politics<\/a>, the Code allows routines to be customized for each athlete\u2019s skills, preferences, and creativity to a much greater extent than would otherwise be possible while allowing meaningful competition between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis doesn’t translate directly to cosplay contests because we’re a collection of hobbyist nerds with no governing body to establish such a code or train judges to interpret it. Cosplay contests are hosted by a hodgepodge of volunteer and commercial conventions with no incentive to coordinate on such a level, and the entire enterprise is too niche and too low-budget to justify this amount of organization. But I think that anybody putting together a rubric for contest scoring could take inspiration from the general approach, and maybe we can move toward a structure that reflects the multifaceted reality of cosplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine if a contest entry form presented a list of categories, and instead of shoehorning you into one it asked you to pick the three areas that you’d like to be judged on. So maybe the contest is looking at sewing, armor, electronics, makeup\/prosthetics\/wig work, and engineering. You’ve got the classic light-up giant robot, so you check armor, electronics, and engineering for the rigging and stilts. Next to you is a cosplayer in an embroidered ballgown, who checks engineering for the hoopskirts but also sewing and wig work for their towering 18th century coiffure. The judges have a score card that tallies points for each category, based on the difficulty and execution of the techniques, and every category is worth the same number of points overall. So you’re rewarded for a diverse skillset, but because you can pick and choose the areas where you’ve made the best showing, you don’t necessarily have to be good at everything or incorporate more techniques than the particular build calls for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not a contest organizer and event planning is the opposite of my cup of tea, so I’m flinging this out into the universe as a challenge and hoping that the community will pick it up and run with it. If none of us know how to categorize our costumes, then maybe it’s the structure that’s the problem. What can we build that will be clearer, fairer, and more attuned to the needs of the community than what we’ve seen so far?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t expect to get into another competitive sport after I quit gymnastics, but I’ve found myself getting hooked on cosplay contests. I’m not the winning-motivated kind of competitive, but I’m definitely the kind where if you lay down a challenge I’ll go to excruciating lengths to meet it, and the challenge of creating a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,85,55],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5soL3-iD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}