Attack on Dignity

What I want every convention experience to be like. For those who have yet to see it, Attack on Titan has be exploding in popularity both here and overseas. Anyone looking for something outside the cutesy style and tones anime has recently adopted, I highly recommend giving this a try. It can seen with English subtitles on Hulu.

Artificial Infatuation

When I turned on my laptop last week for a routine internet dick-around session, the first thing I was greeted with was not the blue login screen I was accustomed to, but rather a perverted resemblance of that comforting glow which instead had thousands of red flashing pixels smeared across the screen. My reaction was not unlike that of Jeffrey Dahmer’s girlfriend opening his fridge to see dozens of severed heads.

Let me back up for a second. In the summer before my freshman year here at college, I spent exactly $1,765 purchasing my ASUS G73S from Amazon.com (not including shipping and handling). Now before you chastise me for being so irresponsible with money on what most college students use as a glorified word processor and Facebook machine, let me say computers have been my entire livelihood for entertainment and work related needs, as well as socialization in a time where high school meant anxiety attacks and disgust for others’ lack of moral conscience. But I digress.

My laptop for the past three years has provided for me anything and everything I needed from the digital landscape as quickly as the school’s bandwidth would allow: movies, music, games, cat pictures. It would not be inaccurate to say that I love it more than some blood relatives. So, to find out my beloved laptop had been inflicted with some condition of unknown origin was much like receiving news that a family member had come down with a mysterious illness.

Shock and denial came on immediately. Confusion, fear, anger. The works. How could something like this happen? It had been so healthy not a day before. Why is this happening? It is some sick punishment brought on by the tech gods? Why me?

After a few hours of panicked attempts at rationalizing the problem and trying to fix it with different combinations of hard drive sweeps and restarting the system to no avail, I decided to take a walk to collect my thoughts. In the cool night air I solemnly trekked to my favorite thinking spot besides the lake.

There I sat, thinking. Thinking about how unfair it was that despite my years of care for that absurdly heavy chunk of plastic and metal it would all end like this. I sat, thinking some more. Time passed and my mood had yet to improve. Then I thought about how absurdly emotionally attached I was to that absurdly heavy chunk of plastic and metal. How could my heartstrings be plucked so severely by sparking machinery made in Korea? I’d like to think that I’m a pretty level-headed fellow, but seeing me in such a state over an inanimate object would beg the contrary.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized there were likely many more like me with a zealous attachment to a piece of technology. How many people can’t go to the bathroom without pocketing their phone, iPod, etc.? How many people do you see immediately texting if they’re not being addressed by someone else? Hell, how many people do you see texting while talking to someone else? How often do you hear someone answer another’s question with “I don’t know, Google it.”

Now imagine all those fancy tech luxuries suddenly went away or stopped working indefinitely. Code black. What would you do? Can you say with an honest degree of certainty that you wouldn’t experience a jarring feeling of loss? It really is no enlightening revelation, most of us realize how dependent we are on technology to satisfy our everyday needs.

However, just like any dependent need, once severed, withdrawal symptoms set in. Fear, anxiety, anger, panic, inability to function properly, and desperation can result from the loss of a dependent source.

The age of the smart phone has essentially made all of us drug addicts, and that drug is information and instant gratification. This is obviously problematic, especially for future generations who are being taught to rely on technology even more so than we do. What might the repercussions be? I can’t say I have a clear solution to this issue, but I feel it’s something all of should be aware of as we supplement more technology for uses in our everyday life.

After a few more breaths of fresh air, I returned to my room to face the dread sitting atop my desk. Having no other options, I slapped the matte black chassis with the swiftest wrist flick my emotionally drained body could manage. Poof. The dots were gone.

While I eventually got my “fix,” the event had me see a dark side of myself that seriously worried me. To think that anything, living or not, could hold so much control over me emotionally and mentally was something I never thought I was vulnerable to. So, let me be the first to say it: Hi, I’m Anthony and I’m a tech-oholic.

Con-Man

My favorite part of Comic Con, and any convention at that, is always the cosplay. Having a communal center where you can show your love and dedication to a character or series through cosmetic emulation is, for me, the epitome of what it means to be a fan. Seeing the creative and often complex efforts a cosplayer puts into their costume is something I can truly admire and appreciate. As a cosplayer myself, there is no truer joy than when someone compliments the accuracy or innovative of your costume. Being able to capture a character's identity and be appreciated for it the most satisfying feeling you can get as a fan. Being recognized as the character you are portraying has a cosplayer assume their identity for the duration of the con. You are no longer Anthony DeRosa, journalism student at SUNY New Paltz but rather Miles Edgeworth, ace prosecutor. For me, fulfilling these kind of escapist fantasies are what really represent how much I love a character or series. My Comic Con this year was one of the best con experiences I've ever had. Myself and four friends were swarmed with people wanting to take pictures of our Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney group cosplay. Hanging around the booth where the newest game in the franchise was being demonstrated, many con attendees thought we were being paid by the company to promote the game. While the seemingly constant barrage of similar Ace Attorney fans stopping us to take pictures interfered slightly with our ability to move around the convention center, the smiles and compliments we received more than make up for it. Comic Con: a space where you can go to nerd out with other nerds and get high fives and a sense of camaraderie from doing so.     

The Cause Behind The Play

For Mallory Alexa and Michelle Dira, being in costume is a natural state of existence.

The girls are the founders of the New Paltz Cosplay Cartel, created last semester. The idea for the club came when the creators became close friends after attending the same convention over spring break. The two wanted to create a “cosplay home” after realizing a cosplay club did not exist at the college.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Alexa, a second-year English education major and president of the club, said. “It’s a great way to form a geek community, meet new people and represent how much of a fan you are of something.”

According to Alexa, cosplay is a “culmination of art forms” incorporating photography, costuming, modeling and makeup art.

The art form began with character homage at Star Trek conventions and has since taken off in popularity with the development of other fandoms and pop-culture conventions, Alexa and Dira said.

Alexa began cosplaying in 2009 after seeing cosplay videos online. With a seamstress grandmother and a makeup artist mother, Alexa said she already had the tools and experience passed down from her relatives to begin creating cosplay.

Dira, a second-year English education major, was in eighth grade when she saw her first cosplay video and began to teach herself the craft through tutorial videos online. Having gained more experience as well as instruction from Alexa, Dira now considers her cosplay worthy of “art.”

“There’s something exciting about trying to replicate a character that you love,” Dira said. “Then you find a photographer that loves what you look like, and you find a [photo] editor that would love to turn you into that character.”

While the process of accurately embodying a character requires skill, talent, collaboration and determination, it cannot begin without first finding a character, Alexa said.

“It starts with a series that you love,” Alexa said. “If it’s an anime, a video game, a comic book, you meet that character and you are able to associate with them or they resonate with you. It’s a lot about self identifying with them.”

After finding a character and going through the laborious creation of a costume, cosplayers have an opportunity to showcase their work at conventions.

Preparation for these conventions are often the most stressful experience cosplayers go through, Alexa said, as they represent the deadline when a costume must be as perfect as possible.

The convention environment itself can even be a cause of stress, particularly for female cosplayers, Dira said. Sometimes other convention-goers make unwanted sexual advances or remarks based on what they’re wearing.

Dira said she used to laugh it off and walk away. But she said after seeing a video distributed throughout the online cosplay community called “Cosplay is Not Consent,” featuring both male and female cosplayers taking a stand against unwanted comments, she will now confront a harasser, telling them what they said has made her uncomfortable and asking them not to do it again.

Dira said hearing derrogatory comments can create a feeling of vulnerability and loss of empowerment that many cosplayers feel while in costume. Her advice to anyone who experiences a verbal harassment is to report it — not only for themselves but for the community itself.

On the other hand, the two agree that cosplaying can  be an empowering experience.

“It’s something really cool to take control of your own body and present an image you might not necessarily be able to portray otherwise,” Dira said.

Comic Con Woes

Comic Con came and went, and with it so did my cash. I think I might have a problem. How can I resist the temptations the vendors display? Bright colors and joy emit from those tables like radiation waves. My answer is of the green variety. By the end of my three day stint in Manhattan I was left feeling hollow, surrounded by a sea of toys destined to ornament my desk. On the train ride home I thought about all the things I could now not afford. The first things to come to mind were pizza and cigarettes. A tear shed for the addictions left unsatisfied. Was it worth it, I questioned. I opened the deluxe sized promotional bag a sexy cat had given to me. Vinyl caste faces smiled back at me with bravado. Yup, I thought. Worth.

Poems about Pokemon Volume 1

What horror it would be
for both you and for me
to lose your first Pokemon battle

The shame on your face
can be seen from space
run back home to Mom

Prof. Oak you cry
I just want to die
Better go to a PokeCenter