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.