‘King of the Nerds’ season 3 spotlight: Lily Rutledge-Ellison looks to have punderful time
Lily Rutledge-Ellison loves cosplay. She also seems to love “Game of Thrones,” “Firefly,” tabletop gaming, and puns. How could we pun…ish her with a terrible “King of the Nerds” spotlight article? We couldn’t! She’s as well versed in nerd culture as Cersei Lannister is in being a generally awful person to most everyone she comes in contact with.
We shall dive into all facets of her game below. First, a quick reminder to check out our podcast if you want to get a sense of how we feel about the show in general in audio form. We’re hoping to have many other great “King of the Nerds” related things before the premiere, so stay tuned.
Name – Lily Rutledge-Ellison
Age – 21
Location – Denver, Colorado. We wonder if this means that most of her costumes in the winter are either Wildings or the female Ice Climber.
Specialty – “Professional cosplayer.” That’s not an easy thing to be professional at. Basically, you have to be so awesome at what you do that people want to give you money for something that a lot of people do for free. If she had a skill tree, we may also put on there bard+3 for being brave enough to sing about geometry in her TBS video.
Nerd cred – She’s played the game of thrones, she’s danced with dragons, and were “King of the Nerds” actually filming right now versus airing, she’d be able to avoid the winds of winter by being in Los Angeles. We give her props for dressing us as Cersei, since Dany is clearly the flashy choice for “Game of Thrones” cosplayers. (Typically, about 90-95% of costumes we’ve seen at conventions are the Khaleesi.) Also, she demonstrates that she knows more than just how to do an intimidating Lena Headey-esque trick with her eyebrows. Maybe a three-eyed raven told her pre-season that she needed to bring something else to the table.
Competition-wise, Lily may not even have to disguise herself as a team player, since she’s probably going to be good at that naturally. Unless you really just want to create a Red Wedding (we’re talking in terms of shock value, not the gory stuff), we can’t picture a reason to get rid of her the first couple of weeks.
Weak points – It feels like there are as many costume-wearers this season as in the first two combined; we’re not just talking about Amanda, Lily, and Raychelle, but also some of the guys like Jonathan and Ori who also have no problem dressing up in various characters. How do you differentiate yourself from your rivals? If Lily is not assertive, she could be saying “gorram it” in frustration as she heads out of Nerdvana.
Also, let’s talk killer instinct … and not the SNES game, which we’ve already referenced once in these spotlights and will probably continue to until the end of time. Most of her TBS video screams “fun,” but it doesn’t necessarily let off that she will be competitive enough to do to her fellow nerds what Summer Glau did to almost everyone in “Serenity.” We shall see.
End assessment – We have a feeling that Lily could do rather well this season, and she may not even need any help from the Mountain to do so. She is the most well-rounded of the female cosplayers we’ve seen, and we get enough of a sense in here that she can make fun of herself and handle the light, silly portions of the competition. This season should fare better for her than season 4 of “Game of Thrones” did for House Lannister.
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