RPG [Part Two] #atozchallenge2014

And we’re back! Just last post, I shared about ROLE-PLAYING and posted photos in RPG [Part One]. I was going to post the second part of the Role-Playing Gang post the next day but problems with choosing the last pics became quite a challenge, and then I had to take care of things that were of the life-changing scale.

Now I continue…

2012 continued

For the year’s Christmas party, the theme was United Nations, with a twist. Instead of wearing national costumes the usual (and boring) way, the challenge was to feature something about a country, perhaps something it is known for, preferably something bizarre. I thought, “Viking, female, princess…” It’s bizarre because do you see vikings anywhere you now? And they’re stuff books and movies are made of…Good thing I expressed this already because it so happened another person was thinking of viking as well.

For some reason, I assumed vikings were from Ireland, but my research brought me history. Scandinavia, it was. I saw viking princesses dressed in girly stuff. Ugh. I stink at being girly-girly. And I was going to be a viking, not a damsel to save, so it had to be something more special, so I was a viking warrior princess! Of course, I didn’t just assume it would be a Xena kind of thing, so I did my research as well and came up with this:

Meet Helga Ormsdottir, Viking Warrior Princess

First of all, that axe can never chop anyone’s head off (I say it in present tense as I don’t have the heart to disassemble it yet). The handle’s from a mop, the black parts are just electric tape, and the “blade” is just metallic-silver gift-wrapper taped to brown envelope cut into the desired shape. For a while, though, somebody didn’t want to touch it, thinking it could cut skin 😉

Helga’s cape at the back…Uh, does this outfit make me look fat? *girly mode*

Second-hand shops were really helpful. The sleeveless jacket was actually two separate things. The actual jacket was turned inside-out because I was after the faux fur. The back part that reached my shoulders was actually — ready? — a bag.

I was thinking of cutting an old, furry towel to use though the material wouldn’t seem close enough to that of the jacket’s. Then I happened on a shop and chanced on the bag…the night before the party! I say that was fate. What you see on the photo at right was literally half of the bag, the other half cut into several pieces to serve other purposes such as for the arm bands.

I had a sort of belt made out of a material my mother owned before, which term for it I didn’t know but she used it for medical purposes. The round shiny things, if you are able to notice from the pic above, were used CDs. I bought brown boots, too, that practical me could still use after, and I really still do. Parts of that bag served as furry parts of the boots. In truth, I put them over the boots. I saw boots that looked exactly like what I wanted, but it’s not practical to wear something like that on a regular day in a tropical country.

Now about the helmet, I made that, too, though it’s quite large on my head. I wanted a viking helmet with horns on it. So I grabbed a plastic coriander, put Santa’s hat over it and glued on 2011’s New Year blow horns made of actual photo films (not made by me). That thing in the middle was the pendant of my favorite necklace that I couldn’t anymore use…Two of us had the chance to win Best in Presentation, but my funny competitoe beat me, hands down. I would’ve complained if I won.

Sorry if I went all-talkative about this. I just really enjoyed my costume. Oh, here are other pics from the party (I made up most of the names, BTW):

If this reminds you of Queen Amidala, that’s because the inspiration for her costume was the Mongolian traditional garment for noble women. This girl made this whole thing by herself and her win was well-deserved. Okay, maybe she won’t really mind me posting this (crossing fingers). She’s the Skuld of 2011’s party

Representing Kyrgyzstan falconry, most of Sherwin‘s outfit weren’t made by him, but would you look at that eagle?!! He and his bro made that. That sealed it and he won, too!

Everyone wanted a pic with that eagle, including the Viking Princess. I suppose you’re not to hold its feet like that in real life, but this one would have fallen off my arm

The Jamaican Rasta Man

Don’t know what country she represented but what tribe wouldn’t want this queen? 😉

Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra

The Dutch Maid and the Gypsy

This Pirate Queen is actually the Ginantsilyo Queen. She crocheted that sexy outfit herself

One of the various group pics. Included are the Norwegian…I dunno what he is supposed to be (LOL!!!), the Greek Goddess, the Piper, and the Cold Canadian Guy, he he…

2013

Last year’s Halloween was different. While in past years, it was a contest among employees of the different branches, 2013 was a time for team unity. This time, it was a competition among the branches themselves, not the individual employees. Each branch was supposed to create a three-minute horror film that involved the whole office.

The combined Makati and Quezon City branches came up with a Plants vs. Zombie trailer-type film. I talked about this in Zombie-fied!!! I’m happy to inform you we won 😀 This is the winning piece:

Some pics…

The Cast and Characters

Me as DJ Zom-B

Me and My Boyfriend 😉

“Braaainnnsss…” DJ Zom-B and Swashbuckler Zombie flank Sherwin’s Bonk Choy!…Incidentally, that’s my fave costume, or rather, head gear.

This is my other favorite head gear, the Jalapeno that I couldn’t help but try out

Zombies and the courageous Plants invade the city!

Actually, they just wanted to order their food, so they waited in line for their turn, just like normal people. In photo: Target Zombie, Weightlifter Zombie and DJ Zom-B

Meanwhile, how about a selfie and some texting. That’s Newspaper Zombie taking a selfie with Weightlifter

Now, for Christmas. We dared to be different. We wondered, “How do super villains celebrate Christmas?” Obviously, we dressed up as super villains, focusing on Marvel and DC comics.

We could choose whether we went as male or female villains. I really wanted to go as a villainess. My concern was most female super villains wore very revealing and/or skin-tight costumes (target audience rather obvious, ‘no?). The ones that really weren’t either looked like monsters, which I’ve had enough of, having nailed it at last year’s Halloween and played a zombie the next year, or looked like nasty old ladies.

Here’s one of the few pics where I actually smiled. I could only photo-bomb and hide somehow. That’s Red Skull striking a pose, by the way

Alas! I found my super villainess — BizarroGirl! She is the counterpart of SuperGirl in the Bizarro World. But alas again! It was an epic fail for me. I worked the hardest for this and yet it was the worst costume I ever came up with. I totally had great plans, but I also totally lacked enough know-how on how materials worked.

I won’t explain further and will leave it at that. Let’s just say I still ended up looking like a pregnant (I am not, which makes it worse, LOL!!!), nasty old lady. I was feeling sick the night before and the whole day, too, so yeah, that made finishing the costume much harder.

Anyway, check out some of the cool costumes, though. I managed to grab clearer photos, thank goodness 🙂

Catwoman and her bike…Sexy!

Dr. Doom and the cute-me pose…So, it has come to this…

Doc Octopus. Another doctor in the house to set things right. I mean, wrong

Ra’s al Ghul…Nice version!

I really liked the black emseble of Talia al Ghul. She actually looked like a cute super heroine! Couldn’t find a solo pic of hers, but here she is caught mid-wink (LOL!!!), flanked by Dr. Doom and…

…the Smiling Harley Quinn

This Joker‘s not smiling. The joke’s on us, apparently…

Lady Deathstrike. I took a closer look and saw the long fingers were basically made of paper, but I stayed away anyway, ’cause they really creeped me out (still do!)

Of course, we know where most of the red paint went, but Magneto‘s head gear was one of the coolest! I wanted to steal it!

Enchanting, ain’t she? That’s 2012’s Tribe Queen turned Lady Enchantress. Beside her is…

…the costume that won Best Costume — the Silver Samurai! Do I even have to mention who he is??? This year, we non-winners will push for forced disqualification for hall-of-famers! :))

And that concludes our RPG posts 🙂

Again, pics belong to us so do not share/distribute. Just link to here, if you really must.

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Did you enjoy the two posts? Hope you did. It’s fun sometimes to role-play. But it’s always wise never to lose sense of reality, eh? If you do have similar posts and pics to share, then by all means, share! Feel free to give us a link at the comment box below. Meanwhile, “S” is coming up soon 🙂

This is the second part of my “R” post for…

RPG [Part One] #atozchallenge2014

Because I am a closet-frustrated actress (well, the closet has been opened now, I guess), I do enjoy ROLE-PLAYING. I do not, however, mean online RPGs, but rather the “more realistic” one called cosplaying. It was only in recent years, however, that I got to somehow enjoy a bit of cosplaying, thanks largely to our cool office that holds costume contests for Halloween and Christmas.

I thought that today, I would like to share to you some pictures with me and my officemates in costume. Now, remember, I am still practically new at this and we are not all-out cosplayers (that requires great dedication). I present to you…the ROLE-PLAYING GANG!!!

Please do not expect my own costumes as actual cosplay events-worthy (my motto is to do it the least expensive way possible). Just have a look and I hope you smile 🙂

 

2011

It’s Psycho-lo Gi!! Well, okay, it’s hard to smile when someone’s in front of you looking like this, but that’s just me who could not think of any costume for Halloween 2011…I’m short, but I look stunted here. Hmnnn…

I didn’t hope to win anything with this one. I was pressed for time so I thought of a semi-Scream version. Bought a common mask and wore black jacket and slacks, that was it. Posed with a knife, but only for pictorial purposes, so kids, don’t try this at home. Didn’t go around the office threatening peeps with it. There’s a saying, “Baka itulak ka ng kapwa mo demonyo,” which means, “Your fellow-devil might push you,” so might as well avoid tempting him.

Unfortunately, only five of us somehow participated in this. How sad 😦 Winner came from another branch office…Double sad 😦 😦  Had a grand time posing with office peeps but I’m not sharing, ’cause they’re not kid-friendly stuff.  Sharing this one, though:

That’s me at right with our Ate Ru sticking her tongue out (he he), then it’s she of MamaIsWorking in the middle (work it, Miss M.!!!)…

And so this was Christmas 2011 and what did we do? We went all-animated as we dressed in colorful costumes as various characters from animated shows, films and online games. Check out these cool pics!

Some of us had costumes made, some didn’t have much time to prepare for something more elaborate (party was after work), but some of us did what we would describe as “kinarir,” or in figurative English, “made a career out of it.” Here we smile

 

Here we serious! Just shared this one so you can check out the “gunblade” I made. Sorry for the pic quality

You’ve probably seen this in my About page. I was Rinoa Heartilly of Final Fantasy wearing here parts/props of others’ costumes — Skuld‘s wings and Haru Glory‘s sword

I was and am not that familiar with most animated characters, not as much as my colleagues did/do, so I just tried to do research. I tried to look for a character with dark hair (so I wouldn’t need a wig) and that was not scandalously dressed and found Rinoa Heartilly of Final Fantasy —  I was the bigger, curly and brown version.

A very close look at my drawing of the winged lion, The Griever

Created my own (anemic blue) blaster edge, Rinoa’s default weapon, and my version of her boyfriend Squall Leonhart‘s (cartolina) gunblade that she got to used, complete with the supposed etched winged lion called The Griever along the blade. I didn’t look anything like Rinoa (ha ha) but I was proud of my gunblade, It was safe, too, as the “blade” was just, as said, made of paper, it would easily bend if you just as simply poked it with your fingers.

There were lots of good costumes, but I will share only some because most were anime-inspired. If you are familiar with how anime female characters often look like, well, let’s just say I’d like to keep this blog kid-friendly. Besides, they would kill me if I did that. So I’ll keep this Gi-friendly as well, for my own safety 😉

Some costumes are worth showing, though, because they were creative and were made by their wearers themselves:

My usual Komikon buddy Sherwin won 2nd prize as Haru of Haru Glory. The sword had us (again, kids, this is not a real weapon…it was heavy, though). The wings had us, too, and belonged to the one who won first prize as Skuld of Skuld (Oh My Goddess!). She’s so shy so I felt she wouldn’t want to be seen here in public. It’s the wings that won for her, definitely

We’ve got the Super Mario Brothers–er–make that Super Mario Sisters–er–Maria…? This is Mario Mario…

 

 

…and this is Luigi Mario (and yes, Mario is their last name, look it up). These girls sewed up these outfits and created the cute hats out of feltpaper, I think

 

Luffy, is that you? What a simple but perfect way to come as his favorite character from his favorite One Piece

 

2012

BOO!!! Did I scare you? Well, I’m not sorry. I hope I did (LOL!!!). I call this my Aswang Salonga-look. Aswang is a Filipino term for evil, human-eating creatures/monsters that roam at night hunting for people to devour. I think I worked it with the eyes, but really, it was the hair that did most of the work

I was being a tightwad again so I bought the baggy black dress from the thrift or second-hand shop. Then I bought those fake plastic nails. They would look weird on me, though, as I have a brown complexion and the parts you attached to the fingers were white so I got surgical gloves from leftover medical supplies at home. The sleeves concealed my skin well enough. Just painted dark circles around the eyes and a bit of red lines on the face and neck that didn’t seem anything like blood at all.

I didn’t expect to win, at least, in the Branch Office, but I did. Looking at the pics told me who wouldn’t let me win? 😉 The funny thing was, my own sister asked me if I was wearing a wig! HA HA HAAA!!! I really just messed it all up and let it hang like that. So if you’ve read my TOP TEN QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK ME post, now you understand how wiry it could be.

For fun, we did go out on the streets in full costume to buy lunch and stopped by a mall (I can now say their security peeps cannot be relied on as they let us in…what if we were robbers???). The kids screamed both in scared and amused ways and actually followed us in a bookstore. Some kids talked to me and suddenly, one touched my hair, probably trying to find out if it was true, smelled it even. Then she declared “Her hair smells nice!” Aaww…I just didn’t know whether to say thank you or be depressed when some guy amusedly said the costume fit me well.

There were only a few of us who participated, but it was lots of fun already. Ladies and Gents, we introduce to you…

The not-so-Slender Man

The dashing Scarecrow

 

Jason of Friday the Thirteenth. BTW, kids, that’s just a prop in his hand, okay?

The Woman with Creepy Crawlers…She’s so pretty, though, not scary 🙂

Group pic, serious

Group pic, wacky!!!

Yipes…what would you do if you saw this…?

Okay, this got much longer than I expected. So I prepared a part deux — RPG [Part Two]. Hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen so far 🙂

BTW, pics belong to myself, f-l-o-r-i-e and our other officemates. Please do not share somewhere else, but feel free to link here…Thanks!!!

 

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Have you ever done some cosplaying or worn costumes for fun sometime or another? Feel free to share your experience and.or link us to your posts or photos!

It’s better late than never. This is the first part of my “R” post, still a part of the…