Types of Cosplay briefly Explained

There are many different types of cosplay and large range of those types.
I myself am in a cosplay group that does many of the different types and hopefully I can get them to help explain some for you guys!

Until then here are somethings I know and do myself:

Keith a character, never
actually seen, from the game
Left 4 Dead 2
(This one is actually me!)

Cross-play
Cross-play is when you cosplay an opposite gender character and leave their gender as it is. So this is a woman dressing as a man or a man dressing as a woman. Most of the time these are either spot on and you can't tell that the other is dressing as the other sex or you can because they didn't put much effort into it. Either way, you have no right to tell them if you don't like it.

Jackie and Saul instead of
Jack and Sally
(Found on Deviant Art Link)

Gender-bent
This is where (most of the time) the character was the opposite gender of the cosplayer originally, but they for whatever reason didn't want to cross-play (which is completely understandable) and instead flipped the sex of the character; making the man into a woman or the woman into a man. With this there is also the option of a female/male who feels more comfortable dressing as a man/woman (not transgender) and they flip the sex of a character who original "matched" them to that of the opposite (effectively making it a cross-play in place of "normal" cosplay).

The universe in which it was The Dwarf
and the Seven Snow Whites
(This has been re-posted so much that I had to track
down the oldest link for it available, Link)

Alternate Universe (AU)
This is in which the cosplayer drags the character through other options, like if the character started as a normal human they might now be part animal or mythical creature. These types of cosplay is what happens when the cosplayer falls in love with a non-canon idea for the character and twists the character's costume or outfit to match that of the idea. This can range from putting a headband of ears on a character to making a very tech-y character dress in furs. This type of cosplay puts a lot on creativity and not necessarily on originality.