-Oh. -Sorry.
[ Laughing ] I jumped the gun there.
-I have been a geek for my whole life.
-I am just basically a huge nerd.
-The crowning achievement in my life when I was a kid
was knowing more about Star Wars than my older brother, so...
Cosplay is short for costume play,
and it is where people dress up as
or act as their favorite characters.
-People identify with a character,
and they just love that character so much.
It's not enough to just wear a backpack with their face on it.
Like, you want to be that character.
-I was about 16.
And a couple of my friends were like,
"Hey, there's this convention thing,
and we all kind of dress up and go there.
Like, a lot of people dress up as characters."
I was like, "Oh, that sounds really fun."
-All of a sudden, I get there,
and there's costumers as far as the eye can see,
and I felt like I was the only person out of costume,
so I was like, "I got to do this!"
-The costuming community has a term
for people who don't wear costumes to conventions,
which is "mundane."
My uncle didn't want me to be mundane,
so he put a little tunic on me,
and I wore khaki pants with boots that went up,
and he put a belt on me, and it had a lightsaber on it,
and I was a Padawan.
-I just kind of taught myself to sew just from trial and error.
-As soon as I learned how to sew a seam,
I just could not stop sewing.
-Last year... [ Sighs ]
How many? I think I built...
25 costumes last year.
As you can see, the bottom is quite flowy.
She has mechanical arms.
-We say we level up... [ Laughs ]
...when we make a really hard costume.
-I spent over $1,000 on it.
I'm not sure of the exact total.
-I actually have a tutorial on how I made this one.
Just knowing that something goes from, you know, in my mind
to a sketch to a pattern
to just this garment that I've created from nothing,
it's a really cool feeling.
I think there's been a really strong movement lately
where women feel
that they need to be portrayed better in comic books.
A study in particular going around
about the "damsel in distress" thing,
about how women are always the plot point,
not so much the main character.
It'd be nice if more people demanded the opposite.
-I think the biggest problem or difference that we have
is with mostly just the older fans.
And the older, kind of, community
isn't used to having females in their community.
-"Oh, she probably doesn't even read comics," and --
I mean, it's really not that hard
to pick up a comic book and read it.
-I think everyone wants to belong to something.
There's always going to be someone that gets left out,
and nobody ever wants to be that person that's left out.
-You have people now that are "gate-keeping" the fandom,
where they'll be like,
"These people aren't allowed to like this
because they don't like it as much as I do."
-There's this whole, like, "real nerd" thing that's going on,
and it's baloney.
I can understand that there is sort of an animosity
for people who were probably teased for years
for being a nerd,
and then they finally find a community that accepts them,
and then, of course, they don't want other people in that.
As far as I'm concerned, the more people get involved,
like, the more fun everybody's gonna have with each other.
Something that's really important to me
is all the positive things that cosplay has done for me
in my life.
-I was that kid.
I was that kid that nobody talked to,
because I had the giant glasses, and I had braces on my legs,
and my hair was just a greasy mess.
-I was different from everybody,
and, you know, maybe if I had let go
of some of these, like, passions that I had,
maybe I would fit in a little bit bitter.
-'Cause I didn't want to be anybody different.
I just wanted somebody like me.
-In just a short amount of time,
I could have very easily become a different person.
But I started going to these conventions,
and I started meeting these people,
and they made me feel like I was awesome just the way I was.
-I remember I was in, I think, a math class once.
And someone came up,
and they're like, "I heard you write Sailor Moon fan fiction."
And I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "So do I,"
and, like, gave me some of theirs to read.
-I started making friends who were into the same things,
so I didn't feel as weird anymore.
-To be able to express your fandom for something
and be able to be like, "Wow,
this is something I enjoy, and so do other people,"
and to create something from it
was just a really good thing to have.
-Things have kind of blown out of proportion now,
like getting invited to convention stuff.
-I get flown to Mexico or to Russia.
I started to have fans, which is very odd experience
when you're just -- I just dress up as a cartoon character.
-And it was just like click, click, click, click,
click, click, click, and, like, flashes everywhere,
and I was just like, posing the whole time,
and I felt like such a badass.
-It's weird. I can't even --
There's no other word for it,
'cause I still feel like just the no-name nerd
that sits in my room and sews all day.
-I went from being this really awkward,
really uncomfortable in my own skin person
to someone who -- I am just very proud to be who I am.
-I can't imagine being what people would consider normal.
I would think that I'm really boring.
I like what I do.
-The costuming community and the geek community in general
had such a profoundly positive effect on me
that I would love to continue to see that positive effect
on younger people who are afraid of being nerds,
but they can learn to be themselves.
-Don't stop being a nerd.
We're pretty awesome. [ Laughs ]