Cosplay Choreography

Nat (she/her) | Cosplayer and Aerialist | Writer | Wedding Celebrant

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It's been a while since I've posted any of @cosplaychoreography as Jolyne! This definitly wont be the last time that's for sure!

Shot at CosXPo 2022.

To see more from this set or to show your support, please check out either my Patreon or Ko-Fi

👉🏻 /shillphotos 👈🏻

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Introducing MCM Mondays! Which totally wasn't an idea that @cosplaychoreography came up with to help me try and decide what to post because I am OVERWHELMED with the amount of content I have to post! Therefore we're starting with @cosplaychoreography herself as Anne from Persona 5.

To see more from this set or to show your support, please check out either my Patreon or Ko-Fi

👉🏻 /shillphotos 👈🏻

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I return to tumblr with new aerial circus skills and a likely unhealthy appreciation for the Death Note musical.

I was going to do something else for this show but that got easily beat out by how hard Rem and Ryuk's duet goes, so I could literally perform to nothing else.

[penwiper]

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

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I did an aerial hoop performance to When We're Together as Elsa. I think it went pretty well!

Christmas cabaret performance

Watch "Christmas cabaret performance" on Streamable.

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I suck at remembering to post on tumblr, so likely never posted any progress pics of this-

So anyway, here’s a photo of my mid-quirk Aizawa cosplay! Taken by John Wolf Photography for Cosplay Community Magazine at MCM Birmingham, March 2019.

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I suck at remembering to post on tumblr, so likely never posted any progress pics of this-

So anyway, here’s a photo of my mid-quirk Aizawa cosplay! Taken by John Wolf Photography for Cosplay Community Magazine at MCM Birmingham, March 2019.

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Super useful!

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I’d had the same photo of my Belladonna cosplay (from way back at MCM London in 2017!) as my profile pic for ages so it was time for a change!

New one is a photo of my Y’shtola cosplay, taken by @celerymoondesigns on our trip to Germany in February 2019.

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I’m so happy I con crunched hard to have Y’shtola ready for Fan Fest! It was such an amazing weekend, and I already can’t wait for he next one or to wear this cosplay again.

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I spent the weekend at FFXIV Fan Fest in Paris and it was amazing! I love this game so much, and the community is so welcoming.

I wore my Hydaelyn cosplay on the Sunday and managed to get some great shots as the sun was setting that I love!

[aicosu]

Your guardian angel!  ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)  Photos by EBK!

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WIP Wednesday!

I’m in mad cosplay crunch to be ready for FFXIV Fan Fest in a couple of weeks time, but hopefully we’ll get there.

Y’shtola is still a way off, but Hydaelyn is at least very close to being finished!

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First aerobic video is up! I hope to release one of these every week, but we’re starting out with a song from basically my favourite series - Persona!

https://youtu.be/vf9tqw_J8Bs

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I did 20 new cosplays this year, what craziness!!

@nalciel’s Ladybug 2B and @faebelina’s fairy Mercy were my two big builds of the year, and I’m so proud of all of them! Ann also got some love with three new versions of her, then we also had Miu, steampunk Aqua and roller derby Mercy.

I did yet more great cosplays for shoots and cons with @dpacuk - more Merida of course, and then the new ones of Tink, Esmeralda, Anna and my new favourite Vanellope!

Then finally there were a few cosplays I threw together with most stuff I already own or I had the wig ready and only a few pieces needed buying - fun, quick and cheap cosplay can be great too! Here we had swimsuit Mercy, CN Marinatte, book!Yennefer, pin-up Raven and casual Ygritte.

Let’s hope 2019 goes just as well as 2018 - and a happy new year to you all 🎉

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Preview of my Kingdom Hearts inspired dance - you can find the full video here!

You Will Be Found from Dear Evan Hansen is such a great song, and when I discovered the cover by BYU Vocal Point I couldn’t not dance to it.

[anime-fanarts]

Characters: Makoto & Elizabeth Anime: Persona 3

無題 by ♣3 (id 464063) | ※ Reprint with permission

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I love this art piece, so at a con me and the bf tried to recreate it - not bad considering we didn’t look over the art on the day!

Photo by @celerymoondesigns.