Not Interested Entertainment

Mered­ith Placko

1. What is your name, and where do you hail from?
Mered­ith and I’m a recent trans­plant to Atlanta, GA!

2. Tell us a lit­tle about your­self. Do you have any inter­est­ing hob­bies out­side of
cos­play?
*laughs* Not any more it seems! Really, I’m just a big nerd. I like read­ing my
comics and play­ing video games. I plan on get­ting back into horse back rid­ing
(hunter / jumper) now that I have friends with horses about 40 min­utes south from
me. I’m also going to start swing and bel­ly­dance lessons in the next month.

3. How long have you been cos­play­ing?
I began cos­play­ing in 1999, but didn’t start mak­ing my own cos­tumes til 2000 — when
I made Gar­net / Dag­ger from Final Fan­tasy IX. My very first cos­tume, and I started
work­ing with span­dex. ;D

4. What ini­tially drew you to cos­play?
I’ve always been into dress­ing up, from Hal­loween to Ren Faires to just being a
crazy kid who liked going to goth clubs. The idea of dress­ing up as my favorite
anime char­ac­ters just sounded so cool!

5. What was the first char­ac­ter that you cos­played?
Luna, from Lunar. The cos­tume was cre­ated by Jasper’s Cos­play Closet.

6. What is your favorite thing about cos­play?
I love plot­ting and design­ing my cos­tumes — pick­ing out the fab­rics, draft­ing the
pat­terns, the whole process of get­ting it all together. Then, when it’s all done,
putting it on and wear­ing it for the first time at a con, it’s so exhilarating!

7. What is your least favorite thing?
The sewing. *laughs* I’m lazy, and can’t sew a straight stitch to save my life. But
I plow through, because the end result is always worth it.

8. What was your most enjoy­able cos­play expe­ri­ence?
Anime Week­end Atlanta 2008. Pretty much that whole week­end rocked. It was the first
time in god knows how long I actu­ally cos­played with a group / duet. My friend Mia
and I did Maria-sama ga Miteru cos­tumes and also Vel­vet and Alice from Odin Sphere
(and found an awe­some group to take pic­tures with!). Cos­play­ing with friends is the
best!

9. And your least?
Going through a period in my younger years when I was just a bitch. Hon­estly, I was
just rude and catty (and sub­se­quently inse­cure). It made it so I never really
enjoyed going to cons, only con­cerned about how I looked and if my cos­tume was “good
enough.” I took a two year period off from cos­play­ing, and I think it did a world of
good for me. I grew a lot in that time, and when I came back to the con scene, a lot
had changed, most of all, my attitude.

10. What is the last event at which you cos­played, and what did you cos­play?
Anime Week­end Atlanta. Iron­i­cally, I didn’t wear a sin­gle anime cos­tume. I brought
my Steam­punk Slave Leia, and wore two other steam­punk out­fits, and an orig­i­nal
Gothic Lolita out­fit that my friend Caitlin designed and we both made match­ing
ensembles.

11. What is the next event at which you plan to cos­play?
Realms Con. I’m bring­ing two of my steam­punk pieces, Slave Leia, and Zero Suit Samus.

12. What do you have in the works for upcom­ing con­ven­tions or events?
Oh! So many excit­ing things! I plan on fin­ish­ing my Rosa (Final Fan­tasy IV) and C.C.
for Anime South and Ikki­con. Also, a few new steam­punk designs. And finally, I have
an excuse to do a long time dream cos­tume of mine — Royko from Tenchi Muyo! I’m
actu­ally going to do a few of her out­fits as it’s always been the wig that’s put me
off from doing her. Now that I’m a bit bet­ter with hair pieces (and have some
amaz­ing wig styling friends!) I’m going to tackle her.