#first!!1!! and the mentality behind it (Patreon)

I was hoping for Witch Mercy to be a cosplay I would take my time on, and make over a few weeks/months, and instead I made it in its entirety in one week, with three of those days being out of town.

I think the reason this is is because I was starting to see other Witch Mercys pop up, and once I see too many of a cosplay and feel it's 'overdone' I lose interest. Cosplay is different for each person. I get asked a lot during interviews and such WHY I cosplay. For the love of the character? For attention? To hang with friends? For me, it's artistic expression! As a former performer, I find it beautiful bringing a character to life to the best of my ability, and finding creative ways to achieve that! So I tend to pick characters I love that I haven't seen depicted in the way I envisioned, or feel I could bring my own spin to it. I think this is the case for a lot of other cosplayers too, and why the #first!!!1! mentality exists. People want to cosplay a character before others do just so that they don't have to compare themselves to someone else.

I remember when Meagan Marie and I made Anna and Elsa, we were SO PROUD of our costumes. It was only a little over a month since Frozen came out in theatres, and we had very little real-life costumes to compare to! Over the coming months, though, with thousands of Elsa and Anna cosplays, my costume felt 'meh' in comparison. But just for a few weeks, I had no one to compare myself to, and I could love my art for what it was and appreciate the hard work I put into it!

Does that make sense?! I don't feel I need to justify why I cosplay characters so fast after content comes out, because what matters is that I love doing it, BUT thought it would be fun to explain it anyway!

Anyway, above are a few of my progress photos of Witch Mercy: wing progress (made from PVC sheets), corset and sleeve progress, and mold-making with moldmelt and fast-drying resin!