What Cosplay Taught Me
I’ll never forget my first cosplay.
I had just been dumped by my first serious boyfriend, Danny. We’d talked about getting married, and I’d devoted so much of my time to him that I had little other life to speak of. My social circle comprised his friends, which made it hard to find support when they inevitably chose a side.
I did have a few friends outside the circle, all of whom were much geekier than Danny’s friends. Feeling sorry for me, they invited me on their annual trip to Dragon*Con, a major sci-fi and fantasy convention in Atlanta.
I would need a cosplay, they said.
I was no stranger to costumes. I was an avid trick-or-treater as a child, then a theatre kid. I’d made my own costumes for years and trotted them out on Halloween and at college parties. Rushing my theatre fraternity was a weeklong costume parade.
Cosplay, however, was a different beast. I was intrigued yet intimidated by the idea of performing a character outside the confines of a theatre. “Just, like, walk around and be that character?” I asked my friend.
“You don’t have to stay in character the whole time, but people get pretty into it,” he said.
I learned quickly that in the world of cosplay, your costume had to come with a story and be executed at a…
