geekosystem

Women warriors tend to have it pretty rough when it comes to armor selection. If one is looking for a metal protective suit that offers more in the way of protection than the dubious security, and comfort, of the chain mail bikini, then options are limited and the available breastplates tend to be...well, pretty literal. And they may be even less safe than they seem. Tor.com blogger Emily Asher-Perrin offered a great critique of why "boob plate armor" would be an unwise order from your local blacksmith, and the matter deserves a moment of your time.

It takes a dedicated nerd to dress up as a super hero or heroine of their own design and walk the streets without fear of ridicule. But it takes a dedicated nerd with a serious pair of cojones to do exactly that and take to the streets administering their own brand of justice. In the Subculture Club documentary The Subculture of Superheroes, the cameras follow members of the San Diego-based Xtreme Justice League on their mission to make the city a safer place for all its citizens. They may not have the equipment and flair of the Avengers -- hey, not every hero can hope to be bankrolled by Tony Stark -- but at the end of the day, they do what they can to wipe the scum off the streets -- figuratively and literally, since community clean-up falls under their heroic purview.

When Eric Smith decided to propose to his girlfriend, he took pains to make sure the ring was exactly what she wanted, a unique and somewhat unusual shade of yellow. Before he had a chance to propose, however, she broke it to him that she had been seeing someone else behind his back and Smith found himself in possession of a one-of-a-kind ring that he could hardly bear to look at. Even after selling the ring on eBay, he found that he still felt the need to get rid of the money and thought "Why not Zoidberg buy a full-scale suit of armor modled after Master Chief from Halo?" Why not indeed.

Well, folks, Halloween has come and gone. It'll be a whole other year before you see all kinds of crazy carved pumpkins and intricate, clever costumes. Thank god. Seriously though, as always, there were some pretty good costumes out there this year, so we've collected a bunch of the geekier (and just more awesome-er) ones for your perusal. Laugh quietly to yourself as you get all the references and marvel at your vast pop culture knowledge!

Metroid's Samus Aran is a popular cosplay character, partly because Samus was the first iconic female video game character who wasn't a helpless princess, partly because Samus is awesome and you know it, and partly because pretty girls like to dress up as various incarnations of Samus -- one of which happens to be Samus in a blue leotard with long blond hair -- and this is the Internet. Dan Cattell and Krystal Belcher, however, took the cosplay in a different direction. Krystal dressed up as the pixelated Samus of old when she made her bones in a big suit of armor rather than a leotard (not counting a certain famous cheat code), and when her gender didn't matter, which is what made it matter.

Along with Krystal as the retro Samus, Cattell whipped up and hopped into a pixelated Chozo, the iconic keepers of Samus' suit and weapon upgrades. The cosplay is featured in the latest issue of Nintendo Power, a magazine you may be surprised to hear is still around.

It looks like Nemo has gotten himself lost again, this time in the suburbs. Also, he's grown a pair of legs. That being said, I give him props for waiting patiently at the crosswalk even though he looks like he's in quite the hurry to get somewhere. Consider this a teaser trailer for the sequel we all knew was coming sooner or later.

(via BuzzFeed)

The browser-based "hardest game ever," QWOP, is so frustratingly difficult that it became a funny thing on the Internet rather than something that makes gamers throw their keyboards against the wall. The game, where the player controls a track and field runner, isn't difficult in the traditional sense -- stages don't get harder, enemies don't gain more health and power as time goes on, ammo isn't scarce, and there aren't any complex puzzles to solve. The reason why QWOP is difficult is because the controls are so obnoxiously frustrating, yet ridiculously simple (mapped to the titular Q, W, O, and P keys), that it takes a lot of practice to move the runner even ten seconds down the track.

The game has a bit of notoriety amongst gamers and fans of Internet culture, but for some reason, QWOP cosplay never even crossed my mind. I am so, so glad it has now.

(via BuzzFeed)

I'd want to say that someone having drawn all 493 original Pokémon as anime cosplaying females is a weird thing, but this is the Internet and stuff like that is fairly standard. Though however standard it may be, someone still took the time to lovingly draw 493 things for the rest of us to look at, and whoever the mysterious artist may be (if you know who drew this, let us know), we should at least take the time to see if we can identify which cosplaying females are which Pokémon, especially because doing so is pretty fun. Head past the break, then click on the above excerpt to view the (much) larger version containing every femaleized Pokémon.

GeekDad Review of Machete (Wired) Botched Transformers 3 Stunt Sign of Negligence? (Spinoff) Another Adorable Japanese Robot (TechnaBob) Star Wars Smash Bros. You Know You Want It (Kotaku) This Is A Spinning Black Hole (APotD) PAX Cosplay Gallery (1Up) Pokemon Fusion! (Alex Onsager) (pic via Reddit.)

TIL A New Word: Nurdle (Reuters) Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury! (GeekDad) The Cosplay of Gamescom (Kotaku) Adrien Brody as Mr. Fantastic? (ScreenRant) DJ Hero 2 Dated (GameRant) 2,000 Year Old Hellenistic Paintings Discovered (The Guardian) Somebody Made a Wacom for the Wii? (Joystiq) (image via Reddit.)

Special effects artist Pete Mander has put his talent to good use in devising this life-sized, scarily realistic costume modeled after the Sangheili, a.k.a. Elite, that you know and love so well from the Halo series. "Cosplay" seems like rather a cheap word to describe what Mander hath wrought; you'll see what we mean when you check out the pictures and making-of video below.

Gotta love cosplay.  One German Star Wars fan has made one damn impressive General Grievous costume, and it really has to be seen to be believed. The level of detail and obvious hard work this guy must have put into this makes for something rather awe-inspiring... if you get past how, well, unsettling seeing it might be. It's that good. It beats the hell out of my Lando Calrissian costume anyway. Video after the jump (don't mind the German!)

In fact, this War Machine suit was built in a month for about $4,000.  Now, for tha $4,000 model ther', you're not goin' to be able to fly, or shoot repulsor beams, or fire ammunition, and you're definitely not goin' to be able to fold it all up int'a suitcase.

But you've still got the motorized faceplate!

This past weekend, from March 26-28, Stony Brook University hosted what is advertised as "the Northeast's largest convention of science fiction, fact and fantasy." Or, put another way, the university held one of the geekiest conventions you could shake a catgirl tail at, what con-goers already know as I-Con. And it was awesome:

In what we can only hope is a break from cosplay, a headcrab-infected Half-Life zombie sips a soda while the heroic Gordon Freeman (Ph.D.) munches on a pretzel.