Welcome to our first Cosplayer of the Month interview!

This month we've interviewed Marian of Marian Ashley Cosplay. She had almost 39 thousand followers on Instagram, until some jerk hacked her account and tried to extort her! Show her some love by following her! She cosplays a wide variety of characters and shares other fun things, like a T-shirt of the day. Read on to learn about Marian and what cosplay is to her.

Tell us about your favorite movie, anime, or TV show.

Ok, where do I begin, Star Wars is one of my favorites for many reasons – action, comedy, romance, great characters, character development, and great visuals. It’s just all around amazing. But, once The Witcher show came out, I fell in love with it for many of the same reasons. A couple other favorites would be: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Easy A, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Avengers and Marvel movies, Robin Hood Men in Tights. I could honestly talk about TV and film all day, I have so many favorites it’s hard to pinpoint just a few.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! If someone challenged you to do a cosplay from the movie, what would you do?

If I did a Hitchhikers Cosplay, I’d definitely want to be Marv, the depressed robot.

Who is your favorite character or all time? And why?

Princess Leia is my favorite because she is simultaneously strong, fierce, sassy, classy, funny, girly, sexy, and feminine. She gets saved, but also holds her own and fights for what she believes in. She was the first female hero from my childhood that really stood for something. And Slave Leia was like my first ever girl crush!

What fantasy world do you want to visit? What would be the first sight you see?

Star Wars, the opportunity to explore space and so many planets would be simply amazing.

What super power do you wish you had? What would you do with it?

Shapeshifting, would make cosplay so much easier. Or invisibility, I deal with anxiety, so sometimes just being able to disappear would be kind of nice.

Why did you start doing cosplay? What do you want to achieve through cosplaying?

I always loved dressing up as a kid, I was always running around pretending to fight bad guys and rescue my sister. But as I got older Halloween was really the only acceptable time I could dress up, until I discovered cosplay. Now, cosplay gives me the opportunity to not only do something I love, but also helps me to cope with anxiety and depression, and makes it easier to meet people and make friends. There’s nothing I’m really looking to achieve, but if I can make someone more comfortable with themselves or inspire them, that makes it even more worth it to me.

How do you choose your characters?

I pick my characters for many different reasons ... usually I pick my characters because I’m drawn to that character's personality. I either strongly relate to that character or the character possesses qualities I wish I had in real life. Tiny Tina, for example, I like how bubbly and simultaneously obnoxious she is, which is how I often see myself. Whereas the Sith, are dark, strong and powerful, things I wish I could be more.

Do you have advice for someone that wants to try it for the first time?

Just do it. And don’t compare yourself to other cosplayers. The truth is, we all start out terrible, we don’t have a clue what we’re doing and make lots of mistakes along the way. But we would never improve if we never took that first step and just did it. One extra thing that motivated me, I picked a con to attend. It gave me a clear deadline, I either finished my cosplay or went as a normie. And it was a rush that got me addicted.

What is your favorite cosplay?

It’s hard to pick 1 favorite, but probably my Borderlands 3 Tiny Tina. I worked on this cosplay every night for about 4 months. It was made of craft foam, and old clothing I found at thrift stores. And lots of paint. The paint job definitely took up the majority of the time. But, because I was thrifty and ingenious. It didn’t cost more than $150 to make.

Why did you choose her?

Tiny Tina is one of my favorite characters, I just relate to her spastic, obnoxious personality. My first cosplay was a fan art version of Tiny Tina, and I wanted to pay homage to that as well. But mostly, she’s just a fun character to be. And because the character is so crazy, it makes me, as a person, feel more comfortable when a lot of attention is on me. I tend to overthink everything I do, so the fact that Tiny T would probably do it (whatever crazy or dumb thing) eases my mind and makes me feel more acceptable.

Where have you worn it? What kinds of responses do you get?

I wore it to a shoot last summer, and to Baltimore Comic Con last fall. And overall great responses. So many people were so happy and/or excited to see Tiny Tina. Gearbox even shared one of my pictures on their Instagram page, and I still can’t believe that, one of my proudest moments, I was so, SO surprised.

Is there anything at all that you'd like to share with us?

I’d just like to promote my friends, The Forgotten Nerd, great group of people and some of my favorite cosplayers. And if you have an artist, musician, cosplayer, whatever, that you really like, please support them! Donations are always super helpful. But just sharing their work, leaving them positive feedback, it’s all a tremendous help. And they probably need it, especially just starting out. And especially right now, a lot of artists are losing work and opportunities, myself included, but we want to continue.

We'd like to give a huge thank you to Marian for being our first ever Cosplayer of the Month! Please follow and support her on Instagram, Facebook, and Patreon. If you have any questions for her or us, post a comment!

Photo credits: S1PriceLightworks & SeeBackward