Convention Horror Stories

LOKI (I have her put as that in my phone since she loves the character): You need to get here, now!

LOKI: There’s been an emergency! Where are you?

LOKI: ANSWER!

At this point I regretted turning off my phone and I called my friend and was relieved when she answered, and I can’t blame her for being angry when she picked up.

LOKI: “Finally! Why weren’t you answering?!”

ME: “I was in a panel and I thought my dad was calling! What happened?!”

LOKI: “Chibi and I are in the hotel! Get here, now!”

I could hear Chibi crying in the background so I hung up my phone and ran to our hotel room, which was in a hotel about a block away. I get there and I see Chibi crying her eyes out and Lady Loki is trying to calm her down. I asked what happened, and Lady Loki told me something that made me see red.

Some creep had  grabbed Chibi and put his hand up her shirt! Lady Loki had been meeting up with Chibi and saw what happened. She, and I was so proud of her for this, threw a manga box set that she had just bought at the guy, grabbed Chibi, and ran back to the hotel as fast as they could. I asked if they’d called con security or the cops, but Lady Loki said that she had been so concerned with getting Chibi away from him that she hadn’t thought of it. It didn’t help that both were panicking. I hugged Chibi and asked her if she wanted me to call her parents and she said no. She said that we had saved up so much money to come to this con and she didn’t want it ruined because it was only Friday and we hadn’t gotten to do a lot other than go to a couple panels. I told her that even if she didn’t want her parents to know, we needed to tell con security and call the cops. She agreed and after she had calmed down some more, she changed into some regular clothes and went back to the con and told con security. They were angry too and asked Lady Loki and Chibi to describe him, which they did. While they did that, I went to try and find this bastard who had the nerve to grab my friend.

I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I was bullied a lot and Chibi helped me get through it and was pretty much my first friend, so I was PISSED that someone thought they would try anything with her! It doesn’t help that I have anger issues. While in the dealers room, I spotted the creep. How? Not only did he match the description (Basically he was a hambeast, and Chibi was tiny so that pissed me off further! Poor girl wouldn’t have stood a chance if Lady Loki hadn’t gotten there when she did!), he was carrying a manga box set, the same manga box set that Lady Loki said she had bought, Soul Eater, to be exact, and he had a bruise on his face that I assumed was from my friend chucking it at him. He made eye contact with me and I ran at him. He ran from the dealers room and I noticed he was heading in the same direction that Lady Loki, Chibi, and Con security were at so I began to yell “STOP HIM! THAT’S THE CREEP!” Con security saw what was happening and they tackled the bastard and called the cops. After that Lady Loki, Chibi, and I had to go to the police station to ID him and Chibi pointed him out. Lady Loki got her manga box set back, Chibi pressed charges for sexual harassment, and, since she was still 17, she had to call her parents but told them she wanted to stay since the creep was arrested and she had been looking forward to this con all year. They reluctantly agreed and Lady Loki and I called our families and told them what happened that and that it was resolved. It wasn’t even 2 in the afternoon yet and we went back to the hotel and ordered pizza and soda and just stayed there for the rest of the day, pigging out on junk food, watching family guy on my laptop and basically trying to forget that the events of that day even happened.

Dash stayed the night and the next day we all went to the convention. I was cosplaying as Russia and Dash was cosplaying as Naruto. It was going great untill around lunch time. My grandpa want to go to a restaurant.But dash did not. We convinced her to go with us. Then after lunch things went downhill. She did not want to do a panel i wanted to. She would throw a hissy fit if things did not go her way. Then the worst moment came when i bought somthing she wanted. “I wanted it!” I explained where i got the wallscroll. She wanted that one not any other one. I said to her, “I’m going to meet my grandpa. We’ll be over near the entrance.” About 10 minutes later Dash came storming over and shoved me then kicked me. My grandpa pulled her off me. “I WANTED THAT WALLSCROLL ASSHOLE!” My grandpa made the choice that we were going home. When we dropped Dash off my grandpa told her parents. They were pissed and banned her from going back to the con along with  grounding her for 3 weeks.

So anyway, I am white, but for some reason the gene lotto awarded me with unnaturally dark hair and eye color uncommon for the natives in my country, and I tan super well unlike the majority of my people. (and before someone makes the joke that my mom had a one night stand, my father has been proved with 2 DNA tests to be my actual biological dad, so do me a favor and shut up.) I tan so well I’ve actually been mistaken for a foreigner a couple of times, I don’t know if it’s funny or sad that me, a native, have been told to “go back to your own country” numerous times due to my very dark tan during summer.

So last year, I was cosplaying a POC character. It was a summer con so I had tanned quite a bit. I think it goes without saying that because of my darker than usual skin, I was using darker make up. The first day was a blast, I had a lot of people take pictures of me and compliment my costume.

I get back to my hotel for the night and check the con forums to see if anyone’s posted any pics yet and boy oh boy had they. A thread discussing “brown facing” had blown up with hundreds of replies, intrigued, I check it out and find nothing but pictures of me in my cosplay from today and pictures taken from my instagram from last winter when I was about as white as a sheet. People were shitting on me for brown facing, saying I had very obviously painted my skin/used darker make up and that I was racist. After crying for like 2 hours and talking about the situation with my 2 friends rooming with me, we agree that I’ll post a short video of me removing my make up to show that I am actually this color naturally and my intention was not to black face or be racist. The thread blows up again and I get lots of private messages apologizing for their crude words. Some people send me notes that I should still wear the make up that I would use for my “winter skin”, because wearing the correct colors for my current tanned skin would be considered racist.

So the next day of the con, despite the absolute shit storm that went down yesterday, I go in the same costume but now with a different set of make up as I was advised to do. The make up made me much more paler looking, but very obviously artificially. I get quite a lot of glares and I already know I’m going to have to check the forums later.

And when I get back from the con to my hotel room and I check the forums, I’m proven right by the thread now discussing how I was very obviously white washing the character, with a few people trying to defend me by saying that after the backlash of yesterday it’s no wonder I’d try to be whiter to “fit in”, as awful as that sounds. I post a few screenshots of the private messages from yesterday telling me to use the lighter make up so I wouldn’t be racist, and at this point most people have stopped giving a shit while about 10 people continue to argue that I should’ve known better than to white wash, even if I was told to do so to avoid being racist. I can’t fucking win with these people, whatever I do I’m somehow racist to them.

So last month I went to a con with a group of friends and while it had it’s ups and downs(boy howdy were they BIG fucking downs) like most con do, one instant in particular though while annoying I found funny. During the second day I was cosplaying Mimikyu (Just in case for those that don’t know it’s a pokemon that dresses up as Pikachu) and while wandering around the con I ran into one of my friends who was cosplaying Harley Quinn, she was sitting down with a group of people (I don’t know if they were her friends or just some nice people she decided to hang with for the day) and I decided to come over and say the usual “Hi! how’s your con going? etc etc etc”. Now here’s the thing about my Mimikyu cosplay it’s has a hood, a headband sewn into the hood to help keep the ears up and a bag mask (think Scarecrow but not burlap) and said mask has two very tiny eye holes, needless to say it’s a little difficult to get on and off so for quick things like getting some water or chit chatting I left part of the mask up instead of taking everything off. Now in Harley’s group there is this one guy in a trench coat wearing headphone and just rocking out to his music (and I don’t mean just bobbing his head a little I mean full on raving and he wasn’t off to the side either he with right in our little circle) at one point while me and Harley are talking he stops raving to complement my cosplay, I thank him and go back to talking to Harley and he goes back to his music, well a few minutes after that and for no logical reason I can think of Trench Coat sneaks around behind me and yanks my hood (and everything else) off, no rhyme or reason wasn’t trying to get my attention at all before that, just straight up comes up behind me and rips my hood off. Not a second goes by before I whip my head around to face him with the ugliest look I can muster and blatantly asked him what was that for? and explained that it was unbelievably rude to do that and now I have to fix everything which is very annoying. Trench Coat is clearly taken aback but my response and mutters out a pathetic little apology but still no reason as to why he did it, I let it slide tell him that it’s fine but he really shouldn’t do that to people and start fixing my things while continuing talking to Harley. Now however he isn’t sitting on the other side of the group like he was before now he is two people away from us and is constantly trying to butt into our conversation with this “Boo Hoo Poor me” malarkey about how ~*~embarrassed~*~ he is and how he will be ~*~beating herself up over this years later~*~ and how he is ~*~so hard on himself~*~ and other pity party nonsense. At this point I’m rolling my eye so much that I’m pretty sure I could use them as a centrifuge to separate his crocodile tears from his BS all the while thinking “you’re not upset that you did it or else you wouldn’t have done it in the first place, you’re just upset that I called you out on it in front of everybody” but I just ignore him and toss out little uh huhs here and there until I get everything fixed back up, I tell Harley that I have friends to meet up with (this is true) and say my goodbyes and that I’ll see her later.

Now this is the part I find funny, again Mimkyu is a pokemon that dressed up as Pikachu but we never see what it actually look like  and on multiple accounts in canon it says that those who look under Mimikyu’s costume either are struck with a fatal illness or are just straight up scared to death, so strictly speaking from a canon stand point this asshole just fucked himself over real good for no goddamn reason.