Dax and Kortney King-Lives (@thekurligurlicosplay) played Dungeons & Dragons together at an immersive costumed event at Evermore Park. As a "shapeshifter extraordinaire", Kortney works as an actor, a princess, a mermaid, and even uses cosplay to help inspire her D&D characters!
Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/dungeonsanddax
Hire a Professional Dungeon Master: https://dungeonmasterdirect.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:35):
Hey Kortney.
How you doing today?
Hi.
I am doing fantastic.
How are you?
I'm doing, it's early.
It's early in the morning.
It is early.
It It's early.
I've got my water.
You've got your coffee.
We're ready for this.
I've got coffee.
I was like, listen, I will only getup early for a handful of people, so.
I You made the list.
(00:56):
I you did
Because 10:00 AM Cause 10:00AM late for me, listen,
I'm 10:00 AM is so early.
I'm a person that stays up tillat least two o'clock on a daily.
Yeah.
Because I get the late night creativitystuff happening, so I never want to sleep.
So I run a bunch of games at night.
(01:16):
The game I ran last nightwas from seven to 10:00 PM.
And then I had to like write up a bunchof notes and answer some emails until 11.
And then I still had all thisenergy, so I'm like, Hey, let's,
I, my wife just is ready for bed.
And I'm like, let's watch a show.
I need to do some breaths.
Yeah,
I
feel that.
And we were in bed after midnight andluckily our kids sleep very, very well.
(01:38):
Oh, hey, look, we're live.
We've got.
We've got people listening in.
This is Dungeons and Decks,the podcast where we talk about
collaborative storytelling and howwe tell better stories together.
Thank you so much for coming in.
Kortney tell us a littlebit about yourself.
Well obviously my name is Kortney and I.
(01:59):
I'm Kortney.
Hi.
And I am a co player full-time andI am also a performer primarily my
basis being in musical theater and.
Gosh, this is really hard.
I don't even know what else to say.
Really hard.
What else do you want to know?
We're,
we're gonna spend the next 30minutes talking about, don't worry,
(02:21):
that's just scratching the surface.
So that now is scratching the surface.
Now that people are interested, nowthat people are intrigued, now we
get to delve into some of the morefascinating aspects of your life.
For those of you who've.
You know, been followingfollowing us on social media.
You know, that we were recentlycollaborating together on a live
(02:42):
streamed D&D game at EvermorePark, and we're gonna get to that.
We're gonna get to that.
But first I want to delveinto the origin story.
The origin story, yes.
Of how you became this epicnerd that you are today.
Oh man.
So where does your origin story begin?
My origin story starts in highschool, if I'm being honest.
(03:03):
So I didn't start getting into likecostumes or performing or anything until
about my freshman year in high school.
Before that, I was an avid athlete.
I used to play soccer all the time.
Okay.
And it wasn't until my.
Freshman year of high school whereI actually didn't make the soccer
(03:24):
team that I was like, I don't knowwhat I'm going to do with myself,
because that was my entire life.
And I was like, oh, Ididn't make the soccer team.
I took, and I know this wasgonna be a tragic backstory.
It it is a little bit, you know,it's the, those are the best kinds of
backstory or a tragic backstory stories.
But.
Because of that.
(03:44):
One of my classes that I wastaking was an advanced dance class.
I, I tested into advanced danceand not quite dance company.
So I was in advanced dance and my teacherthought that I was good enough that
she was like, Hey, you should go andaudition for the school musical and stuff.
Because there's gonna bea lot of dancing in that.
And I said, okay, sure.
(04:04):
Why not?
Told my parents, my parentswere like, I, okay, go for it.
And so I auditioned formy first production and it
was Beauty and the Beast.
Excellent.
And I was a villager.
I was a wolf and I was a plate.
Oh, those
are you have range.
I love that.
I had so much
range in high schooland I just stuck with.
(04:28):
Musical theater.
After that, I caught the bugimmediately and I was stuck doing that.
I joined choir in school.
So I was
So you were a jock whobecame a theater kid?
Yep.
I actually had a similar experience.
I didn't make the basketball team myFreshman year of high school in junior
high, I hit a massive growth spurt and Iwas about six inches taller than anybody
(04:52):
else in my junior high basketball league.
So I was the best center in, in theleague basically, cuz I was just so huge.
But I never learned how todribble well or shoot well.
And so when I stopped growing,I just barely six feet tall.
I wasn't good at basketball anymore causeI no longer had that height advantage.
So I had to turn totheater and choir and Yep.
(05:18):
You know, music, you know,we shared that in common.
It's how it goes.
How, how else would we have knownthat that was gonna be the case?
So, so you became a theater kid?
I did, I was an arts kid, so I was alwaysin the art wing all the time for things.
At my high school.
And shortly after that, I went tocollege and I studied performing arts
(05:42):
over at Salt Lake Community Collegethrough their performing arts program.
I haven't finished it entirely.
I did the performing arts track, butbecause of my learning disabilities
that I have, two classes are alittle bit hard for me to get past.
So I've just been like, Boo.
I'm good.
I'm good right now.
I have the knowledge that I need exactly.
(06:03):
I have the knowledge I need.
I did a lot of shows there andeven some past the point of like me
supposedly graduating from there.
And then from there, I.
Got married in 2017 and then in 2018I got reached out to by Evermore
(06:25):
Park to come and audition fortheir first season of lore in 2018.
And I was sort of in a post recoveryfrom a major surgery that I had
in my life when they contacted me.
So I was like, I can'treally get out of bed.
(06:46):
Can I just send in an audition I canmanage to get myself up for about 20
minutes to film something and send it in?
And they were like, yeah, sure.
Let me send you a side.
They sent me a side, I sent it inthe next day I got a casting email.
Excellent.
Yeah.
So evermore, so not everyone wholistens has, has been to evermore and
you were the third person in a rowthat I've interviewed who's had many
(07:10):
experiences with evermore, and everybodydefines evermore in a different way.
Mm.
How would you explain evermoreto someone who's never been?
I explain evermore as amedieval game simulation.
Because in this household weare video game people 100%.
(07:32):
So I can really only describe thingsin video game terminology now.
Thanks to my husband and yeah, I basicallytell them that you have dived into a
fantasy game and you get to interact withcharacters and they send you on quests.
Fetch
quests.
(07:53):
That's it.
Be quests and es.
I love
it.
Fetch quests.
That's, that's really what it waswhen it was when I was working there.
When I was starting there.
Cool.
It was a lot of fetch quests.
So tell us about that firstseason of lore and this was, this
was during the spooky season.
It was a spooky season, and yetI was not a spooky character.
(08:15):
Oh, you were nice and
friendly.
Oh yeah.
I mean, look at my face.
Doesn't it just scream nice and friendly.
Last time we hung out,you looked a lot scarier.
I looked so scary, which I loved.
But no, I was actually castas a fairy my first season.
Of lore and I would play thatferry for the next three years.
(08:36):
Cool.
Of working there.
And the first season of lore was avery interesting season because none
of us really knew what was going on.
None of us really understoodto the full extent.
I don't even think I understood tothe full extent of what I was doing.
I had some experience with improv becauseI was on my college's improv team.
Mm-hmm.
But this was a different levelof improv that I had never.
(08:58):
Experienced before, and it was howthey basically started asking me, what
do you want out of your character?
You have free reign tomake your character.
Obviously this is somethingthat has changed since.
And you know, evermore is in charge ofwhat kind of characters they write now and
stuff, but when I was working there, I wasthe person who built my character because
(09:20):
I was defined as like fairy number one.
When I was there,
I You wanted to be more than just
I did, I did.
Well, and that was, how do you makeyourself interesting when you were
just labeled as ferry number one.
You're given the evermore handbookof things from Laura 2018.
(09:45):
Can, can we get a profileshot of that binder?
See how thick
it is.
This, this was my binder,
so, oh, let's, this was four inch,three ring binder For those of
you listening in, that is huge.
Yes.
This was the Bible.
So this is all of the originalstuff of what Evermores linear
(10:05):
concept was supposed to be.
My character was notwritten in any of this.
I was, you know, a side character.
I wasn't part of the mainstory or anything like that.
I had a very, very small descriptor as towhat a ferry was in the world of evermore.
And that was it.
You know, I didn't have too muchto work with, so it was a lot
(10:26):
of, Hey what do you want to do?
And I was like, okaylet me figure this out.
I had to come up with a name.
I didn't know what I wasgonna be dressed like.
Yet.
But I had to come up with a name.
I had to come up with a personality trait.
I was also the oldest ferryout of all of the girls.
All the girls were like, yes, all thegirls were like in their late teens.
(10:49):
And I was like 23, 22 at the time.
And so I basically adopted the like,Mary Poppins type of demeanor where I
was taking care of all the little girlferries basically and trying to keep
them in check and stuff because I wastrying not to run around that much.
I was like, I'm too old for thisalready of running around being
(11:14):
crazy, all of that fun stuff.
I came up with my name, my character'sname was Amelda and I came up with
Amelda because I was really obsessedwith the movie Coco at the time.
And mama Amelda was one of myfavorite characters in that movie.
Okay.
So that was, that was the, that was thedead grandmother who forbade everyone
(11:35):
from listening to music because Yes.
Hector had, had gone and left her.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, that's coming back.
She was feisty.
She is feisty.
I'm getting all Misty.
I just thinking about Coco.
Why'd you put It's a good movie.
It's so sad.
It's, but also so happy.
It's so
good.
Cool.
(11:56):
So you had, you played a melt ofthe ferry and I, during that time I
was just a casual fan of evermore.
I'd go with my wife, we'd go ondate nights and I remember you, I
remember you as a very Oh, okay.
I mean, I was just some guy inthe crowd, you know, all, all
bearded guys look the same.
So.
My hair was a lot shorterat the time, actually.
(12:16):
Yeah.
Well I think most
of the ferries, mine waslike up to here, so it's
grown out since then.
Mine was, I've had many haircutssince more or less looked the same.
So yeah.
So evermore was, you mentioned beforethe stream that that was a huge turning
point for you in figuring out mm-hmm.
You know, what you wantedto be when you grew up.
(12:39):
Yeah.
The wise old age of 22 or 23.
Yeah.
This evermore puts you onanother trajectory towards,
you know, awesome nerdiness.
Yep.
I was not expecting it.
I was not expecting.
Anything that was gonna happen next inmy life because the concept of making a
(12:59):
character and dressing up and interactingwith characters was completely new to me.
The LARP experiencecompletely foreign to me.
I was like, mm-hmm.
Okay.
These people are really, reallyinto what they are doing really.
And they're like, they're like reallyinterested in wanting to know more about.
(13:19):
Me the character and not thequest that I'm going to give them.
I haven't gotten that figured out yet.
So I was like rushing to like tryto figure out backstory and the
fairies we're trying to figure outhow, like where did we come from?
Who are we in, who's in charge of us?
Like those kinds of things.
Mm-hmm.
So was a lot of.
(13:40):
As a guest at the park, I always foundthat the side characters were more
fun to hang out with because thosewho were like central to the plot one,
there was always a huge line Yeah.
To, to go talk to them.
And they were just repeatingthe same stuff over and over and
over again because it was mm-hmm.
Part of a plot that theyneeded to adhere to.
But the side characters, at least inmy experience, they didn't have lines.
(14:04):
They were a lot more free and they would.
Be more willing to ask youquestions as a guest mm-hmm.
And build relationships.
And so I became fr I liked thefairies, of course I became friends
with a bunch of goblins there.
Yeah.
But yeah, it was the side characters thatI really fell in love with that ever more.
So thanks
for, thanks for being, I made a lot ofer.
I made a lot of really fun relationshipswith people through my character
(14:30):
after that season too, like Youknow some of my relationships that I
had with patrons turned into actualrelationships and I'm still friends
with some of them to this day.
And yeah, it was, it was areally, really fun time, but I.
Just hadn't ever experiencedanything like that before in my life.
(14:51):
And I ended up making my owncharacter too, when I wasn't cast
the following season for Aurora.
And everything.
My husband was cast but I wasn't.
And I was like, well, I'm gonna be goingthere a lot to drive my husband to work.
I need to come up with a character.
(15:12):
And so I came up with my first characterever, which was my pirate character Vera.
She's no longer a pirate now, she'shad a complete story arc at this point.
Redemption arc left.
But when I first made her, she was apirate and she was my first character
I ever like invested costume pieces forand got a wig for and anything like that.
(15:36):
Like I just.
And I fell in love with her and she wasone of my favorite characters that I
played for a really, really long time.
So yeah, I always startedoff with my character.
Since then, like I said, I startedoff with her making her costume.
Mm-hmm.
And yeah, I built her costume first andthen I filled out her backstory later.
(16:02):
And what was really funny is that recentlywhile I was cleaning out all of my old
things, like I was finding all of my olddolls that my mom sent over to me, I found
a journal, or I would say it's a journal.
It's literally a notebook withOrlando Bloom's character from
Pirates of the Caribbean on the front.
(16:22):
Of course, I was, what's her name?
I was obsessed with him.
When I was younger cause he was real cute.
And in that book, in that notebook,I wrote my own fan fiction and I
forgot that I had written anythinglike this about a pirate character.
In the Pirates of the Caribbeanuniverse and like to a T somehow.
(16:46):
This was just like all the way in thebig back of my subconscious I guess.
But like there are so many similaritiesof my character's backstory.
And my middle school version'sbrain of, of my, my character
and I was, Vera was just living rent.
She was living there readyfor her moment to shine.
(17:07):
Yes, exactly.
Awesome.
So a lot of people when they getinto Dungeons and Dragons or any
tabletop RPGs when they startcreating a character, they start with.
Stats, you know, race, class, mm-hmm.
The mechanics of the game.
I, I like to take a story, first approach.
I want to know, you know, what,why is this person suffering?
(17:28):
Why do they wanna go out mm-hmm.
And change the world?
What, what, how are theydiscontent with their life?
And mm-hmm.
I love this story driven approachand you've introduced another very
cool approach, starting with theaesthetics, starting with the look.
And what else do you do to get intothe head space of a new character?
(17:50):
I, now that I've built up likea very large plethora of costume
pieces over time, I always Excellent,
excellent use of the wordplethora up, by the way.
Thank you.
Gotta gotta compliment that.
Thank
you.
I I start to actually just considerwhat I already have on my person.
(18:11):
And I just want to use whatI already have half the time.
And sometimes I'll build thingsif I really want to like round
out something and make it a littlebit different, hence why my damn
fear looks a little bit different.
But majority of the stuff thatI had for her, I already had.
So I always try to take the approachof what do I already have, and then
(18:35):
I will go to Pinterest and I'll tryto find some vibes there as well.
And then I'll be like, Ooh, I'mgonna add this element and then
maybe I'll build something.
So in the case of my damp fearshe, I, I built all of the
floral pieces for her costume.
But everything else wasmine that I already owned.
(18:57):
Let's us forward a little bitto that down for character.
Yeah, a Audre, that was her name.
Audre Elco.
Yeah.
Audre Elco.
So when we became acquainted throughour mutual friend Rachel Ann you were
brought in as one of the characterson a live stream that I was.
Venge mastering.
And you had some, you had some vibes,I guess that's a good word for it.
(19:20):
You had some vibes of thecharacter that you wanted and
the aesthetic that you wanted.
But when you talked to me, you didn'tquite know how that was going to
work mechanically or story wise.
Mm-hmm.
Which is great because I was there and Iwas able to find the mechanics for you.
Let's talk about that process.
Where did you start with Anell?
Well again, I have an obsessionwith musical theater and I am still.
(19:45):
Obsessed with Little Shop of Horrors.
I was still on my little shopof Horrors kick and stuff.
And I primarily wanted to have a characterthat was different because I have been
playing a Bard for over three years.
And I also was cosplaying a bar.
Recently as well on TikTok.
(20:06):
So I was like, okay, I gottamove away from the Bard class.
As much as I love being a bard,because I can be like my true self and.
It's an, it's a type of characterclass that I can ease into with
no problem, despite not knowinganything about instruments.
I wanted to do something completelydifferent for the D&D live stream
(20:29):
because it was gonna be a one shot,and I didn't know if this was going
to be a character that I was going towant to translate into another life
into another session or campaign.
Excuse me.
Campaign.
I'm still getting used to the D&Dterminology, despite the fact that
I've only been playing for three years.
It's fine, it's fine.
People still get confused withcharacter level and spell levels
(20:52):
and Yeah, it's not intuitive.
It's not intuitive, don't
worry.
So yeah, so the primary thingwas that I wanted to take
myself out of my comfort zone.
And I said to you that I wantedto do something completely
different than what I was used to.
And that.
Decision was I wanted to bea chaotic, evil character.
(21:15):
And that kind of happenedand it was great.
And it turned out really funny because I.
I threw everybody for aloop on the livestream.
Who was the real enemy?
Was it the actual enemies that Daxwas throwing at us or was it Kortney?
Was it Audra?
Now?
Which is for those of you who didn't catchthat yet, that's a play on Audrey too.
(21:36):
The yes.
Person eating plant inlittle Shop of Horrors.
Mm-hmm.
And I remember you said to meyou wanted to be chaotic evil.
I mean, I don't use alignment in my games.
I mean, I use a lot of morality,I use a lot of philosophy.
Yeah.
But the alignment system I'vealways found to be restricting.
I'm more interested in good peoplewho do bad things and bad people who.
(21:59):
You know, have redemption arcs, right?
Mm-hmm.
I'm more interested in those types ofstories, and I don't think the alignment
system lends to that nuance, puttingpeople in nine different boxes, so mm-hmm.
We talked about, okay, what doesit mean to be Kay chaotic evil?
What is it you actually want?
Yes.
And we decided your characterdidn't just want to destroy things
and, and watch the world burn.
(22:19):
What, what did she wa, what weresome of the inspirations for her?
She wanted to actually have basicallySeymour's moment in Little Shop of
Horrors, which was, you know, hewants to kill the plant, but actually
be successful at killing the plant.
You know, the, the the movieversion, not the director's cut.
(22:45):
That's, that's really what she wanted, wasthat, you know, she did, she wanted her.
Some semblance of her old life back.
Mm-hmm.
And she feels that the only reasonher life changed was because of
the plant that changed her andshe hates what she is now for it.
And she kind of turned into this vengefultype of individual that doesn't really
(23:08):
care about other people around herbecause she's so hyper focused on one
thing and that's just destroying things.
I don't know if she'd actually behappy post like fighting her maker.
Yeah, but because you had that motiveand that drive, that gave you a reason
to cooperate with the party, to go alongwith their plans and just abide and wait.
(23:31):
Yeah.
I've seen players try to be chaoticand they just throw a wrench into
everything, but there's no reason.
There's no purpose.
You were very deliberate and thatmade your betrayal at the end so
much more delicious because youwere their friend and you had helped
them, and you had healed them, and.
But everything you did waswith your specific goal and
(23:51):
motive in mind, which was Yes.
Which was a, a selfish motive.
You know, I want to be free.
It was
very selfish.
Absolutely.
But it
was still like, you still wantedsomething that you perceived was good.
You valued freedom, youvalued getting your life back.
You were willing to step on other peopleto get to that, but that made a more
(24:12):
fascinating and interesting character.
I remember we were talkingabout some of your inspiration.
You mentioned Audrey too, andyou also mentioned Poison Ivy.
I did mention Poison Ivy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Poison ivy.
And that's where we, we cameup together with this idea of.
Instead of a classic vampire ordam fear, but a caribous plant.
(24:33):
Yes.
Hence the druid background.
Yes,
we used the druid background circleof spores, but we kind of re flavored
it to be, you know, thorns and.
Yeah, it's, it's really interestingbecause my whole experience with Drewitt
has always been that they're likedivinely good and they're like making
(24:54):
beautiful things all the time, you know?
And we sort of forget about allof the deadly type of plants
that we have in the world too.
You know, so I wanted to, oh my goodness,
you were also Isabel from in Panto.
I did not make that connection until now.
I, I really wanted to spin the ideaof a druid on its head by having
(25:19):
it be so just inherently creepy.
Because I also wanted to play into,yeah, I wanted to play into your
Eldridge Horror type of campaign for,that you were doing for us as well.
And, you know, we, we digspooky plants in this house too.
My husband's next game is about sp.
(25:41):
Spooky things in your house, andsome of those have to do with
plants and deadly plants at that.
So
I, I love it.
It was so much fun to help bepart of that creative process in
bringing that character to life.
Yeah.
I mean, you did most of the work.
I was just kind of like guiding.
I was, I was gardening a little bit, alittle pond here, a little watering here,
(26:03):
but it was you who did the growing, I
loved how you brought me into the group.
I was like, okay.
He's introducing likeeverybody in the group.
Wait, what is he doing with me?
Oh, oh, oh, okay.
I was built up as it, it felt like I wasA B B E G at the beginning of the session
(26:25):
with how you introduced my character,and I loved just how much it intimidated
the person who was in charge of.
The party being put together andeverything, and it set up the perfect
scenario of being like, you owe me.
You owe me a favor because youcan't pay for how much I charge.
(26:47):
And I loved that.
I loved that so much.
I was like, that waslike the perfect setup.
I hadn't had a more beautiful setup forthe type of character that I was playing.
Before, like to thatextent, it was so cool.
And that was something I hadn't planned.
Like I hadn't written out how Iwas going to introduce all these
(27:10):
characters because I wasn't sure whatthe vibe was gonna be with everybody.
Mm-hmm.
How everybody would interact.
And so while I started makingthe introductions, that's when I
was thinking on the fly thinkingwhat would be the best way?
To get everyone in.
And I looked at you and you just lookedterrifying and awesome and powerful.
This isn't somebody who is, youknow, answering notice board jobs.
(27:35):
This isn't someone who's,you know, a mercenary.
This is, this is going to be thespecialist that they bring in.
This is and And so, yeah, I'm so I thoughtup with this idea of a transaction a,
a devilish deal because money's uselessin D&D especially in a one shot when
you're not gonna be around a long time.
Right.
But having that social, a,that oral agreement, uhhuh.
(28:00):
Owe you a favor, which cameinto play in the final act.
Like that was, it
really did, and it made me so happy.
So, so you took that and then,you know, I was running the game.
I didn't have time to monitor,come back to that myself.
But you remembered and you brought itup and you were able to build on those
ideas and make such a delicious twist.
It just, it was, it was so funbecause I could just see the fear in
(28:25):
everybody's eyes every time that Ibrought up the fact that I had an I O U.
And stuff because it just, I, I'vealways wanted to play a good villain
type of character, and one that justshakes people to their core because you
don't know what they're going to do.
Mm-hmm.
I, I loved it the entire time.
(28:48):
I loved it.
No, even though youwere, you know, Imposing.
It's intimidating and very spooky.
There were some times when Igot under your skin a little
bit and I got to Oh, absolutely.
Which was fun because wegot see more aspects of you.
I, I
brought, it was actuallyme and not my character.
(29:08):
Okay.
We had, if you haven't watched thelivestream yet, dear listener, go do it.
It's great.
Major spoilers right now, as if wehaven't already spoiled everything right.
But there was this there wasthis room behind a mimic.
There was this unicorn head mimic,and in the room behind it, there
were all these specimen jars andthese crawling hands knocking.
(29:34):
Jars onto the ground and the glassshattering and liquid getting all over.
And these slugs, they were actuallysl tadpoles that were crawling
around, and I had like 12 of them.
And I just got these from Amazon.
And not only that, not only did Ihave these gooey slugs but I had them
soaking in water because I wantedthem to be wet and slimy and gross,
(29:58):
as visceral as possible becauseI, I mostly play my games online.
And there's benefits to that.
I get a nice comfy chair.
I got a cool setup.
Temperature's alwaysjust the way I like it.
Mm-hmm.
But I wanted to.
Play with some, mechanics isn't theright word, but play with some, some
props and some immersive elements and you
(30:19):
wanted to bring some physicalityto the, to the games.
Yeah, that's a good word for it.
Thank you.
But yeah, so I brought these out and Ijust started throwing them at people.
Yeah.
Every time someone got attacked,I was just throwing ah.
What, how did you feel thefirst time one of these collided
with you?
Oh, I was so worried that like Ihad smudged something of my makeup.
(30:40):
I was careful not to aim for makeup.
Yeah.
But I was like, oh my God,because that, I was like, this is
like, we're almost into spring.
I am not ready for the haunted house.
The haunted house experience was in.
October, back in fall, okay.
(31:00):
When I was going to haunted houses, andI expected this, it's almost spring.
I was not expecting that.
It's always spooky season in my house.
It's always spooky season.
So, and we had a lot of fun with these.
You, your reactions were thebest, which is just permission to
action.
Cause I was visceral having likereal Kortney reactions to it,
(31:24):
which was funny because you werelike, I'm a scary vampire drew, I'm
a scary vampire, but throwcreepy crawlies in front of me.
Absolutely not.
There was a moment where you you wereattacking one of these creatures.
And you were going to bite it.
I did.
And you had fangs in and I think youwanted advantage on it or something like
(31:46):
that?
I, I sure
did.
If you actually bite it in real life,I will give you advantage on the roll.
And you did it and we got that on camera.
It was glorious.
You conquered that fear,you dominated those slugs.
I loved it.
Admittedly, admittedly, I did onlybite it with my vampire fangs.
(32:08):
And those are made out of plastic.
So wasn't like my actualtooth, but I did it.
Actual tooth.
That would, that wouldbe a line we can't cross.
Nope.
Fake tooth.
Okay.
It's just it's like the,the feeling of something.
I knew they were sticky because theyfelt sticky on me, so I was like the
feeling of like, I didn't want like stickyresidue on my teeth, if that made sense.
(32:30):
Yeah.
And I could take out mythings and like wipe it off.
So was it just the texture ofthe creatures that I threw?
Was it the way they looked orwas it the way that I described
them, the way that you described them?
The it, that was the aick factorfor me on, on that admittedly, like
(32:50):
it was the way that you describedthem and then you just like threw
them and I was like, jump, scare.
That was really what it was.
And it was just never knowing and it wasalways whenever you would like, Pull over
the specimen jar again, or you'd put itback or you'd pull over the other one.
(33:11):
And stuff and you would just have it.
Luckily I was pretty close toyour DM screen so I could like
see ahead of time when you weregonna throw it at somebody else.
You
saw it in my hand totally like
waving the, you were just like it.
You do such a good job of like, I.
Making people focus on your face whileyou're describing scenarios to them
(33:33):
because you're so intense with how youdescribe things that I just saw your
hand reaching in to the jar while you'retalking to them, and then you just ye it.
It's all about misdirection.
It's all
about direction.
It was just, it was, you have justsuch a talent with storytelling
just through that alone.
(33:53):
That it made it 10 times moreeffective than what it actually was.
Knowing full wealth for me.
That they're fake.
I know they're fake, but you did such agood job at just upping the creep factor
in the game to make them actually spooky,even though they're just little slugs.
You bought off of Amazon that you stuck in
(34:15):
water.
Yep.
Slugs from Amazon.
They were multiple colors, you know.
You know, $11.
Mm-hmm.
I'm glad that worked out so well and I'mglad you infiltrated the house closest
to where those things would be becauseI had to plan out that entire house.
Cause I didn't know which directionyou guys were going to enter from.
(34:37):
Yeah.
So there were a lot of tricks that Ididn't get to use, but I'm not gonna
say what they were, cause I'm gonna say
them.
The, the concept of DMing isjust so vast and large that I
just give kudos to anybody thatcan do as good of a job at it.
And I mean, it's a very good telltalereason as to why you are listed
(34:59):
as a professional dungeon master.
Because like, oh my gosh.
I just, I applaud anybodywho can DM because.
You have to think of every singlescenario and not get overwhelmed and
keep your cool while it's happening.
Unless you wanna dosomething completely devious.
Wanna know a secret.
What?
(35:19):
You don't have to think of every scenario.
You just gotta pretend likeyou already had a plan, right?
You just gotta improvise with confidence.
Yeah.
Last night my players threw me for a loop.
I won't spoil, spoil.
So yeah.
So evermore led you into beinga nerd, getting into D&D.
(35:41):
Mm-hmm.
I think you said you got biginto actually playing the game.
During Covid.
During Covid back when, yeah.
When D&D got Cool.
You were there.
Yep.
I got into my first sessions.
I actually was just likeplaying animal crossing a lot.
You know, I, like everybodyelse was during, I, I was too.
(36:03):
Yep.
Everybody was mostly my wife.
It was her island.
I got to visit her
island.
So I would, I would always playwith my friend Brie all the time.
We'd be on the phone all the time, butthen she'd always be like, Hey, I've gotta
go for four hours to go and play D&D.
And I'd be like, Okay, bye.
And then I'd be like, well,what am I gonna do now actually
(36:26):
spend time with my husband?
What is that?
I've already been
married to him for three years.
Yeah, right.
I and at one point I was just like, is itweird to ask if I can just like sit in on
your guys' game of Dungeons and Dragons?
And she was like, No, let me ask myDM and then my, the DM Miranda was
(36:52):
like, yeah, of course you can totallycome and sit in and everything.
And after I listened to their session,I was like, this is really fun.
It felt like I was listening to a podcastwhile I was playing animal crossing
out on my porch and listening to them.
And it was about two sessions beforeshe actually messaged me and was
like, Hey, did you maybe wanna joinour group and make a character?
(37:14):
I feel bad that you're just likesitting there and just listening to us.
And I was like, oh, sure.
And she kind of walked methrough the whole thing.
They were in the middleof playing cursive stride.
And so I ended up love that playinga character that was from Barro
and no shocker here, her backstory.
It's from Little Shopof Horrors, A dentist?
(37:36):
No, I almost went with a dentist,but I actually decided to go
with a flower shop instead.
And because Barro is so desolate Therewas the, the idea of a dead flower
shop that was basically gone under.
(37:57):
And that is basically the flower shop atthe beginning of Little Shop of Horrors.
The flower shop mush Nicks is justcompletely desolate and there are
no customers or anything like that.
So my character was from that.
Cool.
Very cool.
So, What are you up to now?
What am I up to now?
(38:17):
Yeah.
Well, I have moved on toanother group of people.
My, my group naturally sort ofdissipated post covid and everything,
and now I am with a crew on Twitch.
Called the Misadventuresof the Dragon Crew.
And we stream our sessions everyWednesday and we have a giant table
(38:41):
with a big screen in the middle.
We've got screens everywhere, sound,equipment, everything, trying to make our
D&D sessions as immersive as possible.
And we are currently actuallyplaying the hero system instead
of Dungeons and Dragons five E.
So I'm doing that instead now.
And we it is the Misadventuresof the Dragon Crew.
(39:03):
They're awesome people.
I adore every one of them.
So that's what I'm doing.
And then in addition to that, I am,you know, I'm still doing performance
work and I am still doing I amdoing Coplay full-time now as well.
Let's talk about some of theperformance work that you do.
Can't believe we're, like, we'vebeen talking for so long and we
(39:26):
haven't even mentioned that you'rea professional princess and mermaid.
Yeah, that's a, that's a fun time.
Well, tell us about that.
Yeah, cause this, this goes into,you know, the, the wonderful
tapestry that is Kortney.
Yeah, I I have been working withWish Upon a Party, which is the
(39:48):
princess company that I have beenworking with for over 10 years.
And I have been working with them throughthe Make-A-Wish Foundation as well.
So my best friend Brinley is the ownerof the company and founded the company
off of volunteer work specifically.
And it is through the Make-A-WishFoundation that she specifically became
(40:10):
a wish granter and started the company.
And we've been doing princess worksince then, and then it eventually
deviated into birthday parties.
Hence why the professional wordcomes in, because then you have
officially gotten paid, thereforeyou're a professional doing it.
Right.
Professional princess.
Right.
So I started off playing Princess Tiana.
(40:34):
And then eventually I delved off intodoing Moana during Covid specifically.
So I was doing a lot of Zoomcalls as Moana and everything.
I had like a beachbackdrop and everything.
And then I started playing Moana moreoutside and I started getting paid
doing Moana because Tiana wasn't gettingrequested nearly as often and stuff.
(40:54):
So well on, it's just more recent.
Yes, and she was morerecent and everything.
And then the Encanto RA craze happenedand I got to play Mirabel last summer.
She's kind of died down since then,but I still play her on occasion.
And I'm now hoping that I can playAriel more often because of the new
(41:16):
Little Mermaid movie coming out.
So that'll be really fun.
I actually have a shootspeaking of Mermaid on Saturday.
Speaking of mermaids, I also just gothired on with the Court of Mermaids
who was actually one of our sponsors.
For the D&D live stream.
Mm-hmm.
They were one of our sponsorsthat we had, but I had already
(41:36):
submitted an audition form withthem and I got hired through them.
So they actually are a mermaid group thatwhatever they earn in tips they actually
give to their respective conservationefforts that they choose to go to.
And we just love to go to volunteerevents and immerse ourselves
(41:58):
as mermaids to the public.
So we just did a lot of work overat Station Park in Farmington.
I just did three events in a row forthe first time and being a mermaid.
And it's crazy.
You go from being a princess and you'rereally, really well known and kids
ask you your these questions aboutwhat it's like to be a princess and
you move over into being a mermaid.
(42:18):
And it's literally the same exact thing.
Even if you have created your ownoriginal mermaid character, they just
wanna know every question under the sunabout what it's like to be a mermaid.
And I do put in the words professionalmermaid there too, because I did I did
get paid to be a mermaid over at theLiving Planet Aquarium for their Halloween
(42:42):
season, and so through that I got me paid.
I wish I was a spooky mermaid, but no, I,I still was my brightly colored mermaid.
So yes, pretty mermaidsare cool too, I guess.
Yeah, so I'm still, I'm doing a lotof really fun stuff over the summer
that we're gonna be at Ren Fair thisyear, which I'm very excited about.
(43:04):
It's gonna be just a fantastic time andI'm enjoying being my jellyfish mermaid.
Very cool.
Now you've got a lot of followers,you've got a lot of people who are
interested in what you do in thecosplay sphere and in the nerds sphere.
It's so crazy.
What, what do you wanna say topeople trying to make their mark,
(43:25):
people trying to get notice peopletrying to live their dreams.
What, what, what didyou wanna say to them?
I
think honestly the first thing for mewhen it came to content creation, it was
because it's something that I wanted to doand I didn't wanna do it for anybody else.
And I think that's themost important thing.
(43:45):
You shouldn't be doing it for thefollowers or the the numbers necessarily.
The numbers are great because theycan make the things you want to do.
They, they can give it longevityabsolutely over time, but making
sure that you're creating things thatyou're wanting to do is like, first
(44:09):
and foremost, the most important inmy opinion, because the moment that
you stop doing things for yourself isthe moment that it stops becoming fun.
And it becomes more of achore and less like a job.
This is the first sort of likeprofession for me where I have felt
(44:29):
motivated to keep going becausethere's just endless possibilities
for what I want to do with it.
And so I always prioritize thethings that I wanna do first.
On those.
And I also don't take suggestionsfrom people necessarily on
what I should and shouldn't be.
I always do make sure that the typeof costumes that I'm doing, that
(44:54):
I actually vibe with the fandom orwhatever that it's come from as well.
Before I actually like, delve deepinto it or like the idea of it.
So I, I genuinely do think that it'svery much you, like you need to make sure
(45:15):
that it's something that you actuallyreally want to do and love to do and that
it's just for you first before anything.
Gotta make sure that's what it was.
That
passion is
there.
Yep.
Because that's what it was for me first.
I just, I, I started offdoing it in my own home.
(45:37):
Because I was on TikTok a lot and I sawthat people were dressing up as things,
and my heart was with the characterthat I had basically created myself
over at evermore, and my heart wasbroken because I had gotten laid off and
everything for very, very valid reasons.
Obviously the pandemic being the mainreason, but I didn't know whether or not
(46:03):
I was gonna be able to come back, ever.
And I didn't know what that was gonnalook like, and I dressed up like her in
my home and it started a healing process.
And then I was like, oh, what othercharacters do I resonate with that I
could look like and put out there asa form of healing for myself during
(46:25):
this really, really hard time socially?
Because you couldn't.
Really go out and dress up anymore.
So you just, I just did a lotof stuff in my own home for
a really, really long time.
And, you know it got to a point whereI just kept doing it inside of my
(46:47):
house and then I moved into actuallygoing outdoors and I connected with
some wonderful people at Fan, andI did my first, like on location.
Shoot with them.
And that was with Rain and Bella,who were also in our D&D live stream.
Mm-hmm.
And Haith as well.
(47:08):
And the four of us like didMonster High together and I
loved Monster High growing up.
And that was my first on location shootand I got it just a little taste of
what it is that the three of them did intheir lives and I was like, oh, I get it.
I get it and I wanna do this more.
This sounds great.
(47:28):
This looks great.
This is fun.
I was having such a good time and I wasjust happy to be there the whole time.
And I just got to see, I.
How they worked and what theirprofessional lives look like.
And they have been just nothingbut kind people to me since, and
it's only taken off from there,which is really, really cool.
But that was all becauseI talked to Rain at.
(47:52):
Fan and rain and I already knew each otherbecause we both went to college together.
Okay, I didn't know that.
Yeah, so her and I wentto college together.
She was in the Fashion instituteand I was in the theater program.
And the fashion institute and thetheater program work hand in hand
with each other sometimes, especiallywhen it comes to costuming for shows.
So I was in a show over there andshe costumed me for one of those
(48:14):
shows and then, She also happenedto be working at evermore in
the costume department as well.
And that was in that firstseason and I was like, oh,
hey, it's so good to see you.
Like our paths havealways just kept crossing.
And it's only like right now thatit started to, that it's like it's
stuck and everything, but it's
stuck.
And now you're here andnow you're creating, and
(48:36):
yeah.
And I'm really, really enjoying it.
And it's like, I, I just have never felt.
Like I could say, I know exactly what Iwanna be when I grow up and everything,
but now I'm starting to feel moreassured of myself that this is exactly
what I should be doing right now inmy life because I am having so much
fun and it doesn't feel like a chore.
(48:57):
Sure.
Like the cosplay crunching and theslogging sometimes seems like enough,
but I put that on myself half thetime, but it's so worth it and I just.
Am amazed by the fact that Iget compliments from people over
something that came out of my brain.
(49:19):
I'm always so fascinated by what people,what other people come up with that I
forget sometimes that I also came up withstuff and that people are recognizing
that too, and it's the first time I'veactually felt like, wow, I've actually
finished something to like completion.
And it's appreciated and it's reallynice because I've always, I've always
(49:42):
have finished things, you know,never gone all the way with things.
Okay.
Well, I look forward to thenext things that you create.
I'm hoping that there's morecollaborations that you and I
can do in the future becausethere's an absolute pleasure.
I
would love to, I genuinelyhave been loving D&D more than
(50:02):
anything, and I just wanna keepdoing D&D for the rest of my life.
I feel like if I don'thave D&D in my life, I.
Will like malfunction.
I will malfunction.
Let's let's make it, let's makeit our thing rest of our lives.
Yes, I know.
Dante livestream people.
Let's all like actuallymake the campaign continue.
(50:23):
Let's go.
Awesome.
Any, any final words?
I don't, I don't think so.
I'm glad you're getting to see my, myface in its true form and everything
and my hair in its true form.
Cause not a lot of people get to see that.
I'm just letting you know, cuz mostof the time I'm usually in wigs and
(50:43):
crazy contacts like I was for the D&D
live stream.
But now my dozens of fans willsee you in your true form as well.
Yay.
This has been Kortney, a professionalshape shifter extraordinaire
at the curly girly cosplay.
Yeah.
Thanks for tuning in everybody.
Yeah, thank you.
Bye.
Hey Kortney.
How you doing today?
Hi.
I am doing fantastic.
How are you?
I'm doing, it's early.
It's early in the morning.
It is early.
It It's early.
I've got my water.
You've got your coffee.
We're ready for this.
I've got coffee.
I was like, listen, I will only getup early for a handful of people, so.
I You made the list.
(00:56):
I you did
Because 10:00 AM Cause 10:00AM late for me, listen,
I'm 10:00 AM is so early.
I'm a person that stays up tillat least two o'clock on a daily.
Yeah.
Because I get the late night creativitystuff happening, so I never want to sleep.
So I run a bunch of games at night.
(01:16):
The game I ran last nightwas from seven to 10:00 PM.
And then I had to like write up a bunchof notes and answer some emails until 11.
And then I still had all thisenergy, so I'm like, Hey, let's,
I, my wife just is ready for bed.
And I'm like, let's watch a show.
I need to do some breaths.
Yeah,
I
feel that.
And we were in bed after midnight andluckily our kids sleep very, very well.
(01:38):
Oh, hey, look, we're live.
We've got.
We've got people listening in.
This is Dungeons and Decks,the podcast where we talk about
collaborative storytelling and howwe tell better stories together.
Thank you so much for coming in.
Kortney tell us a littlebit about yourself.
Well obviously my name is Kortney and I.
(01:59):
I'm Kortney.
Hi.
And I am a co player full-time andI am also a performer primarily my
basis being in musical theater and.
Gosh, this is really hard.
I don't even know what else to say.
Really hard.
What else do you want to know?
We're,
we're gonna spend the next 30minutes talking about, don't worry,
(02:21):
that's just scratching the surface.
So that now is scratching the surface.
Now that people are interested, nowthat people are intrigued, now we
get to delve into some of the morefascinating aspects of your life.
For those of you who've.
You know, been followingfollowing us on social media.
You know, that we were recentlycollaborating together on a live
(02:42):
streamed D&D game at EvermorePark, and we're gonna get to that.
We're gonna get to that.
But first I want to delveinto the origin story.
The origin story, yes.
Of how you became this epicnerd that you are today.
Oh man.
So where does your origin story begin?
My origin story starts in highschool, if I'm being honest.
(03:03):
So I didn't start getting into likecostumes or performing or anything until
about my freshman year in high school.
Before that, I was an avid athlete.
I used to play soccer all the time.
Okay.
And it wasn't until my.
Freshman year of high school whereI actually didn't make the soccer
(03:24):
team that I was like, I don't knowwhat I'm going to do with myself,
because that was my entire life.
And I was like, oh, Ididn't make the soccer team.
I took, and I know this wasgonna be a tragic backstory.
It it is a little bit, you know,it's the, those are the best kinds of
backstory or a tragic backstory stories.
But.
Because of that.
(03:44):
One of my classes that I wastaking was an advanced dance class.
I, I tested into advanced danceand not quite dance company.
So I was in advanced dance and my teacherthought that I was good enough that
she was like, Hey, you should go andaudition for the school musical and stuff.
Because there's gonna bea lot of dancing in that.
And I said, okay, sure.
(04:04):
Why not?
Told my parents, my parentswere like, I, okay, go for it.
And so I auditioned formy first production and it
was Beauty and the Beast.
Excellent.
And I was a villager.
I was a wolf and I was a plate.
Oh, those
are you have range.
I love that.
I had so much
range in high schooland I just stuck with.
(04:28):
Musical theater.
After that, I caught the bugimmediately and I was stuck doing that.
I joined choir in school.
So I was
So you were a jock whobecame a theater kid?
Yep.
I actually had a similar experience.
I didn't make the basketball team myFreshman year of high school in junior
high, I hit a massive growth spurt and Iwas about six inches taller than anybody
(04:52):
else in my junior high basketball league.
So I was the best center in, in theleague basically, cuz I was just so huge.
But I never learned how todribble well or shoot well.
And so when I stopped growing,I just barely six feet tall.
I wasn't good at basketball anymore causeI no longer had that height advantage.
So I had to turn totheater and choir and Yep.
(05:18):
You know, music, you know,we shared that in common.
It's how it goes.
How, how else would we have knownthat that was gonna be the case?
So, so you became a theater kid?
I did, I was an arts kid, so I was alwaysin the art wing all the time for things.
At my high school.
And shortly after that, I went tocollege and I studied performing arts
(05:42):
over at Salt Lake Community Collegethrough their performing arts program.
I haven't finished it entirely.
I did the performing arts track, butbecause of my learning disabilities
that I have, two classes are alittle bit hard for me to get past.
So I've just been like, Boo.
I'm good.
I'm good right now.
I have the knowledge that I need exactly.
(06:03):
I have the knowledge I need.
I did a lot of shows there andeven some past the point of like me
supposedly graduating from there.
And then from there, I.
Got married in 2017 and then in 2018I got reached out to by Evermore
(06:25):
Park to come and audition fortheir first season of lore in 2018.
And I was sort of in a post recoveryfrom a major surgery that I had
in my life when they contacted me.
So I was like, I can'treally get out of bed.
(06:46):
Can I just send in an audition I canmanage to get myself up for about 20
minutes to film something and send it in?
And they were like, yeah, sure.
Let me send you a side.
They sent me a side, I sent it inthe next day I got a casting email.
Excellent.
Yeah.
So evermore, so not everyone wholistens has, has been to evermore and
you were the third person in a rowthat I've interviewed who's had many
(07:10):
experiences with evermore, and everybodydefines evermore in a different way.
Mm.
How would you explain evermoreto someone who's never been?
I explain evermore as amedieval game simulation.
Because in this household weare video game people 100%.
(07:32):
So I can really only describe thingsin video game terminology now.
Thanks to my husband and yeah, I basicallytell them that you have dived into a
fantasy game and you get to interact withcharacters and they send you on quests.
Fetch
quests.
(07:53):
That's it.
Be quests and es.
I love
it.
Fetch quests.
That's, that's really what it waswhen it was when I was working there.
When I was starting there.
Cool.
It was a lot of fetch quests.
So tell us about that firstseason of lore and this was, this
was during the spooky season.
It was a spooky season, and yetI was not a spooky character.
(08:15):
Oh, you were nice and
friendly.
Oh yeah.
I mean, look at my face.
Doesn't it just scream nice and friendly.
Last time we hung out,you looked a lot scarier.
I looked so scary, which I loved.
But no, I was actually castas a fairy my first season.
Of lore and I would play thatferry for the next three years.
(08:36):
Cool.
Of working there.
And the first season of lore was avery interesting season because none
of us really knew what was going on.
None of us really understoodto the full extent.
I don't even think I understood tothe full extent of what I was doing.
I had some experience with improv becauseI was on my college's improv team.
Mm-hmm.
But this was a different levelof improv that I had never.
(08:58):
Experienced before, and it was howthey basically started asking me, what
do you want out of your character?
You have free reign tomake your character.
Obviously this is somethingthat has changed since.
And you know, evermore is in charge ofwhat kind of characters they write now and
stuff, but when I was working there, I wasthe person who built my character because
(09:20):
I was defined as like fairy number one.
When I was there,
I You wanted to be more than just
I did, I did.
Well, and that was, how do you makeyourself interesting when you were
just labeled as ferry number one.
You're given the evermore handbookof things from Laura 2018.
(09:45):
Can, can we get a profileshot of that binder?
See how thick
it is.
This, this was my binder,
so, oh, let's, this was four inch,three ring binder For those of
you listening in, that is huge.
Yes.
This was the Bible.
So this is all of the originalstuff of what Evermores linear
(10:05):
concept was supposed to be.
My character was notwritten in any of this.
I was, you know, a side character.
I wasn't part of the mainstory or anything like that.
I had a very, very small descriptor as towhat a ferry was in the world of evermore.
And that was it.
You know, I didn't have too muchto work with, so it was a lot
(10:26):
of, Hey what do you want to do?
And I was like, okaylet me figure this out.
I had to come up with a name.
I didn't know what I wasgonna be dressed like.
Yet.
But I had to come up with a name.
I had to come up with a personality trait.
I was also the oldest ferryout of all of the girls.
All the girls were like, yes, all thegirls were like in their late teens.
(10:49):
And I was like 23, 22 at the time.
And so I basically adopted the like,Mary Poppins type of demeanor where I
was taking care of all the little girlferries basically and trying to keep
them in check and stuff because I wastrying not to run around that much.
I was like, I'm too old for thisalready of running around being
(11:14):
crazy, all of that fun stuff.
I came up with my name, my character'sname was Amelda and I came up with
Amelda because I was really obsessedwith the movie Coco at the time.
And mama Amelda was one of myfavorite characters in that movie.
Okay.
So that was, that was the, that was thedead grandmother who forbade everyone
(11:35):
from listening to music because Yes.
Hector had, had gone and left her.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, that's coming back.
She was feisty.
She is feisty.
I'm getting all Misty.
I just thinking about Coco.
Why'd you put It's a good movie.
It's so sad.
It's, but also so happy.
It's so
good.
Cool.
(11:56):
So you had, you played a melt ofthe ferry and I, during that time I
was just a casual fan of evermore.
I'd go with my wife, we'd go ondate nights and I remember you, I
remember you as a very Oh, okay.
I mean, I was just some guy inthe crowd, you know, all, all
bearded guys look the same.
So.
My hair was a lot shorterat the time, actually.
(12:16):
Yeah.
Well I think most
of the ferries, mine waslike up to here, so it's
grown out since then.
Mine was, I've had many haircutssince more or less looked the same.
So yeah.
So evermore was, you mentioned beforethe stream that that was a huge turning
point for you in figuring out mm-hmm.
You know, what you wantedto be when you grew up.
(12:39):
Yeah.
The wise old age of 22 or 23.
Yeah.
This evermore puts you onanother trajectory towards,
you know, awesome nerdiness.
Yep.
I was not expecting it.
I was not expecting.
Anything that was gonna happen next inmy life because the concept of making a
(12:59):
character and dressing up and interactingwith characters was completely new to me.
The LARP experiencecompletely foreign to me.
I was like, mm-hmm.
Okay.
These people are really, reallyinto what they are doing really.
And they're like, they're like reallyinterested in wanting to know more about.
(13:19):
Me the character and not thequest that I'm going to give them.
I haven't gotten that figured out yet.
So I was like rushing to like tryto figure out backstory and the
fairies we're trying to figure outhow, like where did we come from?
Who are we in, who's in charge of us?
Like those kinds of things.
Mm-hmm.
So was a lot of.
(13:40):
As a guest at the park, I always foundthat the side characters were more
fun to hang out with because thosewho were like central to the plot one,
there was always a huge line Yeah.
To, to go talk to them.
And they were just repeatingthe same stuff over and over and
over again because it was mm-hmm.
Part of a plot that theyneeded to adhere to.
But the side characters, at least inmy experience, they didn't have lines.
(14:04):
They were a lot more free and they would.
Be more willing to ask youquestions as a guest mm-hmm.
And build relationships.
And so I became fr I liked thefairies, of course I became friends
with a bunch of goblins there.
Yeah.
But yeah, it was the side characters thatI really fell in love with that ever more.
So thanks
for, thanks for being, I made a lot ofer.
I made a lot of really fun relationshipswith people through my character
(14:30):
after that season too, like Youknow some of my relationships that I
had with patrons turned into actualrelationships and I'm still friends
with some of them to this day.
And yeah, it was, it was areally, really fun time, but I.
Just hadn't ever experiencedanything like that before in my life.
(14:51):
And I ended up making my owncharacter too, when I wasn't cast
the following season for Aurora.
And everything.
My husband was cast but I wasn't.
And I was like, well, I'm gonna be goingthere a lot to drive my husband to work.
I need to come up with a character.
(15:12):
And so I came up with my first characterever, which was my pirate character Vera.
She's no longer a pirate now, she'shad a complete story arc at this point.
Redemption arc left.
But when I first made her, she was apirate and she was my first character
I ever like invested costume pieces forand got a wig for and anything like that.
(15:36):
Like I just.
And I fell in love with her and she wasone of my favorite characters that I
played for a really, really long time.
So yeah, I always startedoff with my character.
Since then, like I said, I startedoff with her making her costume.
Mm-hmm.
And yeah, I built her costume first andthen I filled out her backstory later.
(16:02):
And what was really funny is that recentlywhile I was cleaning out all of my old
things, like I was finding all of my olddolls that my mom sent over to me, I found
a journal, or I would say it's a journal.
It's literally a notebook withOrlando Bloom's character from
Pirates of the Caribbean on the front.
(16:22):
Of course, I was, what's her name?
I was obsessed with him.
When I was younger cause he was real cute.
And in that book, in that notebook,I wrote my own fan fiction and I
forgot that I had written anythinglike this about a pirate character.
In the Pirates of the Caribbeanuniverse and like to a T somehow.
(16:46):
This was just like all the way in thebig back of my subconscious I guess.
But like there are so many similaritiesof my character's backstory.
And my middle school version'sbrain of, of my, my character
and I was, Vera was just living rent.
She was living there readyfor her moment to shine.
(17:07):
Yes, exactly.
Awesome.
So a lot of people when they getinto Dungeons and Dragons or any
tabletop RPGs when they startcreating a character, they start with.
Stats, you know, race, class, mm-hmm.
The mechanics of the game.
I, I like to take a story, first approach.
I want to know, you know, what,why is this person suffering?
(17:28):
Why do they wanna go out mm-hmm.
And change the world?
What, what, how are theydiscontent with their life?
And mm-hmm.
I love this story driven approachand you've introduced another very
cool approach, starting with theaesthetics, starting with the look.
And what else do you do to get intothe head space of a new character?
(17:50):
I, now that I've built up likea very large plethora of costume
pieces over time, I always Excellent,
excellent use of the wordplethora up, by the way.
Thank you.
Gotta gotta compliment that.
Thank
you.
I I start to actually just considerwhat I already have on my person.
(18:11):
And I just want to use whatI already have half the time.
And sometimes I'll build thingsif I really want to like round
out something and make it a littlebit different, hence why my damn
fear looks a little bit different.
But majority of the stuff thatI had for her, I already had.
So I always try to take the approachof what do I already have, and then
(18:35):
I will go to Pinterest and I'll tryto find some vibes there as well.
And then I'll be like, Ooh, I'mgonna add this element and then
maybe I'll build something.
So in the case of my damp fearshe, I, I built all of the
floral pieces for her costume.
But everything else wasmine that I already owned.
(18:57):
Let's us forward a little bitto that down for character.
Yeah, a Audre, that was her name.
Audre Elco.
Yeah.
Audre Elco.
So when we became acquainted throughour mutual friend Rachel Ann you were
brought in as one of the characterson a live stream that I was.
Venge mastering.
And you had some, you had some vibes,I guess that's a good word for it.
(19:20):
You had some vibes of thecharacter that you wanted and
the aesthetic that you wanted.
But when you talked to me, you didn'tquite know how that was going to
work mechanically or story wise.
Mm-hmm.
Which is great because I was there and Iwas able to find the mechanics for you.
Let's talk about that process.
Where did you start with Anell?
Well again, I have an obsessionwith musical theater and I am still.
(19:45):
Obsessed with Little Shop of Horrors.
I was still on my little shopof Horrors kick and stuff.
And I primarily wanted to have a characterthat was different because I have been
playing a Bard for over three years.
And I also was cosplaying a bar.
Recently as well on TikTok.
(20:06):
So I was like, okay, I gottamove away from the Bard class.
As much as I love being a bard,because I can be like my true self and.
It's an, it's a type of characterclass that I can ease into with
no problem, despite not knowinganything about instruments.
I wanted to do something completelydifferent for the D&D live stream
(20:29):
because it was gonna be a one shot,and I didn't know if this was going
to be a character that I was going towant to translate into another life
into another session or campaign.
Excuse me.
Campaign.
I'm still getting used to the D&Dterminology, despite the fact that
I've only been playing for three years.
It's fine, it's fine.
People still get confused withcharacter level and spell levels
(20:52):
and Yeah, it's not intuitive.
It's not intuitive, don't
worry.
So yeah, so the primary thingwas that I wanted to take
myself out of my comfort zone.
And I said to you that I wantedto do something completely
different than what I was used to.
And that.
Decision was I wanted to bea chaotic, evil character.
(21:15):
And that kind of happenedand it was great.
And it turned out really funny because I.
I threw everybody for aloop on the livestream.
Who was the real enemy?
Was it the actual enemies that Daxwas throwing at us or was it Kortney?
Was it Audra?
Now?
Which is for those of you who didn't catchthat yet, that's a play on Audrey too.
(21:36):
The yes.
Person eating plant inlittle Shop of Horrors.
Mm-hmm.
And I remember you said to meyou wanted to be chaotic evil.
I mean, I don't use alignment in my games.
I mean, I use a lot of morality,I use a lot of philosophy.
Yeah.
But the alignment system I'vealways found to be restricting.
I'm more interested in good peoplewho do bad things and bad people who.
(21:59):
You know, have redemption arcs, right?
Mm-hmm.
I'm more interested in those types ofstories, and I don't think the alignment
system lends to that nuance, puttingpeople in nine different boxes, so mm-hmm.
We talked about, okay, what doesit mean to be Kay chaotic evil?
What is it you actually want?
Yes.
And we decided your characterdidn't just want to destroy things
and, and watch the world burn.
(22:19):
What, what did she wa, what weresome of the inspirations for her?
She wanted to actually have basicallySeymour's moment in Little Shop of
Horrors, which was, you know, hewants to kill the plant, but actually
be successful at killing the plant.
You know, the, the the movieversion, not the director's cut.
(22:45):
That's, that's really what she wanted, wasthat, you know, she did, she wanted her.
Some semblance of her old life back.
Mm-hmm.
And she feels that the only reasonher life changed was because of
the plant that changed her andshe hates what she is now for it.
And she kind of turned into this vengefultype of individual that doesn't really
(23:08):
care about other people around herbecause she's so hyper focused on one
thing and that's just destroying things.
I don't know if she'd actually behappy post like fighting her maker.
Yeah, but because you had that motiveand that drive, that gave you a reason
to cooperate with the party, to go alongwith their plans and just abide and wait.
(23:31):
Yeah.
I've seen players try to be chaoticand they just throw a wrench into
everything, but there's no reason.
There's no purpose.
You were very deliberate and thatmade your betrayal at the end so
much more delicious because youwere their friend and you had helped
them, and you had healed them, and.
But everything you did waswith your specific goal and
(23:51):
motive in mind, which was Yes.
Which was a, a selfish motive.
You know, I want to be free.
It was
very selfish.
Absolutely.
But it
was still like, you still wantedsomething that you perceived was good.
You valued freedom, youvalued getting your life back.
You were willing to step on other peopleto get to that, but that made a more
(24:12):
fascinating and interesting character.
I remember we were talkingabout some of your inspiration.
You mentioned Audrey too, andyou also mentioned Poison Ivy.
I did mention Poison Ivy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Poison ivy.
And that's where we, we cameup together with this idea of.
Instead of a classic vampire ordam fear, but a caribous plant.
(24:33):
Yes.
Hence the druid background.
Yes,
we used the druid background circleof spores, but we kind of re flavored
it to be, you know, thorns and.
Yeah, it's, it's really interestingbecause my whole experience with Drewitt
has always been that they're likedivinely good and they're like making
(24:54):
beautiful things all the time, you know?
And we sort of forget about allof the deadly type of plants
that we have in the world too.
You know, so I wanted to, oh my goodness,
you were also Isabel from in Panto.
I did not make that connection until now.
I, I really wanted to spin the ideaof a druid on its head by having
(25:19):
it be so just inherently creepy.
Because I also wanted to play into,yeah, I wanted to play into your
Eldridge Horror type of campaign for,that you were doing for us as well.
And, you know, we, we digspooky plants in this house too.
My husband's next game is about sp.
(25:41):
Spooky things in your house, andsome of those have to do with
plants and deadly plants at that.
So
I, I love it.
It was so much fun to help bepart of that creative process in
bringing that character to life.
Yeah.
I mean, you did most of the work.
I was just kind of like guiding.
I was, I was gardening a little bit, alittle pond here, a little watering here,
(26:03):
but it was you who did the growing, I
loved how you brought me into the group.
I was like, okay.
He's introducing likeeverybody in the group.
Wait, what is he doing with me?
Oh, oh, oh, okay.
I was built up as it, it felt like I wasA B B E G at the beginning of the session
(26:25):
with how you introduced my character,and I loved just how much it intimidated
the person who was in charge of.
The party being put together andeverything, and it set up the perfect
scenario of being like, you owe me.
You owe me a favor because youcan't pay for how much I charge.
(26:47):
And I loved that.
I loved that so much.
I was like, that waslike the perfect setup.
I hadn't had a more beautiful setup forthe type of character that I was playing.
Before, like to thatextent, it was so cool.
And that was something I hadn't planned.
Like I hadn't written out how Iwas going to introduce all these
(27:10):
characters because I wasn't sure whatthe vibe was gonna be with everybody.
Mm-hmm.
How everybody would interact.
And so while I started makingthe introductions, that's when I
was thinking on the fly thinkingwhat would be the best way?
To get everyone in.
And I looked at you and you just lookedterrifying and awesome and powerful.
This isn't somebody who is, youknow, answering notice board jobs.
(27:35):
This isn't someone who's,you know, a mercenary.
This is, this is going to be thespecialist that they bring in.
This is and And so, yeah, I'm so I thoughtup with this idea of a transaction a,
a devilish deal because money's uselessin D&D especially in a one shot when
you're not gonna be around a long time.
Right.
But having that social, a,that oral agreement, uhhuh.
(28:00):
Owe you a favor, which cameinto play in the final act.
Like that was, it
really did, and it made me so happy.
So, so you took that and then,you know, I was running the game.
I didn't have time to monitor,come back to that myself.
But you remembered and you brought itup and you were able to build on those
ideas and make such a delicious twist.
It just, it was, it was so funbecause I could just see the fear in
(28:25):
everybody's eyes every time that Ibrought up the fact that I had an I O U.
And stuff because it just, I, I'vealways wanted to play a good villain
type of character, and one that justshakes people to their core because you
don't know what they're going to do.
Mm-hmm.
I, I loved it the entire time.
(28:48):
I loved it.
No, even though youwere, you know, Imposing.
It's intimidating and very spooky.
There were some times when Igot under your skin a little
bit and I got to Oh, absolutely.
Which was fun because wegot see more aspects of you.
I, I
brought, it was actuallyme and not my character.
(29:08):
Okay.
We had, if you haven't watched thelivestream yet, dear listener, go do it.
It's great.
Major spoilers right now, as if wehaven't already spoiled everything right.
But there was this there wasthis room behind a mimic.
There was this unicorn head mimic,and in the room behind it, there
were all these specimen jars andthese crawling hands knocking.
(29:34):
Jars onto the ground and the glassshattering and liquid getting all over.
And these slugs, they were actuallysl tadpoles that were crawling
around, and I had like 12 of them.
And I just got these from Amazon.
And not only that, not only did Ihave these gooey slugs but I had them
soaking in water because I wantedthem to be wet and slimy and gross,
(29:58):
as visceral as possible becauseI, I mostly play my games online.
And there's benefits to that.
I get a nice comfy chair.
I got a cool setup.
Temperature's alwaysjust the way I like it.
Mm-hmm.
But I wanted to.
Play with some, mechanics isn't theright word, but play with some, some
props and some immersive elements and you
(30:19):
wanted to bring some physicalityto the, to the games.
Yeah, that's a good word for it.
Thank you.
But yeah, so I brought these out and Ijust started throwing them at people.
Yeah.
Every time someone got attacked,I was just throwing ah.
What, how did you feel thefirst time one of these collided
with you?
Oh, I was so worried that like Ihad smudged something of my makeup.
(30:40):
I was careful not to aim for makeup.
Yeah.
But I was like, oh my God,because that, I was like, this is
like, we're almost into spring.
I am not ready for the haunted house.
The haunted house experience was in.
October, back in fall, okay.
(31:00):
When I was going to haunted houses, andI expected this, it's almost spring.
I was not expecting that.
It's always spooky season in my house.
It's always spooky season.
So, and we had a lot of fun with these.
You, your reactions were thebest, which is just permission to
action.
Cause I was visceral having likereal Kortney reactions to it,
(31:24):
which was funny because you werelike, I'm a scary vampire drew, I'm
a scary vampire, but throwcreepy crawlies in front of me.
Absolutely not.
There was a moment where you you wereattacking one of these creatures.
And you were going to bite it.
I did.
And you had fangs in and I think youwanted advantage on it or something like
(31:46):
that?
I, I sure
did.
If you actually bite it in real life,I will give you advantage on the roll.
And you did it and we got that on camera.
It was glorious.
You conquered that fear,you dominated those slugs.
I loved it.
Admittedly, admittedly, I did onlybite it with my vampire fangs.
(32:08):
And those are made out of plastic.
So wasn't like my actualtooth, but I did it.
Actual tooth.
That would, that wouldbe a line we can't cross.
Nope.
Fake tooth.
Okay.
It's just it's like the,the feeling of something.
I knew they were sticky because theyfelt sticky on me, so I was like the
feeling of like, I didn't want like stickyresidue on my teeth, if that made sense.
(32:30):
Yeah.
And I could take out mythings and like wipe it off.
So was it just the texture ofthe creatures that I threw?
Was it the way they looked orwas it the way that I described
them, the way that you described them?
The it, that was the aick factorfor me on, on that admittedly, like
(32:50):
it was the way that you describedthem and then you just like threw
them and I was like, jump, scare.
That was really what it was.
And it was just never knowing and it wasalways whenever you would like, Pull over
the specimen jar again, or you'd put itback or you'd pull over the other one.
(33:11):
And stuff and you would just have it.
Luckily I was pretty close toyour DM screen so I could like
see ahead of time when you weregonna throw it at somebody else.
You
saw it in my hand totally like
waving the, you were just like it.
You do such a good job of like, I.
Making people focus on your face whileyou're describing scenarios to them
(33:33):
because you're so intense with how youdescribe things that I just saw your
hand reaching in to the jar while you'retalking to them, and then you just ye it.
It's all about misdirection.
It's all
about direction.
It was just, it was, you have justsuch a talent with storytelling
just through that alone.
(33:53):
That it made it 10 times moreeffective than what it actually was.
Knowing full wealth for me.
That they're fake.
I know they're fake, but you did such agood job at just upping the creep factor
in the game to make them actually spooky,even though they're just little slugs.
You bought off of Amazon that you stuck in
(34:15):
water.
Yep.
Slugs from Amazon.
They were multiple colors, you know.
You know, $11.
Mm-hmm.
I'm glad that worked out so well and I'mglad you infiltrated the house closest
to where those things would be becauseI had to plan out that entire house.
Cause I didn't know which directionyou guys were going to enter from.
(34:37):
Yeah.
So there were a lot of tricks that Ididn't get to use, but I'm not gonna
say what they were, cause I'm gonna say
them.
The, the concept of DMing isjust so vast and large that I
just give kudos to anybody thatcan do as good of a job at it.
And I mean, it's a very good telltalereason as to why you are listed
(34:59):
as a professional dungeon master.
Because like, oh my gosh.
I just, I applaud anybodywho can DM because.
You have to think of every singlescenario and not get overwhelmed and
keep your cool while it's happening.
Unless you wanna dosomething completely devious.
Wanna know a secret.
What?
(35:19):
You don't have to think of every scenario.
You just gotta pretend likeyou already had a plan, right?
You just gotta improvise with confidence.
Yeah.
Last night my players threw me for a loop.
I won't spoil, spoil.
So yeah.
So evermore led you into beinga nerd, getting into D&D.
(35:41):
Mm-hmm.
I think you said you got biginto actually playing the game.
During Covid.
During Covid back when, yeah.
When D&D got Cool.
You were there.
Yep.
I got into my first sessions.
I actually was just likeplaying animal crossing a lot.
You know, I, like everybodyelse was during, I, I was too.
(36:03):
Yep.
Everybody was mostly my wife.
It was her island.
I got to visit her
island.
So I would, I would always playwith my friend Brie all the time.
We'd be on the phone all the time, butthen she'd always be like, Hey, I've gotta
go for four hours to go and play D&D.
And I'd be like, Okay, bye.
And then I'd be like, well,what am I gonna do now actually
(36:26):
spend time with my husband?
What is that?
I've already been
married to him for three years.
Yeah, right.
I and at one point I was just like, is itweird to ask if I can just like sit in on
your guys' game of Dungeons and Dragons?
And she was like, No, let me ask myDM and then my, the DM Miranda was
(36:52):
like, yeah, of course you can totallycome and sit in and everything.
And after I listened to their session,I was like, this is really fun.
It felt like I was listening to a podcastwhile I was playing animal crossing
out on my porch and listening to them.
And it was about two sessions beforeshe actually messaged me and was
like, Hey, did you maybe wanna joinour group and make a character?
(37:14):
I feel bad that you're just likesitting there and just listening to us.
And I was like, oh, sure.
And she kind of walked methrough the whole thing.
They were in the middleof playing cursive stride.
And so I ended up love that playinga character that was from Barro
and no shocker here, her backstory.
It's from Little Shopof Horrors, A dentist?
(37:36):
No, I almost went with a dentist,but I actually decided to go
with a flower shop instead.
And because Barro is so desolate Therewas the, the idea of a dead flower
shop that was basically gone under.
(37:57):
And that is basically the flower shop atthe beginning of Little Shop of Horrors.
The flower shop mush Nicks is justcompletely desolate and there are
no customers or anything like that.
So my character was from that.
Cool.
Very cool.
So, What are you up to now?
What am I up to now?
(38:17):
Yeah.
Well, I have moved on toanother group of people.
My, my group naturally sort ofdissipated post covid and everything,
and now I am with a crew on Twitch.
Called the Misadventuresof the Dragon Crew.
And we stream our sessions everyWednesday and we have a giant table
(38:41):
with a big screen in the middle.
We've got screens everywhere, sound,equipment, everything, trying to make our
D&D sessions as immersive as possible.
And we are currently actuallyplaying the hero system instead
of Dungeons and Dragons five E.
So I'm doing that instead now.
And we it is the Misadventuresof the Dragon Crew.
(39:03):
They're awesome people.
I adore every one of them.
So that's what I'm doing.
And then in addition to that, I am,you know, I'm still doing performance
work and I am still doing I amdoing Coplay full-time now as well.
Let's talk about some of theperformance work that you do.
Can't believe we're, like, we'vebeen talking for so long and we
(39:26):
haven't even mentioned that you'rea professional princess and mermaid.
Yeah, that's a, that's a fun time.
Well, tell us about that.
Yeah, cause this, this goes into,you know, the, the wonderful
tapestry that is Kortney.
Yeah, I I have been working withWish Upon a Party, which is the
(39:48):
princess company that I have beenworking with for over 10 years.
And I have been working with them throughthe Make-A-Wish Foundation as well.
So my best friend Brinley is the ownerof the company and founded the company
off of volunteer work specifically.
And it is through the Make-A-WishFoundation that she specifically became
(40:10):
a wish granter and started the company.
And we've been doing princess worksince then, and then it eventually
deviated into birthday parties.
Hence why the professional wordcomes in, because then you have
officially gotten paid, thereforeyou're a professional doing it.
Right.
Professional princess.
Right.
So I started off playing Princess Tiana.
(40:34):
And then eventually I delved off intodoing Moana during Covid specifically.
So I was doing a lot of Zoomcalls as Moana and everything.
I had like a beachbackdrop and everything.
And then I started playing Moana moreoutside and I started getting paid
doing Moana because Tiana wasn't gettingrequested nearly as often and stuff.
(40:54):
So well on, it's just more recent.
Yes, and she was morerecent and everything.
And then the Encanto RA craze happenedand I got to play Mirabel last summer.
She's kind of died down since then,but I still play her on occasion.
And I'm now hoping that I can playAriel more often because of the new
(41:16):
Little Mermaid movie coming out.
So that'll be really fun.
I actually have a shootspeaking of Mermaid on Saturday.
Speaking of mermaids, I also just gothired on with the Court of Mermaids
who was actually one of our sponsors.
For the D&D live stream.
Mm-hmm.
They were one of our sponsorsthat we had, but I had already
(41:36):
submitted an audition form withthem and I got hired through them.
So they actually are a mermaid group thatwhatever they earn in tips they actually
give to their respective conservationefforts that they choose to go to.
And we just love to go to volunteerevents and immerse ourselves
(41:58):
as mermaids to the public.
So we just did a lot of work overat Station Park in Farmington.
I just did three events in a row forthe first time and being a mermaid.
And it's crazy.
You go from being a princess and you'rereally, really well known and kids
ask you your these questions aboutwhat it's like to be a princess and
you move over into being a mermaid.
(42:18):
And it's literally the same exact thing.
Even if you have created your ownoriginal mermaid character, they just
wanna know every question under the sunabout what it's like to be a mermaid.
And I do put in the words professionalmermaid there too, because I did I did
get paid to be a mermaid over at theLiving Planet Aquarium for their Halloween
(42:42):
season, and so through that I got me paid.
I wish I was a spooky mermaid, but no, I,I still was my brightly colored mermaid.
So yes, pretty mermaidsare cool too, I guess.
Yeah, so I'm still, I'm doing a lotof really fun stuff over the summer
that we're gonna be at Ren Fair thisyear, which I'm very excited about.
(43:04):
It's gonna be just a fantastic time andI'm enjoying being my jellyfish mermaid.
Very cool.
Now you've got a lot of followers,you've got a lot of people who are
interested in what you do in thecosplay sphere and in the nerds sphere.
It's so crazy.
What, what do you wanna say topeople trying to make their mark,
(43:25):
people trying to get notice peopletrying to live their dreams.
What, what, what didyou wanna say to them?
I
think honestly the first thing for mewhen it came to content creation, it was
because it's something that I wanted to doand I didn't wanna do it for anybody else.
And I think that's themost important thing.
(43:45):
You shouldn't be doing it for thefollowers or the the numbers necessarily.
The numbers are great because theycan make the things you want to do.
They, they can give it longevityabsolutely over time, but making
sure that you're creating things thatyou're wanting to do is like, first
(44:09):
and foremost, the most important inmy opinion, because the moment that
you stop doing things for yourself isthe moment that it stops becoming fun.
And it becomes more of achore and less like a job.
This is the first sort of likeprofession for me where I have felt
(44:29):
motivated to keep going becausethere's just endless possibilities
for what I want to do with it.
And so I always prioritize thethings that I wanna do first.
On those.
And I also don't take suggestionsfrom people necessarily on
what I should and shouldn't be.
I always do make sure that the typeof costumes that I'm doing, that
(44:54):
I actually vibe with the fandom orwhatever that it's come from as well.
Before I actually like, delve deepinto it or like the idea of it.
So I, I genuinely do think that it'svery much you, like you need to make sure
(45:15):
that it's something that you actuallyreally want to do and love to do and that
it's just for you first before anything.
Gotta make sure that's what it was.
That
passion is
there.
Yep.
Because that's what it was for me first.
I just, I, I started offdoing it in my own home.
(45:37):
Because I was on TikTok a lot and I sawthat people were dressing up as things,
and my heart was with the characterthat I had basically created myself
over at evermore, and my heart wasbroken because I had gotten laid off and
everything for very, very valid reasons.
Obviously the pandemic being the mainreason, but I didn't know whether or not
(46:03):
I was gonna be able to come back, ever.
And I didn't know what that was gonnalook like, and I dressed up like her in
my home and it started a healing process.
And then I was like, oh, what othercharacters do I resonate with that I
could look like and put out there asa form of healing for myself during
(46:25):
this really, really hard time socially?
Because you couldn't.
Really go out and dress up anymore.
So you just, I just did a lotof stuff in my own home for
a really, really long time.
And, you know it got to a point whereI just kept doing it inside of my
(46:47):
house and then I moved into actuallygoing outdoors and I connected with
some wonderful people at Fan, andI did my first, like on location.
Shoot with them.
And that was with Rain and Bella,who were also in our D&D live stream.
Mm-hmm.
And Haith as well.
(47:08):
And the four of us like didMonster High together and I
loved Monster High growing up.
And that was my first on location shootand I got it just a little taste of
what it is that the three of them did intheir lives and I was like, oh, I get it.
I get it and I wanna do this more.
This sounds great.
(47:28):
This looks great.
This is fun.
I was having such a good time and I wasjust happy to be there the whole time.
And I just got to see, I.
How they worked and what theirprofessional lives look like.
And they have been just nothingbut kind people to me since, and
it's only taken off from there,which is really, really cool.
But that was all becauseI talked to Rain at.
(47:52):
Fan and rain and I already knew each otherbecause we both went to college together.
Okay, I didn't know that.
Yeah, so her and I wentto college together.
She was in the Fashion instituteand I was in the theater program.
And the fashion institute and thetheater program work hand in hand
with each other sometimes, especiallywhen it comes to costuming for shows.
So I was in a show over there andshe costumed me for one of those
(48:14):
shows and then, She also happenedto be working at evermore in
the costume department as well.
And that was in that firstseason and I was like, oh,
hey, it's so good to see you.
Like our paths havealways just kept crossing.
And it's only like right now thatit started to, that it's like it's
stuck and everything, but it's
stuck.
And now you're here andnow you're creating, and
(48:36):
yeah.
And I'm really, really enjoying it.
And it's like, I, I just have never felt.
Like I could say, I know exactly what Iwanna be when I grow up and everything,
but now I'm starting to feel moreassured of myself that this is exactly
what I should be doing right now inmy life because I am having so much
fun and it doesn't feel like a chore.
(48:57):
Sure.
Like the cosplay crunching and theslogging sometimes seems like enough,
but I put that on myself half thetime, but it's so worth it and I just.
Am amazed by the fact that Iget compliments from people over
something that came out of my brain.
(49:19):
I'm always so fascinated by what people,what other people come up with that I
forget sometimes that I also came up withstuff and that people are recognizing
that too, and it's the first time I'veactually felt like, wow, I've actually
finished something to like completion.
And it's appreciated and it's reallynice because I've always, I've always
(49:42):
have finished things, you know,never gone all the way with things.
Okay.
Well, I look forward to thenext things that you create.
I'm hoping that there's morecollaborations that you and I
can do in the future becausethere's an absolute pleasure.
I
would love to, I genuinelyhave been loving D&D more than
(50:02):
anything, and I just wanna keepdoing D&D for the rest of my life.
I feel like if I don'thave D&D in my life, I.
Will like malfunction.
I will malfunction.
Let's let's make it, let's makeit our thing rest of our lives.
Yes, I know.
Dante livestream people.
Let's all like actuallymake the campaign continue.
(50:23):
Let's go.
Awesome.
Any, any final words?
I don't, I don't think so.
I'm glad you're getting to see my, myface in its true form and everything
and my hair in its true form.
Cause not a lot of people get to see that.
I'm just letting you know, cuz mostof the time I'm usually in wigs and
(50:43):
crazy contacts like I was for the D&D
live stream.
But now my dozens of fans willsee you in your true form as well.
Yay.
This has been Kortney, a professionalshape shifter extraordinaire
at the curly girly cosplay.
Yeah.
Thanks for tuning in everybody.
Yeah, thank you.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.