Except for one Star Trek convention my best friend and I went to in high school (it was right downtown, a bus ride away so why the hell not go?) I came to con life later in life. An ex convinced me to go to the local one (local takes on a new meaning once one has a drivers license and car) in 2013 and I fell in love. A bit terrified by the crowds (not a fan) but absolutely loving the ability to be surrounded by fellow nerds and oddballs of all flavors and universes. With a couple of years off for plague I’ve been going for more than a decade and over the years have increasingly dipped my toe into the cosplay pool.
The youngling and I did a Chihiro and No Face cosplay in 2019 in The Before Times. Even got to have Jim Butcher sign his latest while in my 8′ tall costume. By the end of the day I was covered in bruises from the backpack I had the entire getup rigged onto and lost so much in water weight that my pants kept falling off the next day. It was totally worth it.
It was so much damn fun, wandering around the con, offering people gold coins (foil wrapped chocolate – con is one of the few place it’s okay to accept candy from strangers) and having them react as if we were in Ghibli’s universe. Even just leaning on a solid surface to catch my breath for a few and then startling people when they came around a corner and saw me. Adam Savage talked about this suspension of disbelief and immersion into another universe in a TED talk. He also did No Face and had a similar experience in that some people were excited to see a beloved character and others were deeper into the lore and refused the gold as it’s bad luck to take it from a spirit.
2023 was our first year back and I wanted to take it a bit easier on the cosplay (No Face needs a serious upgrade to make it a bit more wearer friendly and I did some serious damage to it during that day’s wearing. Can’t recall how many times the hem got caught in the escalators) so I went with a haori jacket inspired by the moss suit in Animal Crossing. I’d been playing it a lot that year and love moss so it seemed like a logical enough cosplay.
As often happens with projects, I started late and didn’t completely finish up in time for con. Since I’d never drafted a pattern, made a muslin and then a final jacket this wasn’t a big surprise but I was still disappointed. I wore it, but without the Animal Crossing logo on the back as intended, I’m not sure how recognizable it was. I did get a lot of work done on the logo at con so at least my hands were kept busy. Eh, at least the jacket was comfortable.
We buy our membership for the next con as soon as they’re available right after con (that’s when it’s cheapest) and they send you updates and announcements throughout the year. A few weeks back they sent a friendly reminder that con is in 100 days. The youngling has already informed me that once her coursework is done for the semester, her and a friend will be crunching hard to get their Genshin Impact costumes done in time. Friend will be living here during the con (they’re riding back and forth with us) and possibly before as well while they work on things. Whatever, working on costumes is definitely more wholesome than what I was up to at their age.
Last year at the end of con, freshly showered and curled up on the couch exhausted, I jotted down some thoughts on how to make next year go a bit better. “Feed the youngling on time” otherwise things go south quickly and “take a couple of days at the beginning of the week afterwards as recovery time” were logical enough and I might have remembered even without writing it down. The big one though was “Finish up cosplay in advance. Don’t start the con tired” would be all too easy to ignore. I’ve always been the all-nighter type (looking at you 2019 No Face – finished up around 2 am and then was up at 9 am to leave for the day) but the aging body doesn’t agree with this m.o. anymore.
So I pulled out the haori jacket from where it’s been mashed into a ball on the craft table since last year to assess what remains to get it to done. It definitely needs a wash and ironing. The logo is so close to being ready to attach to the back. And then there’s the idea that’s been rolling around for a couple of years of converting my generic Browncoat cosplay into a full on Jayne Cobb complete with cunning hat and Vera his favorite gun.
What exactly can I get done in the next couple of months? The vision always exceeds my reach but con crunch is part of the fun.
