18 August 2010

Cosplay: The sincerest form of flattery

LOOK, I'M IN THE GUARDIAN! Part of agreeing to write there, however, is agreeing to reply to comments. And they're sort of ugly. Like, oh! I remember why I moderate ugly. So please go write smart things! I'll be eternally grateful.

And let me know what you think!

Also, since the word limit for this article was, like, crippling, I'll be writing a longer version on the blog soon, and include some of the great stuff I got from my interviews with cosplayers. (Real, live ones! Who aren't my friends!)

3 comments:

Cendri said...

I don't want to register there, so I'll comment here.

That's a nice little article, and I can tell it was cut off slightly. Most of the first commenters I kind of want to hit with a large frying pan.

And "femme-ing" is something I'm quite fond of doing, since I love the "tank" type of male characters in video games and never have a female counterpart to that (also, I'm petite). I try very hard to keep it in character too when I convert, not just slapping heels on and calling it a day.

My latest foray in this is here, with two of my friends reinterpreting Final Fantasy X characters:

http://litheba.deviantart.com/#/d2vqhtv

R.B. said...

Yeah, I don't have any urge to register for that kind of a comment thread (am I just perpetuating toxic commenting culture) so here it is! I don't know much about cosplay, but to see the femme-ing of characters does something subtle to me. Like, somewhere in an underground bunker there are hundred of awesome female characters slowly Kill Bill-punching their way to the surface. I imagine that younger girls seeing things like that are impacted more directly.

Treehouse said...

The idea of femme-ing (did I spell that right?) a costume always warms my heart. I love seeing pictures of female Captain Mal's and Doctors. It makes me love those characters even more because I get to see that they can cross gender divides.

Maybe someday I'll get brave enough to try it out for myself. I've already had great experiences with drag- so really this shouldn't be *that* big of a deal, yet somehow it is.

Maybe I worry about being judged not only as gender but as compared to source material too? It's one thing to have someone give a blanket judgment about how I don't 'pass' for a man- but another to insult my kit that I worked so hard to get just right.

Then again I'm the type of person to get everything perfect- but miss one small detail. Like dressing up at DT's doctor and I get my hair perfect, coat perfect- but I buy the wrong color suit. That sort of thing.