started: Spring 2023 | con debut: Sakura-Con 2023 | last worn: Sakura-Con 2024
Several other Genshin characters had stories which inspired me to some degree stylistically or creatively, including Zhongli's initiation of my second cosplay era. By the time I reached The Doctor, I had consumed many hours of this video game's story, many more of an aimless wandering noncompletionist gameplay. The Winter Night's Lazzo trailer is a musical masterpiece more than a teaser trailer, and it has some wonderfully evocative lines: "Only then did the hall join the sky in infinite silence" and "Let every worthy sacrifice be carved in ice, and with this nation endure for all time" and "Rosalyne, I promise you... Your final resting place will be the entirety of the 'Old World'."
As a big fan of grandiose posturing about the heresy and defiance of gods and nature (in other words, a Romantic), I enjoy the Fatui's Miltonian scope. Their lazzo is evidently the archdemonic conference which precipitates the Fall. Pierro's lines have an Ozymandian grandiosity (the 'lone and level sands' here transmuted to the tomb of ice), and if Pierro evokes Percy Shelley, Dottore more obviously brings Mary to mind, given his "little experiment in blasphemy," his Promethean monster mentioned in absentia.
And not merely Victor Frankenstein, we find! The Doctor, appropriately (un)named, is every mad scientist at once! His great work, up to this point (prior to the events of the main narrative), is to have created his "segments," an absolutely fantastic bit of science fiction wherein he captures his consciousness at different ages and embodies them as separate beings. He calls them, rhapsodically, "the eyes I have placed in the dimension of time." (Really good prose is few and far between in this game; but it's unusually likely to be Fatui dialogue.) A self-experimenter like Dr. Jekyll, a showman on the order of Dr. Caligari, a little bit Herbert West, or Faust.
Beautifully, he also acts as a scientific Iago to the queen of ice; cares little for her goals, and only for the advance of knowledge. He is (in his main story iteration -- more on that caveat later) carefully courteous though cold, indifferent. Tighnari remarks that he has no respect for others.
The fun thing about this conceit is that the writers need not commit to one particular interpretation of the trope, either; in his manga appearance he is not cold, calculating, and courteous, but mercurial, vindictive, unhinged, a barely contained fierce demiurgical fury. Red eyes and a manic grin flash beneath a half mask. I would love, at some point, to design both cosplays, to make the high-collared lab coat thing the other segment wears to Mondstadt.
[the playlist]
I started by determining whether I could make the mask, the most striking part of the Doctor's design. I found a 3D model available to print which was a very nice shape but had to do a few test prints to make the sizing work. The print comes with the complete mask as well as split halves of the outer and inner pieces. To better accommodate my own face's dimensions I ended up slightly stretching the halved outer pieces, and printing the complete inner piece. The sizing/dimensions took a few tries as measuring the curved surface of my own face proved to be *challenging* but now I have a version printed in slightly adorable miniature which fits medium sized dogs (or dragons).
I glued and painted the mask, then faced the challenge of how to get it to stay on my face correctly. I tried a few options, including attaching the mask to a wider faux-leather base, an unsuccessful solution I can only describe as a ribbon and hot glue contraption, and then, finally and successfully, gluing it to a party-store half-mask to make it sit at a nicer angle. The result is surprisingly comfortable and secure! I used some hot glue supports and found a nice point of balance on the base mask to make it protrude away from the face at an appropriate beak-like angle, which I had been struggling with in my other attachment solutions.
I decided on the Winter Night's Lazzo coat rather than the feathery lab coat thing because I liked the relative simplicity and because the trailer was the original inspiration for the project. I thought, too, that I'd be more likely to wear the Lazzo coat out in the world on real Winter Nights (and I do). At some point I would love to make a more from-scratch version of the coat, but I found a relatively close light-grey wool option and modified it for simplicity's sake.
I printed, painted, and assembled the pieces of the pendant that each Harbinger wears. (I remember vividly having an issue with my paint repeatedly "curdling" when I used the gloss varnish to try to finish it; probably my paint was just too old. I'm a supply hoarder and have no idea when or how I got the acrylic paints I was using.) I made the aiguillette out of some braided cord and wove in some thin navy and light blue ribbon to match some of the other outfit colors.
I debated what to do with the fur and leather lapel-collar situation, and ultimately came up with a temporary solution to try out, pinning faux-leather pieces to the lapels and making a kind of stole out of faux-fur to pin to the collar. I was glad for my own indecision after wearing this to its debut con, because the original collar stole proved to be incredibly itchy and hot; I later swapped the long-fibered faux fur for a softer and shorter vintage real-fur collar that I already owned, inherited from my grandmother. I lament the more restrained silhouette but the original is impossible to wear for very long.
The rest of the ensemble was fairly straightforward: satin shirt (I'd love to replace this with a more true-blue shirt-cravatte combo at some point, perhaps adding some of the gold edge detailing present on the Omega model), gray pants, strappy harness, black boots (I have, currently, no desire to make cosplay footwear, but if I did, the Dottore boots would be high on my priority list to customize). I wear a navy vest to add a darker blue hue since the blue in my shirt is a little light, and because the Webttore outfit includes a vest. I had leather gloves custom-made with blue palm detailing, and found an Etsy maker selling earrings made of upcycled fuses filled with colored goo, which make the perfect Dottore earring thematically and visually. His canon earring appears more syringe-like, but I like the fuse capsule, since he is primarily an engineer/roboticist, not a biologist or chemist.
After the mask, I decided on another 3D print addition for photo opportunities, a human heart. This is a reference to the Inversion of Genesis storyline, the containment of the corruption of Tatarasuna in a freshly-extracted heart (as well as the broader thematic heart symbolism throughout the intertwined Scaramouche/Dottore story, the substitution of the Gnosis for Scaramouche's missing heart, etc). My friend Mike found a hollow heart model and printed it in red matte, and I painted it to look fleshier. (It's a great model: nicely detailed, very delicate and light, though sturdy enough for carrying it around in a coat pocket all con-day.)
My last prop addition was the test tube filled with blue liquid which appears in the Lazzo trailer. I got a glass test tube and filled it with Dawn dish soap, which is a nice gooey consistency and has held its color for a shocking amount of time. (What is Dawn colored with??? It seemingly doesn't fade with time or air or light???)
It will be noted that this cosplay so far does not include a wig, as I usually keep my hair blue and I thought yeah sure close enough. I have worn this cosplay with a couple different clip-in extensions for the long front bang. The nice real-hair beach-curl one looks best but it doesn't always match my hair color, plus having a cosplay that depends on a specific hair color and length is a little bit restrictive. It's clear that at some point I have to cave and style a wig for this.
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