I struggle a lot with self-doubt: am I good enough, smart enough, fast enough, skinny enough, pretty enough, tough enough, etc. These are questions we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives, I'm sure. Some of us decide the answer is, "Who cares?" and we move on. I claim that my answer is "who cares", and I attempt to move on with building up a tough exterior to hide my shaky little inner core which isn't really sure if it doesn't care who cares or not and is really just trying to seek out some little island of stability to call home.
Wasn't that a lot of personal information to lead us into a costume discussion? My apologies, good people. You put up with a lot.
I started out cosplaying (I'm still getting used to this mainstream term) ages ago now when I worked on a limited budget (i.e. poor college student budget). I thrifted. I made things as best I could. I cut corners. I shopped at the Dollar Tree. I transformed things into new things. This was the base of my hobby.
Over the years, I grew up and so did my hobby. I learned how to sew. I started buying and making patterns. I started learning new things. I started doing research on the internet, joining message boards, reading about props and costumes and realism. And somewhere in all of that, I realized that I hated some of the comments I was reading about "inaccuracies" in a fan-made costume. Where they didn't have a seam properly placed or the incorrect fabric was used or they should save up enough money until "you can afford to do it properly". Words like this kind of hurt me - the person who had started all of this in the poor college student phase. The person who had a crappy couple of first costumes but was still kind of proud of my humble beginnings. I felt bad for the people reading these comments, and it broke my heart that there was some sort of exclusionary set of "rules" that were pushing people out of the fandom because their seams were improperly cut and sewn together.
I don't like that. I don't like pushing people out because something is "wrong" or "inaccurate". Sometimes, you know, that's the best someone can do at the time. We can offer constructive criticism to that person - as long as it's constructive. You want that criticism to be helpful and respectful. Why would you want to make someone feel bad because they've done the best they could with what they had and the knowledge they currently possessed? You don't. It's just plain bad manners in my book. Offer to help. Offer to be there as a source. Offer to teach them something or show them where they can go to learn a new skill that would help them out.
The exclusion mentality and the need to be 100% accurate is the very thing I hated about doing costume research on the internet for all of these reasons. And it's also - unfortunately - now been ingrained into my very skull to the point where I've basically excluded myself.
My stuff isn't 100% accurate. I know that. I know that I do my best to replicate what I can to the degree I can with the information I have on hand at the time. I don't have a lot of skills. I lack leather working ability or access to metal working tools or anything of that nature. I can put in snaps. I can cut stuff up and sew it back together. I can make kinda-sorta pattern pieces all by my little own self. I can stitch things together to make a wearable garment. But I have never been able to attain 100% accuracy because I don't want to throw the money into it. I don't build things on the poor college student budget anymore, but I do still try to keep it to a decent budget. Therefore, my stuff isn't 100% accurate, and it actually kind of makes me feel like a fraud. It makes me feel like I shouldn't be doing this as my hobby or that I've failed in some way, and I'm not a "true" fan.
If someone else came up to me and told me all of this, I'd take them by the shoulders and look at them and say, "What really makes a true fan?" Can we really define that? Can we say, "You spent $33 dollars on the exact same model of gloves, plus the $15+ supplies to cut them up a bit, redye them to the proper color, add new leather pieces, and now you've got the exact piece that they used in the movie! You're a true fan!" Is that fair? Are you going to tell a 6 year old that she's not a true fan because she used her dad's old gloves from the back of the closet? (Well, of course not, I hope...unless you're evil.) But if you wouldn't tell a child that, why would you want to be just as equally evil to an adult? Someone of your own fandom. It baffles me. You can tell someone that it's not 100% accurate, but 100% accuracy doesn't equal "true fan" status.
This is the argument I keep trying to tell myself when I look at costuming standards for groups like the 501st and the Rebel Legion. These people are legendary in their costume skills - the folks that take the time to craft these pieces are just astounding artists. They really, truly are. I don't want to downplay that. I spend a lot of time on the Replica Prop Forum message boards lately, too, and the work displayed there is out of this world. It's like walking through a movie museum, and I absolutely love it. When I see all of this, I hear this little voice in the back of my head that says, "Shada, why can't you be like them? You could make it perfect. You need to make it perfect or else it isn't right."
That's the part of me I'm trying to squelch. The part of me that is judgemental of my own work - with the voice of judgement that is born of looking at the voices of other people's judgement and then...judging them for judging others. That's a lot of judging, and I'm not qualified to make those sorts of decisions in life. I need to just stop it. I need to just take a step back and remember why I do this. I do this to play. I do this to bring joy to others and myself. I do this so some little kid can think it's awesome and will want to do it, too.
It used to be that I hated the word "cosplay" when it was first introduced. I thought it sounded too "playful" - like the people who were crafting the costumes weren't being careful in their construction. That they were careless and reckless and just didn't give a womp rat's ass about any of it. But that's wrong. It was completely incorrect on my part, and in the very beginning I had an extreme misunderstanding of the word. Now, I'm actually proud to say I cosplay. I'm proud to say that I've crafted these things on my own, and that I can help you learn how I did it if you want the help. And if you want to learn something else, I can try to help you figure that out, too. No matter my level of experience or lack of skill, I can still make something. It might not be perfect. It might not be 100% accurate. But it's still full of love and devotion and research and hours or planning.
That makes it perfect in my book. Forget what the others say - that's my advice to me. That's hard advice to take, but it's advice I need to remember. Especially at times like this when I doubt myself and my abilities and my "fan" status. I can't doubt. I can't force myself to be amazing. I need to just love it, live it, and have fun with it. That's the point of all of this craziness, after all.
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