Underrated reasons why cosplay is so good
(All photos taken by me, can be found on my Deviantart and Imgur accounts)
When you’re the cosplayer:
- Being able to find other fans without saying a single thing, because you can see them running at you or fangirling/fanboying when they recognize your cosplay (I once got hugged by a Layton fanboy when I started singing the theme song from The Eternal Diva)
- Even better: when you cosplay a rarely-cosplayed character from a kind of dead fandom, and happen to find another cosplayer from your series (tbh, the Layton fandom in Germany was big in 2014, but died in 2015, so I found 1 Aurora and Layton in 2015, nothing for two years, then a Layton cosplayer in 2017):
(oh my god, I was so happy when I saw this Layton cosplayer after 2 years of nothing or finding out I’d missed the cosplayers -I missed an Emmy cosplayer once because she was outside and I was inside, and don’t get me started with all the Saturday-con-goers while I was a Sunday-con-goer; I missed 1 Luke and Layton duo and 1 Lady Layton the Sunday after this Layton cosplayer, because I was in Paris for family)
- When you don’t have a cosplay account active with photos, but the cosplay photographers simplify the job for you (I’ve never lived it myself, but some cosplayers I’ve seen didn’t have accounts or didn’t do cosplay that often or didn’t want to have to take care of several accounts -a lot of the cosplayers I photograph only post on Animexx.de, because I live in Germany, and because it’s a huge website for one huge national community, making it easier and more profitable for them)
- Meeting other cosplayers and knowing each other’s characters even when cosplaying from different series (in my case I just recognize the cosplayer was as Undine from Undertale because Undertale fanart was overflowing in my DA inbox):
- when you find a visually or personality similar character and take fun or hilarious in-character cross-over photos (or is that just me?):
- or just finding characters that belong to a series that actually crossovered with characters from your series:
- The inevitable cosplay shenanigans, duh. Mine include: wearing sunglasses over my mask, awkwardly running from my Sailor Jupiter friend because I compared her to a trash can, joy-dancing when I get asked 15 times at FBM for photos (no one ever asks at the smaller but real cons…), filming funny skits about Pokemon Go with local KitchenDeadpool and KungFuDeadpool cosplayers and two Pikachu cosplayers, and, the best yet, dancing to “Take On Me” with all the Vine dance moves, led by the local KitchenDeadpool cosplayer who rocks at getting us hyped up):
(my friend: stop, you look absolutely ridiculous me: NO I LOOK SWAG. I AM SWAG!DESCOLE my friend: *facepalms*)
When you’re the photographer/taking photos of other cosplayers:
- Seeing extremely nice and cool cosplays that captivate your attention, to the point where you eventually get into the fandom after binge watching the series (This happened to me on two occasions: a Grell cosplayer got me into Black Butler, and all the Bill Cipher-related cosplays into Gravity Falls):
cosplayer: https://aiko1993.deviantart.com/
- When you recnognize a cosplay from a series your sibbling loves (actually here, the cosplayer in the foreground recognized who I was cosplaying as, and I guessed who she was as as well):