You know, the best part about you, my audience, is that you're incredibly forgiving. Nevermind the fact that it's because you don't exist. No, I choose to believe that you're an ambivalent, understanding audience, so I decided to reward you with yet another post. It turns out, I do have a problem with procrastination, and I'm dreading the portion of my book's editing process I'm currently in.
I've debated which story I wanted to tell next, and I've decided the best way to start would be to go in chronological order. This means today's post is going to be about Sithbelle. Don't worry, this is a much happier story. At least it will be.
When we last off, I was in the worst depressive episode of my life. It lasted for over three months, and there was nothing that I could do that would lift the fog out of my mind. I knew that I had to start preparing for a trip that was coming up in mid-April 2017, but my brain couldn't make myself care. My boyfriend (now-husband) was understandably troubled at my predicament, but was a trooper and stayed by my side throughout it all. I don't know where I would have been without him.
To rewind the clock just a wee bit for some context: Teresa, my stepmom, got my dad and I tickets to some Star Wars convention in Orlando as a Christmas present the year before. Based on the vague description Teresa mentioned about it, I figured it was going to be something close to AWA, a local show that specialized in a particular genre. It would be quaint, but nothing like the amazing experience Dragon*Con was. In fact, from the beginning I had been warning my dad that while this was going to be cool, it was unlikely that it was going to be the top-of-the-line experience it could be. By the time the depression struck, I had no interest in looking further into it.
Still, my parents kept poking and prodding at me, asking about my costume plans. By now, my love of cosplay was well-known to anyone who knew me, so they had natural expectations that I would leap at the opportunity to create something. Problem was, I had no interest in doing, well...anything. I kept up a brave face to them, giving them various excuses to buy me some time. But the weeks slipped past, drawing ever closer to the deadline, and I hadn't even pulled out my sewing machine yet.
The weekend before I was supposed to leave on the trip, the looming deadline weighed over me. Boyfriend had left for a trip with some friends, so I had a few days to myself. During the silence, I felt a stirring of life again. In my deepest heart of hearts, I knew that I really didn't want to go to a con dressed like a normal person, and I had to do something to fix it. Then finally, the instincts of a seasoned procrastinator began to reawaken.
With the time I had left, I was in a bit of a predicament: first of all, my only Star Wars-related costume was Huttslayer Leia, and I was not about to wear that in front of my dad. Not only that, I was no closer to figuring out what costume I actually wanted to do. So the task was now to create a good (or at least halfway decent) costume in approximately five days, when it normally took me weeks to put everything together. Suddenly, I was kicking myself for not trying to snap out of my depression sooner.
I went through the lexicon of characters that were in Star Wars, thinking about their costumes and what it would take to put it together with what I currently had on hand. At the time, I hadn't seen any of the shows, only read the books, and all of the people I could think of would all take too long. I had no time to special order anything, so it had to be something relatively simple. Unfortunately, that ruled out anything Amidala-related, and I didn't have anything close to what Leia wore, apart from her legendary bikini. I dreamed of doing a Twi'lek, but if I didn't have time for Leia, then I certainly didn't have time to mess around with latex and lekku.
That pretty much left a generic Force wielder, and I'll be damned before I'll be a Jedi. That left the Sith. My foray into the heavy metal scene meant that I had a number of black articles of clothing, so it seemed like a good start. I decided to think about what kind of Sith I wanted to portray. Somehow in the brainstorming process, I had the random thought of creating a mashup character, and it didn't take too long before the answer came to me.
Waaaay back in 2013, I went to Dragon*Con dressed as Belle from Beauty and the Beast thanks to a whole lot of help from my Grandma (perhaps I'll make its own post someday). It was the first time I'd ever had a sewing project that required a sewing machine, and she taught me so much during the time she was making it (I was far more of an apprentice than doing any real work). I was primarily in charge of gathering the materials together, and I made a pretty severe miscalculation in judging the amount of fabric I needed to make the dress. It turns out, I bought an entire block too much, and I had a ton left over that I'd held onto ever since.
Now, I'd learned a lot about sewing since then, and was pretty confident in my own skills. I decided that I would create a Sith version of Belle, or Sithbelle, as I started calling her out loud (in my head, her name was Darth Vanitus, her fall to the dark side caused by her inability to look anywhere but inward, but normal people don't usually appreciate lore, and Sithbelle is a lot easier to say and conveys the idea much more clearly).
With this new idea cemented into my head, I was suddenly jolted back into reality for the first time in months. With the bits and bobs and scraps I had on hand, I worked at a feverish pace with every spare moment until I had put together something I liked. On the mannequin, most people guessed it was a Mortal Kombat costume, but that was just fine with me. I knew the true strength of the costume was in its details. That's where the character really came alive.
Finally, the time had come for the trip. Dad and I were excited; not necessarily because of the convention, but because we were also using that time to go to Disney World. He and I are very close, and we've bonded over our love of Star Wars and Disney over the years. Needless to say, we were both were eagerly anticipating the trip, and I was excited because I finally felt something akin to alive again.
We arrived in Orlando after an uneventful flight, and got ready for the convention. My plan was to not dress up the first day of the con (Thursday), and instead save my costume for Friday and maybe Saturday. By the time we had arrived at our hotel, I'd been awake from my mental break for long enough that I really regretted not making more costumes for the rest of my time there.
Thursday morning, we arrive at the street where the convention was to be held, and as with every other convention I've been to, trickles of dressed-up nerds were proudly and excitedly marching their way towards the line to enter the building. As we drove on, we realized that said line was several blocks long already, which didn't bode well. We parked, then joined the throng. Through sheer luck, we managed to find a side entrance to the building which had just opened up to allow better flow into the building, but nobody knew about yet. We skipped the hours-long line and immediately walked into the exhibitor's hall.
The first thing I noticed was the near-life-sized T.I.E. fighter that occupied a small portion of floor, surrounded by other vehicles fully kitted out in Star Wars décor. We then turned a corner and saw a gigantic vendor area that was covered in costumed people and Star Wars fans. It was at about this moment that we realized that this was no mere local convention. This was Star Wars Celebration, the largest Star Wars convention of them all, and we owed it our allegiance--no wait, wrong fandom. But in all seriousness, Teresa had accidentally given us the greatest gift ever, and we realized what a treat we were about to be in for.
The first day, we just were absorbed in the wonder of it all. Dad had never been to a nerd convention before, so he was introduced to the culture and fell in love with it just as much as I had. On the floor, there were giant televisions around playing news clips and streams from the panels around the convention. We pulled up at one point early on to find the beautiful sounds of John Williams' soundtrack for the saga playing overhead. When I finally got a look at the TV, I was shocked to discover it was being played live, and conducted by none other by the legend himself.
Ya'll. I legitimately cried. Performing in his symphony has been a dream of mine for as long as I've known who he is. The fact that he was conducting somewhere in the same building I was currently in was as close as I'll ever get to that dream coming true. It was a profound experience.
Eventually, the performance ended and excitement returned. We found a few panels that sounded interesting and decided to check them out. There was one in particular that I was curious about that was supposed to be an analysis on Rogue One's soundtrack. Dad agreed, and so we went to check it out, saying if it was boring, we could always leave.
What followed was one of the most pivotal and important hours of my adult life, and I am not speaking hyperbolically. As a linguist and a musician, I've always had a love of languages and music. David W. Collins, the speaker at this panel, taught me how the two intermixed, and gave me tools to fully understand what I already knew instinctually. He broke down how the composer told the movie's story using a wordless, but powerful language, and how it shapes our perception of the events we're watching. (Years later, I learned he had a podcast that similarly breaks down other soundtracks, and I
highly recommend it.)
This was revelatory to me, and it healed a musical part of my soul that had been festering up until that point. It inspired me to reembrace my first musical loves, classical music and movie soundtracks, and I have been a better person for it ever since. This particular event is crucial for later stories I'll hopefully tell at some point, so I hope you remember it well. But it's not the primary focus of today's story.
The remainder of the day flew by in a whirlwind of overstimulation, and we were suddenly back at our hotel game planning for the next day. After a restless night, we woke up even more excited than yesterday, which had seemed impossible before. It was going to be the first time I'd ever debuted Sithbelle in public, and I was nervous about getting everything right. Luckily, dad is an excellent cosplay buddy (he's helped me with costumes before at the Ren Faire and is a very helpful guy in general), so everything was able to come together perfectly.
We drove back to the convention center, and I put on the finishing touches of the costume. Finally, I was ready. We headed into the convention center, where there were much shorter lines, much to everyone's relief (I knew we weren't going to get so lucky as to find a secret side door again!), and I began trolling around for other Disney mashups and to see if anyone would enjoy or get my costume.
It didn't take too long before I had success on both fronts. People really seemed to like my outfit, though I did get called "Jedi Belle" a bunch. It's ok, I'll Force choke them later.
Dad really developed an appreciation for cosplay culture while following me around. He told me he enjoyed watching people's eyes light up with recognition when they figured out who I was supposed to be and seeing them gush over the outfit. I told him it was my favorite part, too.
I found so many princesses to take pictures with, and I even found a Jedi Gaston! We joked about how we were both technically on the wrong side. It was so much fun to riff around and have fun with other like-minded nerds. In fact, one of the best parts was I actually got to meet my friend Brandon there! (For those who don't know, Brandon was first featured on a
post about Humans vs Zombies waaay back in the earliest days of this blog. We've been friends for a long time, and still chat every once in a while!) He was dressed as a mashup himself of his own heritage mixed with Captain Rex, and was unfortunately recovering from an injury a bit earlier. It was so cool to catch up with him and hang out with his girlfriend (the Sith Ariel).
Finally, day two ended at the convention, but the party was just getting started. Disney, in their infinite wisdom and ability to see dollar signs everywhere, had closed out Hollywood Studios early for an exclusive Star Wars night, and we had been lucky enough to be able to get tickets to go. We were encouraged to go dressed in costume, which meant I actually got to wear my Disney / Star Wars mashup in the land of the Mouse himself. I'm proud to say the cast members were all very complimentary of my costume, which made me very happy. If the Disneyest of the Disney people like it, it must be pretty good!
There were special cocktails, photo ops, and they re-themed a couple of the rides to be Star Wars-themed. The best highlight of the night for me was riding the Rock-n-Roller Coaster to the tune of the trench run in Episode IV. It was so freaking cool! At the end, they had a huge fireworks show to Star Wars music, and everyone raised their lightsabers to the sky. It was culty for sure, but it was
my cult. I wish they still did this event, honestly. The new Star Wars land is really incredible, but there was something special about how they did it back then.
The rest of the convention was spent doing much of the same as the previous two days. My second day as Sithbelle was similar to the first, and by Sunday, we were pretty tired and a lot of people had left. We called it a bit early ourselves and decided to start the second part of our vacation on a high note.
I think I'll leave our Disney trips for another blog post in itself. Suffice to say it has become a long-standing tradition whose most recent chapter will be written in a few months, and I would like to include that if I still remember this blog exists by then.
After the vacation, I felt back to my old self. Well, perhaps "old" self wasn't quite right. I felt better ready to take on the realities that I had been faced with, and I was ready to start forward with a brighter outlook. I now had a new and deeper understanding of musical language, and I spent time with one of my favorite people, in some of my favorite places, doing something that I really loved. And not only that, I had a new creative identity, something that was uniquely mine of my own creation without anyone's help or input.
I was ready to live again.
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