#Hojan

[musicalislife]

Hojan

[nanoa1foryou]

Imagine trying to explain Hojan to someone who doesn't know.

Like, okay, so.

This Finnish guy has a best friend, right? And they have the same haircut, for fun, yeah? So then Finnish guy becomes rapper and makes a gag out of having a doppleganger on stage. They film bits. They make a joint OnlyFans. Y'know, as one does when they have a clone of themself.

So this Finnish rapper guy becomes real big internationally. And becomes besties with a Slovenian band. And during his vacation he goes on tour with that band and makes guest performances at their shows.

So for an even funnier gag they decided to give the other guy a wig and the Slovenian singer's shirt and make him a doppleganger of him.

And now the Finnish rapper guy doesn't even perform with the band. But the doppleganger does. So now this Slovenian band just have a weird Finnish doppleganger of their singer.

Makes sense, right? Totally normal stuff

[kaarijatits]

love wins 😌

[formulalakana]

hugs and high fives

[maxwolfess]

what he ordered vs what he got

[zefly]

[teal-skull]

You know the extended Käärijä cinematic universe is getting complex when you start having conversations like these:

Person, not in the fandom: So how was the Joker out gig?

Me: It was so good, and there was an interval act with Hojan.

Person: I'm sorry, Hojan?

Me: Oh right, so Hojan is Häärijä but he puts on a wig and a white shirt and is like a parody of Bojan. It began on the nordic tour randomly and became a thing.

Person: Who's Häärijä?

[stealthywing]

Aww

[frikatilhi]

Finally looked through my recording of CCC in Tallinn and while there are no new angles to offer, there some cute moments tucked in the corner of the screen, like this Jure & Hojan hug

[mitamicah]

A whole europe tour later here's the JO nordic tour sketches I made using your fave pics as inspiration

@c28hunter I used your pic of Bojan with the flag because it cracked me up x'D

@j-restlessgeek I ended up chosing the seal dads and Edgar together with Häärijä/Hojan being way too short to give Jan a high five x'D

@lintubintu I wasn't sure which exact Nace and Jan blowing bobbles pictures you referred to so I found two I liked and drew those x'D

I hope you all like how they turned out :3

[musicalislife]

Hojan looks really good

📹Mark’s ig story 2024.07.06.

[guggi04]

Hey!!!!

GUESS WHO’S TREMBLING🫨😍

[smimon]

Hojan my beloved

[formulalakana]

Birthday wishes from Hojan

[izpira-se-zlato]

Bootleg Hojan Merch

I know Nace shared part of the story in an interview a couple days ago, but I was planning on doing a write-up before I knew that, so here you go 😂 Also contains the continuation of the saga in Finland :D

Putting this under a cut because it's gonna be a bit of a read (plus a few more pictures). Yeah, I hope no one here is surprised that I suck at keeping things short 😂

So I have done a fair bit of clownery this year, and the most recent bit (before the shirt project) was attending two of the Polish gigs, Wrocław and Poznań.

I was wearing my Cha Cha Cha shirt to the Poznań gig, and when taking pictures with Bojan and Nace after the show, I opened my jacket so the shirt was visible. When stepping back after the pic, Nace spied the shirt and was kinda excited about seeing Käärijä merch – though he prefers the Häärijä merch, as he told us, because he's a "big fan" (his words, not mine).

So back at the hotel, I told @braveheart1418, "God, I'm so tempted to try to procure an actual Häärijä shirt. Tell me that's a stupid idea." Of course she did no such thing and so we looked into how much it would cost (too much) and how long it would take (too long), and so I was like, "bummer. And I'm not comfortable making bootleg official merch. Although, omg – it would be hilarious of we did Hojan merch!"

And the longer I thought about it, the more I fell in love with the idea. Again, I told friends, "tell me that would be a stupid idea," and again, they were filthy enablers, and so I started looking into the matter semi-seriously once I was back home (that was Wednesday the 22nd, so almost exactly a week before I left on a business trip leading into a stay at my parents' place leading into the gig).

The first thought was to get a big HOJAN in the Häärijä lettering on foil to iron onto a black shirt, though @braveheart1418 had commented that the design with a picture Häärijä on is much more memorable. That was a very valid point, except that there were no Hojan pics in suitable resolution that were in the right pose.

Thus, things I needed to solve:

get a plotter to cut out "Hojan" for the chest -> my mom said my cousin had a friend with a plotter. Contact was established

get a picture similar to the official merch of Hojan -> I reached out to Dean, who was absolutely lovely and set me up with a picture I could use

clip Hojan from the picture -> I had @submariini as well as another dear friend help me there because they are both much better at photoshop than me and were kind enough to offer their help, and decided to add the yellow border because the best picture Dean had sent me was black & white

get transfer paper -> easy: amazon (loathe as I am to use it)

find a copy shop to print Hojan for me -> tricky bc I got Inkjet-Printer transfer paper and most copy shops have laserjets, if they allow using your own paper at all -> I got laserjet transfer paper and once again had my cousin come to the rescue and helped me print it :D

find t-shirts in the right sizes -> I solved this by eyeballing and taking pics of my dad in the various sizes to check with @submariini. While nerve-wrecking, I am astonished just how well the sizing worked out in the end!

Despite the limited time (limited further by me getting sick Monday/Tuesday before my business trip), it all came together beautifully: I did a test-print Friday evening and picked up the foil cuts, went shirt shopping with my parents on Saturday (shout out to them for letting their adult kid drag them through three different clothes stores and especially to my dad for gamely trying on half a dozen shirts and waiting while I yelled at ed about which to take 😂), finished the test shirt (mine) that evening and adjusted the colours on the outline to be closer to the foil, printed three more copies of Hojan Sunday morning, and got them ready just in time for leaving for the gig!

Which was yet again nerve-wrecking because of the unprecedented amounts of snow happening in Bavaria, but it stood no chance against our determination!

Unfortunately, the snow situation meant that JO couldn't come out after the show, so I passed the shirt to Nace during it and received a pick in return, which made me bluescreen as I hadn't expected an exchange 😂 He put the shirt down without having looked at it, which was a bit unfortunate because I would have loved to have seen his reaction, but it was still a pretty cool moment.

They did get a lot of gifts this close to St. Nikolaus (which is also celebrated in Germany, or at least was in my youth), most of which they left on the stage for the crew to gather up, so I bluescreened even worse when Nace bee-lined over to me as they came back on stage for the SSOL-encore to thank me again for the shirt – others told me later he'd taken it backstage after Carpe Diem with him, which I'd missed 😅

After the show, I met @mogoce-nocoj and ended up talking to her for quite a while outside the venue because neither of us wanted to split off into different directions, and so it wasn't until we were on our way back to @braveheart1418's hotel room (finally accepting that we wouldn't manage to say goodbye quite so soon and might as well talk somewhere warm 😅) that I saw that Bojan had posted the story to his Instagram 😂. Let me just say that it was very fortunate we were still out-doors and not near normal flats, because I don't think I was quiet when I saw 😂

I actually ended up making four shirts including my trial one – one for Nace, one for Häärijä himself because it felt fitting, and one for @submariini because he's such a Häärijä fan :D

The latter two, I took with me to Rovaniemi (which was ed's fault, because (and I quote), "come to Rollo! It'll be fun!"), where a bunch of friends and I met up for a birthday party slash Käärijä gig (over 20 clowns in one place, it was amazing, 10/10 would do again (genuinely)). The weather and means of transport tried to keep us apart (train strikes and ice rains on my end, though I still had better luck than Joker Out), but we actually all made it and by now all made it back again, too :D

As I mentioned in a different post, I actually managed to hand over the shirt to Häärijä before the gig, and he told me he would wear it on stage, which he did! I also got a picture with him, ed, and me all in our shirts, which was also pretty great :D

So, yeah! The Process™ of project 1.

Thank you so so much to everyone who helped and encouraged me along the way -- my parents and my cousin, the gift to our fandom that is Dean Grainger (none of whom will hopefully ever read this specific post), @braveheart1418, @submariini, @alephai, my dearest friend K who's been an enabler for so so many shenanigans, and xia!bf for bearing with my insanity (both where the shirts are concerned and the general Käärijä/JO brainrot) and helping me make this project a reality 💛

[zefly]