1. Someone is already clearly a fan of Heath Ledger as the Joker even though the film isn't even due out for another three months yet. (Lies. All lies, I tell you!! It only looks that way. Well... maybe not... And I certainly can't deny the part about the movie not being out yet...)
2. I vote in the Avatar Arena a lot.
This being said, I tend to pay a certain amount of attention whenever someone submits a Joker avi to said Avatar Arena. "Eeep!! It's the Joker!!!! Automatic 10!" (Unless it's a really super crummy entry of course. Like they basically stuck green hair on their avi and called it the "Joker." But you get the general idea.) However, the Avatar Arena tends to be full of "downvoters" who take one look at a Joker avi and go, "Oh brother, it's the five millionth Joker," and go on to complain about how "overdone" it is-- I mean, even counting the so-called "influx" of Jokers that hit the arena after Mr. Ledger's demise ("Rest In Peace, Heath Ledger" wink I'm pretty sure I've seen less than a dozen Joker entries. Compared to countless "Family Portrait" submissions using the orphan and/or celebrity date items, all the different Yoroi Armor "samurai" entries, and so many horrible uses of the "Queen of Hearts" Alice in Wonderland dress that it made me want to scream. This is not even counting the obligatory two or more "Snow Queen/Princess" avi's that get entered each week, all the stupid "angelic"/"demonic" avatars that half the time don't even have wings/horns/etc., or the people who keep re-entering their blasted avi's week after week after stinking week. "Overdone" my a$$. rolleyes
"But at least TWO Joker submissions have won!!"
Exactly two, actually. Both from 2007:
5. The Ace Of Knaves
final score: 8.666
from 1398 votes
(Week 17, 2007-- or April 23rd-29th, 2007 if I'm not mistaken)
3. Water Demon Kappa
final score: 9.091
from 1958 votes
(Week 42, 2007-- or October 15th-21st, 2007)
"But... but... it's so unoriginal!"
See my ranting above about the Queen of Hearts if you want "unoriginal." And now that I think about it how many "Alice in Wonderland" entries or "White Rabbits" have there been since March? I rest my case. And personally I don't even really care that much for the first winning Joker-- if you squint it ALMOST looks like him. Almost. Water Demon Kappa did a much nicer job on his (her? It's the Internet so who knows) entry. In fact that's probably the best Joker I've seen yet, and there are some good ones out there. 3nodding (Incidentally, looking through the arena archives 2007 has got to be the best year for awesome avi's hands down. I kept looking through going "Wow!! Someone did that as an entry? That is just too cool!" I could even instantly recognize what some of the more esoteric ones were supposed to be just by glancing at them; they were THAT good.)
Granted, for a cosplay I suppose two wins in the arenas is quite a lot. Batman only has won ONCE in the entire existence of the arenas (or at least as far back as their records go to 2005.) And Robin also has only won once. It's kind of sad, actually: no Penguin. No Catwoman. And I know it's possible to do an extremely good Mr. Freeze (mainly because I've done it using tektek.org's "Dream Avi" thing.) But, I digress.
So what is it with people hating Joker entries for no clear reason? I mean, okay; I do think it is in extremely poor taste when people have to slather "R.I.P. Heath" all over their submissions and it might SEEM overdone because the Joker, like Batman or Superman or any other Super Hero/Villain, is pretty memorable but still; I just don't get it. (Then again I might be kind of biased here, but, that's besides the point.) Do some people just hate cosplays on "principle" or something? Because they're, ahem, "uncreative?" Which I don't really understand at all; a good (and let me emphasize good) cosplay can require quite a bit of thought and patience as you save up for the different items, experiment with tektek, figure out the right hair, ponder whether you should use this shirt or the one that's more blue, maybe I should just scrap the whole thing, etc. So it's not like you just threw something together at the last minute. (Unlike a certain percentage of "decent" arena submissions. Ahem.) I mean I would much rather see a good cosplay than yet another rich boob throwing their wealth around. "I just bought this awesome 95k item-- I mean, I'm, like, totally Madama Butterfly! Vote me 10, ok???" Right. And I'm the ghost of Giacomo Puccini. With pixie wings. stare
(For those of you who don't know, Puccini is the man who wrote the opera "Madama Butterfly." You can look him up on Google or any other search engine if for whatever reason you'd like to know more.)
Sigh. I'm really starting to dislike the arenas now. (And this has got to be the longest journal entry I've ever written on here. Wow. O_o) The Art Arena is getting so tiresome with all the ugly CG'd images (I hate CGI. It belongs in video games and --maybe-- as special effects in movies and that's about it) and stuff that is either stolen from someplace and/or looks like it has been stolen. (Honestly; if I see one more crappy image of a random anime style chick with wings, roses, or both, so help me I'll put both my eyes out. Not that I would, mind you; I'm just saying.) And with the way things are going with the Avatar Arena I'm tempted to just start doing crazy things: like voting all the entries at a "10" just to see what happens, or, my latest hair-brained idea which has just popped into my silly head, using my mule account to do a parade of cosplays of all the different roles Heath Ledger has. er, had played. "Week 1: Heath Ledger as you saw him in '10 Things I hate About You.' Week 2: Heath Ledger as Mel Gibson's son in 'The Patriot.' Week 3: Heath Ledger ala 'Brokeback Mountain.' Week 4: Heath Ledger as..."
Well, you get the idea. I'm too "law-abiding" to actually follow through with any of my "Take that, Avatar Arena!!" plans but that last one is so tempting. The only problem is though, it requires doing research about what films he was in (since I'm not a Heath Ledger fan; I'm just excited about "Jokerdom" come this July which will probably be a huge letdown but, maybe I don't care) and finding decent reference images and such. Anyway I doubt I'd ever really go through with it because, like I said, I'm not a bloody Heath Ledger fan. Most of the films he was in look awful, or not my kind of thing, or both. So, yeah.
And now that I've regaled you with my mind-numbing wall o' text I think I will shut my trap and vanish back into the woodwork where I belong. Cheers! biggrin And here's looking at you. cheese_whine
Community Member
These probably make a lot more sense if you've seen "Madama Butterfly" (like me. Who be bragging? Where???) or at least know the story, but, oh well: the top two are of the main character, "Cho-cho-san" --from the openings of acts one and two of the opera respectively-- the third her fickle love interest, and lastly Cho-cho-san's faithful maidservant, Suzuki. (Plus bonus tektek of Giacomo Puccini himself. WOOT!) Anyway, cheers! biggrin