Cosplay is a great hobby. It's when a person takes a character from comic book, a film, a cartoon or a movie and makes a costume to look like them.
Fans can spend hours, days and weeks making costumes by hand and I know a friend whose average Cosplay takes months to make. The love, care and intricacy she puts into her costumes is jaw-dropping.
Many "Cosplayers" take their costumes to conventions, a weekend holiday away to show off their hard work with friends, take themed pictures and meet new people.
There are normally competitions at conventions, a masquerade for contestants to strut their stuff in front of a panel of judges, judging them on their quality of costume and how much they are alike to the character.
I've only ever entered one Cosplay competition. I was dressed as Robin from the old series of Batman on TV and won first place.
I recently attended a second convention. Me and a group of friends travelled by coach from Glasgow Buchanan bus station, surviving the seemingly never-ending eight hour journey to Leicester.
We arrived groggy and tired at 3am in the morning and dragged our heavy cases laden with our Cosplays to a friend's house where we promptly fell asleep.
Leicester hosts a convention every year at De Montfort University in the heart of the city, with a number of different events, competitions and even club nights to entertain the vast number of attendees who show up every year looking for a chilled-out weekend with like-minded people.
I did meet quite a few new people at the event; the kind of people that you feel like you're old friends with even thought you just met them an hour ago. They were all friendly and open-minded.
I met a couple of transgender people, which got me thinking: there are quite a few transgender people in the Cosplay community, so why is that? I met up with a few trans guys; Nate, Kai, Axel and Xander, at the convention and asked them what they thought about their gender identity and Cosplay.
When did you all start Cosplaying?
Nate: I think I started in 2008.
Kai: I started in 2009.
Axel: I started in 2011, so I was a little later.
Xander: I've been Cosplaying for years, so I'm not really sure when I started.
Do you remember your first Cosplay?
Nate: I can't really remember my first Cosplay.
Kai: Mine was Roxas from the Kingdom Hearts games.
Axel: My first one was Sebastian from the anime Kuroshitsuji.
Xander: I was Sasuke from Naruto, the anime.
What do you think Cosplay means to you?
Kai: Well, I think it gives you the freedom to be yourself and gives you an escape from home. People treat you differently when you're dressed as you want to be.
Nate: Yeah, it's like a getaway from real life to be you.
Xander: It's a really fun way…I like to express myself.
Did Cosplay help you understand who you were?
Nate: Definitely. It helped me to stop complying with girly-girly things and I cut my hair. My mum hated it.
Axel: I think I became a nicer person because it helped me understand myself a lot.
Xander: It helped me as I found trans video blogs online from other Cosplayers.
When did you first learn about the term 'transgender'?
Axel: I started googling it at nine years old, but I didn't really know what it meant.
Nate: I think I was 17, but I was supervised on the computer at home by my parents, so I was really told by friends.
Kai: I was the little awkward kid in IT class looking it up.
Nate: I watched My Transsexual Summer and that really helped too. I watched it with my mum and she turned around to look at me and said "You better not do that to me." My mother's a devout Catholic.
Xander: I happened to come across a video on Youtube about it.
How did Cosplay help you to identify as transgender and how did it feel the first time you Cosplayed as a male person?
Kai: It helped me a lot as my mum wouldn't let me wear the clothes I wanted, so I could wear what I wanted and say it was for Cosplay. It felt great as I started Cosplay because I was a little scared to come out, but my mum was a little upset.
Axel: It helped my parents get used to me wearing the clothes I wanted to wear. It felt really good. I could dress how I liked and just told my mum it was for Cosplay.
Nate: I just continuously wore band t-shirts really, so they got used to that. Cosplay still helped me a lot too. It felt amazing. I wanted to wait a little before I came out to everyone because Kai came out before me and I didn't want to seem like I was copying him.
Xander: it made me feel more comfortable as myself. Like I didn't have to give a reason for the way I was.
I really enjoyed the convention. It was a good way to get away from the woes of real life, relax and have fun and also gave me a great chance to speak with other transgender guys like myself, who are into the same hobbies.
I think Cosplay helps trans people as they don't have to make excuses for the way they're dressed. They can wear what they like and no one would bat an eyelid in the Cosplay community. I like it as I get to dress up like my favourite characters and talk with other people about different shows, tips and tricks to making costumes.
Really, it's a good laugh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article