During the summer of 2012 I came up with the idea of making a photo shoot with winter goddesses. I had a clear vision of what I wanted and I knew exactly who I wanted to use as a model. The more I thought of it though, I realized I wanted two models, a blonde and a brunette.

“In time” is not really a concept known to Incognito so of course I didn’t start until January this year. Time ran short, but I finished almost everything in time at last.

The winter project was the complete opposite to the autumn goddess. It was not cheap, it did require quite a lot of crafting and it took almost two months to finish, but it was a really fun way to see what I’ve learned during the years I’ve known Jano Me.

On the day of the photo shoot I was tired and sick and wasn’t a very good support for the models but since they’re so awesome they did a great job anyway. Big thank’s to them for helping me realize my winter vision.

The photographer is, as usual, Lord Canon. Makeup, clothes and jewelry is made by me and the gorgeous ice crown is made by me and (mostly) Jano Me.

[Show as slideshow]

In the fall of 2012 both I and Heather were stressed out. We wanted to do tons of photoshoots, but our everyday life was in the way. With barely any free time, we felt we couldn’t do any bigger projects justice.  That’s when we came up with the idea of doing “budget” shoots. The idea was to come up with a theme, keep the budget at a minimum and the crafting as uncomplicated as possible.  And thus, our first season-themed shoot was born.

Sanchez was the obvious choice for this shoot, she’s always been our autumn goddess and was thrilled over the idea.
The dress is made of the corset we used for our Demon Hunter, and the skirts are draped chiffon with sewed on leaves. The mask is a simple paper mask painted with copper colour and decorated with leaves and a simple golden chain. As a finishing touch, we sprayed the mask, dress and Sanchez (!) with a red and gold glitter hairspray I had laying around.
As usual, all makeup was done by Heather, and the photos taken by Lord Canon.

It’s all in the details:

• It might look warm, but it was freezing that day!

[Show as slideshow]

Way back when we did the 10 years of Halo shoot I had this idea of a picture that I wanted taken. I imagined this hipster-esque person leaning against a wall sipping coffee from a Halo mug.  We never got around taking that picture then, but the idea of doing something “fashion” and hipster, but still very nerdy, continued to linger in my head.
So when Heather said it been too long since we did a photoshoot, and that we should do something simple and fun, I proposed the idea to her. From there it went on to the whole east meets west geek stereotypes. The west became the elitist hipster geek that’s unimpressed by everything, only likes retro things and played everything before it became popular. The east is its opposite, it’s the happy geek that loves all things cute and wants to spread its love for geeky stuff with the whole world.

We hadn’t planned how we’d do this shoot; the only thing we had to go on was my vague description of an abstract idea. But as we wrapped up the photoshoot, we noticed that we’d unknowingly manage to capture a small story; The manga ghost of the hipsters past.
In the photos it looks like the hipster was being followed by this cute little dancing manga ghost, we immediately thought that it must be the hipsters past that is hunting its present. I myself used to be an avid anime and manga fan, but now a day I rarely read manga and almost never watches anime. Instead I went back to my roots and started playing lots of old PC games again, but still today my past haunts me at times…

It’s all in the details:

• Almost everything we wear, from nails to earrings, have a geeky connotation in some way, can you guess them all?

[Show as slideshow]

I had this idea when I added a blog to the Incognito site that I would try and write something every Monday. Get into the habit of writing, and keeping up with it. It worked fine the first weeks, but then, as usual, life and my laziness got in the way.

My February should have been spent sewing and finishing the Wizard costume, instead I dedicated the month to feasting upon semlor. Semla is a cream bun that used to be eaten during lent, but now kind of has become the pastry of Febraury here in the north. I usually only eat around 3-4 every February, this year I ate around 15 or more. I love semlor, but I only eat them during February, anything else would feel wrong. Since last year I’ve started a mini tradition, to eat a different semla every week.
The best regular semla was the one from a café called Vete-katten. The bun was newly baked, really soft and tender with a light taste of cardamom. The cream was perfectly whipped and the almond paste was sweet, but not too sweet, and had a homemade feel over it. If you are looking for a nice regular semla, this is the place to go.

Other, less conventional, semlor that I tasted was Karlsbadersemla (the almond paste is mixed with the cream), vanilla-semla, wienersemla (you replace the bun with danish pastry), chocolate-semla and a cinnamonbun-semla.
My least favorite of them was the wienersemla, it was dry and boring, like eating a danish with cream on top, but without the gooey filling.
The chocolate-semla was actually also a disappointment. You’d think you couldn’t go wrong with chocolate, and well to be honest, it wasn’t the chocolate part that was bad, it was the bun. It felt like they put all their effort in doing a nice chocolate amaretto cream filling, but forgot to make the bun edible. It was so dry and boring that not even the cream could save it.
Vanilla-semlor is a personal favorite of mine, they’ve replaced the almond paste with vanilla cream, and well, you can never go wrong with that, yum!
The cinnamonbun-semlor are also a long time favorite. Think of the perfect bun, soft, almost a bit doughy, with that sweet and creamy cinnamon filling. Then add whipped cream and some chunky almond paste, its pure bliss I tell you!

[Show as slideshow]

Opi Take the stage
Nfu Oh #44 (flakes)
Funko Rebel Alliance fold-up headphones

I haven’t read the book Svavelvinter yet, but from what I’ve heard about Blatifagus I have a feeling that I’ll love him, he sounds just like my type of dragon.
What is my type of dragons then? Morkeleb the Black from Dragonsbane has stayed close to my heart for many years. He pretty much embodies everything I envision dragons to be; majestic, wise, powerful, slightly cynical and vain. I mean, with so much power and wisdom how can you not become full of yourself?
Another dragon that fits that description and is on my list of favorite dragons is Arokh from Drakan. I loved the chemistry between him and Rynn, his dry sense of humor and quip remarks. Drakan was a fantastic game all in all, but it was Arokh that really made me love the game.

Still on the topic of game related dragons there is one that actually doesn’t really fit my description of dragons. The dragon known only as “Dragon” from the game Loom. Now it wasn’t until today that I realized that Dragon actually was a she. You see, I’ve only played the two oldest versions of Loom, never the CD-version with audio. I don’t know why, but I guess I’ve always just assumed that Dragon was male and I was quite surprised when I found a clip on YouTube with a scene from the audio-version of the game, and Dragon sounded like an old English lady. This on the other hand just made me love her more.

A new year, and my month long vacation is at its end.

You might think that I’m head over heels in love with the game after spending almost 100 hours with it, I’m not. The thing is I love the first two installments of The Elder Scrolls, Arena and Daggerfall. Few games are as precious to me as those two are,  I’ve replayed them countless times and I still can’t get enough of them.
When the first trailer for Morrowind finally came out I was exalted. I had it on endless loop, driving the people around me mad. Then I tried the game, and realized that I couldn’t play it.
Now I’m not proud of this, it’s a really silly reason, but I couldn’t play the game because it’s brown. I hate brown games, it’s suffocating.  And it didn’t help that the design was horrible, I’ve never seen such ugly characters. I really tried to play the game, but I just couldn’t stand it, it’s a shame because I really think I might like it. But a friend of mine have been giving me a lot of tips on different mods to use, to make the game less brown and get nicer looking characters, so some day I might actually give it another go.

Oblivion then, that’s nice and green right? Too bad the game was so amazingly bad that it makes me furious just to think about it. It’s so horrid, everything from the really bland and uninspired writing and design to the equally bad (and rather hilarious) AI. That game really sucked and made me lose all hope for Skyrim (Fallout 3 didn’t make it better, seriously do they even have writers working for them?), so when Skyrim finally arrived I was less than enthusiastic.
But lo and behold, the game was far better than Oblivion in all aspects, except for the interface. You have to give it to them, it really is a feat to manage to make an even worse interface than that of Oblivion, but they managed. The writing is still far from inspiring, or even that good, but it’s better. The AI is also better, but you still get the feeling that you are in a world of body snatchers.

The more I play the game, the less I think of it. But it’s a step in the right direction.  And maybe, just maybe, someday Bethesda will learn how to write good storylines and dialog, make memorable characters and use more that 5-10 voice actors. Oh and re-implement all the flavor text that they stopped using because reading was hard…

But I digress (I often do). I was 19 when I got the bookstore gig, and it was a long long time ago, I can still remember – minus the chevy and American pie. The bookstore was where I first med Jano, Heather and Magenta. We seldome worked the same hours, and even if, I rarely worked the same floor. But when they, even after I stopped working there, invited me along to coffee-dates, occasional dinners and drinks, I had figured my group friends had expanded with some real bad-ass babes.

Now, needless to say, I would be one of those geeks who takes pride in being geeky. Alot of us are these days. I guess not only because a whole lot of tech-nerds are making billions and ruling the cyberspace, but because it just doesn’t mean you have to be this socially impossible introvert that movies made us out to be (don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of those too, but there’s a lot of socially awkward people period). And I know a lot of geek girls. All kinds actually. The one’s just into a very slimmed down type of fiction, the one’s into anime and manga, the roleplayers, the theatre buffs, and ofcourse – the Gamers.

And that, my good reader, is how I ended up here. Seven years, many semesters at Uni and plenty of part-time jobs later, the bookstore-girls got me involved in a photo-project inspired by one of the few solidly nerdy areas I know nothing about. The gaming world is a maze of confusion to me. To the surprise of many a friend, and to the constant exasperation of my gamer-brother, I basically have not evolved further into this world of wonders, than I can admitt to have, back in the day, been awesome at Tetris, and that I button-mash myself to sporadic victories in many enjoyable fighting games. Needless to say – I have no idea what I am doing when the game is not on solid cardboard.
I always kind of felt I had so many fields of interests, that getting into gaming would probably be the only thing left for me to retreat from reality and spend all day on new adventures instead.

So when Jano approached me, and told me about Incognito, you’d think I would shy away from it. Retro games? Sorry, can’t contribute. Sewing, crafting, building? Sorry hon, you know I can’t pull needle and thread to save my life. Being photographed? Hell no.
But, after years of discussing life over tea and cake, hanging out, working a yearly anime-convention together dressed to the nines in Jano’s creations, the girl knew which strings to pull. She’s been getting me to dress up in blue hair, tafetta dresser, plastic armour and cat ears (not all in one go) for many many years. I think this time, the pitch went something along the lines of:

“[Wigs] I know you don’t like being photographed, but we started this retro-game project [cookies], and I’ll do all the costumes [WIGS], and Heather’ll fix you up in awesome make-up, and I promise [costumes] it’ll be fun. It would great to have you on board. And also – wigs.”

Honestly. How do you say no to that? (Tell me, so I can practice not saying it).

Jano and I, working at a convention three years ago dressed as Hrist and Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile.