Why I Love The Quest

Image: https://www.facebook.com/TheQuestABC

I was vaguely interested in watching The Quest when I first heard about it. My interest in reality shows has waned over the years. I used to love Survivor but it got to be less entertaining as the seasons progressed.

I didn't get a a chance to watch any of The Quest until last week. Our DirectTV was on the fritz which ended up with us canceling it entirely. To fill our entertainment gap, we got Hulu Plus and a new Roku player. I found The Quest on Hulu and watched all of the episodes available in one sitting.

Like many other geeks, I love the idea of normal folks going to a magical kingdom to become heroes. This was why I got hooked quickly to The Quest.

It works a little like Survivor because only one Paladin will make it to the end and a Paladin is cut each episode. They also have to do challenges to determine who will be banished.

But there is a storyline! All the NPC's move through the story and get the Paladins to come along. One challenge involved having to save the Queen from poisoning as an example. The Paladins aren't playing against each other - they want to help everyone to be able to figure out who is the one true hero.

And there is no money prize like so many other reality shows. The 'prize' is you get to fight the big bad at the end. It's the geekiest reality show ever - even geekier than Heroes of Cosplay in my opinion.

The story line, the Paladins (my favorite is Bonnie) and the setting of Everealm has made me fall in love with this show. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Final Thoughts on Heroes of Cosplay

One of my
early costumes

I’ve been a cosplayer for about 15 years now, so I was excited to see Heroes of Cosplay. The show was interesting and the costumes were beautiful but the attitudes of some of the cosplayers were crappy. I’ve already ranted about a few things on the show, but I wanted to share my feelings about the show as a whole, especially the finale.

Knowing this was a reality show, I know that it was edited together to make drama. And sadly, some of the elitist / size-ist attitudes shown in the show have basis in real life because I’ve come across it before in my own cosplaying journey. I have no doubt that Monika is at least as half as bitchy in real life as she is on the show because you can’t really edit some of the hateful things she said.

But what bothered me the most is what information that came out after the finale was aired. The following has spoilers if you haven’t seen the last episode. In the group competition, there was a group of femme Doctors from Doctor Who. They were shown getting into a scuffle with the ‘heroes’ from LA after an audience member shouted about how out of towners should go home. It caused quite the issue in the back stage area, with one of the ‘heroes’ in tears.

I felt bad for the ‘heroes’ when I watched the episodes, since they were the cosplayers I liked most on the show. But then the Doctor Who cosplayers story came to light. Apparently, the thing shouted was something along the lines of ‘everyone who isn't a SyFy plant, I love you,” but that was apparently dubbed over with the out of towners line. Also, from the Doctor Who cosplayers have said that the skit in the group contest wasn’t told to them until they got to the con, since it was the first time it had happened at Planet ComicCon. They were shown to be villains, rather unfairly from what I’ve read. You can read one account from one of the Doctor Who cosplayers' on tumblr.

While I did enjoy the show for the most part, I think it gave cosplayers a bad name in some ways. Some of the cosplayers had the right attitude, but some didn’t at all. I honestly hope that it doesn't come back because it will just be about the drama again and not about the fun that cosplaying should be.