ColossalCon North’s Cosplay Contest Staff Quits Due to Alleged Mistreatment From Management
We’ve received multiple tips from people present, and from what we can tell at around 10:30am today (Saturday, November 18th), after an incident with a member of ColossalCon North’s management, the entire ColossalCon North 2023 Cosplay staff decided to quit – including the original cosplay judges. According to one attendee who witnessed the incident the member of ColossalCon North management “screamed at the entire staff in front of contestants and judges in the hallway.” A text went out to attendees registered for the contest saying this happened, and a sign was posted saying the contest wouldn’t be happening as planned.
Some people involved did post about the situation on social media, though most have been silent. We don’t know if this is because they fear retaliation from ColossalCon staff or not.
It appears that the cosplay contest proceeded as scheduled, but it’s unclear what form it took in the end. The convention turned off comments on the Facebook post announcing the contest was still happening.
Honestly, if what we’ve been told is true, I don’t blame the cosplay contest staff for leaving. Most of the people involved in this kind of work are doing it for the love of conventions, and for the ColossalCon North management to act so unprofessionally is inexcusable.
We reached out to ColossalCon North writing this piece, but have yet to receive a reply.
Update (11/19 2:00pm CST): Just updating to include a link to @its.hakc’s excellent video on the incident. Some of the Cosplay staffers also posted their account of what happened yesterday on TikTok.
For context, Tilly/StarFall is the person who was in charge of the Cosplay Contest staff and was the person yelled at by ColossalCon North management.
As more details come in, the picture is pretty clear that ColossalCon North management greatly mishandled this situation. Whatever members of ColossalCon leadership drove us to this point frankly seem unqualified to manage something this important and public facing for a convention.
