Super Duct Tape Cosplay and Me!

I have wanted to cosplay at a convention for a while, but I couldn't decide what to make or where to go.  This year I tried to get into San Diego Comic-Con, but that was a no-go because tickets were gone in less than ten minutes.  So instead, I decided to get badges for WonderCon for my boyfriend and I.  I had everything set, the only thing to decide upon was what to cosplay as.

I am a bigger girl, so it can be hard for me to decide what characters to cosplay.  I'm not always super confident when going as a tiny character, but I don't want to limit myself because of my size, so I try and do a little bit of everything, but I do think it's cool when I can find a character that I can relate to and rock it out! I'm 5'8" and a size 20, I wear glasses and I have gaps in my teeth.  This can sometimes create a challenge for me.  And although most of the time I just work around these physical characteristics, I figured that this time I might try and find a character that these would compliment.  After thinking about it for a while, I came up with this:

 

Oh yeah.  Alice from Superjail on Adult Swim.  So I'm going to be a chick cosplaying as a dude who dresses up like a chick.  It's gonna be awesome.  It's not going to be all sexy or anything, but it's going to be very empowering!  I'm a huge fan of the show, so I figured that this would be the perfect cosplay for me this year.  And since my boyfriend is going to go with me, I have roped him into going as The Warden.

Which is perfect for him because he's a somewhat tall guy with black hair and a gap in his teeth as well.  Perfection!

I sent in our entry form for the Masquerade at the con and then came the fun part--getting everything made!

First I went online and ordered all of the tape that I thought I was going to need.  Getting your duct tape online is probably the easiest way to get all of the colors that you'll want because while stores are now carrying more of a variety of colors now, they still won't have everything you need most of the time.  This even includes hardware and craft stores, sadly.  After searching for a while, I found that the store online that had the biggest assortment of colors and styles was TapeBrothers.com.  They are kinda pricey, but odds are that they will have whatever you want and they sell it in all kinds of different sized rolls. 

About a week later my tape came in the mail and I was super excited!

I laid out all of the different colors that I had to work with and figured out what I was going to start on first:

I was having a little bit of trouble getting myself motivated to start, because I always end up working on so many projects at once.  So the first thing that I ended up making was the hat because it was just an iconic piece and I knew I would feel some sense of accomplishment afterwards.  I recycled the top hat that I had used from the Tuxedo Mask costume from my Sailor Moon cosplay a few years ago and made it just a little bit taller. 

After having The Warden's headpiece done, I figured that I might as well get started on Alice's.  I could have gone out and bought a wig or dyed my hair, but I wanted to be duct tape from head to toe and show off my creativity.  So I decided to make a wig.  For the base I took an old baseball cap and cut it to hell.  Then I took 12" strips of the red tape and folded them in half to come up with this:

After coming up with about twenty strips I figured that I had enough to make a convincing ponytail and I bundled them up, taped them together and attached the bundle to the cap.  I tried it on my head, but it wasn't coming out how I wanted because my hairline was showing way too much.  I didn't exactly have any help with this part, so I put my hair into a bun and wrapped tin foil on my head and figure out what shape the rest of the wig needed to be.  Once I had that mold, I was able to tape over the foil and get the majority of the wig finished:

It still looked a little bit like a helmet though, so a few days later I took it to a friend's house and he was able to help me style the bangs, make it fit a little better and get out the kinks.  I added a hot pink duct tape scrunchie and it was finally good to go!

I figured that the wig would be the hardest part (and it was fun!), so now that that was done, I moved on to the clothing.  The Warden's purple tux, complete with coattails, would prove to be a bit of a challenge.  There are several ways that you can go about making duct tape clothing.  You can tape the duct tape to itself to make fabric, but I don't recommend this because if you're going to wear it, it's going to get sweaty and gross really fast; you can tape over a clothing item that you don't want anymore, but be aware that when you do this the tape is going to make the garment smaller than when you start no matter how careful you are; you can tape the duct tape to a light fabric to make a sturdy duct tape fabric and then follow a pattern as if you were sewing something from scratch which is great if you have the patience and time for that; or you can use all kinds of other techniques. 

I use a combination of these.  For the jacket and pants I went to the thrift store and found some crappy pajamas to tape over.  Pajamas are cool because they usually have some kind of a collar and they are lightweight.  Here is the first part of the jacket:

I had to make a much bigger collar and trim down the sleeves so that they weren't so bulky, but it came out pretty well after that:

I kind of jumped around all over the place with this project, but I'm putting everything in order so that it makes more sense.  A few weeks later after I wasn't sick of looking at purple tape, I came back to the jacket to make the coattails.  For these, I used another duct tape technique.  When I want to make duct tape fabric, I make a kind of duct tape loom for it.  I measured my boyfriend while he was wearing the jacket and used a guide piece of tape so that I knew how long I wanted to set things up.  Then I took the tape and taped one end to my kitchen counter and the other end to my handy-dandy step stool.  The base that I like to use for my duct tape fabric is paper towels.  I've tried several other things, but this is the cheapest and, uh, most absorbent thing to use.  I lined up the paper towel with the predetermined length of tape and with some very small pieces of tape, taped one end to the counter and one end to the stool until it was taut.  Like so:

Then once you have your "loom" set up you can start applying the colored tape for your fabric over it.  This works out really well and can be done pretty easily alone.

Just make sure you do your best to not wrinkle any tape that you put down on the towel and that you layer each subsequent piece of tape at least a quarter of an inch over the next.  Once you get one side done you can flip it over, trim off any excess and duct tape the next side if you need to.  I had a really nice pic of a finished piece of fabric, but my phone ate it.  I put the jacket on the stool and placed it on the table so that I'd have enough room to work with the long amounts of fabric I had to tape onto it.

Then after I figured out how much I wanted to hack off I drew my guides on the inside and then cut off what I didn't need and finished completely taping the coattails to the inside and outside of the jacket.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out :)  The next day I pretty much repeated those same steps to make the breastplate (because it would be too hot to do an entire undershirt), the bowtie and the cummerbund.  It was exciting because it was finally starting to come together!

I wanted to make sure that we had as many details down as possible, so I made some glasses out of paper towel, duct tape and yellow cellophane that he can just tape to the rims of his glasses:

I also made some gloves and a cane, but I didn't remember to take pictures of crafting those.  The cane was nothing special, I just duct taped an old cane I had (also from my Tuxedo Mask costume haha) but the gloves were a pain.  I had him wear some latex gloves and then I taped over them with this fancy grey matte duct tape I found. (It was super hard to work with and I probably won't use it ever again because it's not as sticky as the regular kind!)  Once he was taped into them I had to cut them off his hands and then I bought some Velcro and made little panels on the inside of the palms so that he could take them on and off.  Oddly labor intensive for such a small detail.

Finally I made the pants.  When you are taping up pants it's always a major pain because of the inseam and the pockets and the like.  So I highly suggest taping the main pieces in the front and then doing the rest while your subject is wearing them so that you get the seams right as well as, um, for lack of a better way of saying it, the booty curve!  If you tape everything flat and then expect it to fit properly, you're in for a nasty surprise.  Anyway, here is the finished product:

I forgot the shoes in this one and I am still thinking of using some black on the edges of everything to create a cell shading effect, but that's what I've got so far!

Then we come back to my Alice costume.  This was even harder than The Warden costume because I am a curvy girl and that can really suck when making costumes, duct tape or otherwise.  So, I made the glasses to fit over mine:

And then I started on the shirt and it was a total nightmare!  I bought a shirt from Goodwill and it said it was my size, so I stupidly didn't try it on.  I got home with it and it was pretty snug.  Not a good thing when, like I said before, duct tape shrinks clothing that you tape underneath it no matter how perfectly you tape it.  So I cut away at the sides of the shirt thinking that that would alleviate the problem and added panels to it using paper towels and more tape:

Yeah... That worked to a point, but it was still way too tight at the chest and it looked like a damn poncho:

Honestly, it still kinda looks like a poncho and I am going to have someone help me trim it down before WonderCon, but at least now it fits!  I ended up having to cut the front of it off, tape it while wearing it to fit my curves by adding yet another set of panels and then hiding a zipper under the buttoned portion of the shirt.  Major adventure. 

Then I got to make the fun stuff for it like the epaulets and the patches.  I think I did a damn good job with the patches:

Then I made a tie and put all of them on the shirt:

Finally I made the skirt (I had to install a zipper in that as well) and duct taped this pair of sneakers I got at Goodwill to make into combat boots.  And here is the finished product on this one barring any cell shading type thing like I was talking about earlier:

I still need to take it in on the sides so that it doesn't look like a frickin' barrel, and the friend that helped me with the wig drew me a pretty awesome set of muscles on some leggings I got, but for the most part this is complete!

I am planning on doing a shoot with the costumes before the Masquerade and I will update this blog post as soon as I finish, but for now I have a million other things to do to prep for WonderCon!  Crossing my fingers that it goes well! :)

20 Books/Authors Every Nerd Should Read But Might Have Somehow Missed!

I fucking love to read.  To emphasize this, in no particular order I have rounded up some of my favorite nerdy reads.  I've been reading for as long as I can remember, which means that I read a lot as a kid and as a result of that I have mixed together my top ten nerdy kid reads with my top ten nerdy adult reads--sometimes they overlap.  Some are old and some are new, but whether you're skirting the edge of nerd culture and want to ease your way into the deep end of the nerd literature pool or you're in over your head, hopefully there will be something undiscovered waiting here for you. 

1.) The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde:

Set in a quirky-as-hell parallel universe in the 1980s where books are cool, cheese is sold on the black market and evil corporations can have you eradicated from your own timeline if you piss them off, Thursday Next is a SpecOps agent who works for a division of the government that ensures that cheap imitation, counterfeit books aren't being released on an unsuspecting public all while figuring out that she has the ability to jump between the book world and the real world, trying not to get killed by her arch-enemies and dealing with all of the crazy shit that her family members put her through.  I cannot stress how awesome this series is and I'd say it is at the top of this list for the primary reason that not enough people have read it and I personally haven't met anyone else who has other than myself.  If you love to read and you love pop culture and/or nerd culture, you will find page after page of references that will make you feel super smug about your canon of useless knowledge, as well as things that you might not have realized were out there that you should know at some point in your life.  I can't do this series justice in one shitty paragraph, so just trust me on this one and pick up the first one (The Eyre Affair) and prepare to be hooked!

2.) The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts:

As the only girl in my first grade class who wore glasses and was one of the few kids who was reading chapter books for fun, seeing the cover of this book in the library forced me to glomm onto it right off the bat. The main character is a girl who is an outsider that doesn't get along with the other kids her age and ends up finding out that she has special powers that have something to do with her silver eyes.  This is an awesome book for kids who feel alienated about anything in their lives and while it isn't the most detailed or well-written book ever, it is a good segue into the world of the paranormal and sci-fi.

3.) Anthony Burgess

Everyone knows him for writing A Clockwork Orange, but Burgess is one of my favorite writers because he puts his characters in so many different kinds of situations and then makes them deal with the moral, ethical and real-life consequences of their decisions.  I'd say my favorite book by him is without a doubt The Wanting Seed, but some close favorites are The Doctor is Sick, The Pianoplayers and of course A Clockwork Orange (which you are missing out on if you've only watched the movie!). 

4.) The Time Quintet by Madeline L'Engle

Okay, I'm not gonna sugar-coat this one.  This series is rather hit or miss.  I received the first book, A Wrinkle in Time, as a birthday present when I was a kid.  The first book had to be good for me to read the rest of them, right?  Well, yeah.  Plus, yet again, it was another book with a nerdy female main character who was in a situation that made her special.  The whole series follows the Murry family and each book somewhat focuses on one of the kids. While it is mainly fantasy with a dash of sci-fi thrown in, it definitely has the Narnia thing going on with the biblical overtones.  Wrinkle in Time is still my favorite in the series, but re-reading it as an adult, I found Many Waters to be a close second favorite and Swiftly Tilting Planet to be a pretty decent read as well.  Sorry Ms. L'Engle, but books two and five kinda sucked.  Still a good kid series though :)

5.) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

If you have any sort of love for nerd culture or the 1980s, you must read this book.  There is a lot of talk about them making this into a movie, so do yourself a favor and read it now before Hollywood gets its hands on it and corrupts your vision of how awesome this book is.  It's the future and the world's gone to absolute shit, so damn near everyone chooses to live their lives in a virtual reality known as the Oasis, which is quite aptly named.  Uber outcast Parzival and the millions of other people in the world are trying to solve a riddle that has stumped pop culture scholars for years and the prize for solving it is essentially control over the world as they all know it, along with the money and power that comes with it.  The review on the front cover says it's Willy Wonka meets The Matrix and that is so spot on it hurts.  If there was a list of required reading to become a part of nerd culture, this would be on it for sure.

6) The Artemis Fowl Series by Eoin Colfer

This is a kid series that I actually started reading as an adult--because I've got no shame to my game.  I'd say the best way to describe this series is... Hmmm... Think Black Butler but with fairies and leprechauns and such.  As a matter of fact, if the creators of Black Butler didn't read this series before creating the manga/anime, I would be incredibly surprised.  Artemis Fowl is a darkly-clad, Irish criminal mastermind/millionaire who is only a boy when he discovers that the supernatural world is a real thing and attempts to tap into it to use it to his own advantage--only to find that he probably shouldn't have stirred things up.  The jokes are cheesy good fun, the brooding of the main character coupled with his disdain for nearly everyone around him is amusing and he even has a Butler of his own.  I'd love to see this series made into a movie if it was done properly.  Just a thought :)

7.) The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Never in a million years would I think that I would be interested in an urban fantasy series.  Most of the ones I've tried to read were unbearable Buffy ripoffs; Dresden Files, however, just gets a hold on you and doesn't let go.  But that's okay, because he is still writing more of them, so we're cool.  I actually found out about this series when I went into a bookstore and asked for a recommendation and the goth chick at the front said, "Do you like wizards?" I shrugged.  "Do you like mysteries?"  I shrugged again.  "How about sarcastic wizards that solve mysteries?"  And she had me there.  The first two books are a little cheesy, but as Butcher goes on with the series the plot thickens, back stories come up that you have to figure out the answers to and he has interesting explanations for damn near everything that has ever gone bump in the night.  Plus, Harry Dresden is this awesomely relateable anti-hero who randomly pulls out bad movie references while kicking ass.  You can almost see the "WHAM" and "POW" pop right off the page!  Oh, and before anyone tries to ruin this for you, yes, this was made into a television series for SyFi, but the show sucks ass and doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with the books.  Don't watch the show (which is a very typical SyFi Channel program, not bad if you are mentally prepared for that kind of thing) unless you are prepared to compartmentalize your thoughts on the matter.

8.) Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Well, I couldn't mention Harry Dresden and then not mention Harry Potter.  That would just be stupid.  Is Harry Potter mainstream?  Yes.  But does that mean that it is too popular to have any nerd cred?  Nah.  I'm not saying that reading the series will give you this huge insight into nerd culture, but it does give some and it has encouraged lots of kids to read and blah blah blah.  We've heard it all before.  It's not exactly the most original story because it uses the epic story formula but it is still noteworthy and entertaining and I'd say it's become a modern rite of passage for today's nerd kids. And it's better than them reading Twilight, right?  My faves in the series are Prisoner of Azkaban and Half-Blood Prince. 

9.) Jonathan Lethem

I hope that the book gods don't strike me down for putting Lethem on the same list with Potter, but hopefully the other ones on here will even things out.  Lethem is an awesomely dark, thought-provoking author whose novels and short stories of the strange and mundane make him a force to be reckoned with in the modern literary world.  And now that I'm done sounding like some terrible book jacket fangirl, I'd like to say that there isn't really anything classically nerdy about his books, but they are just so sharp and smart that I would think that you'd have to be somewhat of a nerd to appreciate them, but you could just as easily be a wine-tasting, yuppie intellectual who occasionally indulges in "slumming it" and get the same effect.  My faves are Gun, with Occasional Music and The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye.

10.) Bone by Jeff Smith

Number ten for you guys is one of my favorite graphic novels.  Despite the kinda creepy cover and a title that can easily lend itself to some innuendo, Bone is totally kid friendly.  I actually first encountered the world of Boneville [Yeah, that's really where they are from.] as a kid when it was featured monthly bit by bit in Disney Adventures magazine.  I thought that all comics had to either be comical or superhero based, so this one totally surprised me with its tiny, oddly-shaped heroes that were just trying to make their way home.  I was truly ecstatic when I saw as an adult that all of the books were finally available for sale in one volume, but was saddened when I found out it was only cell-shaded.  So, of course after I dropped the money for that one, a full-color version came out (and it's absolutely gorgeous!) and that might just be on a future Christmas list for me.  Stupid, stupid rat creatures!

11.) Christopher Moore

If you like Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut, odds are you will like Christopher Moore.  He writes about everything from vampires who work in grocery stores to whales that don't really exist to paling around with Jesus.  He knows how to tell a great story and he is able to put a fresh perspective on things that you thought you knew everything about.  Fluke is great, Island of the Sequined Love Nun is fun and A Dirty Job is great one about death, but the one I like the most from him is Fool which is Shakespeare's King Lear told from the pervy perspective of the jester.  Pick up any one of his books and be impressed.

12.) Sudanna, Sudanna by Brian Herbert

I am a terrible nerd and I have never read any of the Dune books.  I mean, I've seen the movies and they are pretty cool, but I have never read the books by Frank Herbert that everyone likes to sit around and compare this author to because it happens to be his dad.  That being said, I picked this book up when I was about thirteen and I found it to be quite interesting and sometimes kind of funny.  It's about a society run by a computer who is dead set on having things done exactly how she wants them done and even "Bad Thoughts" can get you in trouble.  The main story follows a father whose daughter falls in love with a guy who is a rebel/outlaw because he is a musician.  It was a good sci-fi starter for me and you and/or your teenagers might enjoy it too.

13.) Kurt Vonnegut

Years after reading Cats Cradle, I'm still finding myself making my way through the mass amount of work that Vonnegut has produced.  Not just because they are good and creative, or because they can delve into sci-fi, philosophy and humor all at once; I love making my way through his books because he does such an awesome job at creating a fictional multiverse and love to read a book that I am really into and then suddenly a random guy from another book pops up just walking down the street or in a television commercial.  It makes my brain have to work just a little harder to remember where I heard about that character before and makes me want to keep reading the rest of his books to see if I can find each character's back story.  God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Player Piano are a few of his more "off the beaten path" books that you might not have picked up and Sirens of Titan is also an awesome read.  If you get into his stuff, you have to get back to me and tell me:  How many times have you found Bunny?

14.) Ray Bradbury

He is so full of win that I don't even know where to begin.  The first book I ever read by him was Something Wicked This Way Comes in fourth grade and it just kind of took off from there.  Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and so many more are still nestled safe away in my bookshelf so that I can pull them out and read them again.  He passed away last year, but is by far one of the most prolific writers out there, sci-fi or otherwise and he will be missed :)

15.) A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

When you read a book, I think the main point of it is to make you feel something: be it funny, moving, dramatic or whatever.  I have read over a thousand books and this is without a doubt the most disturbing book that I have ever read in my life.  The main character is pulled from her life with her husband and forced to take part in this creepy, fucked-up religious society where her main job is to produce an heir for a well-to-do leader.  This is on my nerd book list because it's something that you wish was sci-fi, but everything that she has happen in the book could happen in real life if things went to hell.  It will scare the bejesus out of you, but this is a must read for all nerd girls and any nerd guys that care for their own nerd girls.

16.) The Ender's Game Series by Orson Scott Card

This series is on a ton of "best of" lists, but there are a lot of people who still haven't read it yet.  I like this series because it makes you think that you know what is going on and then out of nowhere it will turn you on your head.  I have only read the first eight books that are in the series, but the weird/cool thing about this series is that there are several different ways in which it can be read.  I read the four Ender books and then read the Ender's Shadow books, but because there are so many things overlapping and because the author is capitalizing on this thing as much as possible (yes, there's a movie coming out soon, sigh), there are different ways to read it as shown in this handy flowchart.  Either way, it's about war and aliens and ethics and religion and sci-fi and then some more war.  I like the Shadow books best myself, but you should get through the original four so that you know what is going on!

17.)  xkcd volume 0 by Randall Munroe

This is a collection of web comics from one of my favorite sites, xkcd.com, which you have probably seen all over the internet unless you have been sleeping under a rock or something.  Yes, you can look at all of this stuff online for free, but I think that it is always a good thing to support independent authors so that they can write more cool stuff.  So you should buy this because it's awesomely funny and insightful and makes a great conversation piece to have on your coffee table.

18.) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

This is a very unique story told from the perspective of a young man who has autism and sees things happening in front of him but can't seem to put all of the pieces together.  It's on my nerd book list because I think there are several times that we might get caught up in our own bullshit too many times and don't stop to take things at face value.   For sure worth a read.

19.) A Rag, A Bone and a Hank of Hair by Nicholas Fisk

This is the last one of my nerd kid book recommendations.  Fisk does an awesome job of creating a science fiction novel for kids on the subject of cloning!  Yay!  Basically, it's the future and all of the fucked-up nuclear stuff that we have used has ruined the environment and our reproductive systems, so they kinda start recycling people so that the human race can keep moving right along.  This is a good intro to sci-fi for kids and a good one about ethics and science in society.

20.) Philip K. Dick

Responsible for several books that have inspired major motion pictures in the world of sci-fi (Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, etc), Dick wrote novels that were way ahead of their time and not only showed a future that was advanced, but more often than not, gritty as hell.  I'd say that my two favorites by him are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which was eventually turned into Blade Runner, and once again, terrible nerd here who has never watched the damn movie, shame on me!) and The Penultimate Truth.  If you like your sci-fi rugged, this is the guy to check out.


Soooo that is my list of twenty books/authors that every nerd should read at one point or another.  There are so many more that I didn't get to put on here, but my main objective was to put things out there that many self-proclaimed nerds have never picked up.  I hope that you were able to find at least a few things that you didn't know about before, but if you've read all of those then... Why aren't we already friends?

Cosplay Skanks and Fake Nerd Girls? Where?

Okay, so recently Shelby answered an "Ask a Nerd" question about Cosplay Girls and gave a very, um, interesting response.  This is actually something that Shelby and I have debated about for a long time.  There are so many things that come into play with this topic and it bleeds over into so many other topics.  That being said, I am going to split this into two parts.


Part One:  Why Cosplay? 

I guess the best place to start would be: Why do people cosplay in the first place?  I'm going to talk about as many of the reasons that I can possibly think of for why someone would want to cosplay both on a conscious and subconscious level.  Let's break it down:

1.) "I love the character/show/movie/book/comic and I wanted to pay tribute!"

Awww!

 Awesome!  That's a really good reason to cosplay and kind of something that sums it up.  It's also one of the main reasons that you hear about why someone chose to portray a specific character.  Simple enough.  Let's move on.


2.) "I look really good as this character or they suit my personality/personal tastes!"

Not too sure on the skirt, but she's workin' it!

Okay, still in normal cosplay territory there.  If you are able to pull it together and you can either relate to that character or you bear a resemblance to that character that is cool.  I know that I have often gone with characters that I know I look like or think I can pull off.  But more on that later!


3.) "I'm competitive and I love winning the cosplay contests!"

I want to be there...

That's cool.  People put in lots of work on their costumes and props and sometimes even more than that to take home a little piece of nerd cred.  People do the same thing for sports and other extracurricular activities.  Why should this be treated any differently?


4.) "I have a rockin' body, I want attention and I get it by showing off my skills and my goods!"

There is a whole lot of ass there, but this is a very well executed cosplay!

A lot of people will hate on these women who go out and dress like these scantily clad characters, but to be perfectly honest, if you can pull off the look and you took the time to go out and make every detail look great and you have the time to go to the gym on the daily and look awesome, go for it!  We shouldn't be judging anyone who took the time to hone their cosplay just because the character they chose is risque.  If you have an issue about that subject, maybe you should be asking why it is that we have so many scantily clad female characters in the first place.  And it isn't like that is just something that is exclusive to female characters.

Yep.

Now if you want to put that person's nerd cred into question, that's a totally separate issue.  But if they were able to come up with an awesomely realistic costume on their own, they have to have at least a little nerd cred.  Case in point: Jessica Nigri.  Do I think she's the end all and be all of nerds?  Hell to the fucking no.  But do I think she likes a few nerd movies and plays a some video games every now and then?  Yeah, probably.  And she does an awesome job on her stuff, so I can at least respect her for that.



5.) "I'm a booth girl and this is what I have to wear to get people to buy the shit I'm repping!"

"Oh my Gawd... I'm pretty sure that freak just took my picture... Ugh... Just calm yourself, Becky... It's almost over..."

Eh, I mean, if they are standing by the booth and getting paid to model, you can't really hold that against them.  I don't have anything against it as long as they are not trying to take advantage of anyone with their looks.  They are just doing what they've gotta do to pay the rent.  If they like being there, that's great and if not, oh well.  Just don't expect to take one of them home that night because you and she had so much in common.  Most likely the only thing that you had in common was that you were both there, but I could be wrong.


6.) "I love making costumes and getting all the details just right!"

This is so awesome I can barely contain myself!

 I totally respect people who make their own stuff.  I make my own stuff when I can, but more often than not it's not a very realistic expectation if you lack the skill or time.  Plus, it's not like there is a shortage of people out there who will pay top dollar to get really good costumes.  Laugh if you will at cosplay, but it's a huge money making industry!


7.) "I just really like dressing up as someone else!"

I love the Paul Dini Harley Quinn way more than the Arkham Asylum one.

 Some people use cosplay as a way to escape their everyday lives.  That can be fun.  What does it matter if you do it at a convention or in the bedroom or in the park with your LARPing buddies?  As long as it isn't grossly offending someone else or breaking any laws, wear whatever the hell you want to wear and people can go fuck themselves.



8.) "All my friends are doing it, so I'm doing it too!"

Hey, at least they tried! :)

A long time ago a much less mature me would have said that people who do something because other people are doing it are just posers, but the way I see it now is that if it takes a group environment to get someone out there to try doing something new, then I'm all for it.  Just getting your foot in the door in something like cosplay can take some courage.  (And yes, I realize it's ironic to say that its courageous to hide behind a costume!)



9.) "I could give a fuck about nerd culture, but I heard nerdy guys usually end up making more money, so I'm here to snag myself one by dressing like a skank!"

Now this is one that is kind of a hot button issue.  Some people will tell you that this is an invalid argument and that some nerds are getting upset at it for no reason because it doesn't exist.  But I have personally seen it in action.  I cannot tell you over the years how many times I have heard mothers say to their daughters, "Now honey, you better be nice to that nerdy boy because after college he is going to be smart and rich and he is going to want a beautiful wife to come home to!"  And they've said it right it front of me on several accounts as though it were some totally socially acceptable thing among women!  I am amazed at how many of my peers have taken that advice.  It's pretty stupid that in today's day and age that women are saying that, but it's happening.  It used to be we only had to worry about these girls doing that shit at Halloween, but now with the popularity of conventions and the internet, the ones who are dumb enough to follow through with that bullshit are going to the next level and parading around those arenas too.

If this lady with the reverse tramp stamp is Wonder Woman...

...then this lady is Batman.

. 
10.) "I'm a nerd girl and nerdy guys only want the skanky cosplay girls, so this is what I have to do to get their attention!"

"This is what guys want.  This is what guys want, right?  Oh, God!  Someone love me!  Gah!"

Unfortunately, the side effect of the... Well... Let's just call it the Fake Nerd Skank Boom!  [And I am not trying to say by any means that the lovely Power Girl in the above pic is fake or desperate, she actually has a really awesome costume, but her pose just totally personified the angst I was trying to convey!]  The side effect of that is that then you have real nerd girls (who are genuinely trying to get with guys that they are interested in for reasons other than money or socioeconomic status) trying to compete with it and it just creates this vicious cycle of skankyness that leads to more and more revealing, over-sexualized costumes that give genuine female cosplay enthusiasts a bad name.  Now, I'm not saying that nerd girls are these desperate girls who can only go after nerd guys because they are hideous pariahs that would only want the guys that other girls reject; nor am I saying that nerd girls have to have a relationship to add value to their lives--I am not trying to get the feminists out there pissed at me by any right. 

In fact, the whole thing kind of reminds me of an awesome Bill Maher quote that is about Halloween, but is still somewhat relevant to what I'm talking about here:

"Designers of women's Halloween costumes must admit that they're not even trying. They just choose a random profession, like nurse or referee, and put the word "Sexy" in front of it, thereby perpetuating the idea of Halloween as a day when normally shy women release their inner slut and parade around like vixens and... I just completely forgot what I was complaining about." 

Yeah, what do the guys have to complain about here?  Yes, there are some guys who get upset about the bait and switch that can occur in these situations ("She was dressed like Catwoman, and she said she likes Batman, but she didn't know who Eartha Kitt or Lee Meriwether were!  And I asked her out to lunch and she said she wasn't hungry but then afterwards I saw her with some guy cosplaying as Thor!  He's not even in the same comic universe!  Ugh!"), but there are a lot of guys who just walk around not complaining because they are getting a free show.  And they are judgmental as fuck.  Which is a good segue into the next half of my rant:  Why are we so critical of cosplayers in the first place?


Part Two: Why We Gotta Be Hatin' on Certain Aspects of Cosplay?

So we have talked about why people cosplay, but now let's talk about why people are being such asshats about it.  Here are ten things that I have have heard around the internet that people have been complaining about.  I agree with some of them, but others just show that people online need to grow up.  And yes, I know, "the interwebz is serious buziness."  Breakin' it down again:

1.) "You over-sexualized your costume."

Okay, instead of going into a whole bunch of malarkey on this point, I've created a visual aid that pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:

Maybe too simple, but you get what I'm sayin' here!

2.) "Guys that leer at me in my sexy costume are pigs who just want to use me for fap material."

This one pisses me off because I hear things like this all the time. You can go online and find several blogs about how terrible men are for ogling the girls at the cons (because women never stare at the guys who wear nothing but a loincloth), but most of them don't have a hell of a lot to say.  I did some research for this post and found this chick who almost had me with her talk of just wanting to portray her favorite empowered characters without being treated like a piece of meat and how strong these women were and blah, blah, blah; but then this chick turns around and says: "A man stopped me--he was fat, nervous, sweating profusely. He asked me if he could have a photo with him, and naturally I agreed. I am happy to let men pose with their childhood crush or personal fictional character hero." And she goes on to talk about how he took pictures of her ass in spandex and then says:

"I kept the costume on, refusing to let that one man ruin my day, but the feeling of empowerment was gone. I felt deflated and drained... I felt objectified...Would I be okay with guys taking photos of my butt and then posting the photos online for other creepers to fap to if it had happened to me while I was waiting for the bus? At my day job? Waiting in line for a movie? Several people have tried to make this argument to me: If you didn't want people photographing your butt, you shouldn't wear the costumes that you wear. FUCK. THAT. That's like telling women not to wear short skirts if she doesn't want to be raped."

Really?  You're comparing people taking pictures of you in a costume that you knew was going to warrant mass amounts of attention (and that you've apparently been letting everyone pose with you in already) to rape?  Seriously?  And she mentions more than once in the article that the man that she got so upset about was overweight.  So if a hot guy did all of that then that would be okay?  Come on now.  If you're gonna dress like that, you're going to have to expect some attention of some sort.  It's kind of like when I had a customer at work complain that one of my male staff members looked at her chest when she had a huge chest and was wearing a v-neck.  If I wear a v-neck, people are gonna stare at my chi-chis too.  It's just how it is. I could go outside wearing a burlap sack and there might be a dude out there that had a real fetish for burlap sacks.  You are not ever going to be able to stop someone from thinking about you; you can only go out into the world the way that you'd like to see yourself portrayed and be happy with it.

3.) "I can't look like that, so you shouldn't be walking around like that either."

Okay, so I've never actually heard anyone say that, but you know that there is someone out there thinking it on some level and they are jealous.  I know that I think that sometimes when I'm feeling particularly bitchy.

If I could rock this, I totally would. In fact maybe that will be my next cosplay :P

4.) "You are only contributing to the objectification of women by doing that."


I think I kind of already drove that into the ground with number two, but I guess it all depends how you are going to portray the character that you're cosplaying as.  If you're going to be a kick-ass super hero who fights crime in her skivvies, just be damn confident in what you're doing and I have no problem with that.  But if you're going to be striking poses that make you look skanky or submissive, or you're going to go around with a red and blue bra and thong and call yourself "sexy Spiderman" go back inside and put your clothes back on. Cool.

Love it!

5.) "Fat people shouldn't cosplay, but if they do they should only cosplay as fat characters."

This is one that hits very close to home for me. I, myself, am a plus-sized princess and I could give a fuck if you think that I'm too fat to be cosplaying a particular character.  At least that is what I'd like to say.  I totally give a fuck.  Everyone does to some extent and if they say they don't they are a stronger person than me.  That being said, I don't think that plus-size people should have to limit themselves to only cosplaying bigger characters; however, as a rule of thumb, for cosplay and life in general, you should cover your chunk!  If you feel confident enough to have it hanging out, good for you!  But I don't need to see it and either does anyone else.  This picture is all over the place as a bad example of cosplay:

And while I think it's kinda fucked up to show this bigger girl next to this hella toothpick thin girl, I do agree that there might be stuff showing that should probably not be showing.  Both girls obviously put a lot into their costumes, but it's obvious that one is more aesthetically pleasing than the other.  Sorry big sista. But on the other hand... Well, here, I made this to illustrate my frustrations:

I want to cuddle that guy so badly!

And just so no one can call me a hypocrite, here are some of my fun cosplay adventures over the last few years!

6.) "Cosplay should always look exactly like the character, so if you're a certain race you should only cosplay characters of that race."

That is absolute bullshit.  But people are still having to deal with that bullshit.  This article is a damn good example of that and there was also a video that another nerd website released a few days ago about cosplay needing to be more colorblind than it is right now.  Totally agree. Here is a site that had some awesome cosplaying that shows just how much people underestimate the black cosplay community.

This was one of my faves.  I LOVE this show and they nailed the costume! :)

7.) "If you're a girl you can cosplay as a guy, but a guy can't cosplay as a girl unless it's funny."

Yeah, I'm pretty sure these hotties say otherwise!

I get irritated to no end when I see people talking shit about fem guys dressing up as lovely ladies!  A lot of them look just as good, if not better than some of the females trying to portray the character!


8.) "If you're a girl who's gonna cosplay as a guy character, the character needs to be made more feminine."

This one is just as irritating as number seven.  If you wanna crossplay, then crossplay!  You don't have to make your cosplay look all fem to play a male character.  If I see another female Joker I'm gonna punch a baby.

This made my heart happy though! :)

9.) "Your costume looks like crap.  Learn to make better stuff or spend the money."

Dude.  You can have fun doing all kinds of cosplay.  If you can afford the expensive stuff, good for you.  If you can't afford it, then try your best and have fun.

So very cool...

10.) "Cosplay is a waste of time.  You could be out playing football or something productive like that."

Ha

Alright, well that is my rant on cosplay and cosplay girls and fake nerd girls and all that other crap.  This ended up being a hell of a lot longer than I had intended on it being.  Sorry if I rambled on some things and then glossed over others and then contradicted myself a whole bunch of times.  If I ran a site that only focused on cosplay I'm sure each topic could be its own post, but I have way too many other interests to worry about.  And if nothing else, you got to see some cool pictures from all around the interwebz that I put together in one post just for you guys.  Yay!