#cosplay interview

Any kind of compliment on my cosplay feels like the lottery, but those people that completely stop to ask me about the wings or ask me for a picture feels incredible. Someone took a picture of me and put it on Twitter, and my non-con friend sent me the picture the next day and was like “is this you?!? You’re viral on X/Twitter!” At its peak, the post reached almost 400k views which made me freak out haha. Definitely overwhelmed with love, ESPECIALLY from fellow X-Men fans! Many said they’d never seen an Angel cosplay, but let me be the first to say I’m definitely not the first - @oldfashionednerd was a big inspiration for me.

When Miles Morales (Spider-Man) was first introduced in the comic books, my brother was inspired to do a short film and my mom got him a suit. When we went to a con, he didn’t move 10 feet without being stopped for a picture. I thought he looked awesome and he had everyone’s attention. When his suit needed an update, my mom extended the offer to me and I said yes! I was maybe….I believe 17 at the time. I went with Nightwing.

My Lara Croft cosplay has dramatically increased from starting off with using cardboard to build the classic backpack and holsters to knowing how to work with eva foam, hand paint, other materials to make the backpack, holsters, boots, other accessories! I also have found new and better ways to build my costume pieces compared to the more simplistic why I used tk start out. Also from the character perspective my poses and facial expressions has evolved as well I pose better as Lara Croft now and have more of a variety of poses now compared to when I first started

Cosplay has taught me that it's okay to be myself and to love feeling like a badass in character. I used to get put down so much for simply being me and looking like me from my past and cosplay has shown me that I am awesome and I am good enough and I am not what happened to me in rhe past. 

Unlike a lot of early 90’s/00’s cosplayers, I didn’t have anyone who’d taught me how to sew. So Milly was entirely bought from a trip to the Goodwill. I bought brown pants, a duster, a red tie and yellow suspenders. I remember feeling so proud to find yellow suspenders because in the anime her suspenders are yellow. I was like “wow! I’m so canon compliant. I’m a cosplay pro!”. She has a little green cap and I went to Joanns, bought some fabric and just cut it out and hand stitched it and safety pinned it to the duster. Current me would have been shocked at a lack of surging or a mockup or putting snaps in to make sure the cape stayed on, but it was the wild west back then for when it came to cosplaying. 

At Otakon I had my half-assed Goodwill costume, but everyone loved it, I got so many photos and so many hugs. It was a rush of validation I’d never felt, I was this weird 17 year old living in New Mexico where I had very few friends who liked anime, so going to a con with so many people who knew Trigun and loved my costume was incredible. It made me want to keep cosplaying, 

The Trigun fandom at the time was pretty big. There wasn’t social media the way there is now, but there was a decent community. I think the anime sensibilities mixed with a very western setting was a huge draw to the western ‘otaku’ culture at the time. Vash also had such an iconic look.

A lot of Otakon 2001 was just people being excited to see other members of the Trigun community and get to connect and talk about the show, it’s one of the things I really enjoyed about cosplay back then. It felt easy to strike up a conversation with someone about the character you or they were dressed as and make a new friend. I’m actually still friends with a Wolfwood cosplayer from back then! 

You probably hear this a lot when you talk to older cosplayers, but while I’m happy cosplay has become more popular, it makes me sad there’s less of a focus on learning to sew and learn skills and more of a focus on buying a costume online and posting a photo of it on social media for as many clicks possible. I made Milly from pieces at The Goodwill with so few photos remaining of her and she was probably the most attention I’ve gotten from a cosplay. For young people reading this, don’t be afraid to learn to sew. Don’t be afraid to not have a perfect costume, there’s skills even I’m still learning and I find the building of the costume just as rewarding as wearing it or any attention I get on it.

The most challenging aspect was definitely time. Procrastination is simultaneously the slowest and fastest killer of a cosplay. We sped these two costumes out in the 5 days before the 8th. The clocked ticked down, and the costumes definitely aren't perfect, but given the time we gave ourselves we're happy with how they turned out and it's exciting to think about how we can improve next time using what we learned.