-Adam “Koshi” Shang

The Disorganization XIII “Wear Our Shit” Store!!!

Unnnfortunatley we can’t find the guy who originally drew the DO XIII mascot, nor can we find the original image file on the net. As a result, we are incapable of asking him for permission to use the DO Guy on a shirt. So that’s a bit of a roadblock.

As a result, we need a new mascot, and since you guys have asked us for the shirts, we figured we would let YOU decide who our mascot is going to be!

FAN CONTEST TIME!!!

Here’s the deal. E-mail your take on the Disorganization XIII mascot, or a new mascot all together to DisorganizationXIII@gmail.com. We will pick the one we like the best, and that person will not only get their design on the DOXIII shirt with full credit, they will also receive a free t-shirt of their own, and will be inducted as an honorary member of DOXIII (that means you get a unique t-shirt with something stupid on it!)

The rules are simple.

1. Design must be white on black
2. Design must be a sketch, like the previous DO-guy
3. Design must be e-mailed to DisorganizationXIII@gmail.​com
4. Design is preferred in .svg or .eps format but is not required
5. Design must be mailed to us by October 8th, the weekend before the New York Comic Con so we can announce the winners.

Other than that, go nuts!

Koshi’s picks

Tiger and Bunny – A show about buddy-cop superheroes (with nary a zord or morpher in sight) and the crass commercialization thereof, and it’s from Japan? Color me impressed!

Besides the title heroes, it’s especially worth watching for the supporting cast which includes a tarted-up superhero who really just wanted to be a tarted-up pop star; a flaming energy magnate; and a ninja who made a career out of photobombing all the other heroes.

Admittingly, Tiger and Bunny is probably not as subversive as it could be if it were in the hands of, say, Warren Ellis, but that may be expected when actual companies bought up adspace on the characters.

Toriko – Because something has to step in and fill the Shonen void now that 2 out of Jump’s Big 3 have become an interminable slog. Toriko is the story of a manly man and his manly friends who have manly battles to eat manly food. They live in a world that’s kind of like that of Pokemon, except it revolves completely around food. I’m feeling hungry. I’m in the mood to get a food. Who wants to go out and get a food?

Once Naruto and Bleach kick the bucket, this show will have enough awesome to fill in all of their shoes. Unfortunately, this means Gintama will still be bumped out of being in Shonen Jump’s Big 3.

Dororon Enma-kun! *MeraMera* – Satan’s nephew is sent from hell to kick the asses of renegade penis demons (who in fact do have asses). There isn’t one part of that sentence I didn’t like. Add in the retro 70’s aethstetic, completely bizarre cast of characters, and increasingly more bizarre monsters of the week and there isn’t one part of this whole damn show I don’t like.

Since it’s based on a Go Nagai comic, it should probably go without saying that this show is unabashedly juvenile, but that never stopped me from liking anything. To paraphrase one Something Awful goon, “Panty & Stocking saw poop and sex jokes as a means to an end. Enma thinks that’s ridiculous; sex and poop jokes should serve no purpose but their own.”

Kirk’s picks

Ano Hana – Count on noitaminA to come out with a show more devastating than Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. Kannon figured that the best way to make the main character’s love interest emotionally impacting was to reveal in the last episode that she’s already dead. Ano Hana does this in the first scene. Juxtaposing happy little kids with sullen, damaged teenagers is the best thing since Nakige.

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – In the fourth episode, the main character hits his opponent so hard that his two children and his wife’s pregnancy all vanish. C is an anime that’s directed by the guy that did Trapeze, written by the guy that did Durarara!!, has character designs by the guy that did Black Rock Shooter, and conceptual designs by the guy that did Big O. This is the best dream team since ProStars. It’s a testament to Ano Hana to say that I like it more than C.

X-Men MADHOUSE anime – It can’t be worse than the MADHOUSE Wolverine series.

Kirk’s Anti-Picks

A Channel / Nichijou – Two 4-koma style slice-of-life moe gag anime, neither are that great. I’ll just watch Lucky Star and Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru again this season.

Hanasaku Iroha – I would love to watch the adventures of a 16 year old city girl living the rough, dramatic life at her grandma’s bath house if I was half my age and the opposite gender. Though I guess the fact that I gave this a shot might say something about my age/gender identity.

Mike’s Pick

Steins; Gate – The story of a Mad Scientist fan boy and the damage he does to the space time continuum. Because everyone needs the ability send texts to the past. It also has a microwave that turns backwards and causes bananas placed inside to have been turned to Green Gel in the past. ARG time travel makes my head hurt.

Casey’s Anti-Picks

Lotte no Omocha – This anime season left me cold. “Ooh! Lotte no Omocha! It’s a show about a vampire princess! With a male harem! And she needs to drink something called ‘Sauzfryma’ to survive! I’m curious about this new spin on vampire mytho– oh. Sauzfryma means semen. And she looks like she’s 10. Oh she IS 10? Is that 10 in vampire year– no, really just an actual sexualized 10 year old girl being told she needs to start drinking semen right away.” You know what, Japan? Maybe you WERE asking for it.*

*Ohmigodohmigod I didn’t really mean it, I deal with tragedy and catastrophe with gallows humor and in no way meant to suggest that the current suffering of the Japanese is in any way deserved, no matter how bad Dance in the Vampire Bund was.

Maria+holic: Alive – “Oh, well, at least there’s another season of Maria+holic! It’s that shoujo-ai schoolgirl anime where the main lesbian character is essentially a horny teenage boy archetype and the tsundere character is actually a cross-dressing man, and women become lesbians because they HATE MEN and break out into hives when they touch one, and before the episode loads up, I’m really curious as to what this entire bottle of sleeping pills tastes like!”

Casey’s Picks

Trigun: Badlands Rumble – Badlands Rumble is the movie I’ve been waiting 5 years for, and while I knew it wasn’t going to be canon-shattering (Hey, check out Wolfwood in the poster, bein’ all alive and shit!), I think I had expected something slightly more awesome. Instead, this was a REALLY NICELY ANIMATED 90 minute Trigun episode. But random episodes of Trigun go like this:

Vash the Stampede shows up and people think he’s lame.

Actual danger threatens town where Vash is.

Meryl is vexed; Milly is darling.

Wolfwood smokes and is morally ambiguous.

Vash solves issue and someone has their life touched by the Humanoid Typhoon.

This is not a great 90 minute formula. There’s a villain, and I think his name is Gasbag? And a bounty hunter out to catch him because he’s really her father, a fact that isn’t a twist when you introduce two new characters separated by a generation who both have red hair. I remember immediately after watching the movie that I liked the bounty hunter and thought she was awesome and badass*, but now can’t recall why she was badass or what her motivations were or WHAT HER NAME WAS. I think Wolfwood was Gasbag’s bodyguard. Why? Well, because the moviemakers realised that as a fan favorite, Wolfwood needed to be back in, and that the audience wanted to see a firefight between he and Vash and that never happened in the anime. Oh, why is he a bad guy bodyguard in the narrative? Fuck if I know.

In short (too late), Badlands Rumble was a 90 minute pretty piece of fanservice. And there’s nothing strictly WRONG with that. Funimation is releasing the movie in theaters this summer, and I’ll be in line for it, along with all my Trigun fandom queens. But I’m still holding out for a Trigun series Blu-ray release to hug at night. And fanfic about Knives. Smutty, smutty Knives fanfic.

*and wanted to write Meryl/bounty hunter fanfic don’t judge

30-sai no Hoken Taiiku – So I hereby dub this anime season “bizarro time”, because, to recap, there are both a vampire series and a shoujo-ai series that I’m not interested in, and the movie version of one of my all-time favorites was just okay. So I figured I might as well give a shot to the anime that made me most likely to roll my eyes and make faces – 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku, “Health and Physical Education for 30-year-olds.” It’s based on a manga that’s based on a book series aimed at 30-year-old virgins, and might be the most charming thing I’ve seen so far this year.

Rob’s Pick

Dog Days -  This show is so awesomely bad. Have you seen Combat Butler Hayate? Dog Days is like if Hayate had been just as bad, but did it more awesomely.

It’s about this middle-school kid who’s obsessed with gymnastics and likes to play with big long sticks, though I was disappointed to find he’s way straighter than that description makes him sound. He gets transported to a world of furries, where a princess who’s also a pop idol wants him to be a hero and save her country from losing a war. And by “war” she means “Japanese game show.”

See, everyone in this world is so nice and polite, they have “wars” where everyone’s really friends and you turn into a chibi-furry instead of dying and the heroes do big spectacular spells and combat stunts to show off because it’s all on TV. Oh, and when you take damage your armor falls off, where “armor” means “metal wristbands” for the guys and “all your clothes” for the girls. And he’s not even missing anything on Earth because it’s spring break and his parents are away. So he’s fighting in a war, if war was like paintball, and paintball was like Exalted, and Exalted had more doggie ears and underaged boobies. And the writers have absolutely no shame about any of this.

I keep waiting for them to go, “oh, haha, it’s a Last Exile spoof, get it? Isn’t war and the dramatization of war ridiculous?” But no sign of it yet, they just keep playing this ludicrous concept 100% straight.

Awesomely.

The Second Annual Disorganization XIII JohnCon Fanfiction Contest!

Fanfiction writers of the world unite! … and by unite we mean start competing against each other to see who is the best! Following the amazing success of the fanfiction contest last year, Disorganization XIII is coming back to judge it again this year! If you think you are good at writing characters, describing setting, expanding on cannon, and crafting exciting plots and conflicts… or if you just want your work to be mocked and ridiculed in front of an audience in the hopes of winning some awesome prizes… Then you should enter!

Rules!
1. The fanfic can be for any fandom. Anime, sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, whatever you know about you can write about.

2. The fanfic must be less than 2,000 words long.

3. The fanfic can either be its own one-shot story, or it can be a chapter or snippet from a larger story, however the fanfic must stand alone and will be judged on its own merits. Only what you submit will be judged and events that take place in other chapters or elsewhere in the story will not affect our final judgement.

4. If your fic is a part of a longer story you may submit a short (less than 150 words) summary of what happened before your fic and what will happen after your fic. Once again, the quality of the events before and after your fic will not be taken into account but the summary will give your fic some context when we read it.

5. Your fic does not need to be original (though it can be). You may submit a prior written and/or published fic if you wish.

6. The submission deadline is 8PM Friday 4/8. Judging will be done live the next day.

7. You may state that you would like to remain Anonymous on your submission. If you do, we will not mention your real name when judging your fic. You may also mention a pen name you would like us to refer to you by while judging your fic. However, all fics must have a real name attached to them (so we know who to give the prizes to). Fics without a real name included will not be judged.

8. You may submit as many fics as you like, however, depending on the volume of submissions, only one fic per person may be judged live.

9. Fanfiction submissions must be given by e-mail to DisorganizationXIII@gmail.com and must follow the following format. Submissions that do not follow this format will not be judged.

Subject Line: JCFF Contest – (Fanfic Title and Fandom) – (Name)

Fanfc included as an attachment

E-mail Body
Title:
Fandom:
Word Count:
Rating: (G/PG/PG-13/R/NC-17)
Quick description of your fic as well as any other important info you may want us to know (Is it an A/U high school fic? Is it a crossover? Has the setting changed? So on so forth.)

All fics will be judged based on writing, plotting, pacing, spelling, grammar, characterization, adaptation or loyalty to cannon, and how much fun we had reading it. Portions of select fics will be read aloud at our judging panel on Saturday.

The authors of the top 3 fics will receive awesome prizes! Or at least we think they are awesome.

The author of worst fic… well we have a surprise in store for you.
Most importantly you should have fun with this. Take it as an opportunity to be creative and have a bunch of dedicated fanfic panelists review your writing…or you can take it as an opportunity to have Batman have make out with Jean-Luc Picard in the Naruto universe. That too. What are you waiting for? Get writing and submit your fics to DisorganizationXIII@gmail.com

P.S. You don’t have to be GOING to Johncon to enter. We will post the results of the contest on our site after the con and probably tape the panel. And yes, we will still get prizes to the winners even if they don’t show up. So start writing!

Johncon, over at Johns Hopkins University was nice enough to invite us back to set the convention on fire with our own breed of insanity again! Once again they have been nice enough to shack us up in a decent hotel and pay our way down to the great city of… what is Baltimore know for? Giant enemy crabs?

Johncon is a great con because it’s kind of small. It’s all about anime, video games, sci-fi, and really just geekery of any sort, but since the whole thing is pretty intimate and held on a college campus a good part of the con is just hanging out and chilling with all your fellow geeks and all the con guests. Other than us, who will be performing Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare, Spoiler: The Panel 4, and once again doing our hilarious fanfiction contest that got so many laughs last year, Johncon will also be flying in the authors/artists of Cyanide and Happiness, Surviving the World, Strawberry Death Cake, and Manly Guys Doing Manly Things!

There will also be lots of gaming. Look forward to a Magic: the Gathering tournament, events for popular fighting games such as Blazblue and Marvel VS Capcom 3, TONS of differnet roleplaying games including an annual Paranoia game that runs through midnight, and beta tests of games you’ve never even played before, and much much more!

There’s a non stop anime room and movie room that you can even bring your own shows to. Last year we just showed up with Durarara and people just watched it! There’s a rave Saturday night, and possibly Quidditch on Sunday!

Not only that, but the convention runs twenty four hours long. From start to finish it never closes down from the opening on Friday to the closing on Sunday and guess what? There are couches and beds and shit that you can crash on right in the con space!

There’s also dealer’s rooms, food right in the con, booze … uh… if you bring it … not that we condone underage drinking as awesome as it may be. Oh and the hotel we are staying at has a spa! I guess that’s more awesome for us than you guys … unless you wanna hang in a steam room with a bunch of half naked geeks. I mean, whatever floats your boat man.

Honestly, what more can you ask for from a convention that only costs ten bucks for the entire weekend. Hell if you come with a group of ten or more, it actually only costs seven bucks for the entire weekend! That’s a steal!

Johncon invited us back because … we were funny and made dick jokes, but honestly we want to give something back to them too. So if you are in the Baltimore area or driving distance of the Baltimore area, come down to Johncon and make this the coolest goddamn convention ever. It’s YOUR convention and you can do what YOU want at it. Hope to see you there! (We may bake you cookies.)

Johncon takes place the weekend of April 8th-10th 2011 at John’s Hopkins University. Directions, schedules, and more info can be found at http://www.jhu.edu/johncon/index.html

We will post the rules for the fanfiction contest when we know what day we will be doing it.

Make this one for your whole family next year! Note: I made the penis using DMC E131 thread (Light Effects “Holiday Sparkle”) to give it a little bit of flair. If your family celebrates a more austere Skullfuckmas (or perhaps if you are Amish), feel free to use a more muted color.

Pattern here. This was the prototype, so if there is a slight variation between the pattern and the picture here, that’s because I figured out the kinks in the pattern while making this one.

Previously:

• Join DO XIII
• WE! WERE! LAAZZZYYYYYYYYYY!
• NYAF’s Fanfic Panel
• Skullfuckmas Cocktail
• WOW Fanfic Review
• And a Sparklevamp who likes to climb trees!

One Skullfuck cocktail!

Here’s the recipe for the DO XIII Skullfuckmas:

• 2 oz. Green Tea Liqueur
• 2 oz. Strawberry Vodka
• 1 oz. Blue Curacao
• 1/2 oz. Gin
• Fill as you like with Orange/Strawberry/Banana Juice (we like Trader Joe’s, as seen here, but if you get something by Tropicanal, or just have straight up orange juice, let us know how it works out!)

Casey loves it, Kirk made a face and shuddered. I consider that a rousing recommendation. Drink responsibly, and don’t let yourself get so drunk that you get skullfucked. ‘Tis the season.

Previously:

The second day of Skullfuckmas

The first day of Skullfuckmas

We have been trying to engage DirecTV in fair and reasonable discussions to continue to carry G4. G4 offered DirecTV the same basic deal we have had for the past three years. However they still plan to drop the network and deny G4 fans the only network that focuses on the popular gaming lifestyle.

Ooh, there’s a TV network that focuses on popular gaming lifestyle? Maybe DirecTV will pick that up now that they’ve dropped the Misogyny and Cops 2.0 channel!

FRIDAY:

10:00 PM, Workshop 2. This Panel is Gay. Unlike our normal crazyness, this panel is actually going to be a serious discussion about LGBT issues in fandom. Well, as serious as we can make it anyway.

SATURDAY:

11:30 AM, Events C: Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare. Every convention needs a fan fiction panel, and AUSA has ours. It’s time to talk about whatever you want to talk about in the world of fanfiction. Want to talk about the legal ramifications of fanfic? Sure! Want to talk about good writing tips? Sure! Want to talk about Yaoi? Sweet sweet Yaoi? droooool…

5:30 PM, Events C: Spoiler: The Panel 4. Honestly, if you don’t know what Spoiler: the Panel is by now you deserve to get hit by a fish shaped giant robot. It’s another hour long comedy special that stresses the boundaries of acceptable humor in ways we are sure will eventually raise Cthulhu. Come or YOU WILL BE EATEN LAST!

11:30 PM, Panels C: Anime Press Your Luck. Brian “Sonic Whammy” Sapinski might have broken off from Disorganization XIII, but he still can’t make dick jokes like we can. APYL at AUSA is our territory, and it will be as goofy as it always is!

So yeah, everything is set up to be awesome this year. We are gonna have one hell of a time … that is assuming we don’t get distracted with our rivalry with Uncle Yo. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID YO! THE PROPHECY MUST BE FULFILLED! THE PRIZE MUST BE CLAIMED! THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!