Assassins Creed

Assassins Creed is one of the most competitive series and games through the lore and backstory of the main characters and the templars. The game is about a fictional millennia-old struggle between the 'Order of Assassins', who fight for peace and freedom, as the Knights Templar, who desire power through order and control. One of LarpLikeRae's favorite cosplays of all time comes from an Assassins Creed game that changed their life for years.

From a dream, a hope and love of a character becomes the most emotional journey in LarpLikeRae's cosplay career.

Steampunk Evie Frye

"Oh my gosh, where do I even begin with this Cosplay?! Evie Frye is a very very close and dear character to my heart and genuinely while I write this post I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry a couple times. This character means more than anything to me, and I don’t think most people will ever be able to understand. When I was in my teenage years, my mom was not fond of games that would insinuate killing people or others whatsoever but I do remember that she purchased my PS4 for me to play games with her as well as cute little games I could play by myself. I remember getting Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (which is not a cute little game) and playing it late at night without my mother even knowing since I wanted to play it so bad. I remember my friends had talked about it all the time at school and it felt so nice to be included. Once I got introduced myself to Evie Frye in the game, I have wanted nothing more than to be just like her (except for the killing part). She was so amazing and I genuinely felt a connection to her more than any other character of ever had. I even got to one point where I was drawing up freckles on my face just like her and my mom came into my room and asked what brown stuff was smeared on my face. That was a very big core memory that I didn’t think that was going to be a big deal later on. I remember saving photos my favorite photos of her and just wanting one day to just dress up or portray her in some way. Little did I know later on in 2022 I was going to be able to start that huge creation of my Evie Frye Cosplay."

"In late 2022 I had to sit myself down and really ponder what Cosplay I wanted to make for that year with all the new conventions coming up. One thing that I really wanted to do more than anything was to be able to possibly create cosplays I either always wanted to or characters I had tried in the past and did not like the way I did them. So I wanted to remake them to redeem my own talent and see my progress throughout the years. Evie Frye was one of these characters alongside Mercy from Overwatch, and a couple others. I have never made Evie before, except for of course the horribly drawn freckles on my face and I wanted to pick out an outfit that meant a lot to me, but in reality all of them meant a lot. No matter how many times I went back to the game to examine her own skins I had basically all of them, and I loved every single version of Evie, so trying to create a version of her was going to be extremely hard. I was torn between each and every one of them. until I had an idea. I was going to go to Wild Wild West Con 2023 early that year and since it is a Steampunk Exclusive Convention I figured that I would make her SteamPunk skin. I spent hours and months on this Cosplay. I did everything in my power to make this cosplay as true as I possibly could. I spent about four months at the time on this Cosplay and of course, since then I have changed things up as well as added things to make her a little bit more easier to move around in. At the time I was just finishing the cosplay I began making a matching Jacob Frye cosplay for my partner Cloud. Evie Frye was a Cosplay that did extremely well at wild West con and I end up wearing her briefly for Thursday for a photo shoot before hand, and then that Sunday for the con. For Sunday, it was the day for the cosplay contest, and just to begin... that cosplay contest had categories that I had never seen before. It was not like a normal cosplay competition, the categories were Male, Female and Child there was no Craftsmanship, Journeyman or Novice it was strictly gender related. I was torn mainly because I am gender fluid and trying to pick a gender to compete as was not the easiest. So I went with a gender that I was Cosplaying as. Cosplay is not about gender. Cosplay Contests are not about gender. It is about creativity, the love of making and building something you love, NOT about gender based rules and categories. I still lost the competition which I understand, because there was no pre-judging I wasn't able to show off the attention to detail. When the contestants had their turn, they would go up on stage while the announcer talked about their cosplay and then they would walk down to the judges to show off their cosplay closer. During that time, the announcer would crack jokes and talk loudly so the judges were not able to hear, talk or understand how the cosplays were made. In all, it was a cluster of horrible planning. I was still a little distraught because of the whole gender-based situation. I talked to Wild Wild West Con afterwards, and they had told me that they want to work with me in the future, to make this not happen again, and to make the con more enjoyable for the future. The change of the costume contest was something they wanted to work on, so the next year I had brought back Evie Frye as a guest as well as a judge for that competition. The con has changed out the competition. Just a slight bit. Luckily they did not keep the same categories yet they moved it to first, second and third place, so as a judge it was extremely hard to be able to categorize people as best as possible. Later on after the competition, I was invited to the next year (2025) to be able to host the competition and work alongside everyone so that we could make the next competition better. Turns out halfway through that year they decided to cancel the competition altogether after inviting me to help out with them. After asking for my help, they had cancelled it altogether. So I had withdrawaled from the entire con and decided not to work with them any longer due to them inviting me to help them and decided to cancel it and not even let me help or even reform the Cosplay competition. Instead they are wanting to perfect something that is already absolutely beautiful and well done (fashion show). They instead decided to not even give the competition a second chance which just broke my heart. They wanted my help, and then all of a sudden didn’t even want to use it. I saw the potential in the cosplay contest and how the con would be able to reform it into something everyone can enjoy. It should be about loving the art of cosplay, getting to know how someone made the outfit and the passions about it, instead it was gender categorized at first and then without wanting to work on it more and more, they decided to get rid of it all together. Instead of showing the true passion about cosplay: Having fun and doing what you love. Competition shouldn't be about competing against others of who is 'better', it should be about showing your love for something you took time, love and passion to do. A cosplay competition or costume contest should be about showing others how you made your craft and being proud of it."

"In between all those years of Wild Wild West Con, I decided to finally compete again in this cosplay after losing the first time with no pre-judging. The next time I competed was at Game On Expo in 2024 and this competition had a lot of high stakes and very talented cosplayers. My partner Cloud even withdrew from the contest because of the amount of people and the people that were competing. I remember before I went to the con I had worked on my build book, but the build book did not have the correct information any longer since I updated the cosplay after I made the book. So whenever I did pre-judging I told everyone exactly what I did and left the book with them with the non-updated information. I believe that they probably thought I lied, because my build book was not the same as what I had spoken to them about. I felt as if I probably did not do well due to the inaccurate build book and not updating it. I cannot be certain that happened, but that is my thought! I am okay with not winning, but I’m not quite sure if I’ll ever compete as Evie Frye again just because it has broken my heart several times since all the other competitions I have ever competed in, I have NOT put in THAT much effort and still won something. Whether it was best novice, best journeyman or MC/judges choice. I still won something without doing that much effort as my Evie Frye. For my Evie Frye I made some undergarments and socks from the 1800s (with accurate fabric), as well as an undershirt, reconstructed shoes, LED lights, gauntlet (that actually worked) and countless of other things. I added so many different mediums that were challenging and resulting to me learning so much more about my craft since it was something that I learned to love and a dream of mine to create. This cosplay took hundreds of hours and no matter how many times I competed in it, it was still not good enough and I’m not sure if I want to compete in it again. I’m extremely tough on myself when it does come to Cosplay competitions because I have been a judge several times. I know exactly what judges require and look for because I’ve had so much experience with being a judge that whenever I don’t do well during a competition it has only EVER been my Evie Frye. Not any other Cosplay or character I’ve ever competed. It’s only my Evie Frye. The only competitions so far (2024) that I have competed in have won something except my Evie Frye (twice now). All my other competitions I had won at least something except the one I put my hardest work into. And it’s very heartbreaking because I love this character so much and it’s something I’ve held so close and dear to my heart for so long. What brought me to tears after the convention and the contest was getting home and plugging in one of my old phones I had found while cleaning after the convention. That old phone was back from 2014 to 2015 (I have no idea why I still have this phone). I had charged it and had looked at the camera roll because it was only thing that was active on my phone and I started to scroll through photos. That’s when I found photos of Evie Frye and not just ANY photos of Evie Frye. I was able to see the SteamPunk version of Evie Frye... the same ones I used as reference photos and had absolutely no idea that 14 year old me wanted more than anything to make the Steampunk version of Evie Frye. It was by pure coincidence that I had no idea that was the version I saved in 2014 and I ended up making that same exact version in 2022. So call it fate, but I think that is the coolest experience I’ve ever had and such a weird coincidence that I was able to pick the one version that I saved the most when I was 14. That 10 years later I was able to pretty much re-create the same exact thing that I loved and yearned for."

"So thank you for reading this entire huge essay, I will probably change things more of my Evie Frye cosplay because I love it so much and it is my baby! I don’t think I will ever compete in her cosplay again just because of how heartbreaking it is and I don’t want my favorite Cosplay to change my image of it because someone else doesn’t like it. I want to be able to still love the character and love my Cosplay even if I didn’t win a competition. Competitions shouldn’t be that serious. You should compete because you love your cosplay, it should NEVER be competition against others.... It should always be competition against yourself, and I think that’s the reason why I am so upset that I’ve lost several times. My Evie Frye cosplay hasn't done well in contests however I have done so much better in cosplays that were not taken as seriously (ones made out of duct tape, falling apart on stage and rushed last minute). So it is a little disheartening that I have won in things that I haven't taken as seriously than the one I put my all into. I will still hold this cosplay close and dear in my heart because that’s what Cosplay should be about and that’s the life learned lesson. I’ve been learning and teaching myself that it should never be about competition whether you are a judge, contestant or watcher. It should be about having fun and doing something that you love. Thank you for reading this life lesson I have learned the past several years and continue to learn and grow from!"

Sometimes the art of Cosplay is to be able to be challenged with a design with little to no time at all!

Eivor

"To start off with my Eivor Cosplay. I had the chance to cosplay as a Viking character for a 'Tattoo in Cosplay' session. I have a lot of different Viking outfits, props and designs, however, I wanted to do something that was very recognizable. I decided to go along with Eivor from Assassin‘s Creed, mainly because I love the franchise, and I had a lot of the same items from my past Cosplays. This outfit was extremely easy to put together in a very timely manner, since I had only one day to get this all done. On the day of the appointment I put together the Cosplay, showed up, and my client ended up cosplaying as well! This was a very fun and rare activity since not a lot of my clients Cosplay as well so I was extremely happy and excited that he was able to participate with me. In the future, I would probably like to actually make a cannon outfit for Eivor but that will come within time!"

Sometimes being able to cosplay a character that you don’t know, but means the world to someone else is worth it to make the memories and friendships within your career

Cassandra

"Back in 2022 I had met my future partner Cloud. Cloud loved the series Assassin‘s Creed and especially one of the main characters of one of the games: Cassandra. Cloud always talks so highly about her and I wanted to nothing more than to do some thing for him that meant a lot. So one night I ended up putting together fabric and different clothing choices to make a makeshift cosplay of Cassandra. I didn’t have the time to create the actual cosplay so I had thrown together several different scraps of fabric and wigs to make her own cosplay. I took a couple photos, but only really liked one and edited the crap out of it! The photo took hours to edit and master but once I was done, I was extremely proud of it. I gave the print to Cloud in a frame as a 'feel better soon health care package', and he absolutely loved it! Now it hangs up in our house that we share and sometimes I think that I could definitely redo that cosplay if I had enough time but I would want to make sure that that Cosplay has so much more effort and love put into it then one night like before."