The Life of a Cosplayer: RIP Ammy Cosplay, 6/23/09

Today was extremely emotional. Mom made me move more than half of my stuff out of my sewing room so that she could put a China cabinet in half of it. It was a bunch of fabric, cardboard, craft foam, my table, and two half-finished Pac-Man ghost heads. She also took one of my tables as a computer desk, and so my overlock machine is in the closet. On the surface, I'm upset that I have to move all of this stuff with no benefit to me. Deeper than that, I'm really upset that I was all settled into my little corner of the room with everything where I wanted it (aside from the mess that comes with sewing), and I got uprooted and had my stuff spread all over the house. Now a bunch of my stuff is in plastic containers in the garage, some is in the hall closet, and some is in my room. My costumes have always been in the hall closet, but now there's crafting things in there too.

While moving things around in the hall closet to make room for more things, I found a piece of mouse poop on top of a shelf in there. I quickly pulled everything that was on the floor out of the closet and vacuumed. I figured while I was in there, I'd do some tidying up, as a lot of stuff was just piled on top of other things in a plastic box. Before I began, Mom took me to Target and bought me three plastic containers that had lids because two of the containers that I had didn't have lids, and I needed a third because I had so much stuff.

When I began sorting out things, I noticed that there was mouse poop on one of my costumes, the feet of Amaterasu (Okami). My mom had me get a pair of gloves and take the plastic bin with everything in it into the garage. Knowing that I would have to throw a majority of it out, I fought back tears as I walked down the hall to the garage. I found a face mask (normally used during spray painting or heavy sanding) to protect myself from the toxins in mouse urine, and prepared to start digging through the box, but I couldn't hold back anymore. I cried like a baby.

My Amaterasu cosplay was the first big project that I threw myself at. I spent months working nearly every day on it because I wanted it to be the absolute best that it could be. Even though it ended up flawed, I loved it dearly. It was the first costume that I seriously competed in, it opened up the world of competing in cosplay for me. (Something that I still take fairly lightly, but seriously enough to put a lot more effort into my costumes.)

Amaterasu was officially retired because I wasn't satisfied with my craftsmanship or the overall look. I didn't even want to sell it because I've grown far enough in cosplay that I didn't like the overall look of my Amaterasu cosplay enough to take someone's money for it. However, it was still mine and I loved it dearly. Occasionally I'd see it in its box when I opened my cosplay closet for something, and I'd recall fond memories of wearing it. Amaterasu always got a great response.

I sat and cried by myself for a while, but I couldn't pull myself together enough to do anything. I sent my boyfriend a text message (he was in the living room at the time) to come into the garage. He did a wonderful job of comforting me. He got me calm enough to talk, and I tried to explain why I got so upset. He said he understood. I'm not entirely sure that he did, because I know it's silly to cry over a costume that I hadn't worn for two years, but I think he understood enough, otherwise there's no way he would have been so patient with me. I seriously felt like my dog had just died or something (not a joke because Amaterasu is a wolf, I seriously felt like that).

I finally accepted the fact that I wasn't going to be able to completely pull myself together, and I also knew that I wasn't going to be able to throw any of it away myself. So I began sorting through the box while my boyfriend went to get a pair of gloves for himself so that he could throw it out for me. I saved a few things that didn't have any mouse poop or urine on them, including the shield, the fan, and Issun. I separated everything into two piles, "keep" and "garbage", and threw all of the garbage things back into the plastic bin. I sobbed some more, threw out my gloves, gave my sanding mask to my boyfriend, and left the garage so that I didn't have to watch him carry the box out to the garbage bins.

The Great Painter Issun
Now in necklace form

I went back into the house and put Issun on a necklace chain so that I could wear it while "grieving" over my costume. I know it's silly to cry over it, but even now writing this, I'm tearing up. I put so much love into that costume, and I can't bear the thought of it sitting in a garbage bin and eventually rotting at a dump somewhere. I guess in the process of making the costume, it became almost alive to me, and I formed a bond with it. Like I said, silly, but I don't think I could have helped it. Even though it was ignored for a long time, and the parts that were ruined were parts that I was going to remake anyway, I feel like it deserved a much better ending than what it came to. When I was looking through some of my old photos of Amaterasu, I found that I began construction exactly three years ago, three years to the day.

Rest in peace Amaterasu (Okami) cosplay

You will be dearly missed
06/23/09 - 06/23/12