A Story Only A Cosplayer Can Truly Understand

I'm having an odd costume season this year. 

A few days ago, I was working on my very pink, very cutesy wand for my Halloween costume (Princess Star Butterfly, for those of you not watching the excellent cartoon Star Vs. The Forces of Evil) on my way home from work today when an obviously recently divorced dad (if his bitter-sounding phone call as he was entering the bus was any indication) and his two very young, very cute daughters, neither of whom could be older than five, sat down in seats near mine.

They’d obviously just gone Halloween shopping at Target as the two girls were swinging brightly colored, pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat bags. 

The younger girl turned and noticed what I was working on. She asked me about it. I lied and told her that I was making a costume piece for my niece (it just felt so odd admitting to a three-year-old that, as a thirty-something, I was cosplaying as a fourteen-year-old space princess). 

The older one turned to see what her sister was looking at. She asked me where I got it, so she could get one too. I told her that I made it and that you couldn’t buy it in a store. 

The younger girl then asked, if she couldn't get one of her own, if she could have it. 

I told her again that it was for my niece.

She told me very matter-of-factly that she was dressing up for Halloween as a fairy and that my wand was better than the wand she already had. I thanked her, but repeated that the wand was for my niece. 

She repeated that my wand was better than hers and that she wanted mine more.

Very loudly.

The dad noticed and told the girls that the wand was mine and that they had one at home. Which I thought would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

And, to be fair, the little girl seemed very calm and rational-sounding. 

Right up until she wasn't. 

The younger girl started to cry, saying she wanted THAT one. 

Which made the other one start to cry. 

The dad and I just stared at each other in panic while these two girls cried, neither of us knowing what to do.

I could feel the whole bus judging me.

I’m a monster.

The dad gave me a pained look and offered me $20 for my wand. I looked a him incredulously; I held it up, with only one wing half-sewn on, and pointed out that it’s not even done yet. 

He looked at his daughters and pointed out that he didn’t really think they cared. I told him no; it’s for my niece. 

He offered $30. 

I still told him no.

I felt so bad. Because he just seemed like he's not used to being the primary caregiver and this was his first time being in-charge of the kids. He seemed like a very "here, honey" type parent when the kids get difficult. He was trying, but woefully ill-equipped.

The girls cried for full three stops until the dad told them that they needed to head to the front of the bus because their stop was next. He corralled the two crying girls to the front of the bus only to have the driver tell him that their stop is the next one. 

So they had to shuffle off to the side, while the other passengers tried to maneuver around the two miserable children and their harried father. The bus driver tried to cheer them up by letting them ring the bell, but it didn't help.


That was the weirdest, most panic-inducing compliment ever.

Then, today, I decided to dress up as Closet-Cosplay Maleficent, using my Iron Bull horns, which I thought was a fun way to upcycle another costume. 

But then, on my way from Target to the office, a very booze-filled, unkempt man on the escalator kept asking me if my name was "Jemma," if I knew him, and if I was evil. 

I debated telling him no but, after having thoroughly botched the wand debacle, that just seemed poorly out of the spirit of the season, so I just smiled and nodded. 

I think I made the right decision.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Gender-Swapping The Bull - My "Iron Cow" Costume

So, at the beginning of the year, my friend got me all fired up over Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Iron Bull. I got…um, a little obsessed. What’s a girl to do with her new fictional obsession?

Cosplay, of course.

And, much like with my Centaurette costume, I’m of the idea that one should go big or go home. 

Looks and fashion-wise, I’m an incorrigibly girly girl, especially with my cosplay. I’ve been Disney Princesses and My Little Ponies.  This was my first real venture into gender-swapping cosplay.

Which meant a host of new skills and challenges.

To be fair, I remember seeing Amie Lynn’s cosplay of this character and thinking, "Hey, I've got most of that stuff in my closet; how hard would it be to make the rest?" 


In fact, if you look closely, you’ll notice that this is a recycled costume. So, really, I already had the dress done; the rest would be a breeze. 

It’s thoughts like that that I really ought to remember proceed lots of late nights, hard work, and stress. But I don't. And I won't. Because I learn nothing.

Well, to get started, I needed a pair of horns. After all, it’s where his self-adopted name came from, so I couldn’t really be Iron Bull without them.

But I’d learned, with the Centaurette costume, that wandering around in tight quarters filled to capacity with people is tricky when you have a large and unwieldy costume. It can also, if you’re not careful, be hazardous to those around you. So, my horns needed to take that into account.

Beyond that, love him as I might—just as he is—I am physically the oddest person to portray him. There's something undeniably hilarious about taking this 8’ massive mountain of a man and translating him into a cutesy 4’11” girl. 

But that was also kind of the point. I very much wanted to take this great, hulking Qunari savage and soften him up a bit. Because, outwardly, he does look quite frightening. And he certainly is a force to be reckoned with. But, once you get to know him—particularly, if you, like me, watch his romance scenes on loop—he has this sweet, soft, nougat-y center that just makes a girl want to cuddle close. 

So, taking an old headband, a foam sword, a bunch of wire, and pillow stuffing, I decided to make plush horns. 

I love how when cosplay starts, nothing ever really looks like it’s going to come together, until it starts to.

My battle axe certainly didn’t.

Like I said, I’d never made a really large weapon prop. Certainly not to this level. And I really didn’t know where to begin.

But, seeing as I’d already decided on plush horns, a big, huggable, stuffed weapon seemed like the perfect accessory.

Why do so many of my craft project always begin life as grocery bags? To be fair, the pool noodle is a new one.

That looks more recognizable. Sort of.

Sometimes cosplaying feels a little like Fairy Godmothering for Cinderella. Bought a foam sword; for a weapon? Of course not; that's why I got the pool noodle.

My battle axe was a little wobbly. But spray foam, like duct tape and grocery bags, fixes everything.








This is my first time working with this stuff; can you tell?








That looks more like it.







And here we have a battle axe worthy of a Qunari mercenary! 

Now onto my armor; can’t go into battle unprotected. 

Since everything was getting painted anyway, I didn't really care what color everything started out as. But, man, looking back on it all, all my battle stuff started out life looking like Fisher Price toys.

That looks more like what armor looks like.

I had no idea how arduous a process it was to make armor! There were so many layers of glue and coats of paint that went into these pieces. Plus, I got to play with a crafting heat embossing fun. Talk about badass!

And, of course, I couldn't not do the Dragon Tooth. Gotta keep Kadan close. 

Also, proof that I MacGyver my way through costumes, this is made out of broken bits of a sponge brush, a paper clip, air-dry clay, nail polish, and puffy paint. Held up on a poorly abused chop stick to dry. 

And, even though I know that this is technically called The Necklace of Kadan, I wanted to reference his romance tarot card as well as to showcase his kinky side. So, instead of hanging it from a necklace around my neck, I tied it around my arm in a rope gauntlet. 

The Iron Bull has seen some stuff and, while I may not be quite willing to chop off some of my fingers, gotta get that eyepatch action in. After all, that wound helped save Krem!

But I'm blind enough as it is, so wanted one that I could still see out of. So bits of leather, a sunglass lens, a little bit of velcro, and lots and lots of sewing. Oh, and some puffy paint. Because the Iron Bull needs an eyepatch to match his axe's blood grooves.



All put together, I think it turned out really well. And I had a blast running around as my latest fictional crush. 

And I wasn’t the only one to enjoy it. To be honest, this costume was entirely for myself. I had an obsession and wanted to live in it for a while. I actually didn’t think that anyone would recognize it. But a LOT of people recognized the character. And LOVED it. I had people getting really excited about my costume. Which was awesome! But my favorites were a group of young teens who looked close to tears when they recognized me. It was so surreal. What can I say? I love nerds.

Also, fun trivia, the Iron Bull was actually initially planned as being a woman.

Masquerade Me - Misadventures in Cosplaying

So, I’ve talked about the fact that I go to geek conventions before and about how much I love costuming and cosplaying. And, of course, I’m not exactly shy about showing it off. 

Cosplaying is so much work—I can spend months on a single costume—but it’s so much fun. And while, yes, a lot of the fun comes from the finished product, wearing it around and showing it off, a lot of the fun also comes from the process of making it. 

I'm convinced that there’s a certain kind of madness for cosplayers. Where you have the image and idea of what you want to do—crazy, almost impossible possibilities—that you always have to keep in mind while you muck around with the reality of materials, trying to find a way to transmute craft foam or old jeans or plumbing parts into wings or extra limbs or ball gowns.

And, I guess, I just want a place to put that madness. And this is it; hope you enjoy:

- Fantasia's Racist Centaurette (I'm taking her back!)
- Gender-Bending The Bull - My "Iron Cow" Costume
- Prop Envy - A Story Only A Cosplayer Can Truly Understand
- Club Girl Vanellope - My Aged-Up Twist on a Princess
- The Legend of a Badass - My Asami Sato Cosplay

- If Looks Could Kill - Making Medusa

Fantasia's Racist Centaurette (I'm Taking Her Back!)

So I have an awful, awesome habit of too often dreaming too big when I jump into a new hobby.

While I'd done Halloween costumes before, they were often just Found Costumes—costumes that piece together store-bought items, often on-the-cheap and/or last-minute to create a costume (a practice I still do often). But, if I was going to try out—really try out—cosplaying from scratch, I was going to do it. Go big or go home, right?

Well, a costume I always thought would be fun to do was my favorite Disney character. 

I love Fantasia; I think the music and imagery is beautiful and, of all the gorgeous characters in that film, this centaur in particular always stuck in my head. Admittedly, there's nothing all that special about her. In the 1990's VHS copy I owned at the time, there was nothing particularly special about her. She didn't look or act in any way that really made her stand out from all the other centaurettes prancing about that Bacchanalian vignette.

It wasn't until I was much older that I discovered exactly what made her special. Mind you, the VHS version I owned was the re-edited copy where the extremely racist depictions were taken out of the film—to everyone's (worth listening to, at any rate) enjoyment.

I was horrified. Here is my favorite Disney character—the character my young mind gravitated to and admired so—and she's being serviced by this horribly racist cultural stereotype!

This could not stand.

I was taking her back.

I was taking this beautiful, graceful, magnetic character and restoring her to the wonder I'd felt as a child, before I knew her dark secret of why her hooves shined so bright.

The question was how.

Like I said, I'd never really done cosplaying before. My most complicated costume to date was tying a bunch of yarn to some blocks of Styrofoam and calling it a marionette (a pretty good homemade costume for a week before Halloween, I think). That's a far cry from figuring out how to tack on two more legs and a tail.

So I started out with the body of my horse-half. Which was formed from a discount trash bin for the torso, leftover packing foam to pad me against the sharp plastic edge, a wig for the tail, and miscellaneous plumbing bits to hold the tail in and to form the hips where the legs with attach.

Then came the skeleton of the legs. Made up of even more various plumbing bits and wrapped up in duct tape and cut-up re-useable cloth shopping bags. All held together with wire, duct tape, and hope. But, look, bendy joints!

Then I covered the legs in pillow casing and stuffed them like morbid sausages with pillow filling.  

You have no idea the odd looks I got while working on this on the bus and in the office. I looked like a serial killer Dr. Frankenstein.

The legs were measured and modeled after my own legs so, when I put it on, it looks as much like one cohesive piece as possible.

Then it was more pillow bits sausage stuffing to put everything together. Before being nicely covered with sweatpants/sweatshirt pieces. Held all together with screwed-in belts which went around my hips so the whole piece could roll around behind me. By the way, this color velour tracksuit is apparently ridiculously and thankfully popular. I had to buy two pairs of pants (for the back and front legs) and two sweatshirts (for the torso) at the thrift shop and this was the only color that had enough items to cover that amount of material.

To finish off the costume, I took a "flesh-tone" strapless bra. Which, if you're a woman of color, you know isn't actually your skin tone. So I covered it in pantyhose, to give it a darker color that much more closely matched my flesh-tone. Added more panty-hose material to go around my arms to create the wrap-around garland my Centaurette wore. And covered all that with fabric flowers and leaves.

If you look closely, you'll see that in order to make it so my horse half rolled nicely behind me—as opposed to dragging like a corpse behind me—I had to add a harness with straps that went around my shoulders and hooked onto the belts like suspenders. Those were then attached to a woven cord of clear plastic that was drilled into the body's base, right above the tail.

It wasn't perfect—and lord knows it made going up and down stairs a challenge—but, it created a quite realistic effect. To the point where people at the CON came up to me, thinking that I was two people with someone else cosplaying as my lower half.

This was, by far, my most challenging piece of costuming that I have ever done. It took something like six months of planning, shopping, MacGyvering, trial-and-erroring, ripping it apart, and putting it back together again before I finished it. There were many, many, many times where I tossed it down and never wanted to look at it again. Only to be struck by inspiration and insanity, working at it almost non-stop.

It was a crazy, fun first step into a hobby and world that I now love. I will forever be so proud of it. I swear that I will find another event to wear it to someday! And, I can sufficiently say that, yes, I took her back; whatever she was in her past, I can feel her wonder again.