Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
Trust me, cosplay is the cool thing to do at these events. Costumes don’t just transform the people wearing them; they transform the world around them. At a con, one second there’ll be just a crowd, and then Goku enters, and suddenly everyone is screaming. But not just regular screaming. I mean full-on, throaty, anime-power-up screaming. It’s something else.
I love cosplay. I’ve always been good at creating things, but I only got big into creating cosplays in the last couple of years. It took convincing. And, admittedly, some spite. I kept watching other people’s follower counts skyrocket after they put on ratty shake-and-go wigs and called themselves Sailor Mars, and it annoyed me. I always said to May, Why doesn’t anyone brush out their wigs? Do they like looking like microwaved showgirls? I could do so much better. And she was finally like, Okaaaaay, then why don’t you?
So now I do. And I was right. I’m great at this. I create almost compulsively, my stuff isn’t bad, and I’ve even won a few titles at smaller regional cons. I’m not big or anything, but like a young god, I have gained a small but devoted following. About fourteen thousand people, give or take a thousand, tune in to watch me hot glue shit together on my Ion livestream twice a week.
But that count is going to double by the time I’m done with this year’s Controverse. For the first time, I’m entering the Controverse Championship of Cosplay (Trip-C, pronounced “Tripsy” if you’re cool). It’s the biggest, baddest cosplay competition in Boston—a multiday contest famous for its weird rules and twists. Just about all the criteria change from year to year, except one: People must compete in pairs. Controverse famously considers cosplay a team sport.
Enter May and myself. We’re doing a twist on the classic game Deep Autumn, in which the hero gets trapped in an enchanted forest and must battle through each season to escape. The character designs are nuts. Perfect for a team of cosplayers looking for a recognizable but difficult build.
I’m dressed as a druid, a keeper of the Spring Temple, and May is dressed as a Pinehorn, a low-level beast common on the temple grounds. Except we’ve been corrupted, which means we’ve been overtaken by fungus and mushrooms, turning us evil. As a result, I’ve taken the usually playful design of Deep Autumn and rendered it with gory realism.
I straighten May’s helmet and step back to admire my work.