Damion and Ciel are a cosplay duo based out of Benbrook, TX. Ciel has been cosplaying since 2016 and next year will hit his 10 year mark! Damion has been sewing for 9 years and in 2019 started cosplaying. In 2023 they met and decided to become a duo and have been making cosplays together ever since. Some of their cosplays include: Bungo Stray Dogs, Alien Stage, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Heaven Official’s Blessing. Recently they have decided to incorporate historical accuracy and influence to some of their cosplays. 

Ciel grew up cosplaying with his family and through that was introduced to the anime and cosplay community at a very young age. They mainly bought their own cosplays, until they met Ciel, who was very proficient in sewing. They both met at a convention in Abiline, TX, and ended up spending the day together and bonding over their favorite animes, My Hero Academia and Bungo Stray Dogs. After being around each other for the entire convention, they decided to become a cosplay duo. 

After being together, the two realized that they both did high school theatre, had similar makeup styles, and cosplay practices, which influenced them in becoming a couple. On top of this, Ciel was very interested in starting to make their own cosplays, and with Damion being a seamstress of sorts, they both decided to take this challenge on. Their work is inspired by theatre productions that they had been in, such as Treasure Island where Damion played the parrot. "Treasure Island [had] beautiful jackets." Damion states. "It's actually one of the main things I want to recreate...and later on I [realized] that the cosplay community plays with this concept a lot." After this realization, Ciel and Damion decided to take inspiration from these plays, and take the techniques used from the time period these plays take place in to use their cosplay projects. 

Because Ciel has cosplayed since 2016, he elaborated on how the cosplay community has changed over the years when it comes to how it relates to the rise of TikTok and the mainstream climb of anime. "Back then, it was mainly people cosplaying from their closet or buying their cosplay from Amazon...and as time went on, it was becoming bigger in America due to comic con [and] more anime people went to comic con stuff." Ciel says. They also detail how TikTok brought even more niche fandoms on to the cosplay scene, and even if this brought some controversy amongst the cosplay community, Ciel states that it did bring a lot of interesting trends along and broke the stereotype that a cosplay needs to look exactly like the character for it to be approved. 

Ciel and Damion gave some advice to beginners in cosplay when starting to gain traction online, and that is in their words to "keep posting". They stated that their accounts at first did not gain much traction, but as they kept posting and saw what worked and what didn't, they were better able to gague their audience as a result. They also stated that cosplay is a growth activity. "Everyone is bouncing ideas off of each other...It's a growth in a journey" Damion says. They also say that cosplay helped them shape their identities as people, and allowed them to explore their identities in gender expression to see where they best fit in. Cosplay taught them how to be comfortable in their own skin.