Seniors Ally Taylor and Anya Vail share a unique hobby: cosplaying. They dress up as Homestuck characters and travel to conventions to spread their love for their favorite characters.

Q: To you, what is cosplaying?

ALLY: To me, cosplay is dressing up as a character from a show, a video game, a movie.

ANYA: Yeah, cosplay comes from ‘costume play.’ I researched for it. Costumes can be any sort of thing and then cosplay is a specific character. And then sometimes, after you dress up you can act as that character, but some people choose not to.

Q: When did you two start cosplaying?

ANYA: Well I’ve been dressing up as characters since I was young, but I didn’t make my own costumes until about middle school. I went on and off.

ALLY: I started cosplaying maybe around sixth grade. It wasn’t very good. It was all costume stuff that I threw up and said, “Hey look, I’m a character!” But I stopped doing cosplaying for a few years and just started up again this year.

Q: What are the challenges?

The two looked at each other and smiled.

ALLY: Money!

ANYA: Money, money, money!

Q: What’s the best part of cosplaying?

ALLY: Crafting and meeting people!

ANYA: I love making the costume, and meeting people is a great opportunity.

ALLY: You find people that are either in the same cosplay as you or…

ANYA: They start fangirling over your costume or fanboying!

ALLY: Like, “Oh my gosh! Your cape is beautiful,” or, “Oh my gosh! You actually sewed that yourself?” It’s the thrill of seeing the craftsmanship in everyone’s and your own [costumes].

Q: What’s the best cosplay you’ve ever made or done?

ALLY: I have two that I’ve done pretty well, but I think my favorite one would probably be my fox cosplay. There [are] plenty of anime fox girls around, so I did my own take on that. I sewed my own fox ears.

ANYA: So, it’s more of a costume cosplay?

ALLY: Yeah. If it was a cosplay cosplay, then it would have to be my Terezi Pyrope cosplay. That is from Homestuck. Homestuck is a webcomic that’s very… interesting for sure.

ANYA: It involves lots of time shenanigans. We probably shouldn’t explain that right now…

ANYA: I’m really proud of my Jane from Homestuck. [Also my]  Tavros and Dirk costumes because I relate to the characters a lot. But those costumes aren’t really finished yet.

ALLY: Again, from Homestuck.

Q: Could you explain how you got into Homestuck?

The two girls both giggled.

ALLY: I knew about it from earlier (motions to Anya), but then my friends started sending me really cute fanart, and I really fell in love with them. I’ve tried reading it before but I never really got into it. I pushed my way through until I got later into the actual comic and I fell in love with some of the characters.

ANYA: That’s how I got into it; I fell in love with the characters.

ALLY: Yeah, and how relatable they can be … even if people don’t really see that at first … when you really think about it, you do connect with a lot more characters than they actually act. We pick our characters based on who we could connect the best with.