ColossalCon East 2021 Recap
I haven’t done one of these in a long time. Mainly cause of 2020 but also just cause I felt burnt out from cons even before. For awhile I thought just doing modeling shoots or whatever was easier and more rewarding but, nah, I was wrong. It’s not just about the shoots or cosplay but also about meeting other people with similar interest and just hanging out too. I need cons and I want to keep doing them for as long as I can. With all that being said I’m gonna talk about CCE this year. This was actually my first con in 2 years and my last con was… *dundundun* CCE. A “Return to Shadow Moses” if you will. All I could hear going into this con was “Cult of Personality” as if I was a “returning CM Punk to the world of wrestling!”. Ha! “As if”, indeed.
If anything was a sign that things have changed since 2020 it would be this con. At the same time though things have kinda stayed the same. From what I heard and saw the Formal Ball rules were ultra strict and friends that wanted to go felt they couldn’t because of those rules. Turns out the dang-on thing became a “Formal Rave” halfway through. There was also something about the night swim kicking out people and letting others in? I dunno, I didn’t do the night swim. Also where the f’ was the Masquerade? My group saw that there was a rehearsal for it earlier in the day but couldn’t find the Masq itself on the schedule(unless it was the 2-hour “Cosplay Showcase” which just causes the confusion in the first place). Didn’t bother with that. It seems they may have hastily slapped the con together at the last minute even though it was announced awhile ago?
What was really different though wasn’t the mask policy but the fact that as I occasionally roamed through the indoor waterpark hoping to do a quick shoot I didn’t really see any cosplayers there(or con-goers in general tbh). The few times I went I saw a few photographers doing shoots and maybe one of them would have lighting gear but not always. Made me very self conscious about “being the only jackass to setup lights in the indoor waterpark” so I just didn’t. It was mostly families using the space and it was quite jarring. I know families go on vacation too but the last two times I went to CCE it was packed with con attendees. The wave pool would be lined up with photographers shooting with cosplayers and the “lawn chairs” as I call them would be even more packed with people waiting for their turn at the wave pool. All the while I’m thinking “damn! I wish I had enough courage to ask that Yuna or that Cammy cosplayer to shoot right now…” but now all I think is “damn.. wish there were cosplayers to shoot with in the wave pool..”. Not that there wasn’t obviously but I think the rule change on photography scared most off to just shooting outside. It was really nice outside on Saturday and Sunday but by then I was already out of steam. I didn’t get as many shoots done as I had hoped but every character I shot was someone I liked or at the very least recognized and I believe that will be a very good skill to hone for future cons. Not like CCE 2017 where I just went nuts and shot everything and when I got home I asked myself “who the f’ is this!?”
So asides photography I did put on my shorts and got wet at the waterpark. The group(including @saren_mae_cos) went there late Thursday, I had my Ghostface mask, got promptly told I couldn’t wear it, put it back in the room and went down the group, tubey, slidey thing and then went down the Lazy River. I legiterally could just do the Lazy River and I’d be ok with that, so relaxing. We were going to do the wave pool but it was taking too long to wave. I know Poconos Kalahari won’t see this but just a suggestion, do like your brethren in Sandusky and put the inner tubes in the wave pool. Nothing like sitting on an inner tube that is bobbing up and down from the waves. I got a deep tissue massage early Saturday. It was more so for research and learning just to see how other massage therapist work but it really helped! I wasn’t placing as much bags of ice on my body afterwards, I felt rejuvenated and even carrying around all the heavy gear the rest of the weekend didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Definitely recommend the getting a massage at the Spa Kalahari.
Finally found the eternal “The Waterfall” this year. All I can say is… “nah, son.” The trek there is long and arduous what with all the rocks you’ll end up almost slipping on and the endless army of mosquitoes that will bite you(Bhunivelze be with you if you are rocking a bikini cosplay) and the trek back is mostly uphill. It’s a gorgeous area with plenty of other spots to shoot in if the waterfall is occupied but I would never shoot with a cosplayer there unless it was planned ahead of time or they really wanted to shoot there and if bug spray was available. Finally was also was able to shoot my Ghostface with @darkfox_photography and that was strenuous as hell but also hellafun. “Now I know what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera!” I say jokingly and without much breath. I can’t wait to see those shots! I also attended the Horror Meetup on Saturday which was shot by @photo4food and that had some really hilarious shots. There is even a shot of @saren_mae_cos(as Pyramid Head) and I getting Mori killed by Leon Kennedy and Ash Williams. Check out everybody mentioned!
Hella cool meeting @crimson_quinn_ and having the Ghostface duo/mini horror meetup on Friday and also screaming with/at @lilystitches in her Midsommar/May Queen cosplay. I wish we had the third Ghostface to make a “Scream Squad” but it’s a con, plans go out tha window faster than the pig in Big City Greens and you gotta improvise. There’s always next time. So in conclusion, it was a con with a lot of confusion but I don’t care. I’m just glad that they are happening again. The photos will be coming. If you made it this far and attended the con as well then I guess just comment what your personal favorite moment of the con was, if you want. This is a freaking long post… Kool-Aid
Otakon 2019 Recap
I spent a lot more time in the videogame room this year and I played a ton of Smash Ultimate and Dead or Alive 6. Never played DOA6 til then but to be honest I like DOA5LR much better. I don't really care for the meter nonsense or this designated "special" button and to me the new power blows or whatever they have just seem like a downgrade from what we had in 5. Hell, everything about the game seems like a downgrade asides from the graphics but people love new and shiny things so I guess that's where they will go; MK11 is already proof of that statement. I did get a couple of people added on Steam as friends though and this one dude who used Bass was like super-pro level and I'm just like "well if I do eventually get DOA6 I don't think I can roll with you dude....". I'd have to give up too much just to be on his level and I ain't about that life anymore. Despite me being new though on DOA6 I did win against several people so I felt content.
Smash Ultimate was actually really fucking fun to play at a con! I've played it a few times since it's been out at cons and usually it's all the super-pro's playing so I usually get last place but this time I actually won a few matches! I remember one match where I was Snake and it was just me and Pikachu left. I knock them off but they recover and come back. They land right in the center of the stage and "NOW!", *EXPLOSION* and they dead! Huge crowd pop from that one and it felt nice to get cheered for winning instead of jobbing for a change. Still will never enter a tournament; ever.
I spent most of my time looking for that Sigma cosplayer I saw back at Otakon 2017 but alas I did not find the Sigma
. I did find a wild pigeon with 
though which was... interesting.. since it was in the con itself. And if you were spending any length of time at the entrance to the con Saturday afternoon then the phrase "down the sidewalk, up the ramp!" will be ingrained into your very psyche by now. I swear that security dude was trying to become the D.C. version of the Ice Cold Water Man... minus the sale of water of course. Also major props to the person dressed as the ultimate waifu, Asuka from Senran Kagura, on Friday night. I mean they looked just like her! As if she came printed straight from a drawing or something!Biggest highlight was late Saturday night. I went to bed mad early, like 10:30PM early. I wake up to the screams of my con roommates going on about a blanket or something so I just sat there waiting for the right moment to pounce and when it came I threw off the sheets and screamed "KAT! You should've gave him the blanket! Now you done fucked up and Greg is pissed!" or something like that. Everyone just started laughing at how random the whole thing became and then I got up and left the room, went to the housekeeping closet and grabbed sheets to end the "argument". I throw them in front of Greg and all seems right with the world... except instead of sheets it was 30 pillowcases! In my defense I just woke up and I didn't have my glasses on but the pillowcases just made things so much funnier. There is even footage of Greg having some kind of epiphany with his newfound hope that I will link to once that video has been posted by Weeb Palace(I hope to god it will be included). In terms of con hilarity that is pretty much up there with the time that dude was trying to swing a girl while hugging her but then dropped her instead or the time a dude cosplaying as a zombie tried to unknowingly give a prop hand to a girl who was missing a hand... Fun times!
As far as the con goes it wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst either. I'm looking more forward to the next con in any case which is a farcry from when after Anime Boston I didn't even want to do the next one so things are improving.
Mortal Kombat 11... First 28 Hours..
I prepared for the release of this game by reading up on all things MK on TV Tropes and playing MK9(didn't like MKX). The more I saw of MK11 though the more I realized that maybe I should've retracted my preorder. Release day came and the wait was over though... so I thought. Waited for several hours until 1PM yesterday for the game to finally work... only to have to install a 3-4 hour update once it finished even though the game was pre-loaded. After that I finally got to play. I goto the Klassic Kombat mode and am greeted with a very bland looking character select screen with the menu music still playing. They don't even show a portrait of the character you are highlighting unless you are playing Versus mode. In-between every match is a bunch of social media nonsense and you will find yourself pressing X to skip over it in order to see the glorious result of the Fatality only to realize that it will stay there indefinitely... Oh and apparently you must be online all the time for this game even if playing offline. Thank god I didn't buy the PS4 version cause I don't have PS+.
The Krypt is kinda ridiculous. At first it seems cool being greeted by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Old Shang Tsung but then it becomes another chore to do. Call me old but I liked it better in the PS2 era or MK9 where you just moved from tombstone to tombstone in a row buying coffins with your koins. Now you have to control this random 3D avatar in order to slowly run from area to area to unlock random goods... except most of the time these goods are just konsumables or icons and you have but a small chance of getting a costume or gear. I haven't felt the full extent of this madness yet but others are lamenting over the fact that you have to grind for hours to get good stuff. And then there is the Tower of Time which is just a whole nother batch of nonsense. Impossible challenges that basically mean you need the right konsumable which you probably won't have at the time unless microtransactions. Oh yeah, microtransactions are a thing now as well in MK.
I could go on more but I'm going to sum it up. The game looks nice, albeit too realistic, but fatalities look amazing. Problem is the game feels like like a Mortal Kombat game and more like a glorified mobile game made by some other developer. You have microtransactions, online all the time, social media bullshit, long as fuck loading times(even on retry), very small text bordering on Dead Rising 1 levels of smallness, slowdown on some stages and to top it off random crashing. And this is only the first 30 hours or so. I'm not even going to get into the whole "making female characters less attractive and making them look more boring or manly to appease" bullshit they have going on. Fuck NRS for that but I can tell you that even if they went back and MK9ed all the females the game would still have its slew of other problems. I mean, when Smash Ultimate came out i couldn't physically put the game down for a week or more unless it was to goto work. This game? I stopped playing and went to be around 11pm last night. Game seems very soulless and made with greed in-mind but I had similar feelings when Dead or Alive 5 first came out. After a few revisions its become one of my favorite DOA's. I'm hoping MK11 is similar and future updates will make the game more fun. I'm also hoping that maybe this is some big April Fool's joke from NRS and the real MK11 will release... but it's long past April Fool's Day... godammit. I guess I'll go back to editing photos now cause MK11 sure ain't doing its job of keeping me preoccupied. Lesson learned, never jump on the hype train for modern games.. should've learned my lesson with Dissidia.
Anime Boston 2019 Recap
I had plenty of fun doing things that I used to do though such as running around as Ghostface, watching Cosplay Deathmatch and Chess. Congrats to
for making it to the third round in the Deathmatch! She made it much further than myself back in 2017. Also I did something I've never done at Anime Boston before; I attended a concert! I was running around as Ghostface on Friday and a staff lady yelled "Hey Ghostface, you should go check out a free concert!" Normally I would ignore it cause I have a shoot to do or something or wasn't interested in the music but I said "fuck it! I ain't got no shoots and I ain't never been to an AB concert before!" It was this rockstar from Japan named Miyavi and he was actually really good. I don't have a particular favorite but from what I can remember I did like "Firebird", "What's My Name" "What a Wonderful World" and "In Crowd". Friday I went to bed rather early and woke up early Saturday. That day I actually tried to do shoots but didn't get much done. I had a much better time going to some panels, seeing the last half of the masquerade and re-debuting the new and improved "Scream-a-Chu" cosplay! I seriously think people like the Pikachu/Ghostface mashup better than actual Ghostface. I walk into the mall and not 10 seconds and someone is like "Ghostachu! Can I get a picture?!". I loved it! Even one of the TSA people at security was like "holy shit! It's Screamachu! Ha ha!" and sounded exactly like that too. Sadly I didn't see any other Pokemon cosplayers or horror icons for that matter. I did on Friday have a long, one-sided conversation with Michael Myers about his new movie though(I always seems to have this kinds of convos with Myers or Voorhees) and I saw another Myers on Saturday that was decked out in pink with a giant syringe... thing... but I was out of cosplay then.
Sunday I saw Cosplay Chess just as I've done these past several years(asides from 2012 when I was in it and 2018 when I skipped the con) and it was pretty awesome. I looked back at an older recap and noted how I didn't like the choice of pieces for that year but I must say I liked the choices this year(even though I got there very late and most of the pieces were already gone). I like how they reimagined Team SITCAS as being the Shinsengumi and acted as the "Shadow Priest" or "Masked Guard" of Chess. Very sad to see that both K-San and Roadie couldn't be there but I hope they are both better and can make it next year.
All-in-all the con was decent. I wish I had actually spent less time trying to hunt for impromptu shoots and more time doing whatever especially since the only shoots I did were basically planned with friends but I think I'll definitely be attending next year and I'll use AB as the "have fun" con from now on.
Katsucon 2019 Recap
Also, fuck the badge check. Every 30 fucking seconds there was someone screaming "BADGE CHECK! GOTTA CHECK BADGES!". Sometimes it didn't even sound like they were saying "badge" but instead "vag" so I'd hear "VAG CHECK! GOTTA CHECK VAGS!" and I was like "What the fuck kinda con is this?!". I'm not even sure they were banning indoor camera gear this year as I saw plenty of photographers using their lighting and whatnot without assistants. I didn't try to bend the rules this time and only used my gear for areas outside of the Katsu's jurisdiction.
Maybe I'll have a more complete recap next con, I dunno.