What's going on with Rintamasuunta?

Hello everyone!

You might or might not have noticed our absence, but I have the joy to inform you we are alive, and our group is alive. Deviantart just isn't really... the thing anymore. However, since I know some people still are lurking around here, it might be a good idea to say something here as well.

So what has happened during these two years that we've stayed silent here? After our last Hetalia performance, we had one year break during which we didn't do much as a group. Everyone did their own things, lived their lives. Though we never really dropped the thought that we wanted to continue what we had started. But it was clear we had to move on, Hetalia really wasn't an option any longer. Trying something new was in order.

Almost precisely a year ago we sat down to have a small meeting where we discussed our future plans, what we desired to do with this wonderful group of friends we had made thanks to our passion of making long Hetalia performances together. Everyone agreed we wanted to continue making performances or skits, then there was the idea of competing together. It sounded good. So good we, in fact, started working on it.

After some talking, we had decided our next series would be Shingeki no Kyojin. It had lots of characters, kind of the same military elements we were already relatively familiar working with from doing history & war performances. Also it had kind of the same reputation as Hetalia, being one of the overly popular series. It felt a good idea to continue with the same goal of making a very thoroughly planned performance from a series that had a bit so-so reputation amongst some people due to its popularity.

Indeed, our first plan was to make a long performance like we had done with Hetalia. Soon that idea was discarded though, and since one of our ideas had been to try competing together it couldn't have been that long anyway. A short Shingeki no Kyojin skit that would open people's eyes, it would be then. We started working on it.

Luckily we had a bit of a template to start working with though, since a few members of our group had been planning a Shingeki no Kyojin competition skit during the year we had a break as Rintamasuunta. From the very beginning we knew our skit would have dance elements. So that would be something completely new from us (well, aside from the In the Navy background dancers in our second Hetalia skit, and whatnot). Our group, consisting of many different kinds of people, has a few with dance background, so nothing felt impossible. It would be a different thing how we'd be able to perform the dance we still didn't have in the army uniforms that have this interesting part which is the straps all around their body. Well, that would be our problem in the future. At that point our first concern was to get started with the choreograph.

After months of practicing we had gotten started rather nicely, but that was only the beginning of the adventure. During the making of this little skit we experienced - by far - the most obstacles than during any of our long Hetalia performances. At some point when we had experienced character casting problems, the con where we had planned to go with this skit deciding to not hold the competition, the next choice con having shorter time limits for the competition skits by two minutes, us having to cut two minutes from our nearly-done performance and choreographing parts of it again, and a few problems to add on that, we had reached a point where we were pretty sure we should rather laugh than cry at the absurd amount of misfortune we had to go through while just wanting to perform this frigging skit of ours.

But the day did come when our costumes were ready, our skit was ready, WE WERE GODDAMN READY, and we hoped the audience and judges were not ready. 6th of September, last month, we were standing at the backstage of the main stage at Tracon X, hardly believing the moment was here at last. We had practiced for this moment one year, over 100 hours, each month on one or two weekends. And then it was our turn.



Firstly, we were SO excited. It was incredible to be there at last as a group, especially since I feel like this new project has brought us together even more (all those obstacles sure did). The audience's (and the judges'!) incredible reception was really moving to us, as we hardly had expected it. But in the end nothing could compare to the incredibleness of the fact we ended up winning this extremely high-level competition. A good amount of our group was moved to tears, while the rest was trying to comprehend the situation differently.

After the competition the judges gave us personal feedback on our skit, and they nearly overwhelmed us with all the positive remarks they gave us, all of them about points in our performance we had been working on very hard the whole year leading up to that moment. When we returned to the con, everyone too giddy to do anything else but grin or cry, people came to commend us for our great performance. In my personal experience the whole day felt like a dream.

The next few weeks after the con went in almost head-in-clouds state. We've died a million times over the super kind and wonderful things people have written about us on social media. We can hardly thank them all enough, as this only motivates us more to pick up a new project as soon as we're officially done with this one. But I think it's safe to say we're not stopping now.

So this long-ass post might've given some insight on our current situation as the cosplay group Rintamasuunta. So though we're back now, we likely won't be active here anymore, but perhaps you can see a few journals whenever necessary. But fear not, as after our performance people asked if we had a Facebook page. Now we do! Rintamasuunta's Facebook

That's all for this journal! Thank you for being here all these years, and thank you for reading this huge thing!

Have a good day