We’re spotlighting talent in the cosplay community!
Every month, The Variant showcases cosplayers who display talent, creativity, and a positive voice within the cosplay community.

Happy New Year!!! Welcome to 2024!!!
The Future is NOW!!! 
It’s a brand new year and we’ve brought you a brand new Cosplay Spotlight!!! 
You may remember seeing monstrousfeminine featured in our October 2022 Spotlight and for our eagle-eyed viewers
you’ll have seen her in literally dozens of our convention photo booth pics since as far back as 2018. 
Her work is stunning and we definitely felt she deserved an entire month all to herself!!!
Here’s what she had to say:

“I started cosplaying when I was pretty young, probably around 13, when it first started getting mainstream, just doing basic stuff with the materials and pieces I could gather. My first cosplay was actually Poison Ivy from Batman. It wasn’t until 2020, when lockdown and stuff happened, and 2021 when I moved out and started living alone, that I really started developing my creative voice and my skills and learning what I liked and what I didn’t like. I’ve lost interest in a lot of superhero stuff, and I don’t watch anime or really play video games, so for the longest time I struggled trying to find cosplayable characters, characters other people would recognize.

That didn’t last long, and I eventually was like, whatever, I’ll just do the characters I like, from the media I like, even if it’s not particularly popular or recent. When I’m called to a character, I just do it. I’m usually drawn to villains, they’re just always more interesting and more fashionable than heroes, and I also think it’s really fun to take a male character and hyper-feminize them, play on gender stereotypes a little bit. I get inspiration from a lot of different places. I got the idea for Rococo Springtrap when I read that, after the French revolution, aristocrats who escaped the guillotine would wear a red ribbon around their throats to symbolize escaping death, and the idea just popped into my head. 

I always love clothing with symbolism and costumes that tell a story. I want every costume I make to accurately represent the vibe of the character, and I like exploring different styles and aesthetics. I’m also inspired by fashion dolls, like Monster High and Barbie and Bratz. Like, if there was a really fancy collector’s edition fashion doll of Baron Zemo or Harry Osborn, I like to think they’d look like what I made. I also enjoy playing on character archetypes and the clothing pieces associated with certain types of characters. 

For comic Zemo, I wanted her to be very mod 60’s sci-fi bad girl; the type of sexy female villain you’d see on Star Trek or Buck Rogers, and obviously the Fem-Bots from Austin Powers. That type of character has always been what I’ve kind of modeled myself after, those really fierce, dominatrix type old-school female villains. Characters who are feminine and very glamorous but not soft or fragile. I like things that are very campy and stylized, or conceptual in some way. I’ve gotten more into cosplaying horror media because I think horror really lends itself to that. Another thing I love is when really grotesque or frightening things are made into something pretty. I think my most popular costume has been my Outlast: Whistleblower wedding dress, and the whole story of that dress is that it’s a guy who’s been castrated and turned into a
serial killer’s bride, but people love it because it’s pretty and sparkly, which is the point, obviously. 

I’ve often told myself I’ll step back from cosplay once I complete all my current ideas. The problem is, it seems like I get a new idea every day, and I’ll spend months on one costume, so maybe I’ll be able to stop cosplaying by the time I’m 50. I have a feeling that won’t happen, though.”

 This month we are incredibly proud to present monstrousfeminine in her incredible stylized versions of 
Baron Zemo (comic style), Rococo Springtrap & Baron Zemo (MCU style) all shot by our amazing Photography Director, Tomisina Lynn. 
Also HUGE shout-out to Lil Robert’s Place for allowing us to shoot in their venue as well as a throwback to our
guerilla photog days at Lee’s Laundromat both in beautiful downtown Concord, NC.  

WAIT!!…why are you still reading this??
GO CHECK OUT THE PICS!!!!