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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Steve Evans

Empowering women's characters help Canberra get its geek on

Cosplay

Meet Hela from Thor (sometimes known as the Asgardian Goddess of Death). And Lady Dimitrescu. Spider-Man, of course.

Shoto Todoroki from the manga series "My Hero Academia" was there. And Rem, the maid from "Re:Zero" (it would spoil the plot to say if she's in love with Subaru).

Either way, they were all there in their magnificent finery in the less-than-exotic Exhibition Park in Canberra.

It seemed a bit incongruous: some of the gaudiest, most flamboyant costumes - and people - in the basic vault of an exhibition hall. Superheroes eating burgers.

It was day one of the two-day Oz Comic-Con festival. The fun and the drama lasts through until Sunday evening.

The characters being played in full costume - cosplay - come from the full array of modern fiction, from Japanese manga comics, to video games, to science fiction novels, to superhero movies.

Mark Scott (barbarian), Tony Gorst (Green Lantern), Scott Bullock (Spider-Man) and Crystal Martinali (Raven). Picture by James Croucher

And the people who do the cosplaying come from a similarly great variety of life, from a security guard, to a swimming instructor, to a student of gender studies - from China. Several of the women said they chose strong female characters to make a statement.

Mums were there, sometimes with dads who hadn't dressed up. Mums dressed as Superman with sons dressed as Thor, complete with anvil.

Georgia Quinn posed as Lady Dimitrescu from "Resident Evil Village". In the survival-horror video game, she is not all good - in fact, quite a lot bad, with vampire-like traits.

Georgia likes dressing as Lady D because of the strength of the character: "I think she's really cool." And this is undoubtedly true: the character wears a long, white silky ballroom gown, and a black hat with a brim she could shelter a crowd under.

"She's a big monster - which I love," Georgia says.

"It's empowering to dress as a big scary woman."

By day and through the week, she is a worker at Fantastic Furniture. But she transforms herself into the Gothic heroine (yes, heroine) by night and at weekends. She thinks her parents find it a bit odd, but her mother makes the dress, so the daughter thinks there's quiet approval.

Liam Brown dressed as a steampunk with his daughter Tabetha. Picture by James Croucher

Crystal Martinali comes as Raven from "Teen Titans", one of the now animated DC Comics books. Raven is a human-demon hybrid, originating from the parallel dimension of Azarath (as though you didn't know).

So Crystal is another woman who plays a strong character "because she's a bad-ass, and she does magic. And I'd love to have some magic".

In real life, she has two children. "They think I'm pretty cool," the mother, garbed in purple, with purple hair and a bright scarlet gem on her forehead, says.

Some of the creative cosplay at EPIC. Picture by James Croucher

Weifeng Tao is a student of gender studies from China at the ANU. She has come as Hela from the "Thor" movies. She is wearing antlers sharp enough to take your eyes out and a skin-clinging superhero outfit.

She has chosen Hela because "she's a very powerful woman".

"Usually in movies, the male characters are designed to be more cool but in this one, the female character is very strong, with a lot of action. I love action," she says.

Sebastian Singh, from Narrabundah College, was dressed as Hanako-kun from Japanese manga comics. Christina Stewart, from Canberra College, was Rem from Re:Zero, a Japanese novel. "Cosplaying has a good community in Canberra, and it's fun," she says.

There are men there but it's the women who stand out (there's a PhD in this for someone).

For everybody, it's escapism and fun and camping it up.

There are worse ways of spending a weekend.

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