My good friends, I have made the mistake of jokingly suggesting Groundhog Day as this month's Bibliotheca theme. This joke became the actual theme, and now I am faced with the consequences of my actions: having to write a damn Groundhog Day post. However, I stand stalwart in my insistence on continuing to be a silly little guy in public, because every village needs an idiot, every court needs a jester, and every class needs its clown. It is my fated duty to goof, and goof I shall.
On the topic of Groundhog Day, I think the easiest interpretation for me is that of a time loop or recurring event. This dovetails nicely with my biggest February event, Katsucon.
Katsucon was my first major convention, back in the halcyon days of (I think) 2011. I was an awkward teenage cosplayer back then. I saw and admired a few cool lolitas, but I was more focused on fandom back then. It was an ocean of unfamiliarity, a sea of fellow outcasts, and the sheer scale of the whole thing made me feel like I was newly hatched (a baby squid) and about to be swallowed whole. Still, I consider myself brave (stupid), and so I engaged as much as I could, marveling at the much better cosplays and sharing in the joy of fandom.
I thought the feeling of that first con could never be replicated: after all, where would I ever see Naruto, magical girls, and my favorite webcomic characters all in one place?
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| the Groundhog Day alarm clock set to con |
I went to a few conventions in the following few years, but Katsucon was always my favorite. At the same time, though, cosplay was deteriorating my mental health. There's a cycle of cosplay planning, forgetting, and con crunch that set my anxiety aflame. I was only cosplaying jokes, crossovers, and Alternate Universes-- it was nothing nearly worth the physical or mental toll.
So, in 2014, I abandoned cosplay and decided to wear lolita and ouji at cons. I still went to cosplay-themed panels and still took pictures of people dressed from my favorite series, but I wasn't wearing anything that I wouldn't wear to a nice dinner, for example.
I also added a lot-- I went to every lolita panel I could, started loitering at indie brand booths, and set about making friends instead of just exchanging Tumblr urls.
Since then, I've been to a decade of cons, and I've seen hundreds of Narutos, thousands of magical girls, and more webcomic characters than you can shake a stylus at. I've audited enough Lolita 101, 102, and 201 panels that I can plausibly claim another degree.
More importantly, I found my true calling: lecturing. I've been presenting panels for years now, mostly my Ouji and Aristocratic Fashion 101 panel, and I find I have to tweak things a little every time. For Katsucon 2023, I did four panels and staffed-- I cut it down to three for 2024. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the metrics of conventions, this is still insane.
I try my best to make it to my friends' panels and buy things from familiar booths, but I'm always rushing to help out. The fashion show was lovely this year, but it doesn't stand alone in my mind: each designer exists in a temporal dimension of their past shows and external dimensions. I hardly took any cosplay photos this year because I didn't want to bother the people who worked hard on their cosplay and I didn't want to bother with mass-produced premade cosplays. Mostly, I focus on catching up with friends from the past decade and keeping my body semi-functional through the nonstop activity of the con.
I may feel the need to change up my slides every year, and I might recognize more faces in the audience, and maybe a very small part of me feels less-than-thrilled to keep living in the past, but that's because Katsucon is only Groundhog Day if you're in the loop.
I'm extremely looped in-- because of my role as staff, my regular panels, and my friendships with consistent con sellers, the con circuit in general (and Katsu in particular) takes considerable real estate in my mind.
But most people are out of the loop. For many people at my panels, this might be their first con, and it could even be their last. It's likely their only in-person contact with reliable information on ouji fashion, and it's only as reliable as I can be.
They bring with them the excitement of a first time congoer, and with it my responsibility to welcome them. In the space of the panel and the fleeting moments after, I can make or break someone's whole attitude towards the fashion and those who wear it.
I know I'll never get a perfect, 100% run of my convention loop-- I'm stuck in the cycle of weeaboo samsara because my bones hurt too much to stay up late. I don't think I'll ever want to break the time loop, to escape the cycle, or wake up from the repeating dream, because it's not just my dream. The dream of anime conventions is one of the things that I inherited from weird little teenage me, and it's my duty as a weird little adult to make conventions as magical for the incoming teenagers as they were in 2011, just (hopefully) safer and with less Hetalia.
Groundhog Day is a silly movie made about a bizarre tradition turned into contrived holiday, but it's no more absurd than a pointless corset or a tiny usakumya bag. Suggesting it as a theme was a joke, but it proves that my actions really do have consequences outside the rigid consistency of the con floor. So yeah, to answer your question, I had a great time at Katsucon!
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