| First Picture | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Yeah, it's a statue of some guy sweeping up trash. Dallas is so artsy. Anyhow, I'd seen a few good costumes so far, but I found that my picture-requesting ability was inhibited somehow. I had to get into the swing of taking random photographs again, so I popped my revirginal camera cherry on this guy. | |||
| Orange Hair Gets in the Way | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Just as I was taking a picture of a group of cute guys cosplaying as bloody-gory-and-maybe-dead men with weapons, some unobservant girl wearing an electric orange wig walked right in between us. | |||
| Bloody Hot | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Once the girl cleared out of the way, I took another photo. I bothered keeping the orange-hair-interrupted picture for two reasons: first, to kvetch about the girl; and, second, the cutest of the gory boys was visible in it better than he was in this second photo. They were cosplaying as students from Battle Royale. | |||
| Uh, I Forgot My Mask at Home | |
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| Photograph | |||
| There were two Tuxedo Kamen at A-kon 16. I ran into the first while I was without my camera, so I made certain to get a picture of the second masked hero when I passed him in the skywalk. | |||
| Katamari Damacy | |
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| Photograph | |||
| We ran into a katamari Friday night. If you've never played Katamari Damacy (by Namco), you must go seek it out and play now. For those who don't know, the objective of the game is to roll around a sticky ball (your katamari), which can pick up anything that is sufficiently smaller than it. As it picks objects up, it grows larger and allows you to collect larger objects. Gradually, you can pick up small animals, humans, larger animals, cars, and buildings, weather anomalies, and then even land masses. The one at A-kon was still fairly small. | |||
| The Human Is Too Heavy to Pick Up | |
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| Photograph | |||
| We rolled the katamari over this willing participant to try to pick him up, but, as you can clearly see, he is too large for the katamari to successfully get. We only managed to knock him over and make him giggle, apparently. | |||
| Obligitory Roommate Picture the First: Felicia | |
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| Photograph | |||
| She's taking out her contacts, so she probably had no idea what I was doing. Oh, I am so sneaky. Yes, I am. Felicia stayed in the hotel room for only the first night, and joined us by means of Chris. | |||
| Obligitory Roommate Picture the Second: Akomatt | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Okay, I only call him Akomatt in my cell-phone, and that was only to distinguish him from the numerous other Matts and Matthews in its phone book. He joined us by responding the roommate-needed advertisement I'd posted on the A-kon message boards. Stereotypically, straight male anime fans are not very attractive. I was shocked when we met him (his Hellsing costume was very hot). | |||
| I Have Been Coming to Take Pictures | |
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| Photograph | |||
| It's wizard or elf or garden gnome with a camera. The entire costume appeared to be made out of felt. Whatever the hell e was supposed to be, it was a cute costume. | |||
| Big Balls 1 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Outside the yaoi festival, I saw this guy. I tried several angles to show his costume as best as I could, but no photo managed to capture the true magnitude of it. Basically, he has two giant balls in his spandex shorts. | |||
| Big Balls 2 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I totally missed the shorts here, but I thought the entire spandex outfit was rather hot, so I kept this picture anyway. | |||
| Big Balls 3 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| This photograph was my last attempt, and I wish the winged jerk hadn't obstructed the camera's profile view of our subject's big balls. | |||
| Beware! Big Bear! | |
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| Photograph | |||
| There's really not that much to say. It's a teddy bear costume. | |||
| The Boy (?) Wonder | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of comic cosplays. I've always found Robin (and, later, Nightwing) attractive, but crossplay has always confused my libido. | |||
| The Prince of the Cosmos | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Earlier we had seen your Katamari. Now the prince! We are very pleased! | |||
| Rainbow Brite | |
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| Photograph | |||
| And now we begin with the eighties cosplays. | |||
| Rainbow Briter | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Just in case the first one wasn't close-up enough for you. | |||
| Final Fantasy Something or Other | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Okay, I admit that I really just wanted a picture of the half-shirtless guy in green. I haven't played any FF title since Final Fantasy IX. | |||
| More Shirtless Cosplay | |
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| Photograph | |||
| And, again, and I have no idea who the heck he's supposed to be. Chris also wanted me to take a picture of this fellow, so at least I'm not not the only guy whose camera is being led by the wrong head. | |||
| Katatonic | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Kat (a different Kat than the Kat I had roomed with last year) dressed up in a kimono with a latex bondage corset. It was definitely different. (If you're curious at all, this Kat is part of the O-Chibi Con staff). I wanted Chris to look like a lowly peasant in this picture, but he didn't quite get what I was going for. | |||
| She Wins the "I Believe the Cosplay" Award | |
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| Photograph | |||
| This girl pulled off Princess Serenity excellently. With Sailor Moon's lessening popularity, however, she'd gotten a lot of incorrect assumptions about her cosplay. | |||
| Toweling Off | |
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| Photograph | |||
| The guy with the hat has very, very, very sexy legs. These are my idea of perfect legs. I'm in leg-love. | |||
| Zombies! | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I'm sorry to disappoint by not providing a picture of somebody cosplayed as a zombie. This is the tile-laying board game Zombies!!!, which comes with 100 plastic zombies. Dealers at A_kon were selling it for $25, so I called my friend Darin to find out their list price on Funagain Games: $20. After shipping, it would still be cheaper! However, on Sunday, I managed to talk a dealer down to $18 for it. One of my reservation to buying the game was the horrible grammatical error of one of the cards, which was printed on the back description: "Their not dead yet." But I bought the game, opened up the box, and discovered that the mistake had been corrected on the actual cards used in the game! Bloody awesome! | |||
| Dixie Ballerina | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Kat was harassed by security to wear some kind of footwear--apparently bare feet were not allowed. She would have had to trot all the way back to my hotel room to get her socks and shoes, so she just put on plastic cups instead, maybe more for the humor than actually covering her feet. She kept them on until they eventually split as she was climbing the escalators. | |||
| Tentacle Rape | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Watch out, Chocobo! | |||
| Chocobo Hentai | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Wow, that Chocobo is really getting it everywhere from this squid. | |||
| Security Checkpoint 1 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| This area is bordered off at night, so there are security guards to keep us non-staff-members out. The figure cut off on the left is Cowboy, from O-Chibi Con 1, our former (very bad) head of security. I wanted to get a picture of security (because it seemed funny to me at the time), but he refused to be in it. Whatever, jerk. | |||
| Shirtless Raver Boy Reprise | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I wasn't sure at the time that I took this picture on the escalator, but, yes, these are the same hot guys who were running around in towels earlier the same evening. | |||
| Hogwarts Faces: Chang Cho | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I guess she didn't think that she could pull off a reasonable Ronald Weasly. | |||
| Get Off Me, You Freak! | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Who's attacking whom? You decide, in this scuffle between me and Kyle. | |||
| The Dowe of Pooh? | |
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| Photograph | |||
| His name always makes me think of Tao. I'm not going to fight the mental connection, because, well, that just wouldn't be Tao, now would it? | |||
| Random Group Photo Attempt | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I tried to gather everyone in the corridor for a group photo. Some were more enthusiastic than others. | |||
| Random Group Photo Failure | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I managed to herd everyone into a reasonable group photo shot, but the over-excited guy in the hat felt like ruining it. Jerk. | |||
| More Security | |
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| Photograph | |||
| These two were in charge of the gaming area. They were very happy to have their picture taken. (They're the kind of security I like.) | |||
| Wanna See Some Ink? | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I wanted to get a photo of the guy who found a use for all of his AOL CDs, but there wasn't enough room in the elevator for me to zoom out sufficiently. Then an off-duty security volunteer (who had been nice during the dealer room crisis earlier (a dark horse fire marshall and threatened to shut it down), explaining to us what was going on) asked if I'd like to a get a picture of ink. I wasn't sure what he meant for the half-second between his offer and his peeling his shirt off. I prefer chests to backs, but a shirtless guy on flash card is a shirtless guy on flash card. | |||
| Sunday on the View | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I hadn't realized how good a view our new room had until it was pointed out to me. So as we were moving out on Sunday, I snapped a quick one of the gorgeous cityscape. | |||
| Gothic Face | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I had to get a picture of this gorgeous woman and her death-bunny pet. | |||
| Penguin | |
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| Photograph | |||
| At least I think that this adorable little girl was supposed to be a penguin. Anime-convention-attending parents provide me with such entertainment. | |||
| More Comic Goodness | |
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| Photograph | |||
| If you can't figure it out, it's the Green Goblin from the "Spiderman" universe. | |||
| Can You Hear the Squall? | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I think I've given up on cosplaying Squall from Final Fantasy VIII. It's been a long time since it came out, and I've seen so many good Squall cosplays in the past few years, such as this one here. I gave him my card, so maybe he'll find this picture. I meant to give my card to more of my picture victims, but I forgot. | |||
| The Baddest Duo | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are my favorite pairing of "bad guys" in any comic series ever. I was sad when they went their separate ways in Harley Quinn. But that's enough of the past; let's just celebrate their reunion at A-kon instead! | |||
| Swag Pics: Dragon 1 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| Chris talked me into purchasing this steel dragon at the art auction. I only won one other item I bid on, and the pieces that went to live auction went far too expensive for my wallet (which could have partly been my own fault--I was one of the auctioneers, after all). So I think that $25 for the gorgeous piece was a great deal. | |||
| Swag Pics: Dragon 2 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| A front view of this baby. | |||
| Swag Pics: Dragon 3 | |
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| Photograph | |||
| This picture best shows the general colorations of each piece of steel, and the close-up shows gives a much better impression of the shape than the earlier two photos do. | |||
| Swag Pics: Gundam Kit | |
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| Photograph | |||
| I had thought the gundam kit would involve a lot of intricate hard-plastic pieces, but it turned out just to be five or six rubbery pieces assembled capsule-toy-style. It's still pretty neat, though. | |||