I have the utmost respect for cosplayers and cosplay queens, but I myself am not one. Cosplayers, for the uninitiated, are people who dress as a character from a movie, book, or video game. These artists use painstaking detail in their recreations of outfits and wigs, and I’ve witnessed some that included tentacles, working wings that would pop out, satyr goat legs, a fully working back half of a centaur, and tons more. Cosplayers are some of the most incredibly talented artists around.
As a drag artist who can lean into the more bizarre or inhuman side of drag, some people might mistake me for a cosplayer. After all, most mainstream drag doesn’t include people with bright red or blue skin tones or wearing elf ears or such. However, as I am not trying to make accurate recreations of any character that already exists, this would be an incorrect label for me. Furthermore, drag is performance art. While plenty of drag artists focus on their looks or online presence or don’t perform live much, they are still not cosplayers. A drag queen is not required to perform, although the majority do.
So in accordance to all that I’ve laid out above, we can come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, not a cosplayer (although I wish I had so many of their incredible construction skills). However, this doesn’t bar me, as a drag artist (or any drag artist) from creating cosplays or cosplay-esque looks. For me, my more fantasy character looks lean toward cosplay, and I’ve even created looks inspired by characters who exist in the Critical Role world of Exandria.
See, aside from drag, I adore playing Dungeons&Dragons, also known as D&D. I also love live-play D&D shows, particularly Critical Role, a Twitch-streamed D&D series of eight (now nine!) voice actors playing large campaigns of D&D over several years. They’ve grown from a single home game to three full-length campaigns, hundreds of thousands of hours of content, millions of fans around the world, several canonical books detailing the world Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer created, and now an animated series on Amazon Prime. They’re kind of a big deal. And I’m kind of obsessed with them and with D&D as a whole!
So this week’s look was inspired by Opal, the Twice-Crowned from their Exandria Unlimited series, created and played by Aimee Carrero. While it’s not a totally accurate recreation of how Opal appeared in the campaign, it’s my version of her character. And one of my most popular looks, surprisingly enough!
Makeup and I have a very strange relationship. I’ve gone through phases of wearing a full face, wearing no makeup, nothing but red eyeshadow, winged eyeliner, funky colorful eyeliner… you get the gist. I started experimenting with drag makeup two years ago, and back then everything on my face mainly came from drug stores. And to be totally fair, most of what I use two years into my drag career still comes from CVS and Target, since a lot of it is cheap and totally works! So I’m gonna break down the makeup I use on the regular for my drag, and my favorite brands to buy from!
The look I’m using utilizes most of the makeup I use and pretty much all of my favorite brands! As seen above, it’s a green medley artistry look with funky eyeliner shapes, glitter and sparkles, and my distinct black lip and lack of brows.
Like most drag queens, I use Elmer’s disappearing glue sticks to glue down my eyebrows. Surprisngly, those kindergarten glue sticks are still the best for glueing brows! I use elf Hydrating Face Primer and cover my brows with The Crayon Case concealer in the lightest shade, as well as my foundation in Wet n Wild photofocus Stick Foundation and Krylon Paint Stick in “TV White”, a staple of many drag queens. My eyeliner is NYX’s Epic Wear eyeliner, and I use Kim Chi Chic Beauty’s The Most Conealer in shade “White” to create my eye crease. And then the fun stuff:
The greens and yellows here are part of the Mango Tango and Virgin Mojito palettes from Kim Chi Chic Beauty. The glitter on my lips and nose is from Midas Cosmetics in shades “Soul” and “Mermaid”. All the eyeliner detailing is either NYX or Glisten Cosmetics, and the black facepaint on my neck is from the Amythest Painting Palette. My go-to black lip is a mixture of NYX Epic Ink eyeliner and Sephora black liquid lipstick.
Besides my drug store basics, I try to mostly shop from queer-owned, black-owned, or other small businesses for most of my makeup. The Crayon Case is an amazing black-owned beauty brand themed around school supplies, Midas Cosmetics is a afro-latina-owned indie brand that offers cruelty-free and vegan glitters and eyeshadows, and Beauty Bakerie (which I didn’t use for this look) is a black-owned makeup brand themed around, you guessed it, a bakery! My current go-to brand is Kim Chi Chic Cosmetics, created and owned by Kim Chi, an Asian drag queen who’s makeup artistry is To Die For! Her brand has adorable themeing with teddy bear palettes, drink-themed eyeshadow palettes, adorable heart-shaped blushes and highlights… literally the cutest brand. So if you’ve learned anything from this article, it’s that Pinball is Obsessed with KCC Beauty and that cheap makeup doesn’t have to be bad makeup!!
The terrain on the twilit 1c is treacherous, mountainous and perpetually blanketed in ice and snow near the surface– and bubbling with molten rock seeping through cracks in the dark valleys below. Several research stations are established across the planet; this one in particular focuses on ice core drilling and magnetometry.
In light of our resounding victory against That Team Down South, your local band geek would be remiss not to write about The Game from the perspective of the Michigan Marching Band.
I’m just going to preface this with a simple yet eloquent statement: WE CRUSHED THEM, BABY!!!!!! YEEHAAAAAAWWWW!!!!!! ONLY ONE FOOTBALL TEAM IS GOING TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP, AND IT’S NOT THAT TEAM DOWN SOUTH! (As you can see, I’m still basking in the glory that comes from defeating Public Enemy #1.)
5:00 am. Yes, really–we arose at 5 am in the shadow of the waning night to get fired up for the day we had all been waiting for. Bundled up in multiple layers with our garment bags in tow,
I forgot where I obtained this from, but I am 99.99999% confident the image is public domain.
we traversed the distance from our dwellings to the sanctified building known as Revelli Hall. For all the hype that coiled through the frigid atmosphere, the uncertainty of what lay ahead–namely, the expectation that we were going to lose–crouched in the backs of our minds for the most part.
We all wanted to win, of course. But being a Michigan fan, as we all know, means preparing for the worst during The Game. Were we going to be subjected to abysmal ref calls? Succumb to a walloping by That Team Down South (TTDS) for the ninth game in a row? Or were we finally going to show TTDS who was boss?
Pregame. In all my time as a marching band member (so basically just this season), I have never heard the fans be so loud. This was easily the rowdiest the student section has ever been. And when the band took the field doing entries? Utter chaos.
It was cheering for the most part, though there were spurts of intense booing that were audible with and without foam earplugs.
Truly, it was magical.
The First Half. Cold. Cold. Cooooooooooooooold. Where I’m from, temperatures do not dip this low for such extended periods during which we must be outside. Compared to the eager snow and vengeful wind, the sweater weather that dominated October was a tropical paradise. Lukewarm handwarmers, semi-numb fingertips, and–hang on a second–
WE GOT THE FIRST TOUCHDOWN OF THE GAME.
The rest of the first half unfolded as a true nail-biter (or glove-biter, if you were fortunate enough to have gloves). The holy band beanies were indeed a saving grace against the winter weather (it’s still fall, right? RIGHT!?!?!?!?!?!?)…until the time came for the halftime performance.
Source: @umichband via Twitter
Halftime. Arguably the most crucial part of The Game other than the victory, the halftime performance provided heat where the weather did not. The dusting of snow revealed the tracks of marchers as we went through our drill, our breaths almost as visible as the bull’s ferocious puff at the end of the first song.
By the very end, my fingers were numb and I was in physical pain, but retrospectively it was awesome. And playing El Toro Caliente evidently worked, because the weather was less miserable during the third quarter.
The Second Half: Where it All Went Down. With each touchdown, each stands cheer, the tenuous hope we’d clung to throughout the first half gradually solidified. Was this really happening? Were we finally going to dominate TTDS?
I didn’t let my excitement carry me away until the fourth quarter. When the score was 28-20, I knew The Game could easily be tied with a TD and a two-point conversion, which has been a sore sport for the Wolverines this season (read: we’ve missed it every time, and the other teams seemingly snuck past our defense to score. Yes, I’m looking at you, Sparty).
Then, in the fourth quarter, it happened: the cymbal rank leader called Cheer 8.
The drumline calls a series of cheers throughout the game, each in a different context. Drum cheers are similar to stand tunes other than the fact that only the drumline plays. Cheer 8 is reserved for moments when we are definitively beating the other team and involves a dance that includes the whip, so its being called was a watershed. All of a sudden, the possibility of victory felt real.
When Haskins scored the sixth touchdown, we knew. The final minutes were those of surreal anticipation and chaotic thrills as the seconds ticked toward zero–
And then the football team rushed the field.
Source: @umichband via Twitter.
Triumph. Elation. Screaming brazenly as our lord and savior Carl Grapentine announced the final score to thousands of victorious Michigan fans. A fervent rendition of “The Victors” exploding from our instruments as fans began to storm the field. I sensed going into the season that the field would be stormed if we won The Game, but it was a mere fantasy, a wishful hope the dream of smashing TTDS would finally come true.
As my overjoyed hollering joined the ecstatic roars of thousands, the cold evaporated into a storm of maize and blue.
Aftermath. …for about ten minutes. Then, we had to wait for quite literally thousands of fans to clear the field. (Also, it was snowing again.) The field, when we did finally set foot onto it, was littered with detritus: primarily maize pom-poms, although I did spot a shot-sized bottle of Fireball whiskey.
The MMB celebrates wins by wearing our shakos backwards from the conclusion of our postgame performance to the moment we enter Revelli after cadencing there. Flipping around my shako as I had done for all the home games this season felt differently than before. It felt magical, incredible, fantastic. It also felt unstable because my chinstrap was not adjusted accordingly, and I was too dang cold to bother adjusting it. Perched as it was atop my beanie (with help from my hand holding it in place), my backwards shako bore the victory as I marched along the pavement with a giddy smile stretched across my face.
Although the regular season is over, the band/football season and this blog are far from finished! Tune in next week for more band-related hubbub.
An excerpt from The Pharos Stands Tall: A Testament to Survival, by Johann Brahe:
The tallest and one of the oldest structures of Station 1, the Pharos’ light can be seen from hundreds of miles away, guiding the way for colonists. The name itself came from the eponymous Pharos, the Lighthouse of Alexandria (of Earth’s Ancient Greek fame), which was the first such beacon and a symbol of a city at the crossroads of the ancient Greco-Roman world.
The Pharos was constructed out of recycled parts of the first colony ship, the ISS Qilin, intended as a navigation tool in the early days of settlement. Nowadays, the light of the Pharos is mostly symbolic, an enduring testament to the perseverance of early settlers and an icon of the early colonial era. Even as beacons have become obsolete, many travelers still bring toy replicas as good luck charms on their journey.
