Joining the Corps: In My Blackest Night
This began with an idea for a Halloween costume, but it turned into much more. I love dressing up in costumes, and this year I felt like getting started early and doing something other than my usual "magical fat lady in a long magical robe." I own multiple plus-size "witch" or "sorceress" or "vampire countess" costumes with slightly different accent colors, accessories, levels of shininess, and styles of ridiculous inconvenient sleeves. I haven't done a proper cosplay in years. This year, I wanted to change. This year, I wanted to do a Lantern Corps costume.
I absolutely love the Green Lantern Corps in theory. To state it another way, I love the idea of the Green Lantern Corps: protectors of huge expanses of galactic space, chosen from among all the sapient beings in the universe because of their courage and strength of will, endowed with rings made by technology-indistinguishable-from-magic that give them powers limited only by the wearer's imagination. To a Green Lantern, the body's limitations are nothing; it really is what's on the inside that counts. The scope, the storytelling potential, the open space for adventure and discovery are just about as grand as you can get. And it doesn't hurt that the ultimate item of power is as far from phallic as you can get. In recent years, the mythos has expanded to include other color-coded ring-wearing organizations, such as the Red Lanterns (selected for and fueled by anger), Blue Lanterns (powered by and inspiring hope), and Indigo Lanterns (compassion). This has had some moments of brilliance . . . and many more moments of um, well, the opposite.
I have issues with the Green Lantern Corps in practice. I have even more issues with the other Lantern Corps, including the ones that I find even more fascinating and inspiring than the original GLC. The potential is endless, and some of the people who have been fortunate enough to get paid to write stories in this universe have hit the ball out of the park at certain points. But when writers fail in this franchise, they fail very badly, and when they bring on the Unfortunate Implications, those implications tend to be unfortunate on a cosmic scale.
All of this leads me to my cosplay plans: I've made up my mind to do a Lantern Corps costume. I'm putting a lot of thought into what direction I want to go with it. I'm also having a lot of feelings about it-- a lot more feelings than I expected. I might come out of this with not only a new costume but also a dozen new OCs, a new planet or two, and a whole lot of mental work put into my philosophy of how beings of goodwill should be doing SF/F and real life.
This entry was originally posted at http://gryphonsegg.dreamwidth.org/34370.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I absolutely love the Green Lantern Corps in theory. To state it another way, I love the idea of the Green Lantern Corps: protectors of huge expanses of galactic space, chosen from among all the sapient beings in the universe because of their courage and strength of will, endowed with rings made by technology-indistinguishable-from-magic that give them powers limited only by the wearer's imagination. To a Green Lantern, the body's limitations are nothing; it really is what's on the inside that counts. The scope, the storytelling potential, the open space for adventure and discovery are just about as grand as you can get. And it doesn't hurt that the ultimate item of power is as far from phallic as you can get. In recent years, the mythos has expanded to include other color-coded ring-wearing organizations, such as the Red Lanterns (selected for and fueled by anger), Blue Lanterns (powered by and inspiring hope), and Indigo Lanterns (compassion). This has had some moments of brilliance . . . and many more moments of um, well, the opposite.
I have issues with the Green Lantern Corps in practice. I have even more issues with the other Lantern Corps, including the ones that I find even more fascinating and inspiring than the original GLC. The potential is endless, and some of the people who have been fortunate enough to get paid to write stories in this universe have hit the ball out of the park at certain points. But when writers fail in this franchise, they fail very badly, and when they bring on the Unfortunate Implications, those implications tend to be unfortunate on a cosmic scale.
All of this leads me to my cosplay plans: I've made up my mind to do a Lantern Corps costume. I'm putting a lot of thought into what direction I want to go with it. I'm also having a lot of feelings about it-- a lot more feelings than I expected. I might come out of this with not only a new costume but also a dozen new OCs, a new planet or two, and a whole lot of mental work put into my philosophy of how beings of goodwill should be doing SF/F and real life.
This entry was originally posted at http://gryphonsegg.dreamwidth.org/34370.html. Please comment there using OpenID.