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cosplayinamerica · 3 years

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COSPLAY THEME PAGE: Extraordinary Men of Cosplay

How did the Extraordinary Men of Cosplay start? What was the spark that lead to the creation?

Extraordinary Men of Cosplay initially was started off as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of Cosplay by a fellow cosplayer whom no longer does it but I was friends with. I inherited the page with just shy of 1,000 followers. At that point I changed the name up and made it a point to feature as wide of a spectrum of male cosplayers as possible.

The original idea came up for the page during a live session where the discussion was based off of the lack of men being featured in pages. At this point we wanted to just create a place where men could submit their work and not feel they were getting slighted for more popular women cosplayers.

Was there any other male cosplayer theme/share page around when you started?

At the time the page created, to my knowledge there wasn't a page that specifically featured just male cosplayers. I think this made our page unique in the sense that we were there to show and share the amazing talents that male cosplayers possess but didn't necessarily have a platform to share.

What was your first experience at a convention like and along the same line how did you discover cosplay?

My very first taste of a cosplay convention was back in 2017 at C2E2 in Chicago. I've gone every year since as well as attended a couple others in the Chicago area since I am located in Wisconsin. The first moment I took it all in, I was hooked. I've made many friends through this hobby and it's a fun and exciting way to express yourself and learn new things you didn't know we're so fun. For me cosplay was discovered by deciding to go out for Halloween with a group of friends in 2016. I am a huge Ghostbusters fan ( for those that follow my personal cosplay page, @crazycocoabuttercosplay, it's quite apparent) So for Halloween I decided to go as a GB and my friend helped me create an entire screen accurate pack, suit, etc. From that moment on I was hooked.

How has your page change from 2017 to now?

I would have to say the page has grown and morphed tremendously. From the early stages to now, we have been able to increase our followers to well over 10k which for us number don't matter, but it just shows the audience for male cosplayers to charge their work in front of is large. We've also been able to meet so many wonderful new people and take pride in being able to help support the smallest cosplayers to the biggest

What’s the best part/worst part of running a theme/share page?

I would say just the wonderful down to earth interactions with people that have the same passion and excitement for cosplay as I do. Its always fun to get a bunch of needs together to geek out over the latest show, characters, or stories. Also knowing that people genuinely appreciate us helping promote and share their hard work that they put in. They are fans of our page but really, we are just fans of their work. The hardest thing is the unnecessary drama that comes with dealing with a large group of people. Everyone wants their fame and we always try out best to share as many different people as possible. Plus with the large amount of entries we get every day, sometimes it takes time for us to feature their work and patience isn't exactly some people's best qualities. You also get the pushy people or the people that try to turn a situation into something that it isn't but we do our best to let it roll off of us. For the most part, it have been a memorable experience.

What do you hope people come away after viewing your page?

I would have to say that the one thing we hope people take away from our page is that we are laid back, low key page tjat just genuinely try our best to share the widest variety of male cosplayers. Follower count or talent level means nothing to us. If a person is passionate about what they are creating, the character/fandom they are promoting, or just are trying to learn new things, we are just more than happy to be able to share in that experience by letting those in the cosplay community know that it is for everyone.

Tell us what is cosplay battle about? I noticed that was in your story highlights!

Cosplay Battle is our yearly competition we hold around August/September. Basically we have a long list of characters we ask submissions for and allow men and women to enter. We then have pre-determined character teams that we put together. An example is we pick someone to represent Superman and Supergirl. They are then a team and go against another team such as Batman and Batgirl. We then do this in a tournament style and the winning teams are selected by peers and followers based off of likes.

This competition was done to bring cosplayers together to work together and share in the same fandoms that may not have otherwise crossed paths. The winners don't receive any monetary prize but usually get a nice lengthy feature and also were selected as Page Models for one of our close brother pages, @sharingcosplay. It's all intended for fun and usually a lot of work but people really enjoy it and look forward to it so the work is surely worth it.

What’s in store for Extraordinary Men of Cosplay in the future?

I would have to say what's in store is just to continue growing as a page and sticking to the same standards from when we first started, all are welcome. The rise in followers is nice, but the gaining of friends is truly what is special and something we don't take for granted. Another thing that is new to us, is we started up a sister page called @extraordinary_women_of_cosplay. This is a mirror page of the men's page only for women. We did this as a way to be able to promote the many outstanding women followers that have supported us men for all these years. We are looking forward to that page growing and using both platforms to do our part in the cosplay community.

I would just like to say a great big THANK YOU for kindly asking us to take part in this interview. For a page of your status to recognize the work we have put in and the things that we are doing is truly gratifying for us as a male cosplay community and also on a personal level for all the hard work that goes in behind the scenes. We definitely appreciate this opportunity and wish you the best!

https://www.instagram.com/extraordinary_men_of_cosplay/

#cosplay page interview #cosplay theme page #cosplay #cosplay interviwe #malecosplayer #male cosplay

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