COSPLAY NATION

  

Cosplay has been around in one form or another for a millennium. I won’t rehash the whole history but trust me people have been dressing up in costumes and prancing around masked balls for centuries. Not just the idle rich either. The Mexican Day of the Dead is a great example of a cosplay festival. Whether a religious celebration, Halloween or superhero convention it matters not. People love to transform into something else from time to time. It can be a spiritual expression, an escape from reality or an art form. For some it’s all three.

 

Actors who work in theater, television and movies call it a craft. They have elevated their performance to its highest levels. But it’s still cosplay.

 

Comic and Anime Cosplay in its popular form while similar to simple costume parties and contests should be separated into its own genera because there is a performance element. Not as complex as a theatrical play but more of a skit; reenacting a scene from a movie, video game or comic book. Most popular themes are super heroes, anime, Sci-Fi, horror and Video game characters. While really big at comic conventions cosplay events are popping up all over.  

 

True cosplay is also different from Live Action Roll Play LARPing. The latter involves becoming a character in a game system and emersion into the game’s world and interacting with other characters. A game master arbitrates the rules and game mechanics. In the nineties it was Vampire games, most recently dystopian zombie LARPS are all the rage.

 

Then there is the Creative Anachronism persona. Large groups of people who gather at festivals and fairs to reenact civil war battles, rendezvous as frontier mountain men or medieval knights. These societies pay particular attention to the accuracy and details of their costumes. Keeping within their persona’s time period is a key factor.

This obsession with perfecting costumes has given rise to a fascinating and rewarding industry within the cosplay world. Crafters have become merchants. And every con and festival has a vendor class of artist, molders and builders who hawk their wares for fun charity and profit.

A very popular crossover character architype is the Pirate. This character along with vampires and the western style gun fighter shows up in every form of cosplay. The Star Wars franchise is set in a galaxy far-far away and yet Han Solo is a classic old west gunfighter. The crew of Star Trek’s Enterprise encountered several types of space vampires.

 

The Pirate however shows up everywhere. Anime is crawling with Pirates, super hero comics and video games have many examples of piracy and then you get the inevitable hybrid Steampunk-Vampire-Pirate. Pirates are fun and represent the ultimate escape from our hum drum over regulated civilian life style. Rules routines responsibilities and regulations dominate our existence. What a life to be a roughish renegade off on a quest for treasure and adventure with only one rule? Take what you want and do as you damn well please. Aarrrggue!

What is so cool about cosplay is the community it has become. Creatures from every cosplay genera merge from one group to another. No matter what your particular style of costuming, modeling and prop building you will find acceptance. Becoming a cosplayer links you with a weird quirky family of geeks and nerds that will take you in as one of their own.

 

You are never alone. There is a costumed event happening near you someplace, sometime, every weekend of every month. We number in the millions and that is not just a community that is Cosplay Nation.

STEAM-BLAST FROM THE PAST

The Steampunk community is sweeping the country from East to West and all points around the globe. That is because steamers can time travel to alternative histories and walk through portals that open into secret realms hidden beyond the vail of reality.

Steampunk also has many sub genera like Dieselpunk, Darksteam, Weird West, Atomicpunk, Mad Scientist, Spypunk and Sky Pirate just a few to stimulate your imagination. For that is the biggest deal with Steampunk. There are thousands of clever and creative ways to take almost any subject and steam the hell out of it.

I’ve long been a fan of all things steam and the influence is evident in my Crossbreed series. A Sci-Fi action adventure with a Dieselpunk Weird West flavor. #CrossbreedsbyKCV

Steampunk evolved out of the sci-fi sub genera Cyberpunk and has been lurking around comic and game shops for decades. With the rising popularity of Cosplay at comic cons steamers are climbing to the top tier of cosplay and their costumes and props are winning prizes acclaim and new converts at a phenomenal rate.

Vampires, the Victorian age and Frankensteinian mad scientists blend perfectly to create a gas-lit world of bizarre gadgets and horror. This is the dark steamy world that gave us Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Harry Houdini and Edger Allen Poe.

In a modern world of solar panels, powerful computers, smart android phones and cars that will soon drive themselves why do so many people want to escape to a time when coal was king and a smart horse new the way home when his master was blitzed on Absinth?

The same question can be asked of 1950s Americans sailing along new super highways in big gas powered Jetstream cars. Yet millions wanted to be like the Lone Ranger, Daniel Boon and Roy Rogers.

We embrace the new and ultra-modern but cling to the past. We know where we’ve been and feel comfortable reminiscing, but the new and as yet unknown future can be frightening. We can revisit the past and rewrite it as alternative history. The future of present reality only guarantees one thing for sure. The inevitability of certain death. So by returning to the past we create the illusion that we are somehow further away from Dark Eternity.

There is more to it than just costumes and gear. The steampunk community is attracting writers, film makers and musicians.  Why not? Anytime a new art form stimulates the imagination to then exorcise creativity it’s a good thing. Steamers are not new to this as many have come from the renaissance fairs, Pirate Festivals and Star Trek fan clubs.

The fascinating thing with Steampunk is how like a mechanical virus it can infect a fantasy genera once thought to be incorruptible. All one need do is dig out your old super hero costume from the basement. With a few gears, a bit PVC, some junk hardware from your grand pa’s garage add a little spray paint and Holy Steampunk Batman neat-o Bat-goggles.

To prove my point, I being a grand-pa went into my garage and filled two boxes with junk and odds-n- ends of crap I was thinking of tossing out. I took it to Steamathon Las Vegas with my granddaughter 'Spiritualist Madam Geraldine' and made a bundle.

I’m going to fill more boxes and when next you lay eyes on a Dark Steam Vampirate have a look in my chests filled with priceless loot.