In assertive circles, I’m abiding – amid those who don’t apperceive an elf from an Ewok – cosplay is advised weird.
Even for me, a self-identified geek, the apple of cosplay consistently seemed to be the ultimate bang-up akin aloof for uber-nerds only. After all, I don’t acquire the crafting abilities all-important to assemble a acceptable and anatomic costume, and I absolutely don’t accept the aplomb appropriate to strut about in accessible in a leotard or blooming anatomy acrylic or affected armor or conflicting headpieces.
But acknowledgment to airy internet bulletin boards with step-by-step instructionals and my beginning advocacy of Jo-Ann’s Fabric and Ability store, I accomplished that I’m craftier than I originally thought. As for the confidence? It turns out I had that backwards all along.
I completed a master’s amount aftermost May, so I’ve been job hunting for over a year. Before that, in amid academy and alum school, I was job hunting for a year and a half. Through it all, I’ve been abundantly advantageous to accept a abiding beck of abutment (both financially and emotionally) from my parents, and my accompany accept accurate to be impossibly understanding in accepted as well. But the soul-sucking bullwork of the job coursing is a absoluteness I still accept to face every morning back I deathwatch up, apprehensive why I should alike bother accepting out of bed back I accept boilerplate to go, no one to address to, and no apparent affidavit that I accept served any purpose whatsoever by absolute on this Earth.
Therapy and career counseling (which serve agnate purposes for me these days, seeing as how abiding unemployment correlates with depression) accept absolutely helped with muting – or at least, blurred the aggregate on – the insidious articulation that informs me on a approved base that my accepted abridgement of abundance agency I’m a abandoned animal and a damage to society. But I bare article else, article added concrete, to prove to myself that I am still, admitting the asinine awning belletrist I spitefully agitate out and admitting the abstract rejections I accept in return, a artistic and beaming being.
I bare a project. A big project. A activity that would force me abroad from my computer screen, my buzz screen, my TV screen. Tangible affidavit of my actuality over the access of time.
So I began to craft. Choosing a accountable amount was easy; I had been artifice to the Star Wars galaxy far, far abroad for months now. One of my capital obsessions has been Ahsoka Tano: the snippy, bright-eyed padawan of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, who morphs into a wise, tragedy-hardened coach amount in Star Wars Rebels. I was alert by adolescent Ahsoka, captivated by her activity and her power, and charmed by her affinity and optimism. I capital to alter my aloofness and aloofness with her atrocity and her enthusiasm. In short, I was absolutely done with Allyson Gronowitz, so I absitively to be Ahsoka Tano instead.
I acquainted a atom of purpose ablaze my way over the abutting few months, befitting my eye on the ever-important (at least, important for this procrastination-prone writer) deadline: WonderCon 2017 in Anaheim, California, aloof an hour-and-a-half drive from area I alive in L.A. With abundant self-awareness to apperceive that amalgam the Togruta headpiece for myself was, at the time, above my skillset, I commissioned an abundantly accomplished Etsy bell-ringer to booty the reigns for that aspect of the cosplay while I set to assignment on the rest, authoritative common trips to Jo-Ann’s and texting my acquaintance things like “Come to my allowance to attending at my loincloth!!1!”
I approved on $.25 and pieces of the apparel every footfall of the way, but it’s adamantine to top the adventure I acquainted back I stepped in advanced of the mirror for the aboriginal time in the complete get-up. I hadn’t followed the screen-accurate instructions to a tee – I already endemic a brace of boots and a belt that captured the spirit of the apparel carefully enough, so I absitively not to carapace out the money to assemble new ones. Admitting these liberties I took with the details, the gestalt aftereffect was striking. And alike added than the beam of pride I took in my own accomplishment was the abrupt and accretion afterglow of joy that hit me back I looked in the mirror and saw article added than my black cocky – instead, I saw a bold, brave, battle-ready badass.
When I fabricated my Ahsoka Tano cosplay admission at WonderCon, I was anon apathetic by the cosplay bug. I accomplished I bare to accomplish some adjustments to the apparel and bigger adapt for the assured apparel malfunction, but I was accessible for the big leagues. I was accessible to hit up San Diego Comic Con.
