Backlash cosplay: Hood and wig

      The gentleman's Backlash cosplay is mostly done, barring - of course - the pieces that I need to work on. The character has a "mask" of sorts, that is drawn as just fabric. The gentleman, however, needs to wear glasses, so we had to be a little more inventive. The gentleman found a person online that makes custom masks, and had an option for glasses lenses, resulting in a pretty dang bad-ass looking mask:

      He then ordered a wig, since the character has white hair and that would not go over well at work. 

Bedtime

      Over the years, I have painstakingly established a bedtime routine optimized to get my brain to shut up and go to sleep as expeditiously as possible. It involves taking a shower at a certain time, singing calming songs in said shower, having a filling dessert so I don't wake up hungry at 2am, and controlling the ambient levels of sound, light, and temperature during this process to encourage restfulness. Magnesium supplements are involved on scheduled days, and the gentleman is kind enough to support all this by keeping things quiet when it's dessert time, even if he's staying up later. 

Sketches, again

     This year's been a little odd, for obvious pandemic reasons. When October rolled around, I was bound and determined to do SOMETHING to celebrate it, so I made a couple decoration type things, including these little ghosties that I freehand sketched on some old craft foam:

I taped them to the front door along with some leaves I'd done on fall color foam, and was pretty pleased with the results. I know the gentleman doesn't get into silliness as much as I do, so I asked if he was ok with leaving them there for a bit after Halloween; he said yes and mentioned that he missed my little sketches. I kind of missed doing them too, but time and life drama hasn't been conducive to taking sketch time. I had a bit of down time this morning though, so figured I'd give it a go:

Paranoid or cautious?

      In the past, I've had my fair share of catcalls, harassment, and being followed while out in public. I've learned to deal with it and present myself as not-a-target, to the point where I feel fairly confident walking around on my own, even after dark. The neighborhood we're in now has always felt safe, so as the days grow shorter, I've just kept walking at my usual time, despite it being definitely nighttime. Three events have happened in the last couple months that make me wonder if I'm being paranoid, or justifiable cautious, and if I need to do research on what sort of personal protection items are legal in this area. 

     The first event seems fairly innocuous, and I didn't really pay it much mind at first. I saw another person walking along the sidewalk I'd turned onto, so I popped out into the street to pass them; they were in regular clothes and clearly having a nice stroll and I was in workout gear clearly getting my cardio in. Parking along the curb is very common here, so I didn't really keep an eye on the person as I passed. For safety reasons, I don't have headphones or music playing while I walk, so I clearly heard the "hey, excuse me, are you working out?" when I'd gotten about 6 feet past them. I turned my head and politely answered in the affirmative, and the guy replied something along the lines of, "I thought so, 'cause of your outfit. It's clearly doing your body well, keep it up!" 

Taboo cosplay: Complete

      Original sketch of the Taboo cosplay:

     End results:

Taboo cosplay: Belt, bags, and tail part 2

      With the tail functionally made, I needed a way to attach it. I asked a couple cosplayers I know, and they suggested a climbing harness, which looked way too bulky for what I was after. I figured a belt might work, however, and it would also give me a way to carry some bags for con essentials (and break up the boring waist/ thigh area which looked a little bare after everywhere else being armored up). I still had the thick leather from making the Thor belt, so I trimmed that pattern down a bit and made a belt with loops to attach thigh pouches. 

     I'm not big on buckles, so I figured I'd make it lace closed on the side fronts, giving me a front piece and solid back half. After some tooling, dyeing, buffing, slicking, and hole-punching, I had a reasonable belt base, fitted fairly snugly to my waist and hips. 

     With some input from the gentleman, I grabbed an electrical junction box lid and drilled a hole in it, then threaded the wire from the tail through the hole and bent the rest of the metal into a figure 8 on the other side of the plate. It seemed to make a fairly sturdy base, so I cut out a leather "pouch" and wetmolded it to the plate shape, then sewed it to the belt. Handsewing leather is a pain in the fingers - all of them - and works much better if all the holes line up. Turns out thumbtacks are a great substitute for pins: they keep both pieces in place, don't move around when you're hammering, and allow the base piece to stay flush with the hammerable surface.

     I'll once again spare you the cursing and grumping that goes with handsewing, and just say that it worked out quite nicely:

     I purposefully made the pocket tight, so it takes some doing to slide it in and out - shouldn't be any problem with it accidentally coming out while being worn. With the wire figure 8 behind the plate, the tail is held firmly in place and doesn't bounce around too much, and the belt being well-fitted keeps it lined up well with the spine. I glued the wire to the metal plate, which meant all that was left for the tail was actually attaching all the bone pieces. 

     Still had to solve the "joint" problem on the tail though. The pieces were pretty flat on the ends, so if I bent the tail at all, you'd see the wire. I checked out washers and grommets and even beads, but they were all too stiff - I needed something that would allow the tail bones to flex. On a random whim, I ordered a $2 set of foam hair rollers, and it turned out they work perfectly - cut them down to about 1/4" long and even without gluing them down, they looked like decent "cartilage." 

     With that problem solved, I cut the top piece down to make sure that the first tailbone visible below the vest was a spiky one, and that the tailbones didn't disfigure the vest too much, then went outside on a not-too-horrible day to glue it all together. 

     It took some doing, so I got it all nicely bent into a more natural shape, and everything turned out really well. Only one thing left - bags!

     I waffled for a while on how sturdy to make them, and eventually went with leather that was thin enough that I could sew it carefully on the sewing machine. Two simple bags with lacing along the bottom to keep them against the legs. 

     The narrower one is sized exactly to my cell phone, and the larger one is for keys, makeup, safety pins, etc.: emergency stuff. There's no hardware to close them, because they're not meant to attract the eye, and they're level with my hands, so I don't expect pickpocketing to be a huge issue. I sewed some snaps to the leather laces to keep them attached, then looked at how to attach it to the belt. I had some random extra leather strapping lying around, but it was too narrow, and I didn't have enough to make both bags with the straps doubled up.

     I ordered 1" leather strapping for that final piece; once that comes in, I'll cut it to length, add snaps to connect it to the belt, and sew it to the pouches. After all the fittings and tweaks, it turned out that the belt was a little too large, so I cut about 2 1/2" off the front piece and redyed and tooled it. Once that dries, I'll burnish the new edges, and this outfit will officially be DONE!

Taboo cosplay: Tail part 1

      One of Taboo's distinguishing features is her tail, and I already had a pretty spiffy spine full of pointy bits, so I pretty much had to make a tail. A lot of what I'd seen online, though, was thick, fleshy tails made of cloth and stuffing, and that didn't seem right for a whip-like, spiny tail. The online tail tutorials all mentioned using heavy gauge wire for shape and rigidity, so I started looking at beads as a way to thread narrower, bone-like items onto a tail. Couldn't really find anything pre-made that looked decent and wasn't very heavy - I did consider using actual bone at one point, but even 3' of small animal tail bones gets pretty heavy - so I started looking for ways to make it myself. 

     In my searches, I ran across foam clay, something I'd never heard of before but that looked promising. It's basically a play-doh-like clay, but when it dries, it turns into eva foam - lightweight and flexible. That seemed pretty much like what I was after, so I bought a small tub of it and sat down to work. It takes 2-3 days for the clay to dry, so I had to balance between trying out shapes and sizes vs not taking forever in the trial phase. I made a few shapes, to get the size and general look down, and set them down on the table to dry. 

Random conversations

     I've never really felt like a people person: I'm definitely an introvert, I don't enjoy being in crowds, I'm a very private person, and I hate small talk. Yet somehow, people always end up talking to me - people I don't know at all. I even had this happen the first time I was in Russia and could barely speak the language. Curiously enough, several of those encounters ended well because I'm really good at expressing things without words and I always had a map on me, so at the very least, if I heard "where" and a questioning tone, I could say "I'm sorry, I don't speak Russian well," while holding out the map. The one where a guy handed me a rose and started declaiming poetry, however, did not go so smoothly. 

     On the whole, though, in English-speaking countries, I think people just talk to me because I try to be polite and honest, and I keep my eyes up and aware of my surroundings. People will catch my eye in a store line and start commiserating about the wait. I reply politely, so they keep going. Pre-pandemic, I even had someone connect with me on a class webconference: she decided I looked interesting and started sending me snarky comments on a private chat, trying to make me laugh while the professor was talking (we are still friends to this day). Another time, I tried out a surfing camp, and someone started telling me how horrible the camping conditions were. She seemed like a nice person, so I mentioned I had an extra bed in my hotel room she was welcome to share. Twelve years later, we still write each other several times a year. 

Taboo cosplay: Gloves and almost done!

     There are only three items left for Taboo at this point: pants, a tail, and something for her hands. I did some research on making claws for costume, and it looked like the easiest way to do so was to add them to gloves. I got a pair of fingerless gloves and sketched out some claw options, but when I went to trial it, they were very cumbersome, and having pink fingers show through when the rest of me - literally head to toe except face - is covered just looked dumb. 

     Found another site that suggested sewing Worbla bits onto cloth gloves, and the results looked decent, so I figured I'd give that a try. Got some inexpensive gloves from overseas, but they were... not well fitted. So first step, fixing that. 

Backlash cosplay: Shoes

     The gentleman's Backlash cosplay is coming along nicely. He's got the mask made, a wig bought, the pants and knife are made, and all the harness bits made by a leatherworker. What to wear for shoes, though? Superhero shoes never look like actual shoes (unless they're heavy boot-style heros), so shoes are a bit open to interpretation, unless you feel like handsewing spandex over regular shoes. Which I. Absolutely. Do. Not. 

     The gentleman found some sneakers he'd be willing to wear in a color that mostly matched the other pieces. How to make them match the pattern that is clearly continued down to the feet on the character though? I poked around, and found that acrylic painting leather sneakers is actually super common, so this might be easier than I thought. Taped the shoes off, loaded my airbrush with acrylic paint, and went to town. Easy, right? 

     No, of course it's not going to be easy, silly. Acrylic paint is water-based, so it soaked right in to the fabric parts. They should be hidden under the pants, mostly, so I'm not super worried about them (although I did give them a couple more coats after this picture was taken). The tape wasn't really sticking very well to the shoe, though, so nice, clean lines just.... didn't happen. With some work, I found that by gently pushing with dental tools - which are very useful for lots of cosplay crafts - you could coax the extra creepers back into line fairly decently. The shoe on the right has been cleaned up, the shoe on the left has not. It makes a lot of difference.

     Found an acrylic sealer that is supposedly really good for faux leather shoes and put a couple coats of that on after hitting up the fabric areas a bit more. 

     Looks good, right? Unfortunately, I did this before the gentleman broke in the shoes. That bend line that goes across the base of the toes? Yeah.... buggered up my nice paint job a bit. Fortunately, everything else looks ok, so I've requested that he just wear the shoes around the house a lot more, and then I'll do a final overcoat to fill in the wrinkles. He hasn't done that just yet, but I'm counting these done. I did not track time on these, but they were less than 10 hours, all told. 

     The only things left are two red gems for the harness and belt (which a friend of a friend is working on, as I don't have casting supplies and don't really want to get into that), and making an undermask/ headsock to attach the wig and the face mask to. You can order spandex facemasks, but they all have a really loose neck to accommodate sliding the head through, and it gives a really bad turkeyneck look. I found a pattern that lets you make that more fitted and add velcro in the back, so I will give that a try once we have all the materials.  

Backlash cosplay: Pants

     The gentleman decided to do a military-style take on his cosplay for Backlash, since he's not super keen on the idea of spandex. I certainly can't blame him, I didn't want to do it for his partner, Taboo, either.

     Since the gentleman wears BDU pants for work anyway, he ordered a pair in dark blue as a base to start from. They were a little light, so I dyed them darker, then took off the cargo pockets, so I could add the white stripes. This is where I very much appreciate heavy fabric in general, and ripstop in particular - once you get a seam partly unraveled, you can just rip the two pieces apart, knowing the seam will go and not the fabric itself. 

     It took some doing to find white ripstop material, since most people want ripstop for tough wearing, which is not really synonymous with situations where white would be useful. I did eventually find a reputable website that had it though, and ordered the 2 yard minimum. Turns out it's good I overordered, because one layer of it against the dark blue looked kind of dingy. Two layers, though, looked pretty decent, so I cut out basic shapes to the gentleman's dimensions and sewed them on.

Backlash cosplay: Dagger

     After seeing me work on Thor, the gentleman decided he wanted to build a cosplay as well, albeit in a slightly different manner. I like looking at things and then seeing how I can make them. The gentleman does not believe he has crafting skills, but he can network like crazy, so he recruited various crafters he knows to do the different parts. Naturally, he came to me for the outfit/ sewing parts, but that's a different post. Rather than have a real dagger made (which would cost goodness knows how much), he asked if I had any ideas. Here's a reference picture:

     I have not yet had much experience making weaponry, but some google searching led me to the idea of making the blade out of a lightweight wood, then building up the handle and guard around it. First things first, though: come up with a pattern so I know what size wood to get. Drew up some sketches, got approval, and cut a rough draft out of an eva foam mat that was too chewed up to use for actual cosplay.

The Undead Amaryllis

We're making some changes to how things are stored at work, so I figured it would be a good time to get some of the personal stuff I'd stored there back home where it belongs. I pulled all the folders out, dumped them in a zip drive, and started unpacking them at home, where my filing system is a bit more involved than just by year. Ran across the below blurb I wrote for a friend/(now ex-)coworker's blog, and figured I'd share, because it still amuses me.

My erstwhile and enthusiastic coworker has, I think, a bit of an elevated opinion about my gardening skills, which tend more toward the “let’s see what happens… hey, it worked!” side of things than the “I know what I’m doing, and it worked because of that” end of the spectrum. Still, I will admit that things do tend to work out for the most part, such as when we received an amaryllis bulb at work. 

Typically, when contractors or consultants send us Christmas gifts, it’s along the lines of chocolate, cookies, or treats – consumables and temporary items. For whatever reason, one of them gave us an amaryllis bulb in a pot two Christmases ago [2015]. I claimed it for my desk (logical, since I’m the only one not sitting next to a window, very smart), and we got a month or two of lovely red flowers out of it. 

Taboo cosplay: Pauldrons and mask

     The costume is starting to come together! Got the vest with spine, the legs, and the bracers done; ordered a pair of black boots that I happen to know are super comfy, as well as a black underlayer shirt, and, well, we're still ignoring the jeans/ pants issue. Shhh. I'll get to it, eventually. Next up, shoulders and a mask!

     Taboo's "outfit" goes through a fair bit of change between when she starts out in the Wildstorm series and where she ends up, as a fully-armored, bat-winged vampire lady (of sorts). By the time I started the shoulders and mask, the convention in Cali that I was initially making this for had been cancelled due to the pandemic, but I'd still like to have a fairly transportable cosplay for any future travel plans, so I'm still trying to keep her fairly low-key. That means no bulky items like huge, spiky shoulder pieces or a big mask, so I kept it simple. 

Taboo cosplay: Greaves and bracers

     The vest and spine (previous post) was a good starting place for the Taboo cosplay. It gave me a centerpiece and a style to build off of. I briefly played with making a tail, then realized I couldn't do that until I knew where the waistband of whatever pants I'd be wearing was. Put the tail on hold and finally got around to trying to make jeans, but it went a little sideways. Literally - I though I'd tweaked the pattern well, but after washing, the fly was off to one side and they were huge. Frustrated, I set the jeans and the tail aside, and went for something I knew I could make: leg and forearm armor. 

     Some googling led me to "The Armor Archive," really meant for actual metal armorers, but hey, good enough for me. Downloaded a copy of the greaves pattern, then played with it til it was roughly the shape I was after. Ran into a hang-up, of course, on what color to make it. The character has a purple base layer with black armor bits, but dang if I could find either a reasonable pair of purple pants, or even purple denim. Finally decided to just wear black pants, and make the greaves and bracers both black and purple, to break up the unrelieved black color scheme. Since I still had purple denim left over from the vest, I just glued that onto the greaves first, then cut out leather bits to glue around it, giving it a 3D look:

Taboo Cosplay: Vest

     This year has definitely gone off the rails. Initially, the gentleman and I were planning on going to a comic convention in California in May, but then the pandemic happened, and plans went out the window. Initially, my plans for the year were to do Valkyrie as a full-on, heavily involved costume for the local con in October, and another travel-friendly cosplay for the con in Cali. The travel-friendly one has gotten more complex, however, since I am no longer constrained by the May travel date, so Valkyrie might get pushed off to next year.

     Anyway, after the success of the Thor outfit, the gentleman was intrigued by cospaly as well, and started putting together a costume of one of his favorite characters: Backlash, from a group called Wildstorm that was somewhat obscure even when it debuted back in the 90s. Backlash's female companion/ partner is Taboo, a character that I find interesting, so figured why not make that my "quick, travel-friendly" costume? The gentleman is doing a militaristic take on Backlash, so I figure I could do similar, starting with a vest. Using the same pattern that I did for Valkyrie, I threw together a vest out of purple canvas (just under 10 hours), and made some "stripes" to be the armor bits.

Self-awareness

     One of my first memories of being aware of how other people perceived me was in second grade. Our class was going to do a recording on a poem to put in some larger school project (I don't recall those details), and we all put in a good amount of time memorizing this short poem and wanting to be the one who'd record it. I remember thinking I should definitely be chosen, and was rather disappointed when I wasn't. I asked why not, and the teacher decided to show me instead of just brushing me off. She recorded me reciting the poem, and played it back... and I discovered I could not properly say the letter R - it came out as W every time.

     I remember instantly going from pride at reciting the poem perfectly to chagrin that I couldn't speak properly and somehow had been utterly ignorant of the fact. I honestly had no idea - my speaking sounded exactly like everyone else's to me in my head, but the mistakes were patently, painfully obvious on the recording. Thankfully, I don't recall anyone being mean about it, but I was still aware of everyone looking at me and definitely did not like it.

     I found myself going to the school's speech therapist once a week after that. I recall walking down huge (to me), empty hallways on my own, partly proud I was being trusted to find my own way there and back, and partly ashamed that I had to go do this thing that no one else did. I don't recall how long it took, but I was determined not to be held back by this, so I read sentence after sentence and poem after poem about rowdy red roosters and rolled my Rs (because hey, at least that was better than saying W) until I finally figured it out. I got some little certificate of completion from the therapist and was told I didn't have to come back the next week.

     It's a minor memory, but it was the first time I realized that other people might not see me the same way I see myself. Every so often, I check in with myself and see if my actions (and others' reactions to me) match what I want to be. Sometimes that involves being okay with others thinking I'm odd - ok, often it does - but every now and then I realize something is out of whack and I need to re-examine those little habits you tend not to notice. Often enough that I'll keep doing it, just in case. 

Gaslighting recovery

     If you're not familiar with the phrase gaslighting (lucky you), it's a psychological control mechanism where the controller makes the victim doubt their own perception/ memory/ judgement, so the victim comes to rely on the controller's version of reality - to their own detriment. I ran into this phrase toward the end of my first relationship, in my mid-20s, and realized I'd fallen into it. There were too many occasions to count where I'd get upset because he didn't do something he said he would - or did something he said he wouldn't - and he'd convince me I was wrong, that never happened, we never agreed to that, whatever... and now he was hurt because I came at him with false accusations. It had been going on for so long that I inevitably backed down, apologized, and internalized that I had a terrible memory.

     Eventually, he made a mistake and tried to tell me I was wrong about something I had an outside witness to; that and some other occurrences gave me the strength to get him out of my life, but I carried that now-familiar doubt of my own memory into other relationships, and fell back into the same trap. Even as I went through my BA and got solid grades while working part-time, I still believed I had a horrible memory - my brain never picked up on the doublethink there.

     I finally started questioning and rejecting that self-doubt when a couple things coincided: my gentleman has pointed out several times that I'm pretty good at keeping mental lists of things, and the concept of "mental load" became vocalized and acceptable to talk about in public (somewhat, but that's another topic). It's taken a couple years, and finishing an MS with great grades while working full-time, but I've gotten to the point where I no longer doubt my memory or interpretation of reality.

Well... much...

"Mission critical" vs "linchpin"

     I did not realize how important my little "assistant admin/ executive assistant" job was until we all had to work from home. I do a lot of jobs, most of which boil down into organizing, communication, and research. Which are all things that anyone can do, right? 

     Apparently not. Gonna keep it vague, but there's a payment system in place that, to people not in my department (and apparently everyone but me in my department), looks like this:

1. Contractor sends in a bunch of files asking for payment. 
2. I save them, put the info into a spreadsheet for easier comparison, send to John (not real name).
3. John reviews it to be sure they're only getting paid for work done, sends to Accounting. 
4. Accounting enters it into the system, sends it to Greg (not real name - my and John's boss, head of our department) for approval. 
5. Greg approves it, Accounting cuts the check, Contractor gets paid, yay!

 Seems pretty simple, right? Here's a bit more detail:

Valkyrie cosplay: Design and vest

     Bolstered by the success of Thor, I'm starting not one but two slightly more ambitious cosplays. The second one (more on the first later) is the character than Jane Foster became after putting down Mjolnir: Valkyrie. 

     First things first - I am not going to wear a spandex onesie as a base, because a) I'm not that in shape yet, and b) bathroom reasons. I've talked to many cosplayers who have said they just don't drink or use the bathroom when they cosplay, but that's not really an attractive option to me. So - top and leggings, and bathroom-friendly.