The Scotsman 1 October 2024

If someone talked to you about bubblegum goth, would you know what they were on about? How about dark academia or angel-core? Would they be on any safer ground with coconut girl or Christian autumn girl?

My guess is not. Unless, that is, you are of the generation for whom cosplay is an everyday part of life. For you, those phrases might already look hopelessly antiquated. In the fast-moving world of teen culture, nothing stays fixed for long.

For the rest of us, let’s take a step back. Cosplay – a portmanteau word combining “costume” and “play” – is the phenomenon of dressing up in character. It started decades ago, with fans of animation, science fiction and video games who wanted to look like their favourite characters. It took off in a big way in Japan and has proliferated in the age of TikTok with the platform’s appetite for colourful visual content. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).