is performance art in which the actors bring the audience into their world for a time to experience their favorite fantasy anderson quotes from another scholar on cosplay nicole lamricks who sees cosplay as a vital example of how identity is constructed fans construct their own identity by associating themselves with fictional characters and embodying them cosplay emphasizes that the self not only narrates fiction but is partly fictional as well it is through interaction with stories that we can imagine and perform ourselves for those using avatars from or inspired by a certain anime there's a direct link here however even for unique avatars we can see even these characters as containing elements and tropes present in popular anime ocs or original characters are often a distillation of traits that someone enjoys aesthetically or otherwise cosplay lets us bring gender into the mix too cross-play or cosplay in which you're dressing as a character different from your own gender is a relatively common phenomenon a brief sidebar here i'm primarily focusing everything in this video essay on the western english-speaking vr chat community with that said though there's no doubt that a lot of the western practices in vrchat are heavily influenced by other non-english areas of the game this is especially true of the japanese vr chat community which is obviously incredibly influential and a game defined by anime to that end i think it's important to consider the japanese roots and culture around cosplay i'll include an excerpt here from alexis hugh trong's paper on cosplay defining cosplayman situating it amongst a diversity of costume play practices in japan such as joseo male to female and danso female to male cross-dressing gothic lolita visual k kigarumi costumes that cover the entire body and even original creations all of which were also at times identified as cosopure by participants through these practices participants played with different sources in different ways taking gender as an example it sometimes meant using the costume to play a categorized opposite gender and golden giozo or danzo and have tea with friends while displaying an idealized victorian era femininity through gothic lolita and attend shows while dressed as visual k-mail idols themselves dressed as women or even transform into characters whose gender was sometimes more ambiguous or absent as in the case of animal or robot kigurumi trung quotes a man named tetsuya they interviewed in tokyo in my mind i intentionally let go of the idea of doing things like a guy when doing jyoso i didn't act inappropriate i still have the feeling of being a guy but i think of making myself have a pretty appearance and not moving in decent ways it's pretty much the same with cosplay i don't really care about the character's personality but i can use that character's material make jokes and if there's a layer or a cosplayer doing another character from that series it's easier to get close i can become more straightforward than i normally am and it's easier to open up when communicating tron goes on to talk about how tetsuya used these experiences to challenge certain aspects of masculinity to play with
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