This week Billy asks: If you were to dress up as a literary figure {author or character} for Halloween, who would it be?
This question poses something of a conundrum for me, as several of the roles I would want to dress up as are ones for which I simply no longer have the figure to pull off. For example, I would love to cosplay Éomer or Faramir, but I'm not really quite dashing enough to realistically portray either of them any more. This problem is further compounded by the fact that unless someone was very familiar with the source material, any costume emulating them would kind of look like a generic knight, which would result in the dress up losing its intended effect. I could possibly pose as an older character - the older Ged from The Farthest Shore, for example - but given that he's pretty much just an old wizard that would probably come off as kind of generic as well.
The kind of generic nature of most of the potential costumes is a persistent problem, mostly because many of the characters that I would want to dress up as are kind of nondescript. For example, I love Andre Norton's books, so a protagonist from one of those might be an option, but most of them are guys like Murdoc Jern or ordinary looking people dressed in pretty ordinary clothes. I suppose I could paint myself green and carry a sword like Naill Renfro from Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus, or possibly dress like the alien wolf-like creature krip Vorland is transformed into in Moon of 3 Rings, but those references seem like they will be lost on most people. The same holds true for characters from Ursula K. le Guin's stories - I doubt anyone would recognize a costume intended to be Shevek or Genly Ai.
I suppose that I could dress up as Paul Atredies - a stillsuit costume would be pretty distinctive, although getting the blue on blue eyes might be difficult. Dressing up as Leto II Atredies would probably be more dramatic (and distinctive), but I don't know where one would get a giant sandworm costume.
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I suspect the kind of costumes that would be distinctive enough to be recognised would be from films or TV. The stillsuit might be worth considering, and if you were willing to spend a bit you could do blue on blue contact lenses - these things are created for actors all the time.
ReplyDelete@Sue Bursztynski: The contact lenses might work, and I have worn contact lenses in the past, but my understanding is that the ones that provide full eye coverage (like the ones worn by andreas Katsulas to play G'Kar on Babylon 5) are quite uncomfortable and difficult to wear.
DeleteWow! You came with several great costume ideas.
ReplyDelete@Billy B: I think I will try to come up with an Andre Norton based costume one of these days. This year I dressed as "old Luke Skywalker" so I could match my daughter who dressed as Rey.
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