I went to the Sacramento Comic, Toy and Anime show (Sac Con) with Kevin Trivedi two weekends back. The show was fun and there was a lot of great stuff for sale, but I wouldn’t have blogged about the show if it weren’t for the presence of three strange phenomenon: CosPlay, Furries and Clave’s Doppelganger!
For the uninitiated, “CosPlay” is simply an abbreviation of the words “Costume Play,” and refers to the act of dressing up as characters from Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comic Books, Anime and video games. This phenomenon isn’t new—people have been dressing up as superheroes and characters from Star Trek and Star Wars for decades—but those who associate themselves with the CosPlay scene tend to skew younger and have a greater affinity for Japanese pop culture. I found this to be true at Sac Con: while there were a few exceptions, most of those in costume were teenagers. They were so young there was even a game of Red Rover going on out front when I got there:
Of course, just because you’re a teenager into CosPlay, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily limit yourself to characters from Japan. Here’s a kid dressed up as the Mad Hatter from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which wasn’t even out at the time of the show:
The nice thing about people who dress up for comic book conventions is that they’re always quite happy to take have their picture taken, so I was able to get a photo of a group of kids who didn’t even know each other. I told them we old people are fascinated by their strange customs:
CosPlay outfits can be quite intricate, as seen in this Link / Epona duo (Link is the hero of the Legend of Zelda video games from Nintendo; in the popular installment Ocarina of Time, Epona is Link’s horse). The kid dressed up as Link wasn’t content to let his own face substitute for Link’s, he actually wore a Link mask that more closely resembled the character’s blocky, Anime-style features. The Epona costume was even crazier, worn and operated by only one person using hand-stilts for the front legs!
As weird as CosPlay may seem to us old people, the Furry phenomenon is even weirder. Furries are fans of fictionalized anthropomorphic characters that also create their own costumes, either of existing Furry characters or characters of their own design. Some Furries enjoy pornography featuring anthropomorphic characters and even have sex in costume, although the Wikipedia article I linked above downplays this aspect of the subculture. Still, being aware of Furry sex makes seeing Furries a bit awkward:
The last weird thing I saw at Sac Con was a doppelganger of my young protégé Clave! Although he cut his hair last year, Clave used to have long, wavy red hair, not unlike local cartoonist Griffon Lyles, seen here with fellow cartoonist Devon McMindes:
Griffon even has a similar drawing style to Clave’s, as seen in this self-portrait:
Like I said, Sac Con was a lot of fun, and there are several such events in Sacramento every year, so check out their web site and go to the next con, if only to be a voyeuristic creep like me! I can’t be the only cultural tourist at these things!
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