Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Pros and Cons Cosplay. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Pros and Cons Cosplay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Both of us started crafting at a really young age. From learning to hand sew with our grandmother’s stash of fabrics or playing with our mother’s wealth of craft supplies, we developed a pretty immediate love for multiple craft mediums. We’d taken an introductory class on sewing in middle school, but honestly, the idea of making potholders and pillowcases long term seemed incredibly boring, Pro actually started hating sewing for a long time as a result.
Fast forward to attending our first pop-culture convention, and we realized that all of our sewing and painting could be transferred and expanded on, and then the rest is history.
One of the challenges with developing our skills in this area was finding ways to build on the skill. We started out way before there were many tutorials or mediums to play with. There were no cosplay patterns, cosplay-specific EVA foam or wig stores! Also our home economics and art classes really focused on practical projects like pillowcases. That is great for foundational practice, but neither of us were particularly interested in learning about that. Cosplay, however provided an opportunity to not only get more creative in our artistic and crafty pursuits, but do it in a way that connects to our interests.
Pros and Cons Cosplay, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Cosplay for us started, as all great things do, with exposure to TV. We’ve been nerds since we were little kids. We’d frantically try to finish all of our homework on the bus so we’d have complete freedom at home to glue ourselves to our coveted VCR recordings of Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and Inuyasha. Saturday mornings and evenings had standing reservations for a very important ritual of anime watching with both morning and evening sessions, including Pokemon (again), Digimon, Yugi-Oh, and all of the offerings on the table from Toonami. Apparently unbothered enough by our almost non-stop chatter about whatever anime happened to be the topic of the day, our parents bought us our first Nintendo 64, and that pretty much sealed the deal that we’d be nerds for life.
While running around the backyard pretending to catch Pokemon was probably mortifying for our parents (future interactions with our neighbors were probably awkward), they were very supportive of it. Our mom is a fantastic painter (and we have some really funny stories about her completely taking over some of our art projects in elementary school to “help”). Our grandmother distracted us from destroying every carpeted surface in her house with play dough, with clothes, jewelry and bags she no longer wanted, so we could play dress up. As our personal “stylist” and on-call stuffed-animal medic, our grandmother enthusiastically let us raid her fabric stash to teach us how to hand-sew. Letting some extremely careless ten-year olds loose on some nice imported brocades is nightmare fuel to most, but through this fairly unencumbered access to their collection of art supplies, they cultivated our life-long love and passion for creativity and crafting.
Fast forward to 2005 ish, when a friend mentioned the existence of pop culture conventions, particularly a new one (at the time) called Naka-Kon that was run by the Japanese Culture Club at the University of Kansas. All we knew then were two things: 1. Hang out with other nerds. 2. Wear a costume. At the time we thought not doing those things would make us look mortifyingly out of place (spoiler: we were very wrong. You can still enjoy conventions in plain clothing), we hastily put together some…let’s say…rustic versions of Kamiya, Kaoru, a character from a series called Ruroni Kenshin. Waddling down the halls of the convention center in polyester yukata we’d purchased during a family vacation to Epcott center, a pillow-case obi held together with safety pins and hope, and a couple of handfuls of yaky braiding hair hanging on for dear life in a hastily tied ponytail, we had the times of our lives, and couldn’t wait to attend more conventions and make more cosplays.
We started making more intricate costumes individually, entering a cosplay contest here and there, and then we soon realized it made much more sense to compete together. We’d had such success over the years both in craftsmanship and performance (somehow racking up over a dozen awards including Best in Show titles), we decided to formalize our work under our Cosplay name, Pros and Cons Cosplay (and later Pros and Cons LLC). The name (and assigned individual titles) came after a lot of back and forth about how best to highlight our chaotic energy together as identical twins and also our differences in personality. Pro is the older twin with an affinity for pretty gobs of fabric, accents, ruffles and paint, while Con prefers technically diverse crafting elements on cosplays including unusual sewing techniques like smocking, wig styling and anything that involves nontraditional supplies.
Both of us still enjoy competing, and Pro most recently won the title of the 2022 United States representative for the Cosplay Central Crown Championship of Cosplay. we are also frequent cosplay contest judges, and run several contests at conventions ranging from 70,000 attendees to a few hundred. We are also both huge advocates of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in our professional lives, our cosplay lives, and now our professional-cosplay lives, so we have helped many organizations both pop culture and otherwise view their policies, convention culture and practices through a DEI lens.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Pro: I think artistry is such a complex field with a lot of nuance, and I think folks who don’t regularly engage in creative fields don’t often get that. With cosplay, there are so many ways to participate in the craft. You can model, photograph, craft, design, make commissions, participate in any of those areas individually, or in concert. you can do these things professionally or casually–there’s no wrong way to cosplay (unless you’re doing something obviously problematic), but a lot of us creatives still must use the same methods to get any kind of attention to our work. The kind of content that each artist creates varies, and it would be stellar if the general public understood that. Some cosplay models aren’t going to be crafters, and vice versa. Some cosplayers don’t cosplay full time, some don’t make commissions. But people who are not cosplayers sometimes automatically assume everyone does it for the same reasons and expects the same type of social media engagement, or same kinds of social media content. It think the cosplay social media scene would be a much more positive place of people engaging with cosplayers knew that not everyone has the same goal, and that’s okay.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Con: For me, I’m particularly interested in developing the community so marginalized, and historically excluded populations feel safe to create and explore. As a member of a handful of marginalized identities myself, cosplay has an excellent avenue to try out new things, see what works well for you and really push your creativity to a new level. Unfortunately the same issues that occur outside the cosplay community occur within it: racism, sexism, sizeism, transphobia–and with that in mind, it can amply that voice of doubt in the back of your mind that already comes with being a creative. I try to tackle this issue with a healthy mix of activism: working with people in non-marginalized identities and helping them work to move from mere “allies” to the much more useful “accomplices” in dismantling oppressive systems. Perhaps more importantly, I also believe in empowerment and access: creating avenues for marginalized people to learn, grow, and explore within this community. I love building, creating, programming and developing content around showcasing how creative, talented and passionate marginalized cosplayers can be! I hope our people can “see themselves” participating in all the great parts of the community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meetprosandcons.com/
- Instagram: instagram.com/prosandconscosplay
- Facebook: facebook.com/prosandconscosplay
- Other: https://ko-fi.com/prosandcons
Image Credits
Fairy Godmother and Juliette – Eleksin Photography Nikki (blue dress)- ErikJaws Photo Peach and Daisy – C Mason Photography Snow White (Blue and yellow ballgown) – John Clayton WilyKat (yelllow and brown shirt) – Brad Passow Photography Evil Queen (Gold and Brown Ballgown) – John Clayton Wily Kit (Pink and purple dress) – Brad Passow Photography Dragon Slayer (Purple Armor) – Russ Matthews Photography Fairy Godmother (Single portrait big pink wig) – Downen Photography