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Gretchen (Kansas City) & Sterling
I was so nervous! Everyone was so supportive and complimentary though. And I was so excited to dress up as one of my favorite anime characters! It ended up being a lot of fun, and encouraged me to do it more often. It was the most magical experience of my entire life. I felt like…
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Sunday Creature
Maka Albarn (Soul Eater), Spartoi variant (2010) When I started high school – I was in a magnet program, so I went out of area, new school, completely new people – a new friend there introduced me to manga, and later to the idea of anime cons. We planned to go to Otakon together (ironically,…
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Cosplay: The Illegitimate Child of SF Masquerades
by Michael Bruno The most enlightening panel of the entire convention turned out to be not what I was really expecting. During the “Cosplay Roundtable” panel at Nan Desu Kan 2002 this last weekend, I was expecting a panel of costumers to be answering questions posed by the audience. However, this was not the case.…
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EMMA (New Mexico)
My first con was in Baltimore for Otakon 2001. Pre 9/11! I originally wanted to attend a con either out in Colorado or Texas, but I was the only one in my circle of friends in New Mexico who had a part time job, so there was no one I could travel with. I cosplayed…
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Costuming a World Apart: Cosplay in America and Japan
by Michael Bruno Even though the art of Cosplay in Japan is based on SF costuming in America, there are only a few similarities and many differences. The inherent reserved nature of the Japanese has strongly asserted itself into their costumed activities; mainly in the realm of costume presentation. In America, cosplayers take their costumes on…
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CaffEineCraft & Setterspecs (Chicago, IL)
Photo: Payton’s Photography CAFFEINECRAFT: This is the story of how Setterspecs and I met and how things came together for us to get married the day before Anime Central 2023 in Chicago. I started going to cons in the 2000s, though never for more than a day and not every year either. I did not…
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Ashentrees (Philadelphia, PA)
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…
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Soydoka (Chicago, IL)
I decided to crossplay as Ruby Rose because she is my favorite character from Rooster Teeth’s RWBY. She’s fun character in the series, can be silly at times, and puts in a lot of heart on whatever she does. Her character is cute to Getting into Ruby or any of my crossplays can be a…
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Sarah (Nashville, TN)
Styling wigs can be a pain trying to manipulate the fibers to stay in these shapes and forms that real hair has no control over. You sometimes want to give up because after 2 hrs you’ve some how glued your index finger and thumb to the wig which sets you back so you grab your…
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Toni Darling (Phoenix, AZ)
The biggest misconception is that everyone will make tons and tons of money. That just isn’t true for most people. The hardest thing for most girls to accept, I think, is that there is no fail proof formula for success and a lot of ‘who makes it’ is luck. I am not saying that a…
