This is a companion piece to my article on the nerd culture. I don't go to many conventions, but I have been to a few MLP cons in the past few years. At these cons I have seen people cos playing as Dr. Who, the Assassin's Creed guy, Storm Troopers, and Master Chief from Halo. I have to wonder why people are doing this. Keep in mind that these are MLP conventions, not general “nerd” conventions. So why do people cos play as non MLP characters?

The reason I come up with is that these people want to wear their costumes as much as possible. But I don't understand why they feel that it is appropriate to dress as someone from a totally different fandom. I'm not going to say it ruined my experience, but I think it's dumb.

Now some comments on cos playing more generally. I do not cos play, but it does look fun. I just haven't gone through the effort to make a costume. But I think that if you make the costume yourself it is more impressive than if you bought the costume. I am more impressed with a poor, homemade costume, than I am with a store bought one. <sarcasm>Oh, you bought a Storm Trooper costume? Now you look like 10 other guys here. Bravo.</sarcasm>

The Dr. Who cos plays are the most annoying to me. 1) You and twenty other people are dressed like Dr. Who. 2) how hard is it to put on a tweed jacket and bow tie and buy a sonic screw driver toy? The problem is you are dressing like a human being, as opposed to a cartoon character. This means it is difficult to make yourself look like somebody else. So if you're going to dress as a human character (don't say he's not human, he's a human actor with no prosthetics, so you know what I mean), then you have to get the costume exact. You can't wear a jacket that has a different color. It all has to match exactly, or else you're not really dressed like that character. You're just a guy in a jacket.

You should also try cos playing as something unique. Do you really one to be yet another Storm Trooper? Come on, man. I guess it's a catch 22. You want people to recognize your character, but you don't want to be like everyone else.