Originally Posted by
White_Fang
Cosplay (コスプレ kosupure?), short for "costume play", is a type of performance art whose participants outfit themselves, with often-elaborate costumes and accessories, as a specific character. Characters are usually sourced in various Japanese and East Asian media, including manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and fantasy movies. Other sources include performers from J-pop, J-rock, Visual Kei, fantasy music stories (such as stories by the band Sound Horizon), novels, and objects from cyberspace or the real world that are unique and dramatic (especially if they have or can be given an anthropomorphic form).
-from wikipedia - its your friend
Unless you ARE dressing up as some horror character from some anime or some movie or novel, it will not be considered as cosplay. Cosplay is dressing up as a character that exists in the above mentioned category, and nowadays people associate cosplay more to japan and thus animes, and thus will rule out other slightly minor forms of cosplay as 'dressing up'. Dressing up as a neko cat or witch for halloween does not mean its cosplaying, as well. its just not a defined particular character. Its just something that everyone knows kind of exists in general, and that does not make it cosplay, but merely dressing up.
This line between cosplay and non-cosplay gets harder to define with each passing year.
