Roleplaying and costumes have long been a sexual fetish and porn niche. The sexy nurse, foxy flight attendant, or even the naughty nun. These roles and the images of costumes they conjure are so common today as to be stereotypes. But what about having your partner dress up as Lara Croft? Or Daenerys Targaryen? Or Chun Li?
Such fantasies take us from the generic genre of roleplay to the more specific category of cosplay. Once strictly a Japanese phenomenon, modern cosplay is now firmly entrenched as a worldwide pastime. In this month’s edition of What’s Your Fetish, we’ll explore the origins of cosplay, its mixture of cultural and sexual appeal, and its current and future portrayal in 3DX. We touched on cosplay previously in our column about the uniform fetish, but this month we’re addressing the costumes much more broadly.
Origins of Cosplay
The term “cosplay” is actually (perhaps obviously) a portmanteau of the words costume play. It is the act of wearing a costume to represent a unique character, often from a video game, TV show, or other form of multimedia.
Costume parties date back to the Carnival seasons of the 15th century, which featured masquerade balls and the attendant masks and costumes. The idea of dressing up as a specific, established fictional character arose as early as 1908. That year, a couple attended a masquerade party in Ohio dressed as Mr. Skygack and Miss Dillpickles, a Martian couple from the eponymous sci-fi comic strip.
Conventions for sci-fi and fantasy fans were another launch pad for cosplay, starting with the first ever Worldcon in 1939, in New York. They offered a gathering place for people with the same interests and knowledge of recognizable characters. In Japan, the first Comiket (Japanese for “Comic Market”) convention took place in 1975 and featured costumed fans representing characters from their favorite doujinshi. The term refers to self-published, usually amateur works, often manga. The first fans to don costumes of their favorite characters discovered a community of fellows. The event is now a twice-annual venue for independent manga and games.
As the sci-fi and fantasy genres swelled in later decades with cross-cultural touchstones like Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Dragon Ball, and Naruto, so did cosplay. Fans understandably want to emulate their heroes, and playing dress-up is an obvious outlet. Conventions and the Internet birthed cosplay contests and allowed fans to share their creativity.
Cosplay’s Intersection with Porn
One aspect of cosplay that distinguishes it from sexy uniforms is the emphasis on sci-fi or fantasy characters. Whether it’s Princess Leia from Star Wars or Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, these are heroic characters that people want to inhabit or interact with. They’re also distinguished by unusual and very recognizable outfits.
Given how sexually appealing these and many cosplay characters are, it’s no surprise that many cosplayers strike overtly sexual tones. Many of the most popular characters are female, and when you consider that heterosexual males are major porn consumers, the marriage of cosplay and porn seemed unavoidable. In the live-action sphere, the porn parody is now a major niche with blockbuster hits like Star Wars XXX.
Cosplay in 3DX
We know how 3DX offers artists tremendous flexibility in depicting characters, costumes, settings, and anatomy. Creators of 3DX cosplay content benefit from this advantage more than perhaps those working on any other niche.
One snag is copyrights. If 3DX content sold for profit depicts a licensed character, intellectual property laws apply. We’ve seen artists get around this; for example, SquarePeg3D’s products simply portray all the characters as cosplayers. She may look like a certain sexy dual-pistol-wielding adventuress, but Callie is just a booth babe.
In SquarePeg3D’s work, we see many instantly recognizable characters – Lara Croft, Cammy – but always as being portrayed by cosplayers. It’s an homage to cosplayers that gets around copyright traps. These are horny cosplayers, by the way.
That said, some artists choose to be less hardcore in their portrayal of beloved characters. Clare3Dx, an artist whose work has been featured on Affect3D, tends to avoid showing cosplay characters fully engaged in intercourse. “I find it cool to create a tribute,” she says, while emphasizing that she isn’t against hardcore cosplay. Her work has included characters from the games Dead or Alive and Mass Effect.
Horny superheroes. Costumes abound in Lana Liberty vs. The Mistress, wherein the all-American Lana squares off against four masked studs and their female mistress. Oh, and she is forced to fellate her young sidekick, who resembles a certain boy wonder.
Hentai cosplay. Cosplay doesn’t always have to reference a specific character from movies or games. In Nuki Doki! Tenshi to Akuma no Sakusei Battle – Revolution, a sexy succcubus who resembles Morrigan Aensland from the fighting game Darkstalkers forces two childhood friends to fuck.
Conclusion
Cosplay covers the widest possible spectrum of fictional characters, universes, and media. Its collision with porn, tangentially with generic sexy costumes, then head-on with porn parodies and 3DX, was inevitable. Taste certainly factors into whether cosplay should be made into porn; after all, some cosplay characters are very young. On the whole, given the trend towards cosplay becoming increasingly mainstream, its convergence with porn seems only natural.
Poll: Do You Enjoy Cosplay Porn?
Cosplay and porn are both popular, but do you like the idea of combining the two? Maybe you prefer your cherished fictional characters to be chaste or otherwise true to their canon. Maybe you’d like nothing more than to see Harley Quinn getting it in the ass by a muscular Orcish marauder. Tell us this month’s poll and we’ll share the results in a future analysis article.
(cover image from Knight Elayne: Cosplay by Hibbli3D)
democ1008
June 23, 2017wieantit