This past Saturday, I threw on my North Carolina Comicon shirt (signed by Gerard Way) and headed to a con much closer to home: Dover Comic Con. (Side note: Can we please decide if it’s ‘comic con, ‘comicon,’ or ‘comic-con’ already?!) This was my first year attending Dover Comic Con, and I’m so glad I went! It was completely free, and all of the vendors were set up outside. As my husband put it, it was like a “giant farmers market for geeks.” Other than the unbearable humidity, everyone had a blast.

I attended a panel hosted by my friend Luis Valdez, aka, The_Brown_Ranger, called “Cosplay Changed My Life.” He and a few other cosplayers talked about how they got into cosplaying and why they do it. I thought about the one and only cosplay I did last year at NC Comicon: Genderbent Party Poison.

That was my first ever cosplay. I had no idea what I was doing. I had a Pinterest board to help me figure out everything I was going to need, but I ended up throwing most of it together the night before we had to leave for North Carolina. I bought a cheap jacket off of Amazon and painted it with puffy paint. I got the plastic mask at Dollar Tree and painted that, too. The pants weren’t the right color, I never made a gun holster, the boots weren’t quite right; despite all this, I was proud of what I put together.

I got to meet Gerard Way at that con, who most people know is one of my biggest inspirations and someone I’ve admired since I was a young teen. When I walked up to the table, hands trembling, he said, “I love your costume! I love the feminine flair!” That moment was when I realized that cosplaying was something I wanted to do. I told him it was my first cosplay and I was very nervous, and he said it looked awesome.

After I spent a good 30 minutes crying in the lobby, trying to process the fact that I finally met and chatted with my childhood hero, I walked outside and was greeted by hundreds of fans who were waiting to meet him. Everyone was incredibly kind and talked about how awesome I looked. People took photos with me. No one acted jealous when I told them I got to get a photo with Gerard, or when they saw my hand-painted ray gun (honestly, it was just an off-brand NES Zapper) that G had signed. Everyone was genuinely happy for me, and to be perfectly honest, I felt like a complete badass. It didn’t matter that I was overweight. It didn’t matter that my cosplay wasn’t perfect. It didn’t matter that I had terrible social anxiety and that I could barely breathe at one point. I got to meet my hero while dressed up as a play on a character he created, and I even got to take a photo with him ... what more could I ask for?

Hearing Luis talk about cosplaying brought back all those memories, and made me realize that this is something to which I need to dedicate more time and money. I have a few ideas that I’m really excited about, and I plan to bring back my Genderbent Party Poison cosplay at NC Comicon this year. I’m really excited about a mashup idea I came up with; follow me on Instagram as I begin to tease the cosplay and see if you can guess what it is. At MAGFest next year, I plan to do a Genderbent Uncharted 3-era Nathan Drake.

If you’re at all interested in cosplaying, do it! I’m very excited to get back into it, and I want to see your cosplays. Reach out to me on social media so we can exchange ideas and share photos!

Follow me (@gottosaurus) and Luis (@the_brown_ranger) on Instagram for cosplay updates and inspiration!