captainamericaa replied to your post: cosplaying one of Amon’s chi-blockers actually…

D: I think you would make a badass Chi-blocker, but yeah having that happen to you becomes unnerving and unsettling. u_u

well thank you! 8( I’m in love with the costume design, but, yeah, the tough thing about cosplaying masked characters is it’s pretty hard to communicate with people, and when I was doing Pyro, I couldn’t just whip off the gasmask… that thing is really, really tight, and totally obscures your voice, not unlike the game!

I mean, some people might understand a word or two of what I’m saying if I enunciate really obnoxiously and shout? but even then it’s not always guaranteed. I don’t want to be rude to people, and it didn’t bother me in a profound way, I just got uncomfortable after a while. 

also (I’ve had a lot of time to think about this experience sorry) the thing with pyro is if you do it well, it can be a little, I dunno how to put this nicely—dehumanizing? and I think that makes folks a little more comfortable approaching you and asking for a hug or a hug picture or something like that. 

I had the whole package when it came to the cosplay, and I was bound to keep it gender ambiguous (when I wound up pulling my mask off towards the end of the con, a few of the folks who had been there to conduct interviews acted shocked to see I was a female), but because of that, there was nothing “me” left for the costume. no face, no skin, no voice. It was completely impersonal.

Maybe people are more likely to, er, “glomp” a character if the character doesn’t have any of the cosplayer’s personal features? I don’t really know.