Hello everybody and welcome to my DeviantArt site. This is my main cosplay account where I put up my latest cosplay works and blog about events and convention happening around in Singapore or wherever I attend. Feel free to browse around.

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Last week, I was left to ponder over a passing comment that I found on my Facebook newsfeed. What if Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was wrong? What if instead of evolving, people are de-evolving? For this I was looking into the perspective of what if people instead of becoming smarter end up being dumber.

Such had been the case that I witness among the newcomers in the community, not only the cosplayers but the event organizers and judges as well. It seems to me that the over-enthusiasm for the share of the pie in terms of "imaginary fame" has cause them to make the most nonsensical and illogical arguments to gain credibility among the community. Sadly to say, it seems such comments are gaining in popularity and seen as the "standard" of cosplay.

It is about time get some myth about cosplay standard busted.

Myth #1: The more photos you have taken at an event/convention, the better you are in cosplay

There are many variations of this myth such as "the amount of favs for your DeviantArt photos", "the amount of page views" and so on so forth. However all these variations root out from the very same question. What is the measurement of a good cosplayer?  

Let us first explore the original sub-heading. Instead of arguing why "the more photos you have, the better you are in cosplay", I prefer to look at why a particular cosplay get more photos and for this, I can think of many reasons such as:

1. You have a photographer friend who loves to spam pictures of cosplayers at an event in the forum
2. You are cosplaying a very popular character (eg. Bleach, Naruto, Macross Frontier, Vocaloids etc)
3. You are "pleasant to the eyes" aka moe, good-looking, have huge boobs etc.  

If you have all of the above, then congratulation to you. You will definitely be in the list for one of the highest amount of pictures taken of you at an event in the forums. Now the question is does the above reasons constitute being a good cosplayer? If so, I can be the manager of my model friend, buy off all the beautiful costumes of famous sexy and pretty characters from TaoBao, get my photographer friend and make a star out of her. Being as direct as that, is my friend a model or a cosplayer when everything is done for her. You decide.

The same goes to amount of page views and favs. Unknown to many people, most traffic do not really come from casual surfers in DeviantArt. A large portion of web traffic usually comes from search engines such as Google and Yahoo. If you are well-versed in SEO algorithm (search engine optimization), there will be high chance that you will get a lot of page views to the point that it snowballs. The amount of favs will automatically come with high traffic. It is simple logical statistic. The more people coming into your site, the greater the chance that you get favs. This is like the typical fallacy that we have here in Singapore regarding that lucky place selling lottery in Yishun that produce a lot of winners. Eventually more people buy their lottery there which statically increases the chance that the winning ticket is from there.

Personally, the reason why I respect a cosplayer and consider him/her to be good stem from two factor, "difficulty to replicate" and "innovativeness". The first point basically refers to honestly asking yourself when you look at another cosplayer, it is easy to replicate what he/she did? A person who had been doing costume/performance/props for a long time can take one look at another's cosplay and knows the amount of hard work and talent that is put into the cosplay. However, this requires good judgment and humility as cosplayers by nature finds it hard to admit that another is better than him/her. The second point on "innovativeness" refers to the ability come out with a brand new idea that has yet to be seen or done.

I would say this myth is busted. There are too many circumstances to link that having lots of photo taken of you during a convention or event would constitute a good cosplay.

Myth #2:  Follow your roots my friend. There, you will find salvation…

*queue some Zen music of waterfall sounds in the background with the sound of the rainforest*

Ok ok, I was kidding on that. There was a cosplay workshop recently for those who are interested to learn about cosplay or wants to join the community. There are some who attended the workshop who came to tell me that

The actual advice given to newcomers at a cosplay workshop was to follow your racial roots and cosplay the character whose origin is the same. And the example quoted, "Dynasty Warriors" for Chinese. That must be the most brilliant advice given to new cosplayers. It would probably be the last advice I would give to a new cosplayer unless I really want that person to go kill him or herself with the props and armor.

This was closely tied to one of the judging criteria for the cosplay competition recently where "suitability" or "whether the cosplayer is suitable to cosplay the particular character". My first impression to this was just what the hell was the organizer thinking? Personally, this is a very sensitive issue and I cannot think of a better way to justify this then based on inferences. Is this a restriction to a matter of race (as indicated in the earlier paragraph) or the cosplayer's actual size to the character? Although a perfectionist might argue if you want look like the character, you should make an effort to work out, I still find it derogatory to judge a person based on his/her race or size.

Are the best Dynasty Warriors cosplayers Chinese? Is the most popular Cloud Strife (with such a name you can be sure Cloud is NOT Japanese) cosplayer from the West?

Discussion of racial issue is taboo here in Singapore considering our multicultural society and personally I do not want to touch it at all costs. I am surprise that a so-called veteran cosplayer would dare to dish out such advises.

The advice I often give to new cosplayers would be to pick the character they like and want to be and put your heart into it. To me, the soul and essence of cosplay is fun and should not be bounded be race or how you look. You also have to look at your talent and what you are good at. Some cosplayers I know can sing, act, dance and some are geniuses at armor-crafting.  You only think about such things as "suitability" if you want to be "good" at cosplay which once again begs the question, "What makes a good cosplayer?"

This myth is largely dependent on how you look at it. Ethically, I am still strongly against it as I do not believe in using my racial roots to my advantage. I believe more in the talent a person have before cosplay and what how he/she can harvest that talent and passion and bring it into cosplay.

Myth #3: I started cosplaying in 1990s…

This only applies to Singapore. It is very hard for me to believe that cosplay exist in the 1990s when the first known cosplay event noted in history are in the early 2000s. For those who are familiar with the word MAC (No! Not the make-up!) and Fantasia, you are probably from that time or close to it. I had a discussion with regards to this issue and ask the opinion of a cosplayer from that generation and the question came up, "That depends on how you define cosplay?"

In the vaguest context, cosplay could mean dressing up as anything even as some Disney prince or princess when you are four or five years old and performing at your kindergarten. Today, the word "cosplay" is largely associated with dressing up as largely Japanese animation or game characters. Dressing as characters from Western origin still remains debatable. If one can recall, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball were the most popular manga in the 1990s and I am sure many girls during that time might had dressed up as a character from Sailor Moon which is a relatively easy costume to sew. Assuming that year was 1995 and one person decide to cosplay as Sailor Moon (which I believe that the word "cosplay" was not introduced at that time yet to Singaporeans) and following that the next time she actually cosplay again was in 2000 (when the first cosplay event is held), would it be right to say that she started cosplaying in 1995?

The issue I am trying to bring out here is firstly, is the person even aware that she is "cosplaying"? Secondly, there is a five year gap of zero cosplay in-between, would you add those empty five years into your history of cosplay? I first started learning how to play the bass guitar 5 years ago, however I had not touch the bass guitar for 4 years, if I go around telling people that I had been playing the bass guitar for 5 years, people are going to assume that I have some mad skills when honestly what I can do is really just play simple tabs or follow easy songs.

In my opinion, the time a person should record as their official starting point in cosplay is when he/she is aware that they are cosplaying and make it a point to subsequently go on to the next cosplay within a reasonable time period which I would estimate to within a year or two at most. Cosplaying is a skill in a way and with constant cosplay within a reasonable time; a person can "level up" their skills. I doubt if only two cosplays was done in a timeframe of 5 years would be equal to "5 years of experience in cosplay".

This myth is busted unless you strongly believe that being a tree in your kindergarten or nursery performance would constitute as a cosplay.

Myth #4: Stars are made, not born

Well that is what it seems nowadays that every god damn cosplayer is claiming to be a veteran, star or whatever monkey names that commercial entities can think of to market their products along with them.

I never like to be known as an elite (although I strife to improve my cosplay like everyone else), veteran (been cosplaying for 6 years but there are still people out there who had been here longer than I do) or a star (if I am a star, I do not have to work a 9-to-5 job to feed my hungry stomach). I never understand what the big deal about it is and why these local stars act as though that they are the representative or ambassador of the Singapore cosplay scene by setting all the illogical weird standards (like the myths above) about good cosplay. As I mention previously, these are one of the most innovative bullshit I heard in my 6 years here in the scene.

Putting personal experience aside that I have with the true foreign "star" cosplayers that I met overseas, stars are born and not made.  I would not dare to dictate what is the definition of a star cosplayer but the common similarities are that firstly, in some ways, they had won a local, regional or international competition and represented their country in a way. Alternatively, they had amassed a huge fan-base across the world and subsequently receive invitation to other countries to perform. Compare these to the local stars here that do not even meet these bare criteria, what is it that these folks are trying to prove? Fun? I find it more to be a joke.

Myth busted? I like to say yes. Titles given are worthless, titles are only worth if you sweat and had spilled blood over it. Let's be practical. Everyone can call themselves a CEO (you only need $10 to register a company in Singapore).

My final words…

My words might ruffle somebody's feather and it's funny when there are claims that I am "changing the context" of people's words. I think there is a huge difference between "changing the context" and inferring from what you hear. The former refers to deliberately switching the context to a negative connotation based on what you hear first-hand. Inference is the process of deriving logical reasoning based on what you hear or simply "reading between the lines".

Turning defensive is not going to help in any way. Think about this. For those who attended the workshop and the first thing they talk about is was about that particular line, it must have left a deep impact on them and obviously they were not happy about it. Your further clarification of using "our roots to our advantage" did not help any better and seem even more insensitive since it was clear that most anime characters are generally fair-skin Asian or look Asian leaving the dark-skin people out. So what advice would you had given to a Malay or Indian who wants to cosplay his favourite anime character?

Let us recall back our very first cosplay and why we chose that character. It was because we love that character to the extent that we wanted to dress like him/her. It was fun. It was about passion. That is what cosplay should be. It was not about the colour of our skin nor the language. Cosplay is just like music. When you go to an overseas convention, even if both could not speak a common language, friends can still be made and it is because of cosplay.