It’s not easy being blue—unless you’re Lopti, a 24-year-old Marvel fan who has now posed for hundreds of photos in various guises including Loki and Mystique.
Like many of the more dedicated cosplayers in Tumblr fandom, Lopti has developed her own fanbase. You can buy calendars of her photoshoots, and many of her makeup tutorials on YouTube have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. The infuriating thing is, it all seems to come very naturally. Rather than spending hours perfecting the art of realistic Mystique makeup, or making herself look like one of the blue-skinned Jotun ice giants from the Thor movies, she seems to be able to pick up a makeup brush and just … do it.
“It’s kind of funny,” she told the Daily Dot. “I had no idea that I would be any good with theatrical makeup. I’d always enjoyed makeup in general, but didn’t think I had an eye for it. But when I decided to cosplay as Loki, I knew I wanted to try my hand at Jotun Loki as well. I bought supplies from Mehron and nervously stood in front of the mirror as I did a test run of his makeup. And to my surprise, when I was finished, it actually looked great! Having a bit of confidence restored, I decided to get more experimental, and bought more special effects products from Mehron to play with. I even decided to make my own YouTube channel to record the progress of my makeup experiments. I love the challenge of trying to master a really difficult look, which is why Mystique is probably my favorite of all of my costumes thus far.”
Photo via somelikeitblue/Tumblr
Most of Lopti’s followers were introduced to her blog via her Loki cosplays, which are by far her most popular photos. It turns out, though, that she didn’t actually arrive at Loki through the more typical route of comic conventions. “I’ve always loved costumes,” she explains. “I attended my first Renaissance Festival when I was 13, and fell in love with everything: the music, the dancing, the food, but most the costumes! With my mom’s help, I started putting together my own costumes, and really got into the fun. But eventually, I began branching out into the comic book world, and I’ve been cosplaying regularly for the last three years.”
There are plenty of cosplayers who manage to create highly convincing costumes, even for relatively difficult characters like Loki, who wears a lot of complicated armor that’s virtually impossible to replicate without a movie studio budget. The thing that sets Lopti apart is that she manages to embody the essence of the characters she cosplays. As a slim, youthful-looking woman in her twenties, she certainly doesn’t resemble the gaunt, stressed Tom Hiddleston Loki of Avengers fame, but her Loki cosplay photos still somehow feel real. Along with the fact that she and her photographer seek out Loki-specific locations for their photoshoots, there’s something about Lopti that really feels Loki-ish. Or at least, feels like the sweet-but-angsty teen version of Loki that is favored by many fanfic writers and Avengers fans on Tumblr. It’s also no coincidence that Lopti’s second most popular cosplay is another very malleable character: the shapeshifting X-Men antihero, Mystique.
“I personally don’t think I look like most of the characters I choose,” Lopti tells us. “But I have a way of ‘becoming’ the character. I love finding every small detail that will make a character come to life.”
Photo via Lopti/Facebook
“The one criteria I have for picking characters to cosplay is this: I have to love the character,” she explains. “Cosplay would be no fun at all if I didn’t connect with the character I was playing. Which is why I can never answer people when they ask me to tell them who they should cosplay. You have to truly love a character to enjoy becoming them.”
She even answers questions (sometimes on video) in character as Loki, although like many cosplayers, the real-life Lopti is a lot less confident than her fictional counterparts. “Half the fun of cosplay is being able to get into character, and become a different person for a time. In person, I’m typically very shy, and a little awkward. But in costume? All of that shyness goes out the window, and I take on the characteristics of the character I love so much.”
Photo via Lopti/Facebook
Lopti’s Tumblr username is “Some Like It Blue,” a nod to her two most popular characters: Loki and Mystique both (sometimes) have blue skin. But she’s still done her fair share of non-blue cosplays, including the Last Unicorn (pictured above), Edward Scissorhands, and Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon A Time. Coming up next are Elsa from Frozen and Pippin from the Lord of the Rings movies, but it seems likely that considering Loki’s popularity, we’ll be seeing more of him soon as well.
Ah, to be burdened with glorious purpose.
Photo via somelikeitblue/Tumblr
