Jaremi Carey’s cosSLAY
Season 1 of cosSLAY, an 8 week long competition series on Twitch hosted and created by Jaremi Carey, has just concluded and it was officially amazing! Filled with surprise guest judges and wonderful prizes the highly unique show featured a live vote where fans chose who stayed on to battle another day in the competition.
Cosplayers faced each other LIVE on Twitch in themed weekly challenges like making armor out of unconventional materials, body paint and hair, or a bloody challenge.
I had the chance to catch up with Jaremi to talk about the show!
Hi Jaremi, thanks for joining me, congrats on cosSLAY, how has the series been so far, have you exceeded your expectations?
I am so beyond proud and blown away by the response we have had. This has been a dream show to create with 2 years in the making. To see it inspire so many and be so well received is incredible.
What inspired you to launch the competition?
I love cosplay…plain and simple haha But in all seriousness, I am an artist, a creator and lover of all things pop culture related! I love being able to bring characters to life on and off the screen and I wanted to share the excitement and love for the art of cosplay I have with the world on a huge platform
How many entries did you get and how difficult was it to shortlist the entrants?
We opened the applications worldwide and received over 450. When I watch reality shows and competitions the one thing that bothers me is the lack of diversity in casting. I wanted to make sure we had a little bit of everything represented in this competition and how cosplay is a worldwide celebrated art!
What have been some of the stand out moments from the series so far?
Oh my gosh, there are toooo many to choose from, from meeting all the new cosplayers, to the incredible pieces they make! One of the coolest parts is how excited the chat gets when they see their favorites create something incredible all within a week’s time. We created individual emotes for each of the cosplayer and the chat goes wild spamming their favorite cosplayer!
What was the final four challenge?
Cosplayers often reuse and recycle lots of materials and redo and make previous cosplayers bigger and better as they advance their skills. I wanted to kind of play off that, so we went back to the first challenge of the season where our cosplayers had to create original characters and storylines. Not only did we want them to expand and build off their original design, but also add a new character to the situation and create an out of this world performance. Our reunion episode also let us sit down and go in depth even more about their thought process and how they produced the final looks for the challenge
What is it about cosplay that excites people so much?
It is fun, exciting, and the fact you can bring ANY character in any universe to life. These characters hold special places. Seeing old and new characters brought live and in action, or evening becoming the character yourself, whether you make it or not is empowering! It pushes you to use various skills from hair, makeup, sewing and more to create something incredible out of nothing.
Why do you think LGBTQ people are especially drawn to cosplay?
That is one that hits close to home. I used comic books and video game characters as a tool to escape from reality. I grew up as a heavy set queer kid in a very conservative and religious household. I was abused physically and mentally so seeing these people who were in a way like me in a way…different, an outcast, dealing with not fitting into society’s norms be these incredible and powerful beings helped me find a voice.
Where can people find out more about the show and catch up on the episodes they might have missed?
If anyone is looking for more about CosSLAY or the contestants they can visit Twitch.tv/JustJaremi and there is a video collection of all the free to watch episodes. They can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @CosSLAYTV
Check out some of the cosSLAY looks
About The Author
