HOME | DD

Description
deus’s Half Assed Cosplaying Guide

Foreword:

This book was not written by deusprogrammer, in fact deusprogrammer transcribed it from a glowing scroll he found in a boulder that most likely came from space (or space camp).  Inside that scroll (written in American, because it’s the only language I speak), he found the old art of convincing people you are someone you aren’t.  Deusprogrammer has used this skill constantly at cons to convince you he is in fact Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing (netting him 4 fan girls from Special Ed-con 2004).  He has also used this ability to convince people he is in fact the second coming of Cheesus.  While this book will never make you as awesome as Deusprogrammer at the special art of “Half-assed Cosplay-no-Jutsu”, it will make you confident enough to perform and win everytime (unless your competition is me…then your eye sockets will melt).  This guide will teach you the basics and give you some examples.

Chapter 1:  The Last Minute Cosplay

For starters, let’s make your costume.  There are three types of half-assed costumes, the plain clothes cosplay, the hybrid cosplay, and the last minute cosplay.  The point of a true last minute cosplay is to do as little actual work as possible.  In fact you should be able to expend so little effort you can organize your cosplay 10 minutes before you have to leave for the con.  Your plain clothes cosplay can consist of anything you find lying around the house.  For example, lets say you want to cosplay Master Chief ™…if you’re lucky you can grab your brother’s paintball mask, a Nerf Ballzooka, and a roll of grey duct tape from the kitchen and then get your baby sister to hold the duct tape as you spin around and wrap yourself up (fancy Sunday clothing and all) completely in duct tape.  For bonus points keep the legs separate so you can walk.  Of course lets assume you don’t own cool things like paintball masks and this so called “duct tape”…what will you do?  Okay, for starters go to the kitchen and grab a grocery bag and put it over your head to use as the mask.  Now take a knife and carelessly stab a hole in the bag.  These are called “Anti-asphyxiation Holes”.  Remember that time you were little and you tried to zip tie a grocery bag full of venomous insects to your head…yeah you didn’t have these holes…that is why you are brain damaged now…but then again most of us Otaku are.  Next grab your dad’s black spray paint from the garage and keep spraying yourself in the face until you start seeing your friends transform into the Covenant.  Now with a healthy dose of paint fumes you are ready to go.  You are so knocked up on paint fumes the rest of your Spartan body armor will magically form.  If people don’t see your artist vision, then you should give them a healthy spray of the spray paint.  Now the previous example is worst case scenario.  In most cases you can atleast find a hair encrusted roll of duct tape, a Sharpie Marker, and some cardboard boxes around.  You are only a Pepsi box and a Sharpie away from that awesome Gundam costume everyone will go ga ga over.  Of course if all you have is the Duct Tape, you can just wrap yourself entirely in Duct Tape and go as Ultraman.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Zaku II from Gundam

Materials Required:
-Brothers Football Equipment
-Caulking Gun from Garage
-Duct Tape
-Red Spray Paint
-Captn’ Crunch Cereal Box
-Your cat

Instructions:
-Put on football equipment.
-Wrap yourself in duct tape.
-Spray paint duct tape and your face red.
-Duct tape cat to caulking gun.
-Duct tape cereal box (HAS TO BE CAPTN CRUNCH) to your chest as armor and then write “I Assure You I’m a Zaku!  Sieg Zion!”

Bonus Instructions:
-With every step try to make a “Wakachooie” noise with your mouth (or any other orifice on your body capable of producing a “Wakachooie” noise).
-Your cat should sound very angry since you taped it to a caulking gun, so it will make an interesting sound track for your costume.  For gun fire shake the caulking gun violently to make the cat screech.
-For added effect, take your little brother or any child you find wandering the neighbor hood and construct a similar costume out of cardboard boxes and write “Amuro” on his chest.  Then kick him to assert the fact you are in fact a Zaku.

Chapter 2:  The Plain Clothes Cosplay

Now understand that when I say plain clothes, I don’t mean going out and buying clothing that matches the character you are cosplaying…that would require defeating gravity to lift your ass off the couch from the Naruto Marathon you are no doubt watching right now.  The next type of half-assed cosplay involving “plain clothes” is just going as your favorite character on their day off.  I mean I’m sure Solid Snake wears a turtle neck sweater that proclaims “No Fat Chicks” on his days off.  Of course for added realism you can just hide under a box the whole convention and shoot people with a desk stapler from the box.  But in anycase, the key to cosplaying with whatever clothing you are wearing right now is simple.  First of all you need a piece of paper to make a sign.  The sign should just say “Hey I’m So and So” but with the name of the character you are cosplaying.  And then you need to come up with a back story.  Like you are wearing a rainbow colored shirt, tell them you are Yaoi-Sephiroth or something.  The chicks will dig it and immediately write atleast 10 fan fictions about you sleeping with other men, including your gimp uncle Edward.  Throwing the word “Yaoi” on your sign (which we will refer to as our “Costume Placard” from now on), will instantly net you fan girl appeal…and as such in this same fashion, you can immediately win the cosplay contest by simply making your costume the fact you are constantly French kissing your unwilling male friend/roommate/father.

Once you have yourself properly labeled, you need two other things…you need the gumption to assert that you are in fact who you say you are, and you need to act like the character so well everyone around you will believe that you are Cloud despite the fact your head is bald.  This acting should have absolutely no limits.  For example if you are morbidly obese and cosplaying Gluttony from Full Metal Alchemist, you should actually eat people.  No one will mind since you are just in the spirit of the con.  A few dead people won’t bother anyone…besides they shouldn’t have questioned the validity of your costume.  And hey…now you have real blood on you...theater blood is for emos.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Shinji from Evangelion

Materials Required:
-Your clothes
-Your costume placard (write “I love Kaoru after your name for added appeal”)
-Your ambiguously gay friend
-Some bleach (not the anime)
-Tweezers
-Your currently menstruating sister
-Tang

Instructions:
-VERY IMPORTANT:  Put on clothes…although Shinji is naked plenty in the anime, this will not go over well unless your ambiguously gay friend is naked too.
-Pour the bucket of bleach on your friends face while he’s sleeping to get the gray hair and pale skin/red eyes.
-If your friend dies, just blame it on AIDs…everyone will understand.
-Go to the convention, and whenever someone looks at you, immediately go into the fetal position.
-Have your crazed sister harass everyone (people will immediately know she is Asuka...or Naru from Love Hina…as they are the bitchiest characters ever spawned).
-Everyone will vicariously know you are Shinji, and whenever they question you threaten them with a glass of Tang…be sure to claim that the glass contains the last person who questioned you.  If they persist, end the world with whining.
-When all else fails, cry and scream “I mustn’t run away!” repeatedly.

Bonus Instructions:
-If you can’t induce an all out cry fest on your own, use the afore mentioned tweezers to pluck out your pubic hairs.  If you have your Yaoi prop (i.e. your friend), then sell these hairs in the dealers room for mad cash.

Chapter 3: The Hybrid Costume

The hybrid costume is your last ditch effort.  Lets say you left your duct tape, sharpie, and or Captn Crunch cereal boxes at home…what then?  Well assuming you have money with you, you can do what the truly resourceful and lazy do.  First of all, get a place in the dealer’s room line and as soon as it opens buy the first 5 cosplay items you find and combine them.  It doesn’t matter, just as long as you cover your body entirely with these 5 items.  As a rule though, one of these items HAS to be a Naruto Headband!  If you are lucky, you may actually end up with a costume of a real character, but chances are you will end up as some half male, half female freak.  But hey, anime is full of those, so as long as you can bullshit a believable name, you will be fine.  Here is a good example.

You bought:
-Naruto Headband
-Sailor Fuku (from various anime)
-Tokyo Mew Mew cat ears
-Yaoi paddle
-Kingdom Hearts Keyblade

Combined you are Neko Sailor Konoha Yaoi Rikku.  You must tell everyone you are from Kingdom Hearts III, where Rikku is revealed as a female catgirl ninja from Naruto world.  When people call your bluff simply call them stupid and tell them you have it on your Playstation 6 which is only in Japan right now.  A good deal of otaku might actually be stupid enough to believe you and then cosplay it next year.  Plus you have a Yaoi paddle so you are obviously in Master Form and looking to make out with Master Form Sora.

Another example would be to buy merchandise all from the same series.  Then you will look enough like a character from said series that you can claim you are from a later issue of the manga that isn’t out yet, and 80% of the people will buy it.  But don’t choose something well known or the fanboys and girls will call out mass production Eva units to tear your innards out and then cause third impact.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Amazing Sailor Salaryman from Fukai Unchi no Hito (or whatever you come up with)

Materials Required:
-Sailor Fuku from any costume stand
-A long blonde wig
-A stack of business cards stolen from a dealers table
-Free pens stolen from a dealers table
-A Naruto headband

Instructions:
-Put it all over however you can fit it.
-Throw business cards and pens at people and yell “UNCHI” as loud as possible.
-For your transformation sequence, just mush as many henshin maneuvers into a single motion as possible.  To appease the Naruto fans, throw in some ninja-ish looking hand symbols (flashing the middle finger doesn’t count as tempting as it is).

Bonus Instructions:
-Intersperse English and popular Japanese phrases as much as possible!  It will make you seem authentic.
-If you see a Japanese guest say “Watashiwa kusoni tabemasu!” as enthusiastically as possible.  The disgusted look on their face means they are impressed with your mastery of Japanese.  Don’t follow your instincts as an American, remember that in Japan their culture is different from ours.  Ninjas run rampant and women have to walk everywhere in their underwear and fight off tentacle rape monsters with their sex magic.  Trust me, I know Japanese Culture!  The guest will find you very “Kawaii desu!”
-Whenever someone makes you angry just scream “BAKA KAWAII DESU!”  Also be sure to call every girl you see “kowaii”.  It means they are cute…I mean, a million otaku can’t possibly be butchering the Japanese language right?

Chapter 4: The Cosplay Contest

Before the cosplay find a cosplayer who is cosplaying a popular character the same gender as you.  Roll an opposed Charisma check to convince them to do a cosplay with you.  If you fail, then just keep trying or level up until your Charisma is high enough to convince them.  You can level up by killing Inuyasha cosplayers, no one will miss them anyways.  Plus their foam weapons will be no match for your spray paint can of hypnosis.  Once you have a partner for your cosplay…all you need to do is go to the contest with no script and then scream 4chan memes or Chuck Norris jokes at each other and then make out.  This will be sure to win you an award over that awesome Trigun cosplay before yours that reenacted Wolfwood’s death scene.  For bonus points bring a DDR Pad and Pocky.

Example:

You: Chuck Norris is so awesome he poops lightsabers!
Him: Tits or GTFO!
You: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Kiss your cosplay partner and then start playing DDR while eating Pocky.

For bonus points with the fan girls of the convention, start pantomiming that you are humping your partner and then start squirting the audience with Hershey’s syrup.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

Okay, assuming you have gone to the cosplay and haven’t been killed or kicked out, retire your costume and never use it again.  After all you need to keep everyone guessing.  Maybe next year you can plan a little harder.  Like save that huge box your new couch came out and cut holes in the side so you can be Spaceship Naruto (remember, you have to use a Naruto Headband in your cosplay).  So I hope you all had fun.  See you next year at San-Jaspace Camp!

Description
deus’s Half Assed Cosplaying Guide

Foreword:

This book was not written by deusprogrammer, in fact deusprogrammer transcribed it from a glowing scroll he found in a boulder that most likely came from space (or space camp).  Inside that scroll (written in American, because it’s the only language I speak), he found the old art of convincing people you are someone you aren’t.  Deusprogrammer has used this skill constantly at cons to convince you he is in fact Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing (netting him 4 fan girls from Special Ed-con 2004).  He has also used this ability to convince people he is in fact the second coming of Cheesus.  While this book will never make you as awesome as Deusprogrammer at the special art of “Half-assed Cosplay-no-Jutsu”, it will make you confident enough to perform and win everytime (unless your competition is me…then your eye sockets will melt).  This guide will teach you the basics and give you some examples.

Chapter 1:  The Last Minute Cosplay

For starters, let’s make your costume.  There are three types of half-assed costumes, the plain clothes cosplay, the hybrid cosplay, and the last minute cosplay.  The point of a true last minute cosplay is to do as little actual work as possible.  In fact you should be able to expend so little effort you can organize your cosplay 10 minutes before you have to leave for the con.  Your plain clothes cosplay can consist of anything you find lying around the house.  For example, lets say you want to cosplay Master Chief ™…if you’re lucky you can grab your brother’s paintball mask, a Nerf Ballzooka, and a roll of grey duct tape from the kitchen and then get your baby sister to hold the duct tape as you spin around and wrap yourself up (fancy Sunday clothing and all) completely in duct tape.  For bonus points keep the legs separate so you can walk.  Of course lets assume you don’t own cool things like paintball masks and this so called “duct tape”…what will you do?  Okay, for starters go to the kitchen and grab a grocery bag and put it over your head to use as the mask.  Now take a knife and carelessly stab a hole in the bag.  These are called “Anti-asphyxiation Holes”.  Remember that time you were little and you tried to zip tie a grocery bag full of venomous insects to your head…yeah you didn’t have these holes…that is why you are brain damaged now…but then again most of us Otaku are.  Next grab your dad’s black spray paint from the garage and keep spraying yourself in the face until you start seeing your friends transform into the Covenant.  Now with a healthy dose of paint fumes you are ready to go.  You are so knocked up on paint fumes the rest of your Spartan body armor will magically form.  If people don’t see your artist vision, then you should give them a healthy spray of the spray paint.  Now the previous example is worst case scenario.  In most cases you can atleast find a hair encrusted roll of duct tape, a Sharpie Marker, and some cardboard boxes around.  You are only a Pepsi box and a Sharpie away from that awesome Gundam costume everyone will go ga ga over.  Of course if all you have is the Duct Tape, you can just wrap yourself entirely in Duct Tape and go as Ultraman.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Zaku II from Gundam

Materials Required:
-Brothers Football Equipment
-Caulking Gun from Garage
-Duct Tape
-Red Spray Paint
-Captn’ Crunch Cereal Box
-Your cat

Instructions:
-Put on football equipment.
-Wrap yourself in duct tape.
-Spray paint duct tape and your face red.
-Duct tape cat to caulking gun.
-Duct tape cereal box (HAS TO BE CAPTN CRUNCH) to your chest as armor and then write “I Assure You I’m a Zaku!  Sieg Zion!”

Bonus Instructions:
-With every step try to make a “Wakachooie” noise with your mouth (or any other orifice on your body capable of producing a “Wakachooie” noise).
-Your cat should sound very angry since you taped it to a caulking gun, so it will make an interesting sound track for your costume.  For gun fire shake the caulking gun violently to make the cat screech.
-For added effect, take your little brother or any child you find wandering the neighbor hood and construct a similar costume out of cardboard boxes and write “Amuro” on his chest.  Then kick him to assert the fact you are in fact a Zaku.

Chapter 2:  The Plain Clothes Cosplay

Now understand that when I say plain clothes, I don’t mean going out and buying clothing that matches the character you are cosplaying…that would require defeating gravity to lift your ass off the couch from the Naruto Marathon you are no doubt watching right now.  The next type of half-assed cosplay involving “plain clothes” is just going as your favorite character on their day off.  I mean I’m sure Solid Snake wears a turtle neck sweater that proclaims “No Fat Chicks” on his days off.  Of course for added realism you can just hide under a box the whole convention and shoot people with a desk stapler from the box.  But in anycase, the key to cosplaying with whatever clothing you are wearing right now is simple.  First of all you need a piece of paper to make a sign.  The sign should just say “Hey I’m So and So” but with the name of the character you are cosplaying.  And then you need to come up with a back story.  Like you are wearing a rainbow colored shirt, tell them you are Yaoi-Sephiroth or something.  The chicks will dig it and immediately write atleast 10 fan fictions about you sleeping with other men, including your gimp uncle Edward.  Throwing the word “Yaoi” on your sign (which we will refer to as our “Costume Placard” from now on), will instantly net you fan girl appeal…and as such in this same fashion, you can immediately win the cosplay contest by simply making your costume the fact you are constantly French kissing your unwilling male friend/roommate/father.

Once you have yourself properly labeled, you need two other things…you need the gumption to assert that you are in fact who you say you are, and you need to act like the character so well everyone around you will believe that you are Cloud despite the fact your head is bald.  This acting should have absolutely no limits.  For example if you are morbidly obese and cosplaying Gluttony from Full Metal Alchemist, you should actually eat people.  No one will mind since you are just in the spirit of the con.  A few dead people won’t bother anyone…besides they shouldn’t have questioned the validity of your costume.  And hey…now you have real blood on you...theater blood is for emos.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Shinji from Evangelion

Materials Required:
-Your clothes
-Your costume placard (write “I love Kaoru after your name for added appeal”)
-Your ambiguously gay friend
-Some bleach (not the anime)
-Tweezers
-Your currently menstruating sister
-Tang

Instructions:
-VERY IMPORTANT:  Put on clothes…although Shinji is naked plenty in the anime, this will not go over well unless your ambiguously gay friend is naked too.
-Pour the bucket of bleach on your friends face while he’s sleeping to get the gray hair and pale skin/red eyes.
-If your friend dies, just blame it on AIDs…everyone will understand.
-Go to the convention, and whenever someone looks at you, immediately go into the fetal position.
-Have your crazed sister harass everyone (people will immediately know she is Asuka...or Naru from Love Hina…as they are the bitchiest characters ever spawned).
-Everyone will vicariously know you are Shinji, and whenever they question you threaten them with a glass of Tang…be sure to claim that the glass contains the last person who questioned you.  If they persist, end the world with whining.
-When all else fails, cry and scream “I mustn’t run away!” repeatedly.

Bonus Instructions:
-If you can’t induce an all out cry fest on your own, use the afore mentioned tweezers to pluck out your pubic hairs.  If you have your Yaoi prop (i.e. your friend), then sell these hairs in the dealers room for mad cash.

Chapter 3: The Hybrid Costume

The hybrid costume is your last ditch effort.  Lets say you left your duct tape, sharpie, and or Captn Crunch cereal boxes at home…what then?  Well assuming you have money with you, you can do what the truly resourceful and lazy do.  First of all, get a place in the dealer’s room line and as soon as it opens buy the first 5 cosplay items you find and combine them.  It doesn’t matter, just as long as you cover your body entirely with these 5 items.  As a rule though, one of these items HAS to be a Naruto Headband!  If you are lucky, you may actually end up with a costume of a real character, but chances are you will end up as some half male, half female freak.  But hey, anime is full of those, so as long as you can bullshit a believable name, you will be fine.  Here is a good example.

You bought:
-Naruto Headband
-Sailor Fuku (from various anime)
-Tokyo Mew Mew cat ears
-Yaoi paddle
-Kingdom Hearts Keyblade

Combined you are Neko Sailor Konoha Yaoi Rikku.  You must tell everyone you are from Kingdom Hearts III, where Rikku is revealed as a female catgirl ninja from Naruto world.  When people call your bluff simply call them stupid and tell them you have it on your Playstation 6 which is only in Japan right now.  A good deal of otaku might actually be stupid enough to believe you and then cosplay it next year.  Plus you have a Yaoi paddle so you are obviously in Master Form and looking to make out with Master Form Sora.

Another example would be to buy merchandise all from the same series.  Then you will look enough like a character from said series that you can claim you are from a later issue of the manga that isn’t out yet, and 80% of the people will buy it.  But don’t choose something well known or the fanboys and girls will call out mass production Eva units to tear your innards out and then cause third impact.

Example Cosplay Idea:
Amazing Sailor Salaryman from Fukai Unchi no Hito (or whatever you come up with)

Materials Required:
-Sailor Fuku from any costume stand
-A long blonde wig
-A stack of business cards stolen from a dealers table
-Free pens stolen from a dealers table
-A Naruto headband

Instructions:
-Put it all over however you can fit it.
-Throw business cards and pens at people and yell “UNCHI” as loud as possible.
-For your transformation sequence, just mush as many henshin maneuvers into a single motion as possible.  To appease the Naruto fans, throw in some ninja-ish looking hand symbols (flashing the middle finger doesn’t count as tempting as it is).

Bonus Instructions:
-Intersperse English and popular Japanese phrases as much as possible!  It will make you seem authentic.
-If you see a Japanese guest say “Watashiwa kusoni tabemasu!” as enthusiastically as possible.  The disgusted look on their face means they are impressed with your mastery of Japanese.  Don’t follow your instincts as an American, remember that in Japan their culture is different from ours.  Ninjas run rampant and women have to walk everywhere in their underwear and fight off tentacle rape monsters with their sex magic.  Trust me, I know Japanese Culture!  The guest will find you very “Kawaii desu!”
-Whenever someone makes you angry just scream “BAKA KAWAII DESU!”  Also be sure to call every girl you see “kowaii”.  It means they are cute…I mean, a million otaku can’t possibly be butchering the Japanese language right?

Chapter 4: The Cosplay Contest

Before the cosplay find a cosplayer who is cosplaying a popular character the same gender as you.  Roll an opposed Charisma check to convince them to do a cosplay with you.  If you fail, then just keep trying or level up until your Charisma is high enough to convince them.  You can level up by killing Inuyasha cosplayers, no one will miss them anyways.  Plus their foam weapons will be no match for your spray paint can of hypnosis.  Once you have a partner for your cosplay…all you need to do is go to the contest with no script and then scream 4chan memes or Chuck Norris jokes at each other and then make out.  This will be sure to win you an award over that awesome Trigun cosplay before yours that reenacted Wolfwood’s death scene.  For bonus points bring a DDR Pad and Pocky.

Example:

You: Chuck Norris is so awesome he poops lightsabers!
Him: Tits or GTFO!
You: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Kiss your cosplay partner and then start playing DDR while eating Pocky.

For bonus points with the fan girls of the convention, start pantomiming that you are humping your partner and then start squirting the audience with Hershey’s syrup.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

Okay, assuming you have gone to the cosplay and haven’t been killed or kicked out, retire your costume and never use it again.  After all you need to keep everyone guessing.  Maybe next year you can plan a little harder.  Like save that huge box your new couch came out and cut holes in the side so you can be Spaceship Naruto (remember, you have to use a Naruto Headband in your cosplay).  So I hope you all had fun.  See you next year at San-Jaspace Camp!