Home » Personal Stories » Ashentrees (Philadelphia, PA)

Ashentrees (Philadelphia, PA)

Felix Wong Photography

So i did change like the credit card numbers to be like 2023, all of the coupon codes are the dates of the first weekend of the first Katsucon back in 1995 and then all of the other numbers on it that relate to like the care reward card is the actual GPS coordinates of the gazebo. All the coupons were kind of like a satire for Katsucon like, one of the coupons was like $2 off $100 purchase of convention food, you know, playing on the joke of like, oh, convention, food is expensive.

So I think the biggest reaction for people was just how long it was. And then when people actually like I encourage them to read it. And when they actually did read it, they got a chuckle out of it. Because again, like it’s been good at conventions for a while. It’s something that like you can relate to and get an additional kick out of.

I think it was funny that like anybody could recognize it. I feel like Katsucon like New York Comic Con, anything goes, you know, I look how many. I saw Napoleon Dynamite cosmetic Katsucon this year, and there was a giant group of just people dressed as Pitbull, the singer, and had some kind of like, I feel like, you know, that’s such a vibe of Katsucon. 

 It was even funny that like, the hotel staff are like, Oh, my God, like I get it. I had a lot of people come up to me saying like, do I work at a CVS. No, I actually do not. I’ve used CVS very much in the past. But, ya know, I myself am not a CVS employee.

Phot: Felix Wong

 So I actually started designing it in late 2019, I started saving a bunch of receipts to scan. I really don’t know what made me want to do it. It’s just like, you know, always a CVS receiving log as a joke. So I just wanted to play on that.

A few years ago, I did see Squidward from Spongebob where he is enticing a sea bear so I had the Sombrero and the clown shoes, the cute cheese. I got such a kick out of how everybody like enjoyed it was like, oh my god, like, I love that episode. So I wanted to you know, play on that again, and CVS receipts. I think the first thing I did was make the leggings. Cuz I had previously made like custom leggings before. So I made the design and printed and then they still fit, thankfully. And then from there, I had bought the dress back in 2019. The top I actually ended up seam ripping it and then making my own dress from fabric I had,.

I do think there’s a huge increase in the amount of people who are cosplaying now because I mean, I started cosplaying back in 2008. You know, I started on Cosplay.com There was no Facebook . You know, the social media cosplay didn’t really exist yet. It was just meeting up at like anime clubs that libraries’ Delaware anime society meetings, that was your, you know, exposure to cosplay and conventions. So, certainly seeing the crowd now like how many people just meet up to do TikTok’s whereas like back in the day, we would meet up to you know, just make YouTube videos together or just meet people to talk to fandoms about like, Naruto, Full Metal Panic getting together for an Escaflowne a group. I saw conventions I saw people doing it and I was like, this is something I want to do. I went to masquerades and I was like oh my god, I love this. Thumbs up to a great Death Note skit, you know who’s flexing and nowadays it’s interesting to see here like cosplayers be like oh my god I started with Boku no Hero or like Spy Family, like oh my gosh, like my first anime was probably Dragonball Z.

You know, there’s really no judgement whether you’re possibly sewn or bought at this point, because it is kind of nice that that you know, elitism, you know, I think has been at least in my eyes disappearing a bit more because again, the quality of that you can buy cost less than the availability has increased so much even for plus sized cosplayers. You know, the availability everywhere are the Arda wigs, Epic cosplay, you know, I had to get mine at Party City back in like 2009. And I certainly melted it with my hair straight here because I didn’t know it was built. So I certainly think it’s definitely interesting seeing these younger generations.

Video : Mineralblu


, , , , ,