A few months ago, I scheduled my first cosplay photoshoot that wasn’t at a convention! (I haven’t been to a convention since before the pandemic.) I actually booked it with the same photographer who did the sole convention shoot I did, Michael Largé, because I liked his work, knew it would be great for the character I wanted to do, and also I was too scared to look for other photographers too okay I can admit it.

While some folks may be unsurprised to hear that I — a certified nerd — watch The Boys, others may be wondering how or why I sit through the graphic violence that I’m typically very averse to. Honestly, I wasn’t too interested in the initial promotions of the show. Superhero fatigue had started setting in, and I didn’t need more superhero media to get into while the MCU still had such a hold on me. But then! I saw a cosplayer in Starlight’s costume and I kind of immediately fell in love with the costume. Stars! Her name is Starlight? Did someone design this character for me? (I would soon learn… not really no haha) But I loved this costume and wanted to watch the show to see if I’d love the character enough to buy this costume and wear it myself.

Readers, I did.

I wore this costume for Halloween in 2021, having originally planned to try to attend New York Comic Con because some of the stars of The Boys, including Erin Moriarty, who portrays Starlight, would be there. I ended up not attending because of that pesky COVID but thought I might still be able to book a quick convention photoshoot. However, I was oddly determined to do the blond wig and uh… I am not good at wigs. My first time cosplaying I tried to do a wig and had to pull it off during the middle of the convention. (Possibly scaring/scarring young children along the way oops) But I was encouraged by some moderate success with my Starfire wig from Halloween 2019, so after bailing on NYCC photoshoot plans, I decided to go forward with getting a wig for a photoshoot to celebrate the new season of The Boys being released this year. It was… a struggle, to say the least, and easily the most cumbersome part of the entire photoshoot. I don’t really know how to style wigs, I actually snipped some of my real hair trying to get a feel for the length I wanted because I don’t have a wig stand, there are a lot of good reasons I haven’t done much with wigs in the past, it didn’t seem like a hobby or skill I really needed to invest in at the time.

But despite spending the entire 7am shoot coaxing my wig to behave on a windy rooftop, I had a pretty fun time and I am happy with the photos I got!

So, blog readers will be the first to see the entire photoset, which I will just very slowly post on social media because apparently people don’t just publish the entire photoset the minute they get their photos like we used to do in the late 2000s or whatever.

Please enjoy and let me know if you’d like to see more posts like this or specific cosplay looks!

Photographer: Michael Largé