(interview) The trauma of Cosplay - It's a dangerous world out there!

quote

The trauma of Cosplay - It's a dangerous world out there!

In the world of cosplaying and conventions, there are a few cosplayers who stand out from the crowd, and have become online celebrities due to their accurate depictions of video-game characters and their costumes. But is it really all just fun and games? For these "online celebrities" it can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Crazed fans often abuse, degrade and insult them simply because they are dressed as a character that they don't like.

Adella, a popular and well-known Final Fantasy cosplayer, notes some of the scary moments she's had while cosplaying ...

quote Adella

It gets worse. "When I was at Anime Central, I think in 2004, maybe earlier... I was standing in the lobby of the hotel and talking to someone I had just met," she remembers. "And some girl ran up behind me and grabbed my braid and just yanked, as hard as she could. My head was jerked back and my neck had this awful pain wrench through it. I whirled around and screamed, 'don't touch me!' And she just goes 'I... I just hate Aeris...' and ran off. Like because she hates some fictitious character.. it's okay to physically assault someone dressed up like that character?"

full article

I know this isn't really specific to FFVII or anything, but I thought it was an interesting read anyways. Sounds like alot of people really hate Aerith



[color=#666666]This message was edited by Gothic Girl on Oct 18 2008.

Reading that article actually got me feeling pretty angry. I don't understand how someone can yank at somebody's braids simply because they don't like the character that person is dressed up as. Or jump on ones back because they adore that character. There are two major offences here, assault; and harassment.

It disgusts me. Adella seems to be a very talented cos-player too, she had Aeris' hair perfectly in one of those images. It's a shame how some people can react so despicably to a hobby.

Wake up, n00bs!

Am I the only one who thinks cosplaying is really really lame?

I think Adella is a very beautiful Aerith, and I'd actually love to have some of the outfits of certain characters in fiction, but I certainly couldn't put in the time and money that cosplayers do to have such things.

And it's not like these people dress up every single day of their lives as a fictional character.

I don't think she deserved any of that, but people love to hate, so what can you do about it... >_>

[color=#666666]This message was edited by Ray_Masamune on Nov 17 2007.

quote wildhazz

Read it and.. it think someone need slap those little bastards.

I agree with you on that, though one could argue it perpetuates the violence >_> But so does doing nothing...

If I saw someone do something like that, I'd catch them, and say "how would you like it if I did (Whatever they did) to you?"

They would have no right to complain if I did it, since they did it themselves, to someone who certainly didn't deserve it...

Sure, if I saw a character I really liked, I'd gush about it to the person, but I wouldn't assault them, or anything >_>

If it was a cute character, I'd be temted to hug them, but you supress that sort of urge, since you know, it could be called sexual harrassment (or just plain harrassment) >_>

Like I said on the gamegrep article, it seems some people see the people cosplaying the character, as only having the same rights as said character, which is none (because they are uhhh, fictional beings that don't exist)....