Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Let's all drop a Nostalgia Bomb and take a look at the Ghosts of Halloweens Past!

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I'm Flame Retarded! Said so right on the box for the costume. I thought it was a peculiar name for an action hero, but aren't they all?

See the catalogue at Plaid Stallions.

If they sold these today, I would totally put an embroidered gold scorpion on the back.

Here's me about to precreate the scene where Tony Montana psyches himself up for a gunfight:

Well, the storebought costumes are all very nice, kid. Congratulations, you're a consumer. However, you say you like "being creative," which is code for "inevitable low-paying Service Industry employee." So, sack up, champ. Show us what happens when you make your own costumes.

Yes, I can see you would take the time with crayons to write "Trick Or Treat" in a dripping-blood typeface and draw bats and skeletons on a plastic bag in anticipation of Halloween, but I also see you did not take the time to pay tribute to your favorite comic by fully Charlie Browning the ghost costume full of holes. You failed, kid, and you will always be a failure. I see failure written all over your face and your costume will never hide that, much as you'd like to try.

Alien Invader Costume.

Or Glam Rock Reject.

Go ahead and judge, Internet, it's what you do.

Okay, Me in 1978, we need to talk. I know you love sci-fi and UFOs and stories of alien invaders and that you thought it would be a cool idea if you dressed up as an alien invader yourself, but what you need to realize, and as soon as possible, is that there is a disconnect between the epic space battles going on in your head and what other people can see. I'm saying it's going to take a little more than using a magic marker to draw the letter "Z" superimposed over a jagged lightning bolt on an old t-shirt to convey to others the horror of xenocidal apocalypse and the destruction of all they love and revere.

You need to prepare for the eventuality that people handing out candy might just say "What are you?" You need to know the candy they eventually proffered was a sign of pity, not a reward for accomplishment. Except for that box of raisins there. You deserved that one.

It's fortified with rejection!

And FFS, work on the application and the contrast between the shades of makeup. You don't look like an alien invader, you just look like a dirty photonegative of a case of jaundice. And that single rolled up pant leg. What is that? Is that deliberate? I know for a fact that when you used a Bic ballpoint pen to scribble the concept for this costume down on paper you wanted to convey what an otherworldly uniform would be. With the exception of Fiddler Crabs, Terran biology and all its artifice gravitates toward symmetry. Hence, you thought that if you drew this thing with Harlequin coloration and one pant leg shorter than the other that would mean "alien" because "Nobody on Earth would dress like this." Well, that's all true, kid, and we can sympathize with if we don't completely understand the connections you make in your argument. But did you communicate this to your audience? The answer is no. You would need an advance marketing campaign prepared and distributed weeks beforehand to get that image associated with a horrific invasion before you even walk up to the doorstep with that pillowcase of yours. Decry the sad state of the need for a hype machine all you want, child, but it works. Furthermore, in this worldbuilding exercise of yours, did you even ask why this alien race would have the need to have one pantleg of their uniform shorter than the other? Is there a standard-issue raygun sidearm commonly strapped to their calf that requires dermal contact to recharge? Is this an homage to a mythic figure in their past, and for what deed would this be commemorating? Is this alien race born with a venomous barb on only one knee that gave rise to not only their being the dominant species on their planet but to the creation of a warrior caste as well? If so, was this feature encouraged by selective breeding or engineered through genetic manipulation? In any of these cases, did this biological advantage encourage a culture of conquest that still manifests itself even after their mastery of interstellar space travel? If any of these points in the backstory are acknowledged in your costume design intent, they not only have to be fleshed out, but broadcast to the viewer through visual cues.

I'm just saying that you suck, kid. Give up now.

Yeah, looks like that rolled-up pant leg was deliberate. Because I am just so gangsta like that.

Homemade Suburban Graveyard. Quick now: Is that the name of an AIP motion picture release or the name of an album by a Psychobilly band?

I put candles in the pickle jars propping up the cardboard tombstones. Not as effective as I thought they would be in simulating portals to Hell. No eldritch cult leader ever wants to hear, "Ooh, your Summoning is just so festive!"

Do the light bulbs on your robot face even light up? No? How did my secretary even let you in here?

I just don't see it happening, kid. If you didn't even bother to tape off boundaries for the fluorescent tempera paint splotches that laughably depict mechanical buttons, I just don't think you'll ever have the stuff that shows others you pay attention to detail when worldbuilding.

Oh, wait. Future You is informing Present Me that you actually grew up to contribute to a THEA-award-winning design team? And telling me, furthermore, to eat a multitude of dicks?

Huh.

That's just Weird.