Cosplay Feature: Finding healing through cosplay

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — With FanX around the corner, many cosplayers are adding the finishing touches to their cosplays — and some are preparing to join in on the convention’s competition.

Ahead of the convention, ABC4.com spoke with three cosplayers about their previous competition experiences and what inspires them.

FanX will be held Sept. 26 – 28 this year, with the competition Saturday night. Tickets are still available online.

In the weeks leading up to FanX, ABC4.com will be bringing you additional stories exploring local cosplay.

Cosplay has a ‘glorious purpose’

Jessie, also known as Glorious Purpose Characters & Cosplay, entered her first cosplay competition with the character “Sylvie” from the Disney+ “Loki” series last year. In addition to “Sylvie,” she also cosplays other Marvel characters, including Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel, princesses, and pop sensation Taylor Swift.

She shared that her favorite part about cosplay is the charity work she’s been able to be a part of, saying she loves how cosplay can be used to help others and bring people together.

Jessie’s story started around 10 years ago when, shortly after graduating high school, she became involved in the world of princess parties through a local company.

“The first time I tried the costume on, I was like, ‘Oh, I like this. This is fun’…I did parties for a little bit, and then I really fell in love with the nonprofit sides of things.”

Jessie worked to start her own character company with more of a focus on charity, her grandparents helping her purchase dresses for her characters.

“They were the ones that bought me the dresses and wrote me the first check, which to this day, it makes those costumes even more special to me. My grandpa especially, he’s passed on now, so it feels like I carry a little bit of him with me through those original costumes,” she said.

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Jessie also worked in the Disney College Program for a semester as a character attendant, where she said she learned about new aspects of costuming.

“It really helped me learn how to be a better performer, but it also just taught me a lot of really cool costuming things that I would have never known,” she said.

When she came back from her internship, Jessie continued to work as a princess for a time before returning to Disney in a more professional capacity.

“There was kind of a trajectory to continue down there working for Walt Disney Imagineering and that was my childhood dream job,” she said.

Jessie also joined the Rebel Legion, cosplaying Star Wars characters for local events while she was there. In 2020, she said the world was flipped on its head. She lost her job due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved back to Utah, and started teaching theater at a residential treatment center in Cedar City.

“I found myself in the middle of a pandemic, in this small town that I didn’t know anybody in, didn’t grow up in, and I just was working in this totally new industry. I was recovering from a great deal of grief at the time. Obviously, there was the loss of the dream job…But I also lost two of my relatives who are very dear to me…I was also going through a really bad breakup. So I found myself processing a lot of grief,” she said.

Following the pandemic, Jessie returned to cosplay, saying it’s something that always brought her joy and it gave her comfort during a difficult time.

Upon getting her cosplays back out, Jessie joined local cosplay charity groups like the Legacy Initiative and Heroic, and transferred her Rebel Legion membership from Florida to Utah.

“I really love the nonprofit side of this,” she said. “That’s really the whole reason I do it. Obviously, it’s fun to dress up and embody these characters, but I really think that — especially for me — having had my Disney experience and being around these families, that frankly, were wealthy enough to be able to go to Disney and have those experiences, I thought ‘What about the families that can’t do that?'” she said.

When it comes to princesses, she said Princess Anna from “Frozen” is her favorite. She said she is drawn to her due to her compassion towards others and appreciates how the character has taught her to be more outgoing.

“Doing this has really given me the ability to step out of myself and love people in a really special and beautiful way that I don’t take for granted and is something that I count as a privilege every time I get the opportunity,” she said.

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Jessie explained it’s also special to be able to find characters, such as Sylvie, that she feels a strong connection with to be able to cosplay.

“That’s the magic of cosplay for me. It’s been therapeutic for me in that sense of finding these characters, both Anna and Sylvie, in very different ways. Those characters really found me at a time in my life when I needed them. The way that watching their stories and being able to identify with certain parts of their journey helps me process my own life and process my own trauma and find the direction for that next season of my life, that’s why I love it,” she said.

Connecting with Marvel’s shows

While Jessie was dealing with feelings of isolation and so much change, Marvel started releasing a series of shows on Disney Plus.

Jessie said “WandaVision” got her attention in the ways it deals with grief, connecting with it after losing her grandfather and uncle within a short amount of time.

After loving “WandaVision,” Jessie tuned into the “Loki” series, and felt a strong connection.

“I wanted to just keep up with the Marvel shows and that show kind of rocked my world…You’ve got this character that is basically plucked from his life, plucked from what he thought his path was going to be, and he’s plopped down in this new world where he’s alone, he doesn’t know anybody, and he’s faced with the consequences of what he’s done and the choices he’s made and things that have happened to him,” she said.

Jessie said after losing her job in the pandemic, she felt like she was plopped into a very different variant timeline. She said she felt like a variant of herself who was not living the life that she was supposed to. Jessie described how she connected with “Loki” on finding oneself on a new path and finding self-love and self-acceptance.

“That for me was really powerful because at the time losing my Disney job felt very personal, even though it wasn’t — it was a pandemic. None of us had any control over that. But I felt like I had failed and I felt like I wasn’t enough. I felt like I couldn’t measure up to what I wanted to be like…I sacrificed a lot to go down to Florida and I missed out on years with my family, years with my grandfather that I’ll never get back,” she said.

She said there were several lines in the show that stood out to her that Loki tells the variants of himself, such as “We may lose, sometimes painfully, but we don’t die. We survive,” and “I think we’re stronger than we realize.”

“On those days when the grief just felt really hard, I was reminding myself that I am stronger than I realize. This was all kind of brewing in my head in the summer of 2021. At the time, I just knew… it was [the show] resonating. I just kept watching it on repeat,” she said. “…I remember it was ten o’ clock on a Saturday night, and I was just watching the show, sitting on the couch, and I was looking at Sylvie’s costume and thought, ‘I could make that.'”

Jessie went on Etsy and found a pattern for Sylvie’s chest plate, inspiring her to head to Walmart in Cedar City. Although she said it didn’t have many options, she grabbed what she could and spent the night putting together the first version of her Sylvie cosplay with dark alligator print leather.

“I started just, you know, gradually acquiring pieces…and it became an escape for me. It became something where it really helped grow my self-esteem, too, because it showed me…I am creative. I can do this,” she said. “Honestly, that was my first time doing something really creative for me after losing Disney, which was really healing and powerful, and so eventually I went back and remade the template and I sewed it.”

In 2022, Jessie went to FanX without her cosplay just to attend her first convention and see what that experience was like.

“Then I fell in love with it. The following year, I was like, ‘I’ve got Sylvie. Why not enter her and see what happens?'” she said.

Constructing Sylvie

Jessie shared that the biggest pieces she worked on for the cosplay were the chest plate and cloak. For the chest plate, she updated her prototype to a new version made with leather that she worked to paint and match Sylvie’s dark green chest plate. She said without many reference photos of the back of the character’s garment, it was a challenge to put together and figure out how to get it right, but she was happy to see when it all came together.

“The biggest thing I enjoyed about sewing that particular piece was just the level of storytelling that’s in that one costume piece,” she said.

Jessie explained she watched many interviews with Christine Wada, the costume designer for “Loki,” and that it was inspiring to see the amount of storytelling that went into the show’s looks.

“There are a lot of notes from Loki’s original armor from the ‘Avengers,’ and from the original ‘Thor’ with the way that the armor laces together and then that gold collar,” Jessie said. “But then, there are also a lot of little details, like Sylvie’s has studs on the sides and is designed to be feminine, but also something she wanted to look armored in a way that looked like she had been collecting pieces throughout her time bouncing around apocalypses. My degree is in theatrical design, so anytime where I can really dig deep into the character or story makes me really happy.”

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Jessie competed in FanX last year with Sylvie, in the Novice category, sharing that one of her favorite parts was getting to meet other cosplayers in line and learn more about their process.

“I was sandwiched in the lineup between two Mandalorians and I’m a big Star Wars fan, so seeing that gorgeous armor up close…it was just cool,” she said. “I really loved that. And everyone, the fellow cosplayers, were all very supportive of each other and that was incredible seeing that camaraderie. We’re all creative individuals and it takes a level of vulnerability and putting yourself out there to go do something like that, so to have that support between each other was really cool, particularly at the novice level.”

She also loved the experience of getting to perform onstage as a character who means so much to her, incorporating iconic moments fans of Loki, Sylvie, and Taylor Swift would recognize.

“I think one of my favorite things about the community here is the fact that we create a space where we can all share these special, weird little interests of ours…I think there’s something really special — that bonding and unifying that you find within the nerd community. I would just want to say thank you to everyone for being so welcoming and inclusive of me,” she said.

At this year’s FanX, Jessie plans on wearing Scarlet Witch, Sylvie, and Taylor Swift to the convention. Going forward, Jessie shared that much of her cosplay focus will be on continuing to attend nonprofit events. Jessie explained she’s had many beautiful moments with the families she’s worked with, and seeing how much cosplay can bring smiles to others who may be going through hardships is her favorite aspect of it.

“The most worthwhile use of my time in all facets of this has been being able to bring joy to children and families,” she said.

Learn more about Glorious Purpose Characters & Cosplay on Instagram and her website.

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