I Don’t Do It For ‘Them’...

Just finished working on constructing the boxes of the throwers of the Real Ghostbusters Proton Packs Jon and I are working on getting ready for Oz Comic-Con, and I’ve really been busting my arse planning and constructing these things essentially from scratch¹. I was about to call it a day and just make a post about being tired and my back being achy from slaving over a cutting board for 2 days, but I remembered a bit of a conversation I had with my mother.

I can’t recall specifics, but I mentioned that I can’t wait to finish my Volstagg costume and wear it out so I can finally cut my hair back a bit and probably shave the beard (or at least keep it a lot shorter). She essentially said “why don’t you?”, and I said because that’s what Volstagg looks like. So I went into a little speech about why I put so much effort in and how the public won’t notice or care. I can’t recall the full speech but the TL:DR version was pretty much, “I don’t do it for them, I do it for me!”

It had just finished this build and the thought did strike me, no one really truly knows or even cares about how much we put into these costumes except for the people that make them, and I mean collectively. As a Ghostbuster I’m always asked such things as “Where did you buy that (referring to the Proton Pack)?” and get stunned faces when I say I built it, or worst still the people who want to pull at things and generally show no regard to my property².

There is a good feeling of accomplishment whenever you finish something in a build, even if it’s totally completed. I was pretty proud of the technological terror I constructed, even though some parts of it was a nightmare to construct and plans had to be revised (I’m still noticing things that could be changed at some time in the future). I know that 99.999999999999999999% of the people I’ll ever meet will not know how much attention to detail I’ll have put into such things, but I’m also aware of all the errors and problems in the build³ which thankfully will also go unnoticed.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that for all the time and effort to do something like this, and with such regularity, you have to be invested in it more for pleasing yourself then to worry about pleasing others. Sure this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the attention, or better still do this to bring pleasure to others, but if you not ultimately having fun whilst you’re doing it then it’s going to be a miserable experience. I’ve had some incredibly good times in costume, I’ve also had some horrible or disheartening experiences in costume, and I hate to admit it but I’ve been very close on several occasions to just throwing it all in and never suiting up again, but I try now to do it for myself because when I stop gaining pleasure from this then I will be giving it all up.

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1 – We’ve never been able to find thrower plans online, previous builders have been very secretive about them, so I essentially had to create blueprints from scratch using only the concept drawings from the production of the cartoon.
2 – Worst one was some little shit who yanked my thrower during a promotional hand-out at Perth, which nearly broke the hook and it never felt tightened again after that. Needless to say I wasn’t happy about that but I refrained from breaking the little fucker’s neck... regrettably.

3 – Any creator worth a damn knows the problems with his build, but essentially has to go forward to finish their project. It’s like movie nitpickers, they sometimes act like the filmmaker doesn’t know that they screwed something up without realising that generally they do know, and probably know more faults then they’ll ever spot, but they had to finish telling their story.

DRAMA!

I suppose I’ve had to talk it about it sooner or later. I’ve taken to using the term ‘Drama!’ very recently due to some of the Drama! coming from Waicon the other week. Whilst I’ve stated a lot of what I thought about stuff on a previous blog post *insert url link here*, I’m not going over that again except that today I’ve been pointed out to a notorious figure with the Australian costuming community and their perpetually bad behaviour¹. I don’t want to comment about that particular person but it does raise some interesting thoughts I want to talk about.

I may have stated before that I personally believe that Fandom and the many Fan Communities should be as open and welcoming as possible, that no one should be excluded despite their age, gender, sex, knowledge, etc we should all embrace each other despite our differences, or maybe because of them. I honestly truly believe we can become a community that transcends others in tolerance and acceptance if we do work hard enough. Well enough of the hippy crap, because the hard and fast truth is there is still going to be the ugly bad elements that haunt our community and cause no end of problems.

It seems that there are numerous stories popping up over the internet of people acting like jerks within fandom, mostly racial and sexist charged attacks, and I think this isn’t a new phenomenon but people are being more open about these jerks then every before. We’ve been given a platform to speak up and be heard over the jeering idiots who want to bring us down and I think it’s about time we put a stop to them. There will always be some sort of Drama! within the community, there is no way to stop it, but we can diminish it’s impact if we all pull together and maybe push out the undesirable elements to the further fringes, where hopefully they might be able to pull their heads out of their collective asses.

Strangely enough it’s relatively easy to achieve this as time as shown that ‘Social Darwinism’ is a contributing factor in the evolution of practically all social circles. It’s actually very simple, and you’ve probably all done it at some time or another, that when there is an individual that is an undesirable factor within any social element the group tends to try to disassociate with that person, sometimes without realising they are doing so. To put it even simpler, when someone acts like a jerk they tend to get invited to less and less social gatherings² where their behaviour. There are of course always ramifications, but that’s maybe for another time.

This is not a call to actively ban or shun people from communities and gatherings; more a reminder that, for the most part, these things will eventually sort themselves out. Even after all the utterly detestable behaviour I’ve read about this one particular person, I’m still optimistic about our communities. Why? We are calling out this sort of behaviour; we aren’t just keeping quiet or just hoping it will go away. I’m a firm believer that the only way to combat bad speech is with more speech, not less speech. If you see some bullshit, you need to call attention to it.

That being said whilst we need to be vigilant towards these things, we need to still be tolerant with people (especially newer people to the community), teach them why what they are doing is wrong, sharing knowledge is better then condemning and/or ignoring someone. As for any continued misbehaviour? Well I think that’s up to the communities to decide, not for me, but for the most part they do seem to be self-policing.

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1 – Do a Google search for ‘The Lily Files’ on Tumblr. This post isn’t about her or her actions, only my thoughts on such behaviour within the community.
2 – Strangely enough this even applies to gatherings of jerks! If one jerk is either too much of a jerk or not enough of a jerk, the other jerks will disassociate with said jerk.

The Waicon Cosplay Saga

Just as a quick disclaimer, I was a volunteer at Waicon in the back corner running around at the Gamezone so I was away from the majority of the Drama! that was occurring with costuming and props. However these are my thoughts, feelings, and worries about the future about costuming, or cosplaying if you prefer, in and around Perth and future conventions.

So in case you didn’t know, weren’t there, or wasn’t around, there were apparently a lot of complains for cosplayers who were refused entry for various reasons by various staff or volunteers. These particular cosplayers have since been flooding the Waicon event page on Facebook expressing their disgust, leading to several heated arguments over the last couple of days. I’m personally on the fence for most part because I believe both sides have valid points but it does concern me about future events.

First I wish to discuss the ‘inappropriate’ costume topic. I’m a bit torn on this particular subject because on the one hand, as a costumer, I know what it’s like to obsess over details and trying to achieve a costume that has accuracy and looks the part, but I kinda have to agree with Waicon in preventing costumes that may be a little bit too ‘revealing’ from entering what is essentially an “All Ages” event. That being said there good reasons to debate these issues, for example the majority of the turn-aways seem to be of female who apparently were wearing too little (or at least the majority of complaints were from them), but I saw plenty of shirtless guys all over the con. I must admit as a single hetero male I’m all for girls in skimpy clothing jumping all over the place, and would much rather see that then the guys, but I have to abide by the ruling set by Waicon, ultimately it is their show and they have also have to abide by rules set for public decency and to try and keep it PG. I also believe that this is also a reflection of the anime/manga industry as a whole, but it’s also incredibly prevalent in western culture as well that it’s hypocritical to point the finger squarely at that. I’m personally all for people being able to dress up as their favourite character, even if said character is wearing on a bit of cloth and some bandaids, but I also believe it’s up to the costumer to maybe have a bit more decorum and think about how appropriate this may be for others. I suppose the simple test is do you want your child to be wearing the exact same thing? Probably not a great example but it might at least cause for some pause for reflection. 

Urgh I feel like such a prude, which believe me, I’m not. I do believe people should be allowed to wear what they want, when they want, wherever they want. I also have to acknowledge that there are still laws in place to prevent such things, as well and bylaws with the convention centre itself to go with the organisations ruling. Speaking of the convention centre’s own rules, this leads me to my next point…

 

I’m not sure how many are aware of this but the PCEC appears to have a ‘No Weapons’ policy. No I suppose what you are currently thinking is, “Sure, that makes sense, we don’t want people going in their with guns or knifes who want to deliberately harm someone?” until the guy with outrageous armour and bit spiky hair one-handed wielding a 7’ tall by 1’ wide sword made out of balsa is told he’s not allowed to take it into the pavilion due to the ‘No Weapon’ policy… wait what? Yeah, you heard it right, everyone that had a clearly fake sword wasn’t allowed to have this one the floor (but were allowed to have it in the Cosplay Competition). No you might this is probably reasonable because you wouldn’t want people fighting with them, which is a truly stupid mistake to make because if you think ANY prop builder wants to damage something that took them a lot of time and money to build just to hit things with, you are clearly deluded. It’s like saying you should take that expensive dinner set that’s been in the family for generations and start eating McDonalds off it daily.

Okay I got sidetracked (drink). Now the policy does state that it includes weapons that are real or fake, again probably reasonable because you really don’t want the cops shooting to death someone with a toy gun. You would also probably think this ruling would only affect objects that clearly look like a weapon? Come on, do you really think I’d bring it up if it was that easy? I can give you a very personal example for a friend of mine.

Now who here has played Portal? If you haven’t, shame on you. Otherwise you pretty much know what the Portal Gun is, what it does, and what it looks like. Okay stop saying “The Cake is a Lie” and focus. For those that don’t, I think the best description of a Portal Gun is that it looks nothing like any weapon that has ever been made in the history of mankind on this planet. Or in other words, NOT A WEAPON. So the night before the con, my friend Jon decided to make himself an Aperture Scientist costume very quickly ready to wear around the con. Now being a volunteer, and having knowledge from the previous year’s con at the PCEC, I knew about the law and told him that there is a distinct possibility that they might refuse it. Now I must state that I was probably about 33.333% paranoid about this, 33.333% knowing what happened last year, and about 33.333% hopeful someone wouldn’t have their head up their arse on this matter. Care to guess what happened? Well wrong because if he got let in I wouldn’t have a point. I must point out that I believe it was the PCEC security that prevented the Portal Gun’s entry, not a Waicon staff member, but either way Jon’s costume was pretty much ruined without the one recognisable prop.

And now for the hypocrisy! As have been the case for several conventions lately, there is always someone who is selling toy firearms and swords, usually exactly like the ones that are denied entry within the convention themselves. Now this is not a finger point at them, they are legitimate vendors selling legitimate merchandise that is legal to own and possess, I’m also not having a go at Waicon for allowing such things, ultimately this is a business and I respect that. However, a cosplayer who spent time and money crafting something to perfect is denied their prop when anyone can just buy a cheap toy and wave it around with impunity? Okay, they are not supposed to take it out of the box, but when was the last time you saw a kid wait that long to play with a brand new toy?

This trend ultimately worries me. Why? One of my most popular costumes involves wearing a 15 kilo prop on my back that is THE most crucial part of my costume… and is sadly recognised as either a gun or a bomb by imbeciles. Yes I’m of course referring to my Proton Pack, without it I just look like a plumber… and not even a cool plumber that eats mushrooms. I’m petrified that I’m going to go to the PCEC is costume and be told “Sorry you can’t wear that thing in here, it’s a weapon.” And then what? Most, if not all, people recognise us as Ghostbusters because of the pack, they draw attention and is one of the most recognisable icons of the 80s. I’ve walked around the streets of the City Centre wearing that thing and get plenty of people coming up to ask for photos, none have demeaned I’m wearing a bomb. I’ve walked near Police whose reaction is typically delight, never “Put down the weapon”. I’ve walked through the streets of Perth in the yearly Telethon Christmas pageant, one of the most publicized events in the city, and no one ran away screaming because I was allegedly going to kill them; in fact I’ve never felt so much love from a crowd before in my life. I’ve taken my pack on as luggage on a plane, never one pulled aside for concealing an explosive inside. I even walked the streets of Melbourne, one of the biggest cities in the country, and to their own Exhibition Centre and have never had any trouble from their security. The idea that I will be prevented from taking in something that is clearly just a prop frightens me.

In fact I’ve just had a change of opinion. Fuck the regulations, let people do what they want. If they want to wear a skimpy bikini and wield a ridiculous sword, as long as it’s demonstrable to be part of the costume then LET THEM IN!

On Negativity Within The Fan Community

Got into a heated ‘discussion’ over Facebook yesterday over a picture I posted of some negative comments directed towards a ‘larger’ woman who made one of the most kickass TARDIS dresses I’ve ever seen. It truly angers me that in my community there are some about destructive arseholes who tear someone down because they don’t fit their body type. I suppose this is one of the things I find discomforting within myself, that I’m going to be ridiculed because of my weight whenever I put on a costume, that it infuriates me whenever I see it now. I’d like to believe that it was just a handful of insensitive cunts in an ocean of high praise however the internet has sadly robbed me of that delusion. I think it’s true that once you’ve looked into the abyss, you’re forever changed and the internet is nothing but a focal point for such things.

Wil Wheaton writes about this in his book ‘Just a Geek’ where he states, “I will never understand why the Internet seems to take away the basic humanity of most people, and allows-no, enables-them to say things that they’d never say to another person face to face.” I think a part of it has to do with the inherent duality of a person, the nasty side of humanity that thinks the nasty things but doesn’t dare voice them in public for fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the internet, and alcohol, that gives that voice a pedestal to spew such vile hatred and then immediately back it up with “Well I have a right to do so!” or something just as equally cowardly. If we can go through our real life social interactions with strangers without resorting to use vile and nasty statements, why the hell can’t we do that online? Oh that’s right, we don’t withhold these statements in real life, that’s why we have assholes who tell complete strangers that they are ugly and fat and why we have bullies who gang up and pick on their prey. I suppose the internet just allows more assholes a chance to fuck up more peoples lives.

Kinda makes you think trying to clear up the whole mess to be an exercise in supreme futility? Well maybe that is so, but there is a hope. The internet, whilst giving a platform for the negative, allows good people to get together and fight back. It allows people to say “No!” to having to put up with some of the worst attributes man seems to like to hold onto like a social festering appendix. I see the negative attributes of my community and I want to scream and fight back. Part of the reasons why I want to make a documentary analysing the fan community in Perth, and go into detail the positive and negative attributes I think exist within. I think this discussion has taught me that some things are worth standing up for, despite whatever negative feedback you might face. I want to see my community to be the safe haven it should be, free from the haters and the jackals that seem intent in bringing it down from within. Why do I have hope that this could be accomplished? One word, Bronies.