August 19, 2024
For the four months since my previous photoshoot as Rufus Shinra, I'd been jonesing to do another, but didn't get the opportunity. This was partly because I had far less free time due to life changes and partly because I still worried about what other people will think if they discovered that I enjoyed taking photos of myself dressed in drag as male anime and video game characters. But when I finally got the chance, I decided to put on my shaggy blond wig and beautiful new white suit jacket—not to mention five or six inches of makeup—and cosplay the devious young Rufus from Before Crisis, a game that I (like most Western FF7 fans) never got the chance to play, but which I love based on what I've read about it (and what I've read that's based on it).
The only part of this costume that I made was the cravat, which I sewed by hand back in the days before I got a sewing machine; I used to make a lot of them because I like them, although I ended up seldom wearing them because of their association with the "snobby rich man" stereotype. Of course, this time, the stereotype works in my/Rufie's favor. The shirt is one that I thrifted years ago, and is not the one I'd planned to wear with this, which I'd worn sometime the previous week and forgot to wash over the weekend; even so, I can imagine him wearing it, because it fits his aesthetic. I had to shorten the sleeves on the jacket and add additional shoulder pads (made using this tutorial) to make it fit better on my slopey shoulders, being a men's jacket. (The exaggerated shoulders on most of his canon outfits have led me to suspect that he also wears a lot of shoulder padding, most likely out of insecurity about his appearance. Growing up surrounded by musclebound SOLDIER members will do that to you, I guess? Alternatively, the padded suits could be a throwback to the 1980s and what corporate decadence used to look like before the rise of T-shirt-clad Silicon Valley CEOs.) I think I went a little overboard with the makeup this time—particularly the lips, because I wanted my Rufus to look as pouty as he does in the FF7 Remake trilogy—but can I help that I want him to be as handsome as possible? I don't think I ended up looking much like him, but I felt hot as hell (figuratively, not literally—the suit is linen and is quite comfortable) nonetheless.