Phase I was just a sampling of some of my favorite female fictional characters, chosen on a whim because I thought it'd be a lot of fun to try cosplaying them. These four in Phase II, however, were first chosen because they are all female characters whose books have been turned into movies! I thought it would be fun to converge movie visuals with book descriptions and personal interpretations.
Forget Lori Petty, this is Tank Girl straight from the pages of her original
comic series. She plays rough all over the outback of Australia, consorting with all manner of strange individuals and getting into explosive misadventures, all while on the run from the authorities.
My interpretation is a composite of various elements and looks from Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's less heroic, more chaotic-neutral version of the dame. There's a lot going on with this make, because she's got to look like she's on a non-stop bender-slash-shoot-'em-up. The smoke kind of obfuscates a lot of fun details, but I can't part with the smoke. It's too fitting not to include.
If I did have a tumour, I'd name it Marla. Marla. The scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if you could stop tonguing it. But you can't.
Marla is the only woman crazy enough to get close to the main character in
Fight Club, if only because she'd hit rock bottom far before he began his fateful bout with insomnia. I chose her because she's one of the most unforgettably gritty supporting characters I've ever encountered in fiction. She's nuts, but in a very real and understandable/sympathetic way.
The
Fight Club movie compares very well to the book; director David Fincher does a great job of carrying author Chuck Palahniuk's grit and swagger over to film. With that said, my avi cosplay of Marla is torn from the scene in the movie when the narrator first meets Marla at one of the support meetings.
Read (most of) the book
here on GoogleBooks!
Sophisticated -- God, I'm sophisticated!
Daisy is the subject of the title character's unrequited love in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic,
The Great Gatsby. One of the wealthy socialites in the Jazz Age, she exists to be beautiful and manipulative -- and ultimately destructive. The book, which I highly recommend as a terrific allegory of the amoral excess of Jazz Age America, is also available for reading on
GoogleBooks.
I chose her because even though I would never encounter (nor enjoy encountering) a woman like her, she's such a strong and fascinating symbol. As such, my interpretation of her incorporates symbolism.
I'm using Sentry Guard Santiago to represent Gatsby, what with his youthfully attractive demeanor. Daisy's white outfit represents her naivete and amoral (as opposed to immoral) philosophy, and her tears are for, well, love lost, past friends, and her rare but palpable pangs of guilt and disappointment. And of course the long string of pearls and the shift-like dress are fitting for the flapper fashion of the era.
P.S. Let me warn everyone against the really crappy TV-movie from 2000 that stars Mira Sorvino as Daisy :shudder:
I'm probably going to get a lot of guff for this far-from-canon cosplay of the Queen of Hearts from the Lewis Carroll classic,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Not only is there already a QOH dress in the Wonderland set that I refuse to use, I'm also making her young and beautiful -- with a kind of skanky saloon-girl twist -- instead of scary and schoolmarm-y.
Well, in dressing up as a character whose image has been toyed with countless times, I claim my right to such an open interpretation. And anyway, wouldn't a real heartbreaking queen be at once sweet as pie, devastatingly seductive and oddly puzzling?