Thoughts On Cosplay Hate

There are many wonderful things about the cosplay world.  Like, for example, bringing a character to life.  Or the wonderful enthusiasm that almost everybody at a con has.  You can strike up a conversation with a complete stranger while standing in line, and most of the time, the conversation will continue heartily for an hour.  You’ve made a new friend.  But there is a dark side to cosplay.  There is a lot of cosplay hate.

One of the things I find the saddest about cosplay hate is that it can affect how we feel about our own costumes before the con even starts.  When I had finished sewing Ty Lee and was wearing it around the house, I thought to myself, “What should I say to someone if they come up to me at a con and tell me, ‘You’re too fat to cosplay Ty Lee’?”  And it upsets me that I’d even have to worry about that.  

Cosplay isn’t modeling.  I mean, OK, you get photographed a lot and have specific poses for cosplays.  But I am not a paid model.  I do this for fun.  Should it matter if my body isn’t perfect by the media’s standard?  Which, by the way, is a complete BS standard.

I think the most important part about cosplay is to be open and nice.  Everyone judges, but do so quietly.  Find the nice thing to say and say it.  

Maybe don’t care so much about crossplay and cosplaying different races or body types.  I mean, are you really going to go up to a HUMAN cosplayer and go, “You can’t cosplay Nebula.  She’s an alien.  You’re a human.  You should stick to your race.”?  No!  

Disclaimer: Not Me.

So why would you do that about someone being black/white/Latino/etc?  

We are dressing up as fictional characters!  What does it matter if they don’t have the same body type?  Am I really supposed to be a stick with disproportionate curves to cosplay….any woman in comics?  Come on, folks.  We’re dressing up.  How about we don’t hate and just accept?

Dealing with cosplay hate is like dealing with a bully.  Actually, it’s not “like” that, it IS that.  You can always come back with some smart retort, but that’s not necessarily going to get you anything.  Situationally, it could, but I wouldn’t recommend it for most people.  

If someone WERE to come up to me and say I was too fat for Ty Lee, which, as I said, is something I worried about, I’d figured I’d say, “I’d rather be a tiny bit fat than a lot a bit a ****,” but that wouldn’t be conducive.  

If you come across cosplay hate, just remember that you are awesome and these poor schmuks are so backwards that they can’t be happy with anything less than perfect, which you can be sure does not include themselves.  You are being passionate about a topic you love and harmlessly sharing that with others.  What could be more beautiful?

*I didn't create these memes

How to Make Your Astrid

Hello cosplayers!  This post will detail how I made the skirt and hoods for my Astrid.

You will need three kinds of faux fur: murky tan, blonde, and a short, coffee color.

SKIRT

For the skirt, you want to use the murky tan. I used Simplicity pattern 1663 P5.  I basically followed the directions for Skirt A; the only change was to make the bottom hem 3”.  I found it easiest to pin that on the body form. 

Make sure you fluff out the fur along the seam lines.

In staring at reference pictures, I estimated that Astrid had 8 leather strips down her skirt.  I drew out a pattern by measuring the skirt’s length.  The leather gradually gets wider toward the bottom.  The top measures 2” across, the bottom 3”.  I drew a softly expanding line between the two, rounding out the bottom.  I added an extra half-inch to the pattern for seam allowances.

After cutting out the pleather, I measured in the .5” and folded in the edges.  Sew the edges in place.  Be careful with your sewing machine!  Some spots (corners) may require hand cranking your machine. 

After all 8 were cut, I measured out where the spikes will go.  Astrid has shorter spikes on top, longer on bottom.  I measured about 4” down, then marked every 2”.  I cut a small hole with my seam-ripper and screwed the metal spikes in with a washer to hold in place. 

Next came sewing them on.  I used a Teflon foot and a leather needle, but still snapped a few, so go slowly! 

The bird skulls I bought off Etsy.  I painted them and super glued them in place.

HOODS

Astrid has two hoods.  You need the blonde fur, coffee fur, and tan and dark suede.

I’m sorry I don’t have clear measurements here: I winged it.  Using paper, I sketched out where the lower hood would go on myself and used those measurements to draw it on paper.

The paper is not perfect, but I tried to cut it out symmetrically.  Were I to do it again, I would probably draw half the pattern and cut it on the fold.  I repeated this on the black suede and sewed the two together.

The upper hood took more tries.  You see, cartoon physics aren’t like the real world: in order to make Astrid's hood sit the way it does in the movie, I had to make four pieces of half suede, half fur. The literal hood: suede top with fur bottom.  When sewn to the part sitting on the shoulders, back, and collarbone (fur top with suede bottom), I get Astrid's hood.

Sew the left 2 together.  The right 2 together. 

I sewed the two hoods together where they meet at the collarbone.  I added two suede strips to the under-hood and attached them around the metal ring.

I then super-glued the small skulls on.  Violá.

NOTE: back-heavy hoods need to be secured to the shirt.  I used velcro.

Wizard World Philly

This past weekend I went to Wizard World Philly! (aka, Philly Comic Con).  It was amazing.  There were probably 40 thousand people there.  So much to see, so much to do!

I wore three different cosplays over the course of the weekend: Liv Moore, from iZombie

Liv Moore (iZombie)

 Ty Lee from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Ty Lee (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

and a genderbent 10^th Doctor from Doctor Who.

10th Doctor (Doctor Who)

Holy cow did my Liv get some good attention!  So many people told me that they thought I was Rose McIver (the actress that plays Liv on the show) when they first saw me.  It took them each several moments to realize I was not her.  I met a man who does specialty makeup for films (werewolves, zombies, vampires, sci-fi, etc) who complimented me on my makeup job.  And by complimented, I meant raved every time I saw him.  He even took a picture to show his coworkers

There were so many amazing vendors there, challenging my wallet.  I wanted to buy everything!  There was a booth that specialized in making old time looking blueprints of sci-fi inventions!  I really wanted the print of the Star Ship USS Enterprise, but it was outside of my price range.  Luckily, I can contact them online for smaller sizes, which I might just have to do.

Look at the shops behind me!  So much to look at!

Comic books, figurines, 3D photograph scans, 3D prints, novelty t-shirts, numerous Doctor Who gadgets, Princess Bubblegum leggings, Harry Potter wands, beautiful artwork, swords, swords, swords, lightsabers, I can’t even keep track of all of the beautiful things for sale….that I wanted. 

So many people!

The whole convention was a constant buzz of excitement.  Looking at all of the merchandise, looking at all of the cosplays, looking at all of the people, listening to the on-going hum of thousands of people moving and talking, the loudspeaker playing music, conversing with thousands of people, posing for hundreds of pictures…it was a wonderful, non-stop process.  I probably only stopped once a day to sit and…drink soda.

A rare moment of sitting!  This was at the David Tennant/Billie Piper Panel.

So many wonderful celebrities also visited Wizard World.  I got autographs from the Weasley twins (James and Oliver Phelps), as well as from Oliver Queen/The Arrow (Stephen Amell).  

I took my picture with Summer Glau, 

Summer Glau! (Firefly, DollHouse, Arrow, Terminator)

Scott Wilson, 

Scott Wilson (The Walking Dead)

and Michael Rooker.  

Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy)

But my all time favorite was meeting David Tennant!  

Doctor Action Pose with David Tennant! (Doctor Who, Broad Church)

He was so very sweet and seemed to care about the lives of everyone he met.  I am very proud to say that I kept myself together when meeting him…and then freaked out/fangirled for a good 10 minutes straight afterwards.  What can I say?  He is one of my favorites.

One of the best parts was making new friends.  I can’t seem to go to a con without making new friends!  Some of my new friends host a Podcast: The Emergent Gamer Podcast.  I was on their show several times this weekend! 

While recording a podcast with Emergent Gamer.

One of the best parts of a convention is that everyone is there for the same reason.  That makes it easy to get to know people – just start talking!

Making new friends because we clearly love the same fandom!

Two Livs? Friendship!

Can’t wait ‘til next year!