NOW. Because they are far more common and accepted. Can you imagine being the first one of those beautiful cosplay girls to show up at an old-school, mostly-boys-club-only conventions? Hell, even now, people still have to be reminded that cosplay is not consent. 20 or 30 (or even 10, probably) years ago, I imagine it have been a special level of gropey, skeevy hell.
2 Likes
Geeks have been out of the closet for over 10 years.
Indeed the editor/producer is vomit-inducing.
I donāt know, my father was involved in the Con scene back in the 1970s, and there were some amazing things people did back then!
Scale has definitely changed, providers of wigs, materials and fabrication technology, I suppose knowledge-transferwise the Internet has helped a great deal but the desire to make has been with us for decades!
Just the opposite, to me. I find it a little nerd-caricature, just things that are popular.
Iām not the sort of person who decries āfake geeksā* but I want my jokes to be jokes based on well, things that are funny not āoh i know exactly what that extra popular reference to star wars or pop quantum physics is!ā
Iāll even take dadjokes over āha ha i bet iām the only one who gets thisā¦ā when itās in the IFLS facebook sharing parlance.
I suppose an example of nerd humor done to my taste is MST3k, I donāt get all the references, but I donāt need to 
*I encourage all manner of obsessive weirdness in nerdāry. Knitting nerds, fantasy football and baseball nerds, post-irony bro-nerds, pretty much everything that involves a love and excitement for a niche and isnāt exclusionary / hostile.
1 Like
Great costumes, I think- I couldnāt really tell with that shitty video editing.
The '70s do seem to have been a much better period for con costuming than the '80s and '90s when I was going to cons (a lot of creativity and freedom, from the pictures Iāve seen), although even that is dwarfed by the popularity and ambition of cosplay now. Whatās really new is the awareness of and detailed information about (not to mention widespread access to) materials and how to work with them, especially for making things like masks and rigid costuming pieces. Pre-internet, it was people figuring out how to do things on their own (with each person essentially having to re-invent the wheel), perhaps with the aid of the one or two books available (which now seem really basic and even amateurish), or applying other crafting skills to costuming (mostly sewing, but rarely some metal-working, too).
1 Like
The quality is obviously objectively better, alongside the breadth of content to ape. I do miss a little of the heart and amateur factor, and pout a little that people make a rather decent living off of it, but I at least also know thatās unfair of me and irrational.
Something that always strikes me about the '70s costumes is the prevalence of original and literary characters (i.e. ones for whom the costume design was created by the wearer), whereas most of what we see now are slavish attempts to re-create an existing visual design as closely as possible. Iām heartened, however, that thereās still people doing unique and original designs and, given that cosplay in general is more popular than ever, probably more of them than ever, too.
I seem to recall her name was Animal X. Lovely young lady, I believe sheād be in her 60s now.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
