We’ll start with a quick paragraph about Katsucon. We went on Saturday to mainly see people we knew – not to do anything con related. We were kind of thankful that’s what we were doing because it was a madhouse zoo full of people everywhere and we pretty much hung out in the fountain area talking to lots of awesome geeks. We also went down to the giant hall that led to the pool because that was the only place where there weren’t a billion people and we wanted to at least get a couple of photos of our costumes. We’ve had these costumes done forever and we FINALLY GOT TO WEAR THEM. Byakuya Togami & Toko Fukawa from Danganronpa!

Thanks to Roger for getting these photos (SERIOUSLY THANKS TO ROGER FOR GETTING LIKE ALL THE PHOTOS IN THIS POST)! And also for hurrying and snagging these other goofy-ass photos from the back of a photo machine that did “example” shots of people standing behind the machine. They were only up for a few seconds after they were taken so he would always rush over with the camera and try to take a picture of the screen. SUCCESS!

That’s really about it for a Katsucon report, haha. Maybe one day we’ll actually go back to the con, but we aren’t sure as of now. We like seeing people we only see once a year though! This year we knew it was a no-go because of how much money it would be for hotel/badges for cons two weekends in a row and MAGFest is our favorite time of year (next to Halloween and Christmas… and MAGFest Classic ;D) so we knew which one we had to stick with in the back-to-back con issue.

SO MAGFEST 2016! We got there mid-afternoon on Thursday and the first thing of note that happened was Nate dropping what was left of a handle of Fireball Whisky (it was leftover from the ADAM drink at the wedding) which shattered on the tile and left the Gaylord National hall smelling like Fireball. I wish I had a dollar for every person who walked by while the staff was cleaning it up (the Katsucon & Gaylord staff who helped out both were amazing <3) and went, “IT SMELLS LIKE FIREBALL.” I could’ve used all those dollars to buy my food for the weekend. A couple hours later we were in the Ninja Sex Party panel, flipping our shit because NINJA SEX PARTY WE WERE IN THE SAME ROOM AS NINJA SEX PARTY OKAY. The panel was hilarious (as expected) and if you wanted to watch it, it is up on YouTube here! Their cover album (Under the Covers, yesssssss) was about to be released shortly after the con so there is some fun talk about that as well as all kinds of other hijinks. Overall, the panel was great and just served to get us super pumped up for the concert that was taking place the next night.

On Friday morning we put on the Saints Row 2 costumes we’ve had done FOREVER, DJ Veteran Child & Shaundi and we were joined by Denis who put together an SR2 Johnny Gat! He didn’t do the frosted tips because FIRST OF ALL, FROSTED TIPS, and second, his hair was already dyed purple even before he was going to join us as Johnny and it looked amazing. His hair fit the Saints perfectly so why not run with it?

Friday was full of playing video games, wandering around the vendor room/artist’s alley, and freaking out over awesome/adorable/perfect art and items and then Friday night was the NINJA SEX PARTY CONCERT AHHHHHHHHHHHH! TWRP joined them (since TWRP played on the cover album and there’s going to be a lot of awesome work between them and NSP in the near future) and we got to see both bands rock the hell out. The concert is up on YouTube too — check it out! It was effing great and as an added bonus, DJ Cutman shared a new remix he did of my favorite NSP song, Samurai Abstinence Patrol after the concert was over. You can listen to the remix here — it is a perfect remix of an already kickass song.

After the concert and more MAGFest madness, our room managed to get more photos of the Five Nights at Freddy’s/Hotline Miami costumes we originally brought to MAGFest Classic last year — we got to use the awesome wifi shutter app for the camera for some of the photos (like the first one below) and it worked out very well. These were taken around 4 in the morning? I’m not sure how that happened but our explanation for stuff like that is always just MAGFEST!

Saturday was playing more video games (because MAGFest) with Fallout 4 costumes in the morning and Until Dawn costumes with an amazing group in the evening. Fallout 4 is magical and we knew we wanted to make costumes from it but didn’t have the time or budget for anything crazy. We ended up going with Nate and Nora pre-Vault 111 — aka the two characters at the beginning that you can rename and change looks-wise and all that jazz. We also had a little baby Shaun which was a baby doll from the thrift store. It was the least creepy looking baby doll we could find there and it was dressed all in pink so we ended up calling the baby Shaunita all day. We even made the baby a theme song.

We met up with an awesome group of costumed people later who all loved Until Dawn as much as we do and we goofed off with them at a photoshoot and then thanks to Denis we got a couple more shots of us, also goofing off with the danger totem I made. Nate is always on his cell phone so him as Chris and me as Ashley worked out really well.

Roger helped us get photos for a Jacen Solo/Tenel Ka Djo (Star Wars: EU) photo thing we’re working on later that night. We had to time it just right so that there weren’t a bunch of people around the Gaylord National’s main fountain in the atrium, but the lights and water features were still going. We caught it about five minutes before they turned off. Woo! Here is a shot from that evening. The whole photo project should hopefully be online THIS YEAR AT SOME POINT HAHAHAHA. Look, see, I’m being realistic here.

Sunday was more video games. We need to stop writing con posts months later because we forget everything that happens, but HOW DO WE NOT PROCRASTINATE?

Back in June, with the help of usual Zhobot guest Bria (of White Hot Room), we made the front piece of the flag seen in some of the Saints Row IV promo images! We wanted to use it in some Saints Row cosplay photos like the one seen below!

We were going to make both sides, but due to the time constraints when we made the one side, we only ended up putting a red backing on it. We thought maybe a tutorial would be helpful if there was anyone else out there who wanted to put one together, so it’s time to finally sew the other side of the flag (and add some fun things like a flagpole and so on).

What you will need:
– 3/4 a yard of dark red fabric
– 3/4 a yard of white fabric
– thread
– sewing machine
– dowel for flagpole (optional)
– piece for the top of the flagpole (optional)
– spraypaint for flagpole (optional)
– epoxy sculpt or paperclay (optional)

This is what I had for my flag when I started this tutorial (after taking the red backing off). I will be going through making the opposite side of my flag. Follow the instructions for this side and then make the other side with the blue area where it’s supposed to be – you’ll see what I mean as we go along!

1.) There might be a different way you want to do this part, but I made a purple-ish blue fabric with the Fleur-de-lis/Saints symbol on Spoonflower. It’s up to order if anyone wants to just get the one I used. If you get a fat quarter (21″ by 18″), it’ll be enough to make the blue pieces on both sides of the flag (and there will be spaces between the sets of symbols where you need to cut).

Just cut the two full rectangles of symbols out on the left (leave about a 1/2 inch to an inch of extra so you can hem it) and hem them and you have your blue sections taken care of!

2.) Next you’re going to want to cut 7 strips of dark red fabric and 6 strips of white fabric. They should be about 32 inches long and 2.25 inches wide.

3.) Pin the stripes together and sew down each pair of stripes with a 1/2 inch seam allowance.

4.) Pin the blue (purpleish blue XD) section in the upper corner of your flag – left or right, depending on what side you are currently working on. Since I was making the back of my flag, I pinned and sewed mine onto the upper left corner. Sew down the section on your flag.

5.) This is where you’d repeat everything for the other side! The only change will be where you place the blue section. The piece on the front of the flag needs to be on the upper left and the piece on the back of the flag needs to be on the upper right.

NOTE: If you wanted to do the optional steps for a flagpole, you would need to add the casing to the flag at this point (check below on how – you would need to check now since you would shut the opening of the flag differently with casing). If you don’t want a flagpole, then just keep going and move on to #6!

6.) Pin the two sides of the flag together – with the right sides together (so that the blue pieces are touching).

7.) Sew all the way around the flag with a 1/2″ seam allowance leaving a small space for you to pull the right side of the flag through.

8.) Pull the flag through and make sure you poke all the corners out so it makes a nice rectangle. You’ll see below that my stripes don’t meet up with each other. I had to be creative with the backside of my flag since I was almost out of fabric – yours should be fine. ;D

9.) Iron the flag so it’s not all bumpy!

10.) Sew the opening shut whatever way works best for you. I didn’t include a photo here because I was putting in a casing on the side so I could add a flagpole.

Now, the next couple of steps are optional but we wanted to add a flagpole to our flag so it was easier to carry and pose with in photos. So if you want to add a flagpole, keep going with the steps below!

11.) Get a dowel – it’s up to you how long you want it to be. The thickness is up to you also, but remember you’ll have to fit the casing around it.

12.) We took some epoxy sculpt and a keychain of the Fleur-de-lis/Saints symbol, took the keychain part off, and attached it to the top of the flagpole. We have more of these keychains in the supply section of our shop if you’d like one to get one to use on your flag (you could use anything – it’s up to you!). Sculpt it to the top with something that air dries (epoxy sculpt, paperclay, etc.) and let it dry.

12.) Cover the symbol with painter’s tape and spraypaint the flagpole black. Or whatever color you want, really!

13.) Pin the right sides of your flag together so that the blue pieces are touching and sew the three sides of the flag together with a 1/2″ seam allowance, leaving the side where the casing/flagpole would go open.

14.) For the casing, take a piece of the white fabric and measure it so it’s a little longer than the open side of your flag and will fit snugly around the flagpole (with space to sew it into the flag). Hem the top and the bottom of the casing.

15.) Fold the edges of the open side into the flag and fold the casing over. Pin the casing into the flag and sew it into the flag (this will shut the open side of the flag as well). It’s up to you what color thread you use for this part. I used white up until I hit the blue piece and then used the same blue thread I used to originally hem/sew the blue piece.

16.) There you have it!

Now you can take lots of goofy photos like we enjoy doing!

PLEASE feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the tutorial. I know it’s a little crazy and messy – but WE TRIED. XD

I’m sorry in advance for all the rambling about to come your way, dear reader. I still can’t wrap my head around PAX East. I wish it could’ve gone on forever. This post will include some highlights as well as costume photos! There aren’t as many costumers there as say… Katsucon or Dragon*Con, but there were a fair amount and every single one we saw was incredible. Right off the bat on Friday morning, I saw this Barret (Final Fantasy VII) in his Cargo-Ship-Trip-to-Junon sailor uniform and I squealed. Y’all know how much I love Barret, but BARRET IN HIS STOLEN SAILOR WHITES CURSING UP A STORM is even better!

We checked out the expo hall Friday morning before getting into our first costume and danced on the Dance Central 3 stage (cause we knew we wouldn’t be able to do it in any of our costumes). We danced to “You’re A Jerk” and the Kinect just flat out lost me near the end of the song cause Nate is such a giant and took over the stage. Gosh, Nate, I will forever be in your shadow (XD).

After that (and after getting our awesome DC freebies for dancing! <3), we got into our costumes from The Cave – The Creepy Twins! We have a special place in our heart for creepy twins (hello Glitterati and now hello Luteces) so when we played The Cave, we knew this costume had to happen even though our heights are so wrong. We dropped by the Double Fine booth in them (I needed to stop by anyways because I needed this print so so so so so so bad :3) and were extremely grateful and humbled at how much they loved the costumes! I was getting a Double Fine Kickstarter print signed by Tim Schafer for my brother-in-law and he cackled at the costumes and took a couple of photos (we were both all, “HUR HUR HRUHREUHRURH THANKS HURRRR HIIIIII THANKS” — seriously, we don’t know how to interact with people ever).

(Thanks to Tim Schafer for the above photos!)

(Thanks to Erin for the above photos!)

We checked out more of the expo hall and then changed into Matt Miller and Kinzie Kensington (Saints Row: The Third) costumes! WE HAD TO SEE THE SAINTS ROW IV PREVIEW. I cannot stress enough how excited we are because (I know this isn’t a popular opinion) but we both loved the ridiculousness of Saints Row: The Third even after playing the first two and we were both glad to see they’re raising the BAR OF RIDICULOUSNESS. We were planning on bringing Matt & Kinzie costumes no matter what, but once the Saints Row Twitter started saying that SR costumers would be able to skip the line, we slammed those babies into the suitcase so fast– okay, I take that back. The Matt jacket can’t fit into a suitcase because it is huge and can’t fold. So we put that beside the suitcase.

We talked to the Deep Silver employee letting people into the theater and he was extremely cool and excited for us to see the preview. He also snapped the shot to the left and sent it to the people taking care of the Saints Row Twitter – they were posting photos of costumers all weekend. (I wish we saw them all in person!) I also poked around and asked if that person in the SR4 promo shot with the gang-colored lipstick was, in fact, Matt Miller, and I got a lot of, “HEEEHEHEHEEEHEHE, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT”s, which I took as a very good sign.

The preview– I can’t even– OH MAN. Everything about it was ridiculous and as I said, we are fans of that. The DUBSTEP GUN looks like it will provide all sorts of entertainment and an interview we saw later from PAX East claiming we might sort of be going into the internal baggage of these characters in this game really makes me wish it was August already. ALIENS, SUPERPOWERS, DUBSTEP GUNS, PERSONAL BAGGAGE AHOY! For real, is it August yet?

While scoping the Dance Central stage, we met up with a darling friend Miscellaneon who I know from the worldwide interwebbs (thanks to Dance Central!) and as we stood there and nerded out, I saw a person up on stage dressed in Mo’s alternate outfit from the first Dance Central game. I waited until he was done dancing and stopped him for a photo which turned into all of us meeting the next morning for Dance Central costume shenanigans (which I will get to in a bit)!

The rest of Friday was spent loafing around. We went to the PC Free Play area and played the campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 that we hadn’t played yet (Cold Stream) – we ended up not beating it before our time was up that night, b’awww.

Saturday was mostly spent hanging out at the Dance Central 3 booth because we are nerds for that, okay. We – and by we I mean our new friend Chris as Mo, Miscellaneon as Taye, Nate and I in our new Glitterati outfits, and Denis as Glitch with the amazing light-up Boomy he made – creeped on the booth a little after noon and met all the super nice Harmonix employees who were there (my goodness they were so polite and funny and a joy to be around I can’t get over it sjdkfjaskfd). One of Harmonix’s community managers, Annette, told us we were free to hang out at the booth so we did! We also cheered for people dancing (well, Nate and I golf clapped because the Glitterati are mean, y’all) and talked to other fans about the game. It was a lot of fun and it got even better when a Lil’ T costumer (a fabulous girl by the name of Daniela) came up! We had three full crews! Another hurrah moment was when Annette said Nate and I were the perfect height for the Glitterati – even though Jaryn also looks like a giant in the game, Kerith is a frickin’ monster and she said this is what it would look like in real life. I AM STILL EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR THAT COMMENT because our height difference of roughly a foot works so well for costumes like Luke Triton and Professor Layton but it always worried me with other costumes – especially the Glitterati. SO THANK YOU, ANNETTE! XD

The other highlight in these outfits was when we wandered off to take some photos…

That last group shot was taken by someone who had a certain attachment to our outfits! We were about to ask someone hanging around where we taking photos if they could take a quick group shot of all six of us, but we were suddenly approached by a girl in a Dance Central shirt. Now, this was a shirt only Harmonix employees have, so we were all admiring it because we will never have one: “HI YOUR SHIRT IS AMAZING HUR HUR” (you know, how we usually sound) – she pointed to our Glitterati outfits and said, “I designed those!” She said the same of Daniela’s Lil’ T outfit and pointed to other bits and bobs on everyone’s outfits too! Turns out it was Jamie McKiernan – an artist from Harmonix! She said she was one floor up, spotted us from above, and rushed downstairs to get a photo! She took a couple with my camera as well, which we are very thankful for! I ALSO THANKED HER PROFUSELY FOR GIVING JARYN A FABULOUS BUTT CAPE BECAUSE I. LOVE. BUTT. CAPES. Seriously, there is a post sitting in the drafts of this blog right now about how much I love butt capes. The extra bonus moment of me rolling around on the ground crying in my head came when she said she thought she saw us online before and asked if we were the two who did the Glitterati costumes with the glowing logos on the backs of the crew outfits – Nate and I were both extremely honored that she liked the DC3 outfits we made as well as the crew ones (WEEKEND MADE ;-;) and it was so awesome to meet her AKA THE PERSON BEHIND THESE FABULOUSLY INSANE OUTFITS.

Those photos are a perfect transition into the next part of our day because it was taken by our BRO OF BROS Sonja of Soulfire Photography (I can’t count the number of reasons we love this girl, for real) who is always a joy to work with because you can’t not smile when you’re around her. She also puts up with my stupid made-up words and random costume problems I always seem to have! She was talking to Sheila and Sylar of Aicosu when we met up with her and it was really cool to meet them cause their costumes are always wonderful and look just as amazing in person (they were wearing their Dishonored costumes which looked perfect). Also, they’re both positively kind and funny which is THE BEST COMBO. We bugged Sonja and annoyed her camera for a bit with all this Lisa Frank bling then we hobbled back up to the room to de-shine ourselves!

We got back into normal clothes (and shoes, hahahahahah) after that and wandered around some more. Expo hall, dinner with Chris & Miscellaneon at the food court, Dance Central free play area (Miscellaneon & Daniela danced Nicki Minaj’s “Massive Attack” with us and it was so much fun AGGH I MISS EVERYONE), PC free play area (played L4D2 – Cold Stream again, BEAT IT THIS TIME, AW YES) – it was all pretty much a giant blur of THIS IS SO COOL I LOVE EVERYONE AT THIS CONVENTION.

Sunday we saw a tweet on the magical land of Twitter about a Saints Row cosplay gathering in the con center lobby at 12:30 so we packed up everything and threw on the last minute Saints Row IV costumes we put together after this fabulous image was released the week before the con! I collected things for Kinzie that week and Nate had everything for Presi-Boss (Bossident?)! We went down to the Deep Silver booth and watched the trailer once because we were in Saints Row costumes again, then headed up to the gathering. We were really glad we did because everyone there was just like all the other people we had met over the weekend: AWESOME. XD I’m sorry, I know I’ve been overusing that word but I just can’t use it enough here, haha.

Everyone at the gathering was really nice and we had a lot of fun goofing off with in-character photo ideas (JOHNNY GAT GET ON THE GROUND AND BE DEAD) – it was a really entertaining time! Plus, we made a group trek to the Deep Silver booth and got to watch the preview all together! Thanks to the Saints Row Twitter for these photos!

We changed after that and meandered around the expo hall some more before piling into the car and driving back home. I said this on Twitter (a shorter version of it, though): I know there are some bad apples in the gaming community (as there are in every community) but I met so many polite, funny and marvelous people here – it made me love video games even more. We had a blast at PAX East 2013 and can’t wait to do it again!

In closing, here is a magnificent statue of one of the cat security guards from Battleblock Theater at The Behemoth booth (and me derping behind it)!