Friday, Nov. 14 at 4:30 p.m., Cosplay Club held a Holiday Café event in The Daily Grind, where attendees enjoyed warm holiday drinks, cookies and board games. Attendees and event organizers dressed as different characters from anime, video games and other pieces of pop culture.
Students could enter the event for $7. Cosplay Club members then served visitors a warm, festive drink such as hot apple cider, hot cocoa, hot tea, mocha or coffee. Additionally, people could purchase slices of apple pie, chai cookies, s’mores cookies and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, along with gluten-free and dairy-free options. The club also provided different board games, including Jenga, Uno, card decks and Exploding Kittens.
Event attendees also received a raffle ticket and could enter to win one of two gift baskets. One was a cosplay essentials basket, containing e.l.f. Cosmetics primer and setting spray, wig hair spray, a sewing kit and fake lashes. The other basket was pop culture themed and featured a variety of cute and cartoon merchandise. This basket included a Miffy Christmas plush, a Mofusand blind box, a Frieren manga, Japanese stationery and a Nezuko figure. At the end of the event, raffle tickets were selected to give these prizes to lucky recipients.
Attendees noted their positive experiences with the Holiday Café. One attendee called the event’s environment and the group of people present very fun.
The event was created to help the Cosplay Club fundraise for the semester. Cosplay Club routinely travels to National Harbor, Md. for Katsucon, one of the largest anime conventions on the East Coast. Typically, the vice president organizes a convention committee, where a small group of non-exec club members create a comedic skit for club members to perform in cosplay at Katsucon each spring. The money made from the Holiday Café will be used to subsidize convention costs.
Cosplay Club President Lauren Cook ’26 provided more insight into the process behind creating these annual skits.
“It’s a team effort, and even if you work on the skit, that doesn’t mean you’re going to perform,” Cook said. “Some people would rather write scripts or make props, while more outgoing people prefer to perform.”
Members can contribute to the skit as performers, script writers and audio engineers. The club has won various awards for their skits. Cook noted their positive relationship with the cosplay community and judges at Katsucon.
Due to the competitive element of Cosplay Club, the College of William and Mary helps subsidize the price of tickets for members to attend conventions. However, due to the high number of attendees, the College does not fully cover the cost. Fundraising helps alleviate the additional funds necessary for attending the convention, like paying for parking and hotels. During the fall semester, the Cosplay Club also attends Nekocon in Hampton, Va.
Outside of convention events, fundraising also allows the club to put on different weekly workshops where ir teaches members how to improve at a certain aspect of cosplay craft, including making wigs, using makeup and applying color contacts safely.
Cook explained how these workshops typically involve club members’ input. Members fill out a form at the beginning of the year to gauge interest in different aspects of cosplay that they want to learn more about.
“It’s usually based on what club members want to see and what they may not have as much experience with,” Cook said.
Cosplay Club secretary Mia Spera ’28 commented on how cosplay is not necessarily a requirement for attending the Holiday Café.
“It’s really fun for the members because we get to dress up, and people get to see cosplay, even for people who don’t cosplay. You can come to cosplay events and not be part of the club,” Spera said.
Cook also noted how the club has gained more traction across campus compared to in previous years.
“I think people are being more okay about liking the things they like and not being so concerned about appearances. Compared to other college campuses, people are generally kinder,” Cook said. “I feel like, for a long time, if people liked something, they would pretend they didn’t like it or wouldn’t talk about it. But I feel like people are more okay with being themselves.”
Originally, the Cosplay Café event was part of Griffincon, an event run by Skiffy, a sci-fi club on campus. However, Cosplay Club decided to organize the event independently to find more financial success. This was the first year that the Cosplay Club was able to advertise the event in the Sadler Center, which helped draw attention to the event.
Renny McFadin ’24, M.A. Ed. ’25, recalled that Cosplay Club was originally a subsection of Anime Club before branching off as its own entity in 2017. They noted the growth of the club to over 20 members, a significant improvement from their experience in the organization. McFadin also commented specifically on how much the Cosplay Café event had changed since their time in the club as an undergraduate and graduate student.
“I can tell it’s much more put together as the years go on. We didn’t use to have the menu cards or the way that the servers are working,” McFadin said. “It used to not be that organized.”
McFadin also encouraged audiences to give cosplay a chance.
“I just think people should cosplay and give it a chance because it’s really fun, and it’s a big community,” McFadin said. “Even if you buy your cosplay off of Amazon or you make it out of thrift store materials, somebody is going to think it’s cool.”
Cosplay Club Vice President, Delena Markos ’28, had similar thoughts.
“Cosplay is to me what drag is for some people. I think it’s a fun way to exaggerate myself through performance of a character,” Markos said. “I think people really undersell how fun it is. Even if you don’t have the perfect cosplay, or if it’s not canon accurate or whatever, even just trying is in and of itself fun.”
For more information on Cosplay Club and how to get involved in its future events, you can follow the group on Instagram @wmcosclub.
