b'Dissertation Extract Rebecca WarnerMy focus on the translation of the animated and comicpersonal identity first being understood in terms of marks book character to reality not only is an example of cosplayslike age, sex and occupation (2019: 121). After the First international, collaborative nature, but also demonstratesWorld War, identity became something that was developed how the digital impacts modern understanding andover time, and the idea began to form that there is some expression of identity through the attempt to manifest afinal, higher self to be discovered. Cosplay may be one purely figurative, constructed person into a self/charactersuch attempt to discover that identity through performance hybrid. The demand to tread a line between a digitisedof another personality.image of perfection and reverence to a source text is an interesting one that reveals anxieties around gender,The post-human can be described as one who can become racial identity and the post-human. It also reveals tensionsor embody multiple identities (Bainbridge and Norris, between the different cultures and their ideas about the2013: 27). Domsch refers to the bodies in many cosplays as representation of identity. By not using the physical humanhyperbodies, super-powered, magic-driven (2014: 137). body, race, gender and even humanity become nebulousIt is, perhaps, the next step in the search for identity in a and up for interpretation, which leaves the way open fordigital age to move beyond our physical reality to find more dragging these concepts in ways that fly under the radarcomplex identities fused with the magical narratives we of many viewers. Bainbridge and Norris succinctly identifyaspire to, which confound ideas of the natural limits of how three reasons why cosplayers cosplay: to play with gender,we are allowed to express ourselves. In a time where ideas to play with race and to play with reality (Bainbridge andabout gender and race are so heavily examined, cosplay Norris 2013: 4). has the potential to become an incredibly subversive, exploratory practice. Especially in Japan, otaku (the nerd I will start, then, with how cosplayers find identityculture of Japan which usually involves a love of anime, by playing with reality. A convention is a place wherevideo games and other media) can represent no fixed cosplayers can find a sense of group identity by easilyidentities, no fixed gender roles, and no fixed sexuality in finding others with their specific interests. Cosplay isa society that is ruled by these hierarchies (Kinsella 1998: partially about using the body to signal, both to oneself314). This sentiment is shared by some politically aware and ones community at large, which tribes one belongscosplayers, as I will explore later.to. As Peirson-Smith writes costume is seemingly being used by the cosplayersto communicate and performThe intrusion of the online space into our everyday lives their spectacular individual selves, whilst simultaneouslymay explain why this example of post-human exploration signalling some form of group identity (Mountfort ethas cropped up in fandom communities. Bruno Latour al. 2018: 85). The body is an expression of their likesproposes an anti-identity theory, where he argues that in and dislikes, where cosplay becomes an embodied formsuch a fluid and digitalised world, the idea of fixed identity of social networking: a real-life avatar of their onlineis rendered obsolete (2017: 49). Considering these ideas selves, where they become a simulation of a simulationhave only solidified in our minds in the two hundred years (Bainbridge and Norris 2013: 26). According to anin response to how we have organised our society under interviewee who described one of his first experiencescapitalism, identity itself could perhaps be seen as nothing of this: more than a passing trend.I was just swept up into a group of like 40-50 people who justThe online has a crucial influence on cosplay, especially loved final fantasywhen you go to London it doesnt matter whatin the influence that photography has on the space, and character you are from, what universe, youre bound to find at leastalso has a hand in making identity malleable for cosplayers. a few others whoare wearing a costume from your universeweThe earlier described formal rituals of performing kind of wear our interest so it just makes it so much easier to makecosphotography are argued by Domsch to be a resurrection friends quickly. (My interview with John, 2020) of the tableaux vivants, or living picture which is a performance of an image with an allegorical or historical It is also, however, about navigating ones individualmeaning and has an intermedial element due to its merging identity. Identity is so important to the drive to cosplayof the stage and photography (Domsch 2017: 127). In a because we live in a culture which centres the individualsimilar way, cosplayers will recreate action shots, perhaps and places great value on the formation of personalof their characters posing together in a mimicry of a identity. Crawford and Hancock refer to the idea ofpromotional poster or image from their narrative. 9'