actually is is very broad. Technically, acting as some character with a mask is Kigurumi, it's not just an anime/cosplay thing. The people in various cartoon character outfits in themeparks, for instance, are considered to be kig. It's the nature of the beast. As far as anime stuff goes, kig is much more known in Japan. There are troups who go around a perform in costume to promote games and anime and all that (note that most of professional kigurmi is actually done by women, or so is my understanding of it [my main point of this sentance is that it's not just guys dressing up as girls, there are girls as girls, guys as guys, and girls as guys, and either gender being something else altogether (aliens or such)]). It's stuff like that that makes me not completely see it as weird. I mean, I can agree with it to that point. If it's just a role you're performing, why not have a complete, masked costume? It makes more sense to me that way. Even the guys as girls part seems alright to me for this. It's just the guys running around as anime girls and taking photos of it all (like on sabrina.jp) that I think is wrong.
So, is there a point to all this? I think so, I'll try and remember it for the next paragraph. Having had a bunch of free time, I just decided to look into this as it seemed odd (and thus raised my interest). After having first seen it, I thought of a topic from my anthropology class. 'Ethnocentric' thought, I believe. This is believing that one's own culture and beliefs and everything is the proper way of going about things. With this in mind, I looked into the whole thing and tried to see where they were coming from. That is to say, I put aside what I believed in and just read/looked at everything about the topic I could dig up in an objective way. Granted, this isn't entirely possible (since we all have things we can't look the other way about), but I tend to learn a lot more when I research things with this in mind. At the very least, it gave me something to do for a few days.
Now, the point...blogs, was it? Yes, blogs. Gvendolyn, having shut down her site, has forced me to locate new blogs to read in order to keep myself entertained ("other peoples lives are more interesting 'cause they ain't mine"). So, taking a step back from Kig sites and looking at plain cosplay sites (which can be really weird since you get used to seeing huge anime eyes). Obviously, their cosplay sites are going to be just about cosplay, that's what they are there for. Most everyone that I found, though, had links to their blogs. Blogs on livejournal..ugh. I don't much care for livejournal, it just takes a certain amount of personality away from a site (yet another reason I liked Gvendolyn's blog so much). So I start reading a few of their blogs. Boring! I know I write a bunch of stale drivle about how dull my life is, but come on. It's just the same thing all the time. I don't care about how you went to school and came home and did the same thing the next day. That's my biggest problem. Almost all of the blog content I found is that sentance rephrased somehow. I was hoping there'd be a more psychological or personal edge to it. You know, maybe find some reasoning behind why someone would cosplay (other than enjoying making costumes, which seems to be the reason for most). Nothing though. After looking over a few, I just gave up. I thought of bookmarking one or two, but I ended closing all the windows. It just won't cut it. Livejournal, for the most part, will not be read by me. I don't know what it is exactly about it, but I just can't find an interesting blog on there.
So, that brings me to another paragraph. What to do? I have no idea how to find more blogs that would interest me. But, I have figured out, that looking into this whole kigurumi thing has been interesting and entertaining. Also, I have one of my longest rants typed up, and it isn't about how bored I am. I'm quite happy with it (and type that before reading over it...) and it's rare that I can pull that off. I can only sit here for so long and stare at my browser and wonder how much information is out there and how much I haven't learned anything about. I mean, the Internet is for what? Information, Communication, Warez, and Porn. Actually, porn should probably go at the front of that list. Whatever. The point is, I don't know too much and I still can't hold a decent conversation with a stranger. It bugs me. So, plan B (or C or D), find something interesting and look into it. Write it all down and remember it. Eventually, I'll have something to talk about. What is there to lose? If it all falls flat, there's still warez and porn...