IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST:Â http://wow-lawbringer.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-life-as-villain-of-cosplay.html
What if I told you those judgmental Doctor Who cosplayers were plants? That Syfy told them they needed to cause drama with some of the cast so it would be a more interesting competition?
That's not true, but you'd believe me, wouldn't you? Because guess what, you want to demonize a dumb reality show. It's A REALITY SHOW. Not only that, but it's a show that somehow manages to showcase both the negative AND positive sides of cosplay. None of that shit was scripted; Jessica and Riki were both sick out of their minds, Becky DID go to the hospital (in fact, you can see the producer in one of the shots). But also, Jesse and I won fair and square and had a blast doing it. Holly and Jessica did teach me how to work with foam. Monika and I bonded over all the exhaustion and misery and video games.
Look, guys. I would never stand by Syfy if they did something atrocious. I signed a contract, but that's not signing away my soul.
Syfy didn't tell the Doctor Who girls they needed to cause drama. It happened all by itself because of three things:
People don't like things like TV shows invading their small community (understandable).
People don't like when the odds are stacked against them in a way that feels unfair (though the cast entirely made their own costumes and paid for almost everything). Either way, they won something.
Cosplayers tend to tear down their own kind when they feel threatened. All people do. Especially the cosplay community, though, as I've noticed A LOT on Tumblr during the airing of this show.
Originally I wasn't going to write up a post, but this has been building and building and I can't stand it anymore. I was mad when it happened, and I'm mad now.
The way it started was that someone from the audience identified my friends as "Syfy plants". I'll let Jessica tell the story through a post she wrote up on our secret cast Facebook group. She didn't intend for this to be seen by anyone, in fact, she wanted to let it go. But I'm not comfortable with this kind of bullshit. It's takes A LOT to make me this upset, but these girls were cruel.
"The stuff that girl wrote when she was summarizing, not throwing around blame, was pretty accurate. Someone did shout something out from the audience. They cheered. I think Becky (?) asked them why they would cheer or something really Disney Princess and then that girl got all aggro and said that line that you can read her lips, 'You're not even from Kansas City' and all the other things that she pointed out in her message. Holly mentioned that we spent [a buttload of money] shipping things here and that we worked really hard blah blah and they said they only go to one convention every year. Then I said Steven Moffat would be ashamed [that they were being so catty]. Then that's when Holly said how dare they make this about not having fun and all that, then that's when the mean girl did her hand thing. Then Becky was crying and Holly hugged her and we gave each other death glares for the rest of the night.
Then Chloe and I later had a really forced heart to heart with them which ended in a really forced group hug with the hand girl whispering, 'Just drop it' in my ear."Â
For the record, I had approached these ladies before the competition because I'm a huge Whovian and loved their cosplays. I complimented them, took pics with them, hung out with them. So since I'd bonded with them, I felt pretty hurt to see them turn on their fellow nerds. Especially my friends, who'd been through fucking HELL trying to get their costumes together in time, and Becky who'd all but lost her vision because she'd fallen asleep with contacts in (thanks to exhaustion).
So to those ladies trying to blame their BS on the show: You can't edit something in that wasn't said, and the show portrayed you just as you were. After the show, I started bawling, because it was devastating to me to see how these girls treated outsiders. To be fair, the severe lack of sleep and recovering from that week's surgery didn't help.
I hope you felt like a hero defending your con- because you did to us what we all fear the most. You singled us out and turned us into outcasts… The opposite of how a convention should feel.
P.S. No one can make you sign a waiver. It was their choice to appear on the show.