Whether it be music, sports, art or just about anything else, everyone has a hobby that they love and enjoy. For me and a small group of friends that particular hobby is cosplay.

Now some of you, or maybe a lot of you, may not be familiar with cosplay, so let me explain it to you. Cosplay is a word formed out of two other words, costume and play, and it refers to a person who enjoys dressing up as a particular character that they like from a show, movie, book, anime, game etc. These people are known as cosplayers.

You may be asking yourself, “how is cosplay any different from dressing up for halloween?” The answer to that is cosplay is the more “professional” version of dressing up for halloween. Although they do have some similarities, they also have many differences. Before conventions, or more commonly known as cons, cosplayers put months of work into purchasing or creating the right wig for their cosplay, styling it, making their outfit, making the weapons or accessories needed for the character, getting the right contacts, fangs or other piece they can’t make themselves and putting their costume/cosplay together. Cosplayers go to cons that usually take place over a 4 day time period where cosplayers of all kinds gather at a venue.

At cons you can find things from the whole spectrum of the “geek” world: vendors of comics, props, prints, posters, wigs, etc. Panels are also part of the con experience. They can be about up and coming tv shows, old shows, cosplay panels, Q&A making their costume look perfect. These championships are usually televised and some of the cosplayers actually have a very large following and become a type of celebrity.

Cosplayers in general usually have at least one outfit per day, sometimes more, for conventions, which is a lot of work to put together. And let’s not get started on having to figure out how to make your face look like an animated character. The amount of makeup that gets piled onto our faces could give drag queens a run for their money.

Although making and preparing cosplays takes a lot of time and effort, finishing them and having them come out good brings great satisfaction and pride. There’s nothing better than having someone tell you that they love your costume or think that it came out great and want to take a picture with you.

Cons can be a lot of work though, you have to deal with a lot of things. When interviewing freshmen Basil Lyons and Julie Yu, fellow cosplayers i ask them what some of the things they don’t like at cons are and they answered with “they are extremely crowded and hard to get through” and “the lines are very long and everything is expensive”. I can say that sometimes you find yourself not enjoying some particular parts of cons, because of the fact that the crowds are so big that they are hard to get through, and having to wait in line for hours to get extremely overpriced food. Seriously who wants to pay $20 for a salad and a bottle of water?!
Some things are just unfair: lines, waiting, your costume falling apart, your props breaking, makeup getting sweated off, not making into a panel after queuing forever and all the other things
that could go wrong. Trust me, none of these things are any fun at all.

When interviewing Julie i asked her what some of her pet peeves in cosplaying were and she answered with “people who mess around with my stuff, messy cosplays and rude people (the last one is in and out of the cosplay community).” Basil had a similar answer stating that they find it annoying when “people mess with my things without asking”.

The cosplay community is also about making new friends, meeting amazing people, trading ideas and talking with people who have the same interests as you. The cosplay community is a very friendly community for new and old cosplayers alike. Most cosplayers are very open to people of all different ethnicities, body types, and physical appearances that may be judged outside of the community.

I personally feel extremely comfortable around people from the cosplay community. The character that i went as on saturday of New York ComicCon has a different body type from me.She’s skinnier and is built different from me (that’s also partially because she’s animated and i’m not) but no matter i couldn’t tell you how many people said they thought i pulled her off really well regardless of my body being very different from hers. And in no way was anyone saying anything rude.

Cons are very fun to go to and are honestly a big part of the whole cosplay experience. You can make cosplays and not go to cons, but that kinda defeats the purpose of making the costume, because why put month’s worth of work into something and then just leave it on the side to collect dust. As much as cosplay is a part of cons, you don’t have to prepare one for them. No one will judge you if you don’t.