So this year the Conservative party of Canada decided to book a convention at the same time as Anime North, in the same building. Meaning it’s basically been a bunch of us gays/nerds walking around in costume, confusing the fuck out of groups of politicians and businessmen.
(A couple of them actually called the cops on us because there were people walking around with giant cardboard weapons. And the police were like “what do you expect us to do? It’s a comic con, we can’t tell them to stop… they literally go through a weapons check at the event”).
(My friends and I also had some of them come up to us at a restaurant to ask us “what the fuck an anime was” and if it was just “one big party”).
This is one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me….
This happened to me in Charlotte a couple of years back. HeroesCon and the state’s Republican convention were at the same venue on the same weekend.
I witnessed men give an extremely wide berth to a passing Silent Hill cosplayer, a LOT of head shaking, and one woman actually clutched her pearls.
The best part was watching the Republicans attempting to find a place to sit when they broke for lunch and staring at the eating area with both disdain and dispair with their trays.
It was glorious.
A potentially-apocryphal story that has been going around for ages in my friends:
One year, there was an anime/comic con scheduled in Las Vegas at the same time as a Baptist convention.
There was a gentleman of some stature and size who was cosplaying as a demon character of some kind (I have heard it as ‘Goliath from Gargoyles’ as well) who left his room to head to the masquerade and convention floor.
He traveled down a few floors in the elevator and then the doors opened again…. to reveal a group of little old Baptist ladies waiting, all in their church hats and Sunday best, to go to a show.
They blinked at him.
He blinked at them.
And then he smiled broadly at them, one and all, and said “going down?” in a deep, stentorian voice with a gallant sweep of his arm.
Apparently the door closed without a single one getting on or saying a word.
I can’t imagine why.
One con I used to go to was regularly scheduled at the same time as a cheerleading competition
Most of us didn’t mind the kids and teenagers, of course, although some of them were a little perplexed by us
The actual issue was all the soccer moms, hence why an elevator ride with Pyramid Head turned awkward for much different reasons than you’d expect one year (you’d think the lady would have at least had the sense not to whisper loudly at her kids not to look at PH as if she thought we couldn’t hear her)
Dianne, you’re the one who thinks it’s appropriate to put your little girl in a costume you’d find on the Dallas Cowboys’ cheer squad, you’ve got no place for moralizing.
(And yes, I know Pyramid Head is a horror character, but she was just leaning against the corner of the elevator and not DOING anything besides trying to get a rest on her way back to her room)
Man, the last few [that convention]s I attended were a TRIP. Saw a super-adorable Zidane Tribal get chased down and mobbed for photos by what seemed to be an entire cheerleading team… and a girl who couldn’t have been older than twelve getting a pep talk from some of her friends before asking a Sailor Moon group if she could pose for a picture with them. (They said yes, naturally.) It was overcrowded and LORD some of those parents were jerks, but I do miss moments like that.
About the Goliath story above – I’ve heard it told as “Ifrit from FF8”, “[Hellsing] Alucard with all the extra eyes and mouths and stuff”, and “a Klingon warlord”, so who knows how old/true it is….
my fave cross-convention event i’ve witnessed was still the year some huge GA Tech sporps thing overlapped with Dragoncon and the Hilton bar was full of drunk Klingons cheerfully singing karaoke with a load of drunk college football fans.
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