How Cosplayers Truly Perceive Their 'Heroes'

The most well-known cosplayers are those who star in SyFy’s Heroes of Cosplay. The show gives those who are not a part of the cosplay community, but are into fandom, a window into what the world of cosplay looks like. The show has greatly increased awareness of cosplay and debunked some of the myths people believed about the immaturity of the practice and revealed the talent and craftsmanship that go into some of the costumes. Which is great for the community!

However, as lovely and friendshipy the show portrays the world of cosplay to an outsider, many of the cosplayers within the community see through the ‘BS’ of the show and have experience  the negative repercussions the show has caused. The primary issue being the elitist attitude. All negative issues within the cosplay community that derived from the Heros of Cosplay airing relate to the Elitist Attitude that has been growing for years. Whether the cosplayers on that show specifically portray an elitist attitude, like Monica Minx, or they attempt to portray an inclusive attitude, like YaYa Han, the truth of favoritism and elitist nature emerge.

The most talked about two episodes are the last two of season 1 at Wizard World New Orleans. These episodes were split over two days at the convention, seeing as there were two different contests on different days. OR SO WE THOUGHT.

In the episodes, which we are told are over the course of two days, the judges who are judging the different contest change clothes(which takes them over 1 hour), the cosplay “heroes” also change clothes seeing as some of them are in both competitions. Mind you the audience is still in their seats throughout the whole contest of 6 + hours. The at home audience is completely convinced this is a two day event. It wasn’t until shortly after Wizard World that we discovered attendee testimonials describing the horrible experiences they had at the convention, particularly at the contest. The contest was during one day and having an original time slot of 2 hours (normal) but ended up lasting 6 + hours.

The testimonials and personal experiences of the Wizard World New Orleans cosplayers are too long and in depth for the sake of this blog but I encourage everyone to read them.

At the end of the competition the heroes won all but one of the prizes and the ‘Judges’, who were some of the heroes themselves, conveniently created a new award on the spot for a group of heroes. Basically this is a deliberate act of favoritism. Yes, I understand these heroes are good, but there was a lot of costumes which were clearly better crafted, yet the ‘heroes’ still took all the prizes.

All in all the show has opened the general public’s eyes to the true fun-loving nature of cosplay, but it has also created a seed of hate which has bloomed and separated a part of the community.