Cosplay/Crossplay/Genderbent? WAT -- Blog post on cosplay character design (Patreon)

Although I had two photoshoots prepped for this weekend (one being Witch Mercy at a graveyard!!), it's reach below 0 degrees Fahrenheit here in Minnesota, so going outside almost at all has been....well, inadvisable. So they've been postponed but it gives me more time to make the surprise cosplay I'm going to make for the other shoot =3

In the mean time, I'm in the process of thinking over next years' cosplays. Right now, I'm planning out Prompto for Anime Los Angeles at the end of January and gathering supplies.

Can I just start by saying that I'm not one to usually fall in love with fictional characters? Like, I see other cosplayers get super duper into their fandoms and pick their cosplays according to the character they really truly LOVE LOVE LOVE. I've really only ever felt this way about Avatar: The Last Airbender and some Disney princesses.

Until I played FFXV. I'm so in love with my Chocobros, I feel almost weird how much I enjoy these characters. I want to cosplay Ignis and Prompto despite looking, obviously, nothing like them. Since I'm the type of cosplayer that picks characters depending on who I look like, this is very out-of-character for me.

For about a week there, I was at a standstill on how to pull off my cosplay of Prompto. Here are my options:

'Crossplay'-- as a woman, I can cosplay a male character, bind my chest, do male makeup, and allover do what I can to look like a man! Many women pull this off beautifully (Check out Steff Von Schweetz in particular!), and men being women too! I use the word 'crossplay' with quotations, because personally I don't think cosplaying an opposite gender should get it's own term, really, anymore. You're simply cosplaying :D

Downsides in this case: My personal problem is I don't feel I pull off 'male' well. Even with binding, my facial features are very feminine, and the one I've done it, I didn't feel very great about the whole thing. I wanted to excel at my cosplay, and it just didn't do it for me. I could try again, but I care about Prompto so much I want to do this right.

'Genderbent' or fem version of Prompto -- As you guys know, I cosplay a lot of male characters and give them feminine designs. 'Genderbent' nowadays can be seen as an insulting term, since gender isn't binary, and male =/= masculine, female =/= feminine. So some cosplayers have changed 'genderbent' to being a fem version of a male character or a masculine version of a female chatacter.

In this case, due to Prompto's small frame, he already HAS slightly 'feminine' features. I find that making feminine versions of characters works really well when the character is very large and masculine, like McCree, so the change is drastic. Prompto or Sephiroth, another character I am struggling with for the same reason, are already small or have feminine features. Giving Prompto longer hair and a lower cut shirt to be more feminine just didn't feel like enough.

SO, I've come up with a solution I think I'll enjoy. I'm going to be androgynous! Think Ruby Rose-style Prompto :D I'll still bind, and have short hair, but will refrain from the 'crossplay' makeup women do to make their facial features masculine. It might look lazy to some that I don't do the crossplay makeup, but I'll do my best to make the feminine features intentional.

I feel like it would be Prompto's character to want all the girls AND guys want him, so androgyny just works :D