I really need to learn how to take photos.

The internet- Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and the like, is filled with amazing, professional-quality photos of folks in their cosplay:

Like this. It even has an EFFECT. Sigh.

Cosplay daughter works so very hard on her work, and loves to share her work. (She’s the only reason I know that Tumblr and Instagram are things.) And I’d like to be able to help. I’m very proud of her.

Unfortunately, I have a small, weak camera and no particular training or skill in taking photographs. Most turn out fuzzy or boring.  A quick look at the photo gallery on the home page of the site will reveal my best efforts, and the paltry nature thereof.

At some point, I will spring for professional photos of her favorite cosplays- I suspect she’ll want them for a portfolio as she’s applying to college. For now, though, we are constrained by our budget.

I think I’ve seen panels listed before at conventions on how to take better photos, and I should really attend. In the meantime, I’m going to fall back on trial and error- and the help of friends, once again.  I took photos, but she was concerned that she couldn’t see what she looked like. Fortunately, Novio was over and offered to hold both a large mirror behind me so she could check her posture and hair and also provide some ideas.

For this service, he negotiated a deal I could live with: pie.  All-he-could-eat pie.

The blueberry was a bigger hit than the pumpkin…

A fair price, and within our budget.

I think we did better- you can be the judge. Cosplay daughter will now go off to photoshop them to her satisfaction, but I think we’re making progress!

I just need more practice, a better camera and lots of pie to keep the crew happy.

Elizabeth apparently smacks the protagonist repeatedly with a book in-game. I love and teach literature myself, but rarely use it as a weapon….

New city, new convention, new adventure!

Cosplay daughter, cosplay BF, novio and I are in St. Louis, Missouri for Kawa Kon: a convention with an impressive array of Scout Legion Members, Master Chiefs dressed as Master Chefs and multiple Boba Fetts. (Or would it be Bobas Fett?)

There’s also an amazing group of Nazgûl, complete with a Sauron wearing his crown.

This is not the best photo of the group, but they wouldn’t stand STILL. Novio, bless him, shot it out the hotel window.

Watching a photo shoot of these Ring Wraiths (above), Novio was disturbed to see folks glomping them. “Nazgûl don’t get hugs!” he said, with an air of one who REALLY read the Tolkien books.

(This is a key reason why we keep him around.  He may eschew most outward participation in the fandoms, but he’s a good, old-school nerd like us).

Moments like the hugging of the Nazgûl remind me why I love conventions. Spontaneous expressions of affection and approval from others abound.  This is the tribe. The nerd tribe, and they are a welcoming bunch.

We arrived late last night and the girls immediately took off to acquire as many new friends as possible- as L and Tintin

They hadn’t gotten five steps on to the convention floor before they were greeted with YES! YES! YES!

(that’s all. No content to the message, except generalized enthusiastic approval and immediate positive attention from other convention goers)

How often do teenagers get that from peers? How often do any of us get that from anyone else?

I would love it if, in my life or hobbies, strangers would leap to express such affirmation and joy.  And I would like very much to have the lack of self-consciousness to do that for others.

This all reminds me once again of the great speech that Star Trek alum Wil Wheaton gave some years ago at a convention: about “Why It’s Awesome to Be a Nerd.” In it, he is responding to a Mom’s question on behalf of her infant daughter about why it’s ok for Mom or her to show that enthusiasm.

In the speech, Wheaton says that “the defining characteristic of us (nerds) is that we love things….we all love different things. But we love them so much that we travel thousands of miles, we come from all over the world so we can be around the people who love the things we love. That’s what’s awesome about being a nerd.”

He tells the baby for posterity to “find the things you love and love them as much as you can.”

I couldn’t agree more.

It might be cool to be disdainful and cold. To dismiss and disparage and not grab on to anything. But that’s not what I want for cosplay daughter.

I want her to love the things she loves as much as she can.

Even if that thing is creepy fantastical ghouls like Nazgûl. 

Glomp ’em. Glomp ’em all.

T-Minus 7 days to the convention.

Friday night:  Fabric is finally dyed to suit cosplay daughter’s discerning eye. Thread is ready, free time set aside.

Time to make a skirt!

and so we worked, happily, glad to be making progress, for a whole hour before…..

Like This….Only MUCH worse. Like 42 times worse.

GAAAAAHHHHHH! That’s what the machine was doing before I paid the guy $60 to service it!

Take the bobbin out. Rethread. Take the top thread out. Rethread.

No. Better. At. All.

No time to take it back in for repair.  So I look it up myself- “how to adjust the bobbin tension.” (Which is what gives you all that extra thread on the bottom side of what you’re sewing)  Looks like maybe I can do it myself……just need to take out the bobbin case. Ok.

So went to do that. Sticky and reluctant little sucker, so I applied more pressure and

I BROKE IT.

i broke the bobbin case.

We are so……. hosed.

So in my despair, as I trudged off to decide whether to spend $30 on shipping of a new bobbin case I posted my distress on Facebook, and received a reply from a friend.

“Want to borrow one of mine?”

bobbin cases? no. SEWING MACHINE.

My friend Amy turns out to have extra sewing machines.

wow.

Amy did lend us her extra machine- I drove that night to pick it up and drop off a thank you note and bottle of wine.

Cosplay daughter recommenced to sewing.

Sunday now, and the skirt is very nearly done: our biggest and most complicated sewing project ever:

It has PLEATS.  (those bands are just still pinned on).

But this whole experience reminded me of something I already knew:  it takes a village to build a cosplay.  We couldn’t do this without the support of our little community.  The collective mind and skill set of the Costuming Guild of the Ozarks. Novio’s skill and knowledge of tools. My Mom and her sewing expertise.  Amy and her generosity and the police academy director who once lent me a “pair of legs”…..

We’re indebted to all of them.

I feel, once again, fortunate to be blessed by a community that doesn’t balk at requests for styrofoam heads or clock-faced bottles.

As cosplay Mom, I might be captain, but it really is all one big team.

Love and hugs (and serious full on glomps) to all who support cosplay daughter.

It’s here.

That time before the convention when all the happy moments of “we have PLENTY of time!” suddenly turn into counting how many free hours there are to work on the cosplay before the next convention.

Conclusion?: NOT ENOUGH.

We leave for Kawa Kon on March 6th. 10 Days.

Not enough time when we have made so little progress, not when there is work and school and family and…..life to go with it.

I think other cosplayers and cosplay parents will understand when I say I wish there could be a Hermione Granger-style time turner for rent

for those of us assistants to perfectionist artists who fuss about……every tiny detail.

I was feeling good, we had skirt and shirt pieces cut and everything.. ready to sew!

Then cosplay daughter decided that the blue was STILL not the right blue.  Back to the fabric store. And now? What about now, you ask? Shouldn’t I be directing the skirt sewing project instead of blogging?

Well I’d LIKE to.  But she’s painting the new fabric.  Before we can even cut it.

Did I mention it’s also her birthday this week? So there are parties and cake and other fun festivities to plan around?

Excuse me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I may change that to my profile pic.)

So. Here we are again. Do I continue to stress and fuss and tell her that if it doesn’t get done, It’s all on her? Tough love?

I want to be supportive and all, but I do have other responsibilities. I do have a life.  And there is undoubtedly a valuable lesson to be learned in adherence to deadlines and, frankly, sometimes admitting that it’s as good as you can get right now.

But I get so much joy out of HER joy when the cosplay is just right, when she’s happy with it.  When her vision comes to life.

I may have mentioned this before: parenting is hard.  What do you all do? Tell them to suck it up and get it done?  Or stay up until 2am on March 5th, madly sewing?

I’d love to hear it if you want to share.

In the meantime, this will be me:

Only with more wine.

Cosplay daughter and I will be going to a new convention in March: Kawakon in St. Louis.

It won’t be like A2F or G.A.M.E where we know the venue, the ins-and-outs and many of the other convention goers. It will be a new  hotel, a new city and a new crowd.

And that has me struggling once again with the issue of safety and the M&M problem.

Cosplay daughter is a girl. A teenager- at the crossroads of protective sheltering and independence.  I want her to be strong, and confident and self-reliant, to move through the world with her head up- staring down challenges and confronting danger head on. Like Chell:

But as her Mom, I also worry. A lot.  (She is absolutely bad-ass in her own way- but does not, in fact, have a functional portal gun.)

After the bad man went hunting sorority girls in a misogynistic fit in California, there was a movement- #notallmen in which good men, anxious to distance themselves from the violence, sought to make sure we knew they weren’t all like that.

But the thing is, we knew.  And the men and women using the counter-hashtag #yesallwomen  made some excellent points. The one that always sticks with me is this tweet:

“Imagine a bowl of M&Ms. 10% of them are poisoned. Go ahead. Eat a handful. Not all M&Ms are poison. #YesAllWomen“

And that’s exactly it. 90ish% of all men (and all people) for that matter are wonderful. Fine. Friendly. Safe.

But some percent are not. And you can’t tell by looking at them.

So how do I confront the tension between my desire to hover protectively at conventions (oh my gosh, how LAME), and my equally strong desire to instill self-sufficiency? (and why, by the way, is the opposite of “helicopter parenting” called “no rescue parenting?” that’s terrible. I can want to not hover and smother but still be available for rescuing. Sheesh)

I don’t have a perfect answer.  But I have some rules.

The manager at the last convention told me that many parents of teenagers rent the hotel room, drop the kids off on Friday and then leave- only to return on Sunday. Um. No.

On the other hand, I’ve seen and spoken to cosplay/geek parents who don’t allow their teenagers to leave their sight for the whole of the weekend. Also, no. (though more appealing than that first option).

So I’ve settled on a plan in the middle. I talk to cosplay daughter frequently about safety, about boundaries and about the importance of her sovereign right over her own body.

And then there are the rules.

Firstly– we always bring along cosplay best friend, so that she can always use the buddy system with another excellent kid who I know and trust to look out for her.  Often the friend has cash flow difficulties that would normally prevent her from getting to go to conventions, but me paying for both the girls isn’t an act of charity, it’s making sure that they can be co-bodyguards. (Note: When I was a girl scout leader, I always insisted on that buddy system, even in the school itself where we had meetings. The girls chafed at this until a soldier friend came to speak to them and shared that women in the U.S. military do the same-use the buddy system while deployed- because there is safety and deterrence in numbers.)

Secondly– they have very specific rules about leaving the hotel, not ever, ever going into another hotel room, etc.  They know very well that consequences would be swift and severe if I ever caught them breaking these rules. We’d leave. Immediately.

Thirdly– while of course I always stay public and circulate (I’m fond of lobby bars and lounges in the middle where I can sit and read a book and see them go by regularly)- they have to check in once an hour, at least by text- and always, always respond to my texts if I message them.  This is usually not a problem. They change cosplay outfits like 5 times a day, so they appear very regularly, going past me in the lobby on the way to costume changes.

However, one time they were waiting in line for a panel, I hadn’t seen them for a while, they were talking to new friends and and didn’t respond.

I tracked them down, not to yell, but with water and a couple of bananas and did the overwhelming, annoying smothering Mom thing:

“oh sweeties, I was so worried you hadn’t eaten!!!”

humiliating (imagine eyes rolling) but point made. Hasn’t been a problem since.

Is this enough? Gosh I hope so.

But is anything ever enough?

I don’t know.  Parenthood is hard.

I can’t wrap them in bubble wrap. And I know that I will not be able to hover helicopterily over them forever.

Cosplay daughter wants to go into coding and game design- a field in which she will be in a significant gender minority and where there are some serious issues about the way women are allowed to participate in the industry.

But again, I’m not going to not encourage her to follow her dreams. I’m not going to go to her first coding job with her to protect her from the mean kids.  What I believe (though I am sure others will disagree) is that she needs both the confidence to confront the challenges and the knowledge that while I may not hover,  I am still. always. totally. here.

For rescues.

There has been a terrible accident in my house. A couch (or something) has exploded in the cosplay room.

There is soft black shrapnel in all the nooks and crannies and bits of foam flotsam are appearing all over the house. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Creativity and construction are wonderful and amazing, but also messy. Very, very messy.

So what’s the story?  Well, there is some serious armor-making going on.  Coming off a 3rd place award for her Hiro Hamada cosplay:

Cosplay daughter is deep into the construction of Hiro’s supersuit.

I’d be flummoxed on where to even begin.  But cosplay daughter knows how to work the online tutorials, how to advocate successfully for tools and materials and what’s more (after the Long Fall Boot odyssey) she’s operating with an enhanced tolerance for the failure of prototypes and the need to refine methods and approaches.

To build this thing, she REALLY needs a lifecast of her head and body. (You know, a full body plaster cast). Talk about messy.

In the absence of that, though, she took one of the styrofoam heads that she uses for styling wigs and covered it in enough of her gamer-girl beanies to get it to the appropriate head size to match her own head. Then, one evening, I was watching an old John Cusak film in the library, and she appeared in the doorway, completely covered in plastic wrap.

“Mom?” she said,  “Will you cover me in this painter’s tape?”

The life of a cosplay Mom means that one takes this sort of request in stride.  I paused the movie and wrapped my daughter in blue tape over the plastic wrap.  Which she then cut carefully in out of the way places et Voila! patterns for the armor.

(I’m SO sure I was neither this creative nor this adventurous at age 16).

and…… there you have it. Having successfully advocated to the correct friend for a heat gun for Christmas (thanks Novio!) and to me for foam mats, she was ready to set up an armory in the craft room.  If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see the early versions of the breastplate and kneepads. But of course, the real challenge is the helmet.

I’d love to post a photo of helmet attempt #1, but she was so unhappy with it that she took it apart.  (Boot lessons or no, she’s still a perfectionist).

Many hours and innumerable foam scraps later:

Lookin’ good.

NOW she says she needs a gun to spray liquid latex rubber to give it the shiny finish.

Sigh.

Here’s hoping for a big tax return.