Dublin Comic Con and WorldCon: Cosplay is for everyone

Comic Conventions are very under researched internationally and in Ireland even less so. Dublin Comic Con, a yearly Comic Convention in Dublin, Ireland and WorldCon, a Convention that has been held in multiple countries around the world and had its most recent convention in Dublin, Ireland will be the topic of this thesis. Focusing mainly on Cosplay at both of these events, I will conduct interviews with two well-known cosplayers as well as an object analysis of two of their costumes and the methods of how they built them. The hope of this thesis is to explain the convention experience, the effect of active audience theory and the concept of cosplay to give readers a better understanding of what it is and what draws people to the craft.