rallamajoop | Manifest Cosplay Part 1: The Amaranth Ball

Leaving all those Japan posts for a bit to try and clear out some of my posting backlog. Time to share a bit of what we were doing in Melbourne last month, starting with the Amaranth Ball.

As I mentioned in my first Manifest post, the ball had a few organisational problems - namely that the restaurant they picked for it was only barely large enough to fit all the tables needed to seat all the guests, leaving practically no room for anyone to dance or take photos. The food was the variety that must be expensive because it came out arranged in small, artistic portions on large plates but didn't actually taste any better than what you'd get from a lot of cheaper places, and I could not make head or tail of what was going on when they were choosing the Bell and Beau of the ball, though that was probably in part because we were on the table furthest away from the stage. But there was excellent company and lots of people in pretty costumes to ooh and ah over, and I still had a great time.

My costume - which does need a little explaining - was an attempt at coming up with something Millia Rage from Guilty Gear might wear to a ball, loosely inspired by a scene in one of the drama CDs (but mostly

velithya's fault for catching me in a moment of weakness and egging me on). The challenge with this one was to try and put something together that would be recognisabe as her style despite there not being any official art for me to base it on. White with black trim and some blue stripes were obvious for colouration. There's not much description of the dress in the drama CDs beyond Millia saying it's a little hard to move in but not too bad, which had me picturing something with a long flowing skirt with a slit in the side (also pretty distinctly Millia, even if the slits in her regular skirt don't go very high). I wanted something high necked with open shoulders, since it's shown up in official Millia art of her in alternate costumes once or twice. I also wanted long black gloves, which are another feature you can take from Millia's regular costume without much modification, and would look good with a dress in that style. I knew from the start I'd want to go with the short-haired version of Millia without her magical hair extensions. It would be less recognisable, but the long hair really is something she doesn't pull out much outside of combat and it'd be much more comfortable to dance around in without having to worry what a horrible mess they're going to be by the end of the night (something

pinneagig knows only too well after so many years of Tifa cosplay). Finally, there's the blue headband, which is such a standard Millia feature that it obviously had to be included.

Fortunately for me, this was all still pretty generic, so I didn't have much trouble finding a commercial dress pattern I could use without modifying too much. Here's the final result:

I wasn't strictly counting on the diamond shaped opening over the chest or the fact the thing is completely backless when I picked out the pattern, but it came out so nicely I would not change a thing.

Attending with me was

velithya dressed as Sol. No fancy ball clothes for Sol though, because neither of us could really picture Sol bothering to dress up for the event. Regular Sol costume it was:

I’m not sure what Millia and Sol were meant to be doing at the same social event, but… actually, scratch that. I bet there was some high profile arsehole at that party with lots of rich enemies, one of whom paid the Assassin’s Guild to take him out, so Millia’s there just waiting for the right moment. But unknown to the Guild, one of their target’s other enemies has taken the less glamourous (and probably cheaper) route of putting a bounty on his head, which explains why Sol’s there. Now Sol and Millia are about to run into each other, realise they’re here after the same guy and are going to have to sort this out somehow without blowing each other’s cover.

Of course, as far as Sol’s concerned, ‘cover’ means the dust cloud he’s going to make when he comes crashing in through one of the walls.

Yeah, this evening’s not going to end well.

I have less explanation for why we took so many vaguely shippy Sol/Millia shots during the evening, except that it was so much fun doing it.

Also attending with us was my sister

pinneagig, who made herself a version of the dress Tifa wears for the Wallmarket sequence of FFVII for the occasion.

There was also a whole huge table of others we were sitting with, hailing from several different states. Sadly, we didn't get the chance to pin many other people down for photos during the evening, but Eugene has a pretty good assortment of pics up here from the rest of the ball.

Naturally, since we were at a restaurant with a bar, we had to take some photos of Sol at the bar.

Likewise, since we had a Tifa with us (and the staff were nice enough to let us) we had to take some pics of Tifa bartending.

Which could only lead to one logical conclusion.

The other thing that comes up when you’re dressed as a blonde in white and blue and hanging out with a Sol cosplayer and both of your are diehard Sol/Ky fans is that if we just lose that distinctive Millia headband and add a gold cross on a chain, that costume could just as well double as something else….

(I can just imagine how that conversation went:
Ky: Sol, I… I got turned into a girl!
Sol: So? What’s the difference?
Ky: Damn it Sol, this is serious!
Sol: I’m serious. Strap down that chest, put on your regular uniform and go to work tomorrow. No-one’s gonna be able to tell a thing.)

You can guess what that meant: more shippy pictures!

There were also cross-shaped earrings to go with this version, sadly too small to show up in any of the photos. One of these went missing towards the end of the evening, only to lead to general LOLs when it turned up again much later stuck down

velithya’s pants.

Yeaaah, can’t imagine what we could possibly have been doing that could have lead to that happening. >.>

*cough*

Finally, I had to include this one we took with a random other guest just because it amused us so much. Spot the invisible ninja!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

yiji-chan.livejournal.com

8D

Your dress was so preeeeetty! x3 *many huggles of love*

Also, the little silver-lit tree in the background of your photo? That's where I got popped the question. ^///////^ <3

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Manifest Cosplay Part 1: The Amaranth Ball

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