gryphonsegg

This post explains my Blue Lantern character, Lally of Achiem. Let’s start with a description of zer appearance: Lally is short and round and curvy and purple. Ze has small black antennae and hair that is a darker shade of purple than zer skin. Lally’s default on-duty costume consists of long black pants, black knee-high boots, and a loose-fitting blue jacket with long sleeves and a high collar. If zer hair gets in the way of work, Lally makes blue light constructs to keep it out of zir face. Lally rarely wears purely decorative things, such as makeup or jewelry other than zer blue power ring, although ze has started occasionally wearing blue light construct bracelets after meeting Wonder Woman.

For some reason, I feel like presenting Lally’s backstory and personality in Q&A format.( Cut for length and potential triggers at the beginning: reproductive coercion and miscarriage, but the reproduction is tech-mediated, so no sexual abuse as such )

Yesterday I got to hang out with several friends I hadn't seen in person for a while. <3 I also got through a little bit more of my application writing, so I was at least marginally productive. I did some shopping around for the finishing touches to my costume too. I explained my costume to one of my friends, and as I did so, I realized that every part of my Blue Lantern's character design and backstory is a metafictional response to genre trends that bug me-- every part except the antennae, that is. I guess I just like antennae.

I told her "I like gratuitous antennae almost as [other friend] likes gratuitous tentacles."

So, because she's the kind of person I know, she said, "I'm a wings girl, myself." ^_^

What is up with the lack of decent antennae in costume stores even when it's this close to Halloween? The year-around stores that put out costume supplies in early fall don't have any antennae at all, even when they do have horns and ears of various kinds. Well, Hot Topic had Invader Zim antennae, but there were no generic antennae for dressing up as a non-trademarked alien or fairy or insect. Even the seasonal stores don't have good antennae. They have some fair ones that are specific to bee costumes, and the generic antennae are awful. At one of them, there were only bee antennae and one kind of generic antennae. You know what the generic antennae were made of? Fraggin' pipe cleaners. Sparkly pipe cleaners on this incredibly flimsy headband that wasn't even painted, and I could make the same thing better myself. I distinctly remember being able to get higher-quality generic antennae ten years ago, especially around Halloween and especially in stores that also sold ears. What is the costuming world coming to?

A brief explanation of certain aspects of the recent political history of two neighboring countries on the planet Achiem:

( Warning for reproductive coercion )

It's not always easy being a non-male Green Lantern fan, and the addition of the rest of the color spectrum to the mythos doesn't necessarily make it easier. These are some of the thoughts that go into planning my Blue Lantern costume:

( Cut for rambling about fictional organizations and my issues with them )

This began with an idea for a Halloween costume, but it turned into much more. I love dressing up in costumes, and this year I felt like getting started early and doing something other than my usual "magical fat lady in a long magical robe." I own multiple plus-size "witch" or "sorceress" or "vampire countess" costumes with slightly different accent colors, accessories, levels of shininess, and styles of ridiculous inconvenient sleeves. I haven't done a proper cosplay in years. This year, I wanted to change. This year, I wanted to do a Lantern Corps costume.

I absolutely love the Green Lantern Corps in theory. To state it another way, I love the idea of the Green Lantern Corps: protectors of huge expanses of galactic space, chosen from among all the sapient beings in the universe because of their courage and strength of will, endowed with rings made by technology-indistinguishable-from-magic that give them powers limited only by the wearer's imagination. To a Green Lantern, the body's limitations are nothing; it really is what's on the inside that counts. The scope, the storytelling potential, the open space for adventure and discovery are just about as grand as you can get. And it doesn't hurt that the ultimate item of power is as far from phallic as you can get. In recent years, the mythos has expanded to include other color-coded ring-wearing organizations, such as the Red Lanterns (selected for and fueled by anger), Blue Lanterns (powered by and inspiring hope), and Indigo Lanterns (compassion). This has had some moments of brilliance . . . and many more moments of um, well, the opposite.

I have issues with the Green Lantern Corps in practice. I have even more issues with the other Lantern Corps, including the ones that I find even more fascinating and inspiring than the original GLC. The potential is endless, and some of the people who have been fortunate enough to get paid to write stories in this universe have hit the ball out of the park at certain points. But when writers fail in this franchise, they fail very badly, and when they bring on the Unfortunate Implications, those implications tend to be unfortunate on a cosmic scale.

All of this leads me to my cosplay plans: I've made up my mind to do a Lantern Corps costume. I'm putting a lot of thought into what direction I want to go with it. I'm also having a lot of feelings about it-- a lot more feelings than I expected. I might come out of this with not only a new costume but also a dozen new OCs, a new planet or two, and a whole lot of mental work put into my philosophy of how beings of goodwill should be doing SF/F and real life.