People have been asking me about this for ages… so I finally filmed it! Here’s a video showing off my Funko Pop collection, where I got the ones I have, and what I am looking forward to from their new releases page.

I hardly even understand the Funko Pop craze myself, but I love ’em anyway. What is it that draws us to these adorable little figures? Which ones do you have? Let me know in a comment!

I participated in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon yesterday, April 25th. I cheated a little, starting Friday night, but I had the evening to myself so I wanted to get reading early. Technically I was supposed to start at 5am my time, but I started around 7pm the night before because I knew I’d be sleeping through many of the pivotal reading hours.

Basically I just made my personal 24 hours of reading a little more convenient to keeping a regular sleeping schedule.

My goal for the readathon, as I stated in a previous blog post, included a stack of a two books I was halfway through and a couple graphic novels I’d been meaning to read. As I got closer to the actual event, I revised my goal to include one more short novel and to read at least 500 pages over the course of the day.

Here’s how I did:

Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson: I read the 275 pages I had left. 5 hours.
Saga Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: I read all 144 pages. 1 hour.
Sex Criminals Vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky: I read all 128 pages. 1 hour.
Doll Bones by Holly Black: I read 133 pages, making it about halfway. 2.5 hours.

Total pages read: 680 pages
Total books completed: 3 books
Total hours read: 9.5 hours

I didn’t do quite as well as I was hoping, but I had a fantastic time and I knocked a few books off my TBR, which really was the ultimate goal. I still haven’t finished Sorcerer’s Stone and now I’m always halfway through Doll Bones as well, but.. I’ll finish those soon. I’m looking forward to getting really serious about my TBR after this, because I have to start whittling it down. I have to.

I believe the next readathon I’ll be doing is Bout of Books, and I am very much looking forward to it. I might also host a readathon this summer for my book club, if anyone is interested. Happy reading!

Ugh, I said I wasn’t going to buy any more books for awhile, but then this happened.

I swear, my book fast starts now. Pinky swear.

This week’s 5 Fandom Friday is RIGHT up my alley, but as I sat down to write it, I realized how difficult it was going to be. FIVE games? Really? I have to narrow all my love of board games, app games, handheld games and video games down to FIVE? Honestly, I almost just skipped this week on account of it being too hard.

But then I saw some other 5 Fandom Friday posts containing games like Clue and Uno and I realized it was extremely important that I make my list. Learning when I did that there were literally hundreds of actual great games out there after growing up with Milton Bradley was extremely eye-opening, and I love any chance I get to help pass that knowledge on to others. I am writing this list so people can stop thinking games like Clue and Uno are the best this world has to offer. Not saying people shouldn’t ever play and enjoy those games… but there is so much more.

After agonizing over it for awhile, I’ve come up with the following list:

1. 7 Wonders: It was extremely difficult to pick favorite board games for this list, as my personal collection contains over 30 and the list of games I’ve played and love goes well beyond that. But I’ve settled on 7 Wonders as my first one, because it’s probably the game I own that I’ve played more than any other game. 7 Wonders is a drafting, resource-management game where you’re deciding what elements of your city’s economy you’re going to care about. Military? Sciences? Just straight Victory Points? This game got even more fun with the release of some of its new expansions (Cities, Leaders, etc) and it’s really hard to explain why this game is so great, it just is. It plays just as well with 3 players as it does with many, because everyone is taking their turns at the same time, which I really appreciate in a game.

2. Betrayal at House on the Hill: This is an oldie but a goodie; my friends and I love Betrayal at House on the Hill. It’s a standard “explore the haunted house” style board game, but the great thing about this one is that once the haunt starts, you then play out one of a list of about 50 various stories for the game. We’ve played this with it ending in vampires, a literal cat and mouse race, ghosts, crazy people living under the floors, etc. This game probably has the best replay-ability because of that fact and I rarely get bored of it.

3. Ladies and Gentlemen: I don’t actually own this game yet, but playing it at a friend’s house instantly got it on my mental top games list. Ladies and Gentlemen is amazing. You partner up as a “husband” and “wife” though it’s often fun to work in other gender pairs, or gender swap, etc. Basically, the men “go to work and make money”, and the women “go shopping and find the prettiest outfit to spend their husband’s money on”, and while that sounds antiquated and extremely anti-feminist, it’s just self-aware enough to make a parody of the whole situation. It’s hilarious, a lot of fun, and works well with large groups of people.

4. World of Warcraft: I couldn’t make a list of games I like to play without mentioning World of Warcraft. I was tempted to add one of the many app games I love, or any of the Nintendo games that have gotten me through my life, but World of Warcraft is sort of one of those old faithfuls. I got into it in 2010, and even though I sometimes get too busy and have to freeze my account for while… I always come back. I’m not sure what it is about it. The expansive world, the holiday events, knowing there’s more levels I could get my main character up after the last expansion… World of Warcraft has been a constant in my life for nearly 5 years and doesn’t judge me, even if it’s been over 6 months since I last logged in. Except that sometimes I have to re-do my talent tree and reassign all my spells in the action bar. Okay maybe it judges me a little. I wish I had more time to play games.

5. Pokémon: This was just a no-brainer for the final game on my list. I was a hardcore fan of Pokémon Red, collected the cards, had Pikachu paraphernalia in my room growing up – then started playing again in college with Fire Red because I loved the nostalgic feel of the game. It’s been downhill from there, as I loved Pokémon X, Pokémon White and am now slowing working my way through Omega Ruby. I love playing these games as much as I did when I was 11. It’s nice to know that Pokémon is still there for me, and I’m glad Nintendo seems to know that while the younger generation also still loves these games, they’re also still making them for us – their original audience, who still loves it like it’s new.

Should I make a more extensive and detailed list of games I like? Maybe I could make different posts for different genres of games? Let me know if that’s something you would be interested in.

I’ve been craving a readathon lately, and luckily – there’s one this Saturday! If you haven’t heard of Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, I highly encourage you to go check it out. It’s fun and relatively low commitment, since it’s only 24 hours. Here’s my TBR:

I realize this is incredibly ambitious for a 24 hour period, but I am about halfway through both Since You’ve Been Gone and Sorcerer’s Stone already. I hope to finish each of those books, and get through two graphic novels I’ve been sitting on for awhile. It’ll be tough, but I’m gonna try!

Are you taking part in the readathon? If so, what books are you hoping to read? Leave a comment, let me know, and join me on twitter this Saturday! I’ll be tweeting about my progress when my nose isn’t in these books. So excited!

I’m not sure when I got it in my head that a Little Twin Stars cosplay was a thing I had to do, but once it was there it stuck. I was a huge Sanrio fan as a kid (who are we kidding, I still am) and this adorable pair of siblings was always my favorite of the characters. I can’t tell you how much stationary I had in middle school with the Little Twin Stars on it.

There are a lot of different variations of these two, but we used this basic image as inspiration.

SakuraCon 2015 fell the weekend directly after Emerald City Comic Con, so we didn’t really have time to put together anything too complicated. We weren’t going to cosplay at all, but then I remembered this idea. I asked Eia if she’d be down to power through putting this together, and luckily she was totally on board. We figured all we’d need to do was find matching white dresses, find the right color and length wigs, find matching shoes and make our respective props.

In the end it was actually a little bit more than a “quick costume” but we still managed to pull it together in a little over a week.

How we did it: Starting from the top down, the wigs we both got lucky enough to find on Amazon Prime. Thank goodness, as we definitely wouldn’t have had time to order from China or anything like that. Both the star wand and star backpack were made by using standard pillow-making method with yellow fabric and batting. I glued mine on a wooden dowel, Eia added straps to her with thick pink ribbon. We got uber mega lucky with the white dresses, as we found these simple, perfect ones that somehow looked great on both our body types at Forever 21. Eia made her pink waist bow with the same ribbon she used for the backpack straps. We both found tights and/or leggings on our own (I believe mine were from Target and hers were from Goodwill) and the white sneakers were from Payless Shoe Source.

Surprisingly, not too many people knew what we were dressed as right away, but those who did were instantly delighted. Maybe they were too obscure of Sanrio characters. Maybe people just weren’t thinking that far back into their childhoods. Whatever it was, I really didn’t mind being in a relatively obscure costume, because everyone always got it as soon as we explained it, and it can be sort of fun to see people scratching their heads as you walk by. Especially after being Rapunzel last weekend (one of many, many Rapunzels) it was exciting to be a less immediately obvious character.

It was a nice little test at how quickly we can put together costumes we’re still proud of. Even though we spent way less time and money on these costumes than previous ones we’ve made, they weren’t any less fun to wear. The photoshoot wasn’t any less good, the pictures are a lot of fun, and we were super comfortable all day.

I think that’s a good lesson to learn early in cosplay honestly — that sometimes it’s really not the amount of money and time spent on a costume that makes it great. You don’t have to break the bank and make yourself crazy every time you go to a con. I will definitely be mixing easier costumes like these into my lineup in the future, for my own mental sanity and because at the end of the day, people are going to enjoy your costumes regardless of how hard they were to make.

As long as you put your heart into everything you do, it’ll usually turn out great. *thumbs up*

After realizing I never made videos mentioning I would be at Emerald City Comic Con and SakuraCon this year, I decided something needed to be done. Here’s a video outlining every other event I currently plan to be at in 2015 – though if new events pop up, you’ll want to make sure you’re following me on other social media!

Are you going to any of these events? Do you know of any other cool conventions I might not have heard about? Leave me a comment!

This month I received Loot Crate, 1 Up Box and Nature Box in the mail – and opened them on camera for this video! I got some awesome stuff this month, so watch the video to both see what I got AND get info on how to sign up with my discount codes!

Sometimes I watch this video and think “what have we done”. Sometimes I watch it and think “this is a masterpiece of pogo sticks and purple hair”. I flip flop back and forth pretty consistently, but regardless, the Dancing on Rainbows music video now exists – it’s a tangible thing in the world that you can watch, and it was a lot of fun to create.

For those in the dark, this is the music video that accompanies my web series Job Hunters. Job Hunters is a dystopian roommate comedy about college grads who are sent to fight others like them in an arena 9-5, then forced to live amicably with the survivors in the off time.

My character Avery is a washed up pop star who tries to make her comeback with a publicity stunt that involves briefly entering the arena — which fails miserably and leaves her stuck in the Maewin system for the rest of the show. This song was her one-hit wonder.

Job Hunters took up a huge chunk of my life and I learned so much having been part of it. I made life-long friendships, met Joe and learned a lot about myself because of this show. I hope you guys have enjoyed everything we’ve created under the heading of this project, and again, I sincerely want to thank everyone who ever backed one of our two kickstarters for helping make this whole thing possible. If you’re interested in downloading this track or other music from Job Hunters, you can do so here.

Dancing on Rainbows is bizarre, ridiculous and a little on the crazy side, but it’s fun. It’s Job Hunters. It’s Avery. And I love it.

I recently went to SakuraCon, Seattle’s biggest local anime convention. It’s kind of crazy… I’ve actually known about SakuraCon since I was middle school, and remember wanting to go back then. Somehow that never happened for me, and continued to not happen until THIS YEAR.

So, come along with me on my very first anime convention experience, see what I cosplayed as and what I ended up doing and buying there. It was a blast – you won’t regret it.