Tag: rant

Marvel Rivals Rant

The new season of Marvel Rivals coming tomorrow has left a lot of fans feeling mixed. I personally get why some are angry, but at the same time, it feels weird to criticize Marvel Rivals for adding lesser-known characters first and then adding more popular characters. How else are people going to find out about these obscure characters? Marvel Rivals is giving them a chance to shine, which in turn makes more people want to write about them. That’s one of the better things about Marvel Rivals; it’s given characters like Angela, Jeff the Land Shark, Elsa Bloodstone, and many other character variations time to shine in the spotlight. Now, if we want to criticize Marvel Rivals, there are so many other things, and I’m going to list them. 

 

Blatant racism

Marvel Rivals has this problem in spades, and every time someone brings it up, they say, “Well, erm, actually Marvel Rivals is a Japanese company; they don’t have to do more for Black people.” You should be lucky in the game at all.” Now imagine that voice in like half the player base. It’s infuriating how people act like Japanese people are toddlers when these are full-grown, able-bodied men. News flash, genius. Everyone knows what racism is. They know what actions are racist and what they say is racist. And adding this on Black History Month is insane, and it feels like they are laughing at us. 

Also, the fact that all the Black people in the game are constantly neglected—like, when was the last time Blade, the character that was teased for 2 seasons and was chained up for all the players to see, got anything substantial? Now I can excuse all the free Storm skins mainly because she’s the least picked DPS in the game, but tell me why she and Black Panther had free wedding skins when all the other couples had event-based skins and actually had to be paid for. It’s weird. Also, another thing people associate Black people with disco, you know, because we are the people that made it. So tell me, why did not a single Black person get a disco skin? But Thor, the person not even from Earth, has one.

 

Toxic Players 

Every so often when I load up on Marvel Rivals, I get a really bad teammate that plays for the vibes, and it’s so infuriating that it makes me want to shove my head in a tuba and scream, but not even that will mask the sounds of the dread and rage I feel. Marvel rivals, please do better.

Halloween from a Cosplayer’s Perspective

Halloween is the one night a year a cosplayer can cosplay in public and not be stared at, laughed at, or generally ridiculed. Cosplay has definitely become more mainstream over the last few years, but as someone who’s been in cosplay communities since the early 2010s, it has not alway been this peachy. There has always been confusion in where the line is drawn between cosplay and simply dressing up, but I’m here to explain it (at least from my own opinion and experiences). 

I’ve seen a lot of people using the term “cosplay” to refer to basically any form of acting like or dressing up as something. For instance, when Carhartt clothes grew popular amongst more wealthy people, many used the phrase “cosplaying blue collar” to describe their style. Another example is when “underconsumption core” became a popular idea on Tik Tok, many wealthy creators were called out for “cosplaying poverty” because they were taking many things that lower class families have to do to get by and reframing them as aesthetic. 

I hate that cosplay is being thrown around like this. First of all, it’s not the correct use of the word. I suggest using “roleplaying as ___” or simply “pretending to be ___”. Secondly, the term cosplay was created with the Japanese word “kosupure” in mind, which means “costume play” in English. Kosupure refers to a specific performance art of dressing up as characters from media. It’s not “costume play” if someone isn’t dressing as a character… I could go on this rant forever. Stop using “cosplay” when you mean something entirely different.

Rant over, let’s talk about Halloween. So what’s the difference between cosplay and dressing up on halloween? Ultimately, not much. In my opinion, the key difference is the motivation for dressing up. Cosplay is tied to 80s-90s nerd/geek culture and began as a form of self expression and a way to show one’s dedication to a character/piece of media. For many years, cosplayers crafted their own cosplays and props and many still do today. You can still be a cosplayer if you don’t make your entire piece on your own, but cosplay’s origins almost always portray cosplay as just as much of a craft as it is a hobby. On Halloween, you might build your entire costume and dress up as that specific character because you love them dearly, but this is when you need to ask yourself an important question: Would you be doing this if it wasn’t Halloween? If the answer is no, I believe that is the key factor separating cosplay and Halloween costumes. If the answer is yes, then you should! You don’t have to post about it or anything, just have fun as your favorite character. I hope to see you at the next local cosplay convention.