#But my local dsmp cosplay community has been like the centerpiece of my last few years so I think about it a lot

[beardisable]

Hope u don't mind me adding on from a cosplayer perspective0(I'M SORRY THIS GOT SO LONG AHSGDHAGS FUCK)

I only joined in 2021 and then wasn't much in the Fandom besides my local scene(first time there was a Scene for a Fandom I was in where I lived???) so I didn't see a lot of the fanart and fanart development youre talking about. But it's fucking awesome and also fascinating from a cosplay perspective.

I'm sure earlier cosplayers can talk more on this but when I joined there was already a lot of ppl doing more intricate designs than what the base Minecraft skins are like. Which was so fucking cool to me!! I had experimented before with adding on details that weren't Canon to my cosplays but I'd never considered doing it to the extent i saw on Iike 2020- tiktok, but being in dsmp and seeing all the varied fanart really encouraged me to start making more intricate designs apart from "copy character model exactly" and I think that's so important to me and to Fandom in general. It breeds so much creativity which is fukxing wonderful :D

Like 50% of my close friend group have cosplayed q or diff versions of Wilbur for instance and everyone has different ideas and different parts emphasized and I think that's so fucking cool. It also leaves a lot of room for beginners to experiment with stuff and not be dissapointed when smth doesn't turn out completely like Canon bc like. The Canon is a block figure lmaoo go fucking ham yo

Plus it makes room for people to like ask about the specific additions to have for your cosplay which leads to sharing interesting headcanons and fanart/content you like which leads to talking more which leads to friendship :DDDD at least in my experience

Also kind of a funny story related to cosplaying and cons that relates to designs: local cons we all frequented obvs have certain rules for cosplay competitions and costumes, which is fine. But defile(means that your costume and craftsmanship is the most important part of your preformance to be judged on) is judged on the Basis of "how well can you exactly recreate the Canon costume/a specifc design" bc it shows well crafts knowledge and attention to detail and skill to translate image to physical.

Which is fine and all but it lead to a situation where dsmp/mcyt cosplayers, especially ones who had intricate beautiful but no canon designs Couldn't really do defile, and when asked about it were told it would have to be the Literal Block Characters for max accuracy if they wanted to go into defile category 💀

I'm pretty sure it's solved now on the basis of like, for defile you have to have an image of the design, either from another artist or yourself as a reference and it's considered like a fan design or original design. But yeah like that's such a specific and wild situation we had in the cosplay community and it was pretty funny bc there were SO MANY dsmp cosplayers on stage(and on the floor obvs) esp right out of lockdowns, that it was impossible to Not take their wishes into account. Like it was literally a joke by the announcer in 2021 that this cons performances were almost genshin-dsmp back to back which was so interesting to see lmao.

As an additional thought: with dsmp having so many diverse designs people can mix and create, there's a lot less of like "it's not super close to Canon :(" or "oh my cosplay didn't turn out as well as x persons :(" (well theres obvs still a lot of the last one, esp since now there's like an expectation you'd try to be original and creative when not everyone does that/takes inspiration) BUT pretty much eliminating that first one is imo very cool 😎

i need to make a post about the differences in dsmp fanart between 2020 and now . someone remind me