It’s because of a Japan Feedback Loop™. People have dressed up for ages, in Japan people began dressing up to anime and called it “kosupure” (because the Japanese are obsessed with shortening words – especially English loan words/terms). Then when anime became popular in America, Americans decided that along with the loan word “anime” (which itself is just a Japan Feedback Loop™ from “animation”) they’d take “cosplay” to go along with it. Then it kind of evolved into “dressing up as any cartoon character when it’s not Halloween.”
Well, when someone uses a word that already has negative connotations to it in order to defend it, there’s little reason to go beyond tautology to explain my distaste.
Ooooh! Ooooh! What if you’re performing a skit at a fan convention?
/two-time cosplay skit winner
//probably because she did it with actual theatre nerds
If it’s a Shakespeare fan convention, you have my blessing. if you’re dressed up as a half-klingon, half-wombat being slain by Sephiroth, I’m taking your lunch money.
I’m not sure you’d want to try to take lunch money from a Klingon. Even a half-Klingon.
Yeah, I think Trekkie cooties mature into a nasty type of syphilis or something.
Are you saying Renaissance Fairs are cosplay? Really? Do I have permission to wear my kilt when I emcee the local Scottish Highland Games or host the Robert Burns supper, or is that geeky cosplay, too? How about if I wear a cowboy hat and boots when I’m in a rodeo? Oh, my! Was it cosplay when I wore a tux to that black-tie New Year banquet?
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:67, topic:620295”]
Are you saying Renaissance Fairs are cosplay? Really? Do I have permission to wear my kilt when I emcee the local Scottish Highland Games or host the Robert Burns supper, or is that geeky cosplay, too? How about if I wear a cowboy hat and boots when I’m in a rodeo? Oh, my! Was it cosplay when I wore a tux to that black-tie New Year banquet?
[/QUOTE]
London, ON, is known for being rather dull. In '96 its fine citizens collectively freaked when some swingers tried to rent the convention centre. I attended a wedding in London at which there was no alochol, and although there was a DJ, there was no dancing. In London, cosplay has been confined to certain places in Storybrook Gardens (refer to the video at 00:28 seconds in), and even there it is given the more snooty term of roleplaying. Storybrook’s mascot is a furry made in memory of a sea lion who after only spending a single night there, said to hell with this and swam off to the far more exciting Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio. In short, please forgive Elbows, for she is a victim of her environment.