Ok, I have a confession. For years, I thought cosplay was strictly a sexual fetish thing where people made porn dressed up as comic book characters. That’s not a lie; I thought this until I was 20 years old (and I blame it on my sheltered upbringing). SO I used to shit on it every time I saw people dressing up for ComicCon, E3, etc. And this is very hypocritical of me because, as I outlined in my Halloween post (here), I love watching how special effect artists created the memorable Saw traps and Friday the 13th kills. Apparently, I’m not the only one because there used to be a show on SyFy called Face Off that showcased this same thing but as a reality game show (think American Idol but each week they make different prosthetics instead of singing). I was addicted to this show. In fact, on one episode they were given the challenge to create their own spin on a character from the Bethesda hit game, Dishonored. Check it out if that type of stuff interests you.
But back to cosplay. After I realized that it wasn’t just a sex thing and I matured into an intelligent human being, I actually started to appreciate it. These fans spend months designing, crafting, painting, and distressing every single piece of their outfits until they’re perfect, and it shows with the final product. So, I want to take just a second today to showcase some of my favorite looks and state this: cosplaying is a cool and underappreciated art.
(Also, I’d be down for the sex stuff too…)