(I received this ask and chose to censor the person’s name to protect their privacy, but I wanted to respond publicly bc I felt like it was a good thing to discuss out in the open, bc I have seen similar issues come up before, so I will refer to the asker as Anon.)

Anon, while I do try to reblog cosplays here on my blog, it’s not a main focus. We both know that I have reblogged several of yours in the past, I’m so impressed with your skill and resemblance to the characters you cosplay! I can definitely understand why you feel salty about putting so much effort in and not getting the attention when someone who seems not to put in any effort gets the credit for cosplay with the #cosplay tag. 

And may it is also just a salty moment just for me salty cosplayer. I am sorry.

It’s okay, I’m sorry that you were hurt. It was not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings. Please accept this hug from me ❤

I feel like there are several ways of answering this, one way would be to remove that tag from the reblog of that post, and another would be to offer an explanation of my thought process on that tag. Since I really want to keep that tag on it, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, hopefully my explanation below will reduce some of your salt by offering more perspective on it. If you’re still feeling hurt after this explanation, I am sorry. We all come to fandom as a safe space to be creative and have a good time, and unfortunately we sometimes have different and incompatible definitions of how that works 😛

Again, it was not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings, it was my intention to compliment the OP of that post, and sadly, when someone is complimented, it can make others feel hurt and/or envy. Maybe this explanation will address those feelings.

So why tag a post #cosplay if OP didn’t tag it #cosplay??

Anyone can tag a post with anything at all, I can tag it #lobsterface, if I have some kind of inside joke with that person, even if no one else understands it! I can tag it with #WOW AMAZING, and other people would probably disagree. One’s tags are one’s own creative expression in that way.

I want to talk about cosplayers, bc that is part of the issue here, that some appear to make “more of an effort” than others in their cosplay.

A) Keep in mind that some cosplayers have considerable advantages over others:

• Some cosplayers are skilled at being able to sew/make their own costumes,
• Some choose to buy their costumes, 
• Some choose to cosplay a more modern-era time period and do not need to sew or buy difficult pieces, 
• Some are skilled at photoshop and can change their hair color/style or create fangs or alter the scene digitally,
• Some have access to cool locations like cemeteries or fancy architecture,
• Some have 

  photographer friends who can stage the lighting/scene really well,

• etc…

^All of these are great and can add to the quality of a cosplay post 😀

B) On the other hand, some cosplayers do not have these advantages, or choose not to do elaborate cosplay for their own reasons.

• Some people might feel that they resemble the characters enough that they choose not to add anything to what they already have naturally,
• Some people lack some/all of the skills mentioned above, 
• Some cannot afford to buy costume pieces, but still wish to cosplay their favorite characters. 

^This group (B) are no less qualified to cosplay than the people who have the advantages mentioned above, and they have every right to make cosplay posts of their own.

EDIT: I decided to remove the part of this post that addressed a specific other blogger. I don’t think it’s appropriate to drag them into this when I am protecting the anonymity of the person who raised the issue. 

But my advice still stands as follows:

It’s a reasonable compliment that we do give to people who happen to look like the fictional characters, unfairly or not. 

So why reblog a selfie that’s not tagged as a cosplay and tag it with #cosplay? Well, it’s a compliment to the person. 

Hey dear, in honour for cosplay it makes me (i do not speak for all so just my no-one-actually-ask-for-opinion) sad that ppl got tagged as cosplay just because they have a kind of simillarities for fictional characters.

So unfortunately, this does happen, and it is a compliment. 

It is a kind of hurtful for those who bring a lot of effort for the actually costume. 

I can understand that. I’m sorry you were hurt by this. The other difficult thing about tumblr is that the tags are there to advertise as well as organize, and for my own blog, I wanted that post above to be in my cosplay tag so that in the future, if anyone asked me about X character cosplay examples, it would be included. And I think it is a good example to have because, as I mentioned above, some people do not have the advantages you might have to create/buy costume pieces, and/or some people choose not to do those in cosplay for their own reasons. 

I think you did the right thing coming to me to ask about it, and hopefully my answer will reduce some of the hurt. In this case, I don’t want to remove the #cosplay tag from that post because of the reasons I stated above, I’m sorry about that.

And… if I would dye my hair more red would civil photos also be a cosplay-tagged post? 🙁 I am confused. 

I wouldn’t recommend that you dye your hair just to have your selfies reblogged as cosplay, in my experience, reblogs are VERY subjective. Reblogging someone else’s selfies especially is something every blogger has to decide for themselves, as selfies can be very personal. Everyone has their own reasons for reblogging a post, and in my case, I reblog things to have them in my personal collection to refer to later if I want, and again, sometimes it’s also a compliment for someone.

Even with the very elaborate cosplays, you can’t predict what will be reblogged. I might put a lot of effort into a post, fic, fanvideo, and it will get very few notes. I might put very little effort in and it gets 5k notes. 

I would suggest that if you want more attention, give other people attention, that’s how this blog became so popular! It is like real life, you get out what you put into it. People tend to give attention to people who have given attention to them *hugs*