I told you I was a nerd. Maybe you didn’t believe me when I posted in various places on this blog that I proudly carry the flag of a nerd. Of a geek. United States of Total Dork. This should teach you never to doubt me…

A few months ago The Roommates and I were playing a wonderful game called Tales of Symphonia. This post isn’t about the game so I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say that the game and the sequel are both amazing. Oh! I almost forgot! For future reference, whenever I talk about The Roommates I mean Kellie, Derek, and the honorary one (he doesn’t live here, technically) Gabe. Anyways, we were playing the game and somehow we started talking about cosplay. What’s that? You’ve never heard of cosplay? I could break it down for you but I’ll let Wikipedia handle this one:

Cosplay (コスプレ, kosupure?), short for “costume roleplay”, is a fan labor type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan. Favorite sources include manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, hentai and fantasy movies. Role play includes portrayals of J-pop and J-rock stars, visual kei, Taiwanese puppet characters, science fiction characters, characters from musical stories, classic novels, and entertainment software. Any entity from the real or virtual world that lend itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Inanimate objects are given an anthropomorphic forms and it is not unusual to see genders switched, with women playing male roles and vice versa.

Of course, you see where I’m going with this. We had a dry run at the SacAnime weeks ago but on Halloween weekend we went to the Yaoi-Con. This is where it gets a little…different. Even more different then just talking about cosplay in general. Yaoi is a subgenre of anime and manga that celebrates love between males. Yup. As J.D. and Turk on Scrubs explained to us all, “it’s guy love, between two guys.” I’m not gay, The Roommates aren’t either (Derek even brought his girlfriend along), but a great number of the people there were. I’ve grooved on the dance floors of gay clubs in Sacramento but the casual gay relationships all around was totally different. Not to get too much into it but I felt like I was looking at what society would be like in the near future. Except, you know, with more props, wigs, and a general level of dorky things. It was a great chance for us to dress up, act like idiots, get some great deals on Japanese comics/toys/artwork, run around a hotel, laugh a LOT, and just generally have a good time.

So, basically, I spent three days running around dressed as The Wonder Chef, complete with a giant fork! You read that right, a giant fork.  It’s taller than my head and I made it out of PVC pipe, plywood, Gesso, and spray paint. The first day I had some issues with it since I had to get used to the low ceilings in the hotel but I adapted. We spent Friday walking around and checking out the items for sale at the swap meet. We went to the opening ceremonies and were treated to a fantastic surprise. Kellie had entered a writing contest put on by the convention every year and at the ceremony they announced the winners. She won. That’s right, won. Not second place, not honorable mention, she took first place. She was speechless and it made us all super happy. Hell of a way to start the weekend right?

Saturday we walked around meeting random people, which included spending more time with a group of girls who also came as Tales of Symphonia characters! We had two doubles since they had a Decus and Genis which are the characters Derek and Gabe went as, respectively. They were pretty great to talk to. I won’t bore you with the little details but I do want to mention the highlight of the day for me: I got to meet Jo Chen. I have admired her work for a long time but my memory being what it is I had forgotten that she was going to be there. I walked into the dealer room and there she was with a table full of her amazing prints on full display. I spent a lot of time debating what to get but ended up with a large print of her cover for the Serenity graphic novel and two smaller prints from her stint on Runaways. Besides the two I mentioned she’s also done a ton of work for the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer comic series. It was great to meet her and be able to thank her for Runaways. After all, it was her cover art that made me take a look at it in the first place and I haven’t stopped reading it since.

Since that was the high point, here is the low point: I tried taking pictures. In the tradition of the amazing photographers here, I took my equipment and I went out that night with the Roommates to get some cool night shots of them in their outfits. From the start something seemed a bit off. Anyone who has experience with photography starts getting a feel for your settings and your environment. If I’m shooting at 1/15 with F4.5, for example, then the image should look a certain way. Plus, I’ve had enough experience with my flash units that I know when things aren’t right. I wish all this supposed knowledge would let me figure out what was wrong that night. The settings on the flash and camera just weren’t giving me the image I knew it should be. Shot after shot I was changing one thing or another trying to get the photography just how I wanted it but it seemed that when I did get it right it was more luck then anything. I should have trusted my instincts from the start but it took one specific shot to show me that there was something wrong and it wasn’t me. I had Kellie and Derek set up for an image and I took the shot. It was ever so slightly blurry so without adjusting a thing I shot a second shot a few seconds later. Well wouldn’t you know it, the second shot was blown way out. It was like my flash suddenly had 5x the power even though I didn’t change a thing! The batteries were new, both times the flash said it was ready so it wasn’t like the first shot was at a lower power setting. Even now I have thought about it over and over and can’t figure out what the issue was. What I was proud of was that I adapted. I got a few good shots out of that session and the next day did more without thinking about my flash unit at all. I knew, being at the con, that I wasn’t going to figure things out there so instead of wasting the opportunity to get some shots of Kellie in her new outfit or Derek and his girlfriend together I did what had to be done. Things are going to happen when I’m out in the field and the more I shoot the more confidence I have that whatever comes up I can and will take care of it.

That night, being Halloween and all, there was a very interesting auction for charity that we all went to and laughed our asses off at. I would give details but no one would tell me the “secret” of the auction on the forums and I won’t ruin it for anyone else who might come across this. Afterward it was drinks, some dancing at a rave with a bad DJ, and just some general hanging around with interesting people. It almost sounds lame to say this is what happened on my Halloween night but after even more running around on Sunday and enjoying some panel discussions (with VERY inappropriate topics!) I can easily say that while some people had a great holiday I had a great weekend.

PS: where are the images of me in my outfit you ask? Well, head on over to www.cosplay.com and see if you can find them. No, really, try to. I didn’t take any of myself, obviously, but there’s a good chance someone else out there got some!  Pictures of my cosplay photographs will be coming soon!