How to Read Books: A 'What Army and I' guide

I, like many people, like to read books. Books with words, and if anyone is looking, no pictures.

For those times when there's someone else in the room and you're slogging through the dull adventures of the pros and cons of dating Mr Darcy, the following may help make it bearable until you get back to your Mr Men Anthology.

• Assume the author came up with stuff as it's revealed in the narrative. If someone's backstory was just revealed then it's cause the author finally worked out what it should have been.*

• If the story has a narrating voice assume the voice is actually biased toward the villain and sarcasm will become the main literary devices of the book. "The Hero reached out and snatched the shiny stone" sounds much more interesting if the narrator thinks he deserves said stone.

• Read all character's names as "Silence!"** as everyone becomes a lot more aggressive and assertive.

• For kicks and giggles, read the book backwards and see if it ever starts to make sense. See also classical books as twitter posts.

•  Following true Tumblr fashion you can always opt for the OTP rules and pick two, seemingly at random, characters and find any contrivance to insinuate a romantic relationship between the two, It makes the dull meetings at Rivendell all the more interesting to work out when Gandalf and Elrond might be sneaking away for a romantic tryst.***

 Following any of these simple formulas (or if you forget then just try paying attention to the plot, that always makes a book interesting) any challenging book thicker than your pride will pose no threat to your hipster/librarian cred.

*I write stories like this. More often than not if a character hasn't had their name revealed it's cause I can't think of a name and just play for time by building tension and intrigue. I managed to once introduce a character, build them up to seeming all mysterious then had them back stabbed and forgotten without ever having to give them a name beyond a title (e.g. The Count), his backstory was revealed later, but I had much less trouble writing him without having to have his whole story mapped out. 

**Optionally change names to pretty much any command, I just prefer silence as it makes the best G rated changes to the Harry Potter series. 

***God have mercy if you pick this option for any of Arthur Conan Doyle's Books.****

****BECAUSE IT WORKS WITH BLOODY EVERYBODY!!!!! IT'S NOT EVEN A GAME, IT'S ALLLL CANON!!!!!

It's Morphin Time!

My Lady Friend is going to a convention next week as well as a convention we both plan to go to together a few weeks from now, and something we've noticed while planning weather we should try our hand at cosplay is the dichotomy in how revealing the costumes are.

On one hand we have the die-had cosplayers who make 1:1 replica costumes of their character, if the costume is revealing so be it, they live for the thrill of people recognizing their character and asking for photos. Then we have the casual cosplayers, the ones who didn't have enough time/experience/effort to make a completely accurate costume and have gone for a interpretation of the character, they generally have the same drive, wanting to be recognized and get photos, feeling comradely in the people who recognize them.

Then there's people like this: NSFW Cosplay Here and Here, who have to have some other factor driving them to dress in such costumes. Maybe voyeurism, they might get excited from being so exposed in public and at anime/sci-fi conventions they see the ability to dress scantily with a large group and not be judged negatively, in fact often be applauded for their daring and talent in getting the costume accurate. Some people also have a habit of acting differently depending on their clothing, they might have found to act more confidently when not wearing much and like the chance to bee confident around other people.
 The last reason I can think of is people who are mildly obsessed with a character and will dress (and maybe act) like them irregardless of the costume.

I have a few problems with females who are forced in their choice of costume if they want to dress up. Taking a quick look at e-bay's female costume listings everything looks, for lack of a better word, slutty. Why does a Tinker Bell costume consists entirely of underwear? Did they not actually watch Peter Pan? I've never seen Halloween or other costume appropriate events as an occasion for showing off sexual appeal by finding creative excuses for wearing naught but under garments. I don't have a solution, I just don't like it, but that's just me.

In short Why can't we all just dress up as Power Rangers? Imagine a whole convention room of people all dressed as guys from various Sentai teams. Then someone outside tries to mug a passer by.

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I'm not weird, that would be AWESOME!