Vegan Tomb Raider Cosplay

6:27 pm HelenLJohnson 1 Comments

(LauraElizaCosplay Facebook)

(Very excited to share Tangled Wires first guest blog post by the excellent cosplayer - Laura Eliza. As veganism is becoming more popular as a lifestyle choice, it is interesting to see how vegan cosplayers, such as Laura, are able to recreate accurate costumes without using animal products. Disclaimer - Views in this blogpost are not necessarily the views of myself)

I’ve been cosplaying since late 2012 and I’ve been a vegan since 2014. Before that, I was a vegetarian for four years and didn’t use animal hides back then, either, so I’ve been animal-free products the whole time I’ve been a cosplayer. I don’t use leather, fur, feathers, suede, wool or silk – any product that comes from an animal living or dead. How, then, do I manage to cosplay the likes of Lara Croft?

There are plenty of alternatives available which are guilt-free and far cheaper to use for your crafts. For my weapon holsters, I use a combination of high quality textured vinyl, faux leather and foam, sewing with extra strength polyester thread. Clothing is usually fairly straightforward as vests are often cotton, polyester and elastane, all animal-free. Coats can be difficult to source – in Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) Lara wears a red padded jacket at the start of the game and it took me a long time to source one that wasn’t feather filled. Boots can also be challenging to find – in the 2013 and 2015 rebooted games Lara wears ‘Timberland Charles St’ boots, which are real leather. They are a discontinued line and Timberland don’t do a synthetic alternative, so I had to find some synthetic leather boots which looked similar in style and add the top four speed lace hooks, darker laces and heel buckles myself. When looking for items try lots of different keywords – e.g. ‘brown combat boot, brown army boot, brown buckle boot, brown lace boot’.

Rise Holster Construction (LauraElizaCosplay Facebook)

I have been asked a couple of times when wearing my Lara cosplays about the ‘leather’ components, with people being very surprised that they are synthetic as they look so convincing. Some faux leather can look cheap and plastic-like but the vinyl I use is textured and grooved with an irregular pattern which looks like genuine animal hide, at a fraction of the monetary and environmental cost! It doesn’t smell and it’s easy to work with – I have a small sewing machine built for lightweight fabrics and I’m able to work with the vinyl and faux leather on this machine.

If you’d like more tips and tricks, or you’d like to know a bit more about my vegan lifestyle, please follow me on social media provided below. I also have an Etsy shop, ‘Earthcraft Emporium’, where I sell my handmade vegan friendly costume pieces, accessories and jewellery.

- Laura Eliza Cosplay

Tumblr, Facebook, Etsy, Twitter, Instagram

CosDown 2: Attending Your First Convention

12:00 pm HelenLJohnson 0 Comments

MCM London Comic Con May 2013

MCM London 2016 is fast approaching and cosplayers new and experienced are working hard on their costumes in these final, precious days. I attended my first convention in 2013, travelling down to London with my Lara Croft Reborn costume. I was so excited I didn’t sleep for odd nights the week before MCM London, staying up all night watching Sneaky Zebra videos and Lara Croft make up tutorials on YouTube. I fondly remember one night, creeping downstairs, grabbing a bag of HulaHoops and a glass of Ribena, before sneaking back up again to watch an extended Dragon*Con cosplay music video!

However I was also extremely nervous. Despite doing dance and drama for a good chunk of my life, the years previous were a cyclone of books and academia. I hadn’t explicitly put myself out, with an aim to stand out, within a public sphere for a good few years. I had seen that people liked to take photos, but I had shied away from anyone taking a photo since my late teens. What if my costume broke? What if people don’t appreciate the new version of Lara instead of the old? Most of these worries ended up just as pre-con nerves, so here are seven tips to help your first con go as best as it can.

Remember to eat and drink.
This is so important, however I have seen so many cosplayers skip meals because they are busy or don’t want to spill food on their costume. Conventions are strenuous times so make an effort to take a ‘lunch hour’. Convention food is expensive and not the best, so see what is around the radius of the convention centre. Trust me, you will not be the only one in costume! You can also take a picnic or small snack food in a tote bag and sit in the designated areas. These are also fantastic times to people watch and look at people’s costumes as they walk past. In the evening, if you are short on money, there are many meals you can rustle up with just a kettle. Yes, they may not be the best nutritionally, but for a night or a weekend, you’ll be okay. Remember you can always buy a bag of spinach or tinned sweetcorn for veg and tins of tuna are great for protein that can heat up with water from a kettle. Pots of instant noodles are a godsend!

Your costume always has the potential to break.
The unfortunate truth is that every cosplayer will have a costume break on them. I had just walked into the convention hall of my first con and the leg strap on my holster pinged off. Don’t rely on the convention having a repair station, a few do not, and those that do may not have what you need. Pack yourself a little repair kit - superglue, thread and needle, duct tape, hot glue gun and anything costume specific that you can keep at the hotel and/or a mini version to put in your bag. The main thing is, don’t let it bring you down. This happens, it is okay! Don’t let it ruin your day.

You will have your photograph taken.
By attending the event, you are consenting to being part of press documentation as you are within the public domain, even if you are not stopped by a photographer. If this bothers you, do not attend. Being in cosplay, automatically makes you more visible to photographers, in particular if you are cosplaying a popular or recent iteration of a character. The best thing to do, is practise a few poses at home, to see what works best and what you are most comfortable with. Then, when you are at the convention it is one thing less to worry about. However you are also within your rights to refuse or stop any photography if you feel uncomfortable. In particular, people should not be taking photos while you are eating or resting.

Sorry I don't know who the other cosplayer is :( (MCM London May 2013) - Spot the broken holster!

 Not everything great needs to be booked and/or ticketed.
Conventions are now more than just the main event, there are fringe meet ups, discos, shows and screenings to name a few. Many of these have a ticket fee, however do not feel pressured into attending these to get the ‘full convention experience’, often, the unschedule and random events are the moments that make a convention. A good example, for over 18s, is the Fox at the Excel in London. A small pub on the convention grounds that has become the go-to place for cosplayers. Nothing happens as such, but the memories of Superman, Wonder Woman and Commander Shepard eating burgers and nachos while slowly piling up discarded pieces of costumes will last a last time. A good rule of thumb is if there is something you specifically want to go to, do it! But don’t feel like you need to go.

Talk to other cosplayers.
If you think someone’s costume looks great or want to know how they made it? Ask them! It means the world when someone gets complimented on their hard work, you’ll find out how it feels when someone says it to you; so keep those good vibes flowing!

Be prepared to queue and wait.
We don’t call them queue cons for nothing. For the popular, larger conventions you can spend a great deal of time standing, waiting. If you know that the costume you will cause you pain or extreme discomfort. Perhaps leave it for another time. It will only make you miserable and tire a lot quicker. Otherwise, popular things to bring along is a 3DS, Cards Against Humanity or a simple good conversation to pass time. If you can, and going for the weekend, go the day, towards closing time, and you should be able to walk straight up to get your band. This is great for those who are working the Friday and may mean not having to book as much time off.

Bring a bag and/or bag buddy.
We’ve all done it. We don’t want a bag to ruin the look of our costume as we sashay into the convention hall. Then end up with phones, cameras and empty wrappers in a carrier bag alongside that plushie you just bought. Tote bags are fantastic for this, and you can often get them in geeky designs or even to match your costume. They will hold all your food, water, repair kit, top-up make up etc. Just throw to the side when you are having your photo took. Another idea is to build pockets  and storage into costumes; I had most of my stuff in my quiver and just some money to hand in my trouser pocket. If you are super lucky, you might have a bag buddy. Often the poor sods who tag along but don’t cosplay are honoured this role! If they are willing, then feel free, however never expect them to just carry your stuff and make sure to show your gratitude at the end of the day/weekend.

And finally, just have fun! Conventions are playgrounds for all things geeky. Don’t take them too seriously, enjoy yourself and time with friends and your first convention will go absolutely fine :)

If you have any first convention questions or worries, feel free to leave a comment below or tweet me @lady_scion and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

El Camino Bracelet Review

1:08 pm HelenLJohnson 0 Comments

 ca·mi·no - {noun} - way · route · bypath · road· path · track · trail
As someone who loves travelling, I am always attracted to anything that can be used as a documentation of wanderlust. So I was very excited when an advert popped up in my Facebook stream about a bracelet where I could wear all my travels on my wrist. The company, El Camino, is based in the UK and is the brainchild of two travellers who thought how cool would it be to sit around a campfire and compare travels? I can’t help but agree with my bracelet sparking conversation among both peers and strangers. It is certainly nice when having a bad day or struggling through work to look down and feel inspired about where I have been and dream about where I can go next.

So what are the bracelets? I will admit, I was surprised when it came through the post as I was expecting just a general braided cotton band. However, the cotton used is something I have never felt before! I can only describe it as a bonded flexible metal cotton; it is certainly very durable so will withstand constant wear and submersion in water. I bought the size that related to my wrist, however for new buyers I would recommend buying the next size up to provide a little wiggle room when compiling the bracelet with beads.

The beads are made from hand polished surgical grade stainless steel by a local metalsmith to the El Camino company. As with the bracelets, the beads are very durable but will age beautifully over the years. Each are engraved with either a country or what is described as a ‘small step’, for example New York, Paris or Ankor Wat. These are great for people who have been to a popular location, though don’t feel like they can say they have experienced the country as a whole. For example I bought a New York bead as there are many more places in the USA I want to visit before I can feel like I have experienced a chunk of America life. The small steps are a thinner bead than the traditional country steps, which add a nice visual dimension to a collection. You can also personalise a bead, something I am definitely doing when I get to San Diego Comic Con or Dragon Con some time in the future, as that would be a special trip for me. Each of the beads also come with coconut spacers which are not only a sustainable resource but add a nice rustic touch to the stainless steel country beads.

The final beads to discuss are the glass region beads. These again are handmade in the UK and each represent a continent or specific region in the world, such as the Caribbean. They are nicely weighty and inject a bit of colour, if that is what you want, into your bracelet. You can treat and read these anyway you like; my friend who I introduced El Camino to bought an Europe bead, as that is her home continent, and an Asia one because she feels as though she has covered most of Asia and is ready to concentrate on a different continent. I just have the Asia bead as although I have been there a few times, it is still the area that I want to travel to more and where I feel most at home. So for me, the region beads are more placeholders and inspiration for the country beads to follow. 


How you build up a bracelet is completely up to the individual. You could have one bracelet that was all your solo travel and have a new one once you get married and start with a honeymoon bead. Or if you travel as part of your job, you could mark all your achievements with a bead. You could start with your first destination after buying the bracelet or create a backlog of where you have been. I have started from my teenage years, as that was when I realised I wanted to travel as much as I could in the future. So although I have been to Australia, I was three years old so I won’t add that bead until I go back again. Oh what an excuse! ;) No matter what, each and every piece tells your own adventure story, so create it however you deem suitable.

I am very happy to have found El Camino, I have always loved the idea of Pandora bracelets, but as well as being expensive, they were never really to my taste. It is also sometimes difficult to pick up charms from countries for my traditional charm bracelet. El Camino therefore fits nicely into that little niche where it blends nicely into the bracelets I pick up along the way and is also something to look forward to when I get home. Admittedly, it can be expensive to start up with a bracelet and a few beads, I think I spent around £70 on my first order. However, the beads only work out as £8.99 for the country steps, £8.49 for a small step and £10.99 for a region step, so are much cheaper than traditional charms and make great affordable gifts for traveller friends. All the beads arrive in a sealed bag with a little tear nook so that they don’t get scratched in transit. The bracelets come in a cloth bag which is great for storage. All of these come in a bubble envelope with the cutest freebie ever, this little airplane paperclip! So handy for attaching landing cards to passports or just to brighten your desk!



So if you want to find out more about El Camino you can read their story here or take a look what is on offer here. You can also follow El Camino on Twitter and Instagram where there are some great pictures from fans and a very helpful team for any questions you may have. Also they have a competition to win a bracelet on their Facebook page at the moment :)

Mebon - Ankor Wat Cambodia (Image by Christiane Kempf)

This review has not been sponsored and is not an ad, I bought all the beads and bracelet myself. I was so impressed by the quality and reaction to the bracelet that I thought I would write a review.

Cosplay Sensei - Lemon Lali Cosplay

12:00 pm HelenLJohnson 0 Comments

It's actually two of my nicknames put together! Lemon comes from the initials of my full name LMN plus Lali is based on the Chinese translation of Laura, I sliced in China for a year in college so we were given Chinese names there! 








You are one of the most motivated cosplayers I see online, how do you keep that motivation up?

From Arks to Argh! - The History of Tomb Raider Fan Fiction

1:00 pm HelenLJohnson 0 Comments

Gameinformer.com

So another month of #20Croft comes to an end with April paying homage to all the fantastic Tomb Raider story weavers out there. I teamed up with Noelle, aka pfangirl, who wrote an excellent collab piece over on her blog on why Fan Fiction shouldn’t be considered the lower form of fan creation and how fan fiction is beneficial to writers. So you should certainly check that out if you haven’t read it yet.

This post has greater focus on how amateur writers has approached the Tomb Raider franchise over the years. When I say amateur, that doesn’t necessarily mean bad, it means creations that are borne from writing for writing's sake, that are not paid although may be picked up along the way and showcased. Of course there are plenty of fluff pieces floating around the internet, meeting your fan needs like you never knew you wanted them met. However there are also plenty of gems, that alongside their real-life counterparts, sometimes need a little digging to find.

So how did Tomb Raider fan fiction come about? It is hard to pinpoint, however writing about an existing franchise was nothing new, especially with the rise of easier to use forums, hosting and archiving websites in the mid to late 1990s. It was inevitable that someone, somewhere would publish a story about the globe trotting Lady Croft sooner rather than later. The earliest recorded story was by Robert Wheeler titled Lara Croft and the Lost Ark in 1997; inspired by the easter egg of the Ark of the Covenant within the mansion. The story took, as most of the early works did, a lot of inspiration from the Indiana Jones films with subtle references to the franchise and woven in with the gameplay from Tomb Raider to create the narrative. Many of these older stories can be found here on the Tomb Raider Archive. Most are short, one shot, adventure filled romps that rely on the artefact, or indeed artefacts, being the sole purpose for Lara’s motivations.

As we approached the new millennium, Tomb Raider as a franchise began to change. We saw the possibility that Lara Croft could be dead at the end of Last Revelations with Chronicles relying on flashbacks as a secret team worked on the first reboot, Lara Croft: Angel of Darkness. Within fan fiction, stories were no longer reliant to being hosted on individual or niche sites when fanfiction.net launched in 1998. As authors migrated their stories over, they became easier to find and create a community. Even to this day, Tomb Raider is a small to medium sized writing community, commanding 1.5k individual stories as of April 2016 compared to Devil May Cry at 5.5k, Mass Effect at 17.7k or Undertale which has only been out a few months amassing 3.5k. There are of course other sites, for Tomb Raider one of the most influential was the Croft Codex which is now sadly not in operation.

What we see developing past the year 2000, are the stories about Lara becoming longer and more detailed as the trend for novel length fan fiction stories grows greater than ever before. Core Design also acknowledged the work of these writers by hosting competitions on their forums and through official PR streams. In addition to her excellent work of gathering screenshots from the Tomb Raider franchise, Katie Fleming found great success in publicising her stories with Sweat, Strength, and Determination winning first prize in a 2003 competition by Core and The Search for Delphi being published as part of a not-for-profit comic, Tales of Lara Croft. Her stories were also publicised within the Tomb Raider Anniversary Ten Year Collectors Edition.

KatieFleming.com

Let’s backtrack a little to 2003, a very important year to the history of Tomb Raider fan fiction due to the introduction of one particular man; the ever elusive and brooding Kurtis Trent. Although deemed as an activity as ‘what not to do in a Tomb Raider game’, Angel of Darkness delivered a larger and more detailed story to the franchise. The game finished on a cliffhanger with many threads left hanging as to what happened both before and after the events of the game narrative. It provided a wealth of inspiration for writers to dig into, in particular the relationship between Lara and Kurtis. Until now, if a relationship appeared in a fan fiction, it was either as a friend, a colleague or if it was romantically, often an original character or Alex from the 2001 Tomb Raider movie. There were also the odd ones with questionable stories involving Werner around Ankor Wat, but let’s not get into that! Angel of Darkness provided a much needed injection of creativity into the Tomb Raider writing community, a trend that continues to this day with a solid fan base who use their stories to finish off the timeline and use the space available to speculate what could have been. Personally, this side is my favourite of the Tomb Raider fan fictions as the stories tend to sway a little darker and as an AoD fan, I’ll always be wondering what if?

As we approach the second reboot with Tomb Raider Legend, Anniversary and Underworld, Tomb Raider fan fiction moved with the games incorporating elements such as exploring Lara’s relationship with her mother or revisiting the artefact based narrative rather than human interaction based as had been the trend after Angel of Darkness. Kurtis Trent romance stories were still in their abundance, however the momentum had dropped significantly. I began writing in 2011/2012 after replaying Angel of Darkness and I remember the total number of stories being around the 800 mark.

Then the next important milestone hit in March of 2013. As the third reboot of the franchise was released, it expanded the fanbase and tagged along the fan fiction writers with it. Exploring the relationships between the Endurance crew, in particular Sam and Alex. Writers took it upon themselves to delve deeply into the what ifs of Lara and her relationships to other people. The notion of a survivor came through the writings and people found creativity through the naïvety Lara held in the reboot. Of course there was smut, there will always be smut and fluff! At the moment, it does seem to be mostly LaraxSam stories, and admittedly they are the most reviewed and followed at the moment, however these only account for around 18 percent of Tomb Raider stories on ff.net. A number I was actually quite surprised to work out as admittedly I thought it would be higher! As with everything when you dip your toe into the world of fan creations, you often need to invest the time to find what suits your style, or if all else fails you create your own.

So, what is the future for Tomb Raider fan fiction? I can’t honestly say because who would have predicted Sam and Lara back in 2005? Fan fiction moves with the franchise with certain elements that thread through the years. There will always be adventure stories involving Lara, stories that involve the manor and Winston. Likewise, there will always be LaraxKurtis and LaraxSam style fictions as these have proven to be popular with fans. What appears to be the situation is when the official narrative leaves plots holes, hints or ambiguity; this is where writers pick up the baton. For the readers, they are interested to understand what happens next and can be frustrated when official sources cannot clarify details. Is Lara gay or bisexual? Is Kurtis dead? What happened to the doppleganger? These all provide a platform for creativity within boundaries that push writers to explore existing narratives and expand upon them. I applaud everyone who has sat down and decided to write about my favourite fandom, you are a talented bunch and deserve more recognition and respect than you currently receive.

Do you have any thoughts about the history of Tomb Raider fan fiction? Have I missed anything out or if you simply have a must read you have found over the years; let me know in the comments below or tweet me @Lady_Scion.

Further Reading:
Fan Fiction on WikiRaider