Making the Fantastic Real: Exploring Transmedial Aspects of Cosplay Costumes

Abstract

Abstract Cosplayers create elaborate costumes with fantastic details and effects imitating the visual and material culture artifacts and features of fictional characters. As such, cosplay costumes balance wearability for the cosplayer and accuracy to the selected character’s appearance. Further challenges to accurate portrayals are costumes that need to be animated or made from materials resembling the visuals originally created using animation or CGI. This article employs Tzvetan Todorov’s theory that suggests the fantastic is a liminal moment of hesitation between belief and disbelief. The author also draws on the concepts of Steven Shaviro’s “tactile convergence” and Sarah Gilligan’s “tactile transmediality,” where the material real-world qualities of cosplayers’ costumes cross between the fictional imaginative space of the story and the lived material body. This analysis further highlights how cosplayers spend extraordinary amounts of time and money on their costumes to portray fantastic characters with transmedial qualities and narratives regarding the character’s appearance.