Charlotte Makes Photos

This past Saturday, Kathleen and I tried something new: we attended Ottawa’s Comic-Con! Neither of us are all that interested in comic books, anime and manga, or even the sorts of movie and television that tend to feature in those sorts of event. It would stand to reason that we wouldn’t be all that interested.

Except for one thing: Kathleen loves costuming. L-O-V-E-S it. She gets competitive even. There are a few things she’d love to do with her life and working in costumes in movies or television is absolutely one of them.

Unfortunately, aside from market forces and Ottawa’s film industry – though active — is well-served with middle-class fleece, knits, and winter wear and that’s just not what she finds electrifying. In most other ways, Ottawa just does not have many opportunities to get costumed up and go somewhere.

One event that has such an opportunity is Comic-Con. Sure, the vast majority of costumed attendees show up as some existing character (i.e. Batman, or some obscure character from an anime I’ve never heard of¹), but there are some who do their own thing (i.e. the man who was sort of a 5-Hour energy drink knight in front of us in line).

So the main goal, then, was a little bit of reconnaissance, so that Kathleen get a feel for whether or not it would be a good place for her to get into character. A secondary (and later) goal was to peruse the aisles of the Artists’ Alley ☺️

It quickly became evident that, no, this was not going to be the sort of event for Kathleen to appear in costume. It was very tied to various sorts of IP and very few seemed veer from that world.

Moreover, it was busy. In many cases, too busy to move up and down the aisles or stop at booths. Perhaps others were able to keep perky, alert and ready-to-buy, but when I’m stuck in a crowd, I tend to disassociate and slowly amble my way through trying my best not to be in the crowd I’m in. It was really challenging to browse.²

Finally, admission was expensive, at $60 each. While it’s an expense that we can manage, most of our favourite tables were somewhat familiar, being frequent vendors at other markets that don’t come with a fee. Since we weren’t there for the main attractions, in the end, it felt like we paid a fair amount to browse vendors’ tables.

We decided that it’s just not an event for us, which is okay. Not everything is for everyone.

Sunday evening would be another story entirely, however. 🎶📚

1. Like Halloween more generally, Cons are a safe space for people to play with gender via these characters too. Suffice to say, as a visibly trans woman, I definitely received looks from some of the younger attendees dressed as their favourite female characters (and others not). I recognized the looks immediately — a saucer-eyed mix of longing and wonder — because it’s the same look I gave out trans women (sorry) when I was younger and wanting very much to have climbed out of the pit. ↩︎
2. That doesn’t mean I didn’t however. I ended up finding a not-so-crowded table with some delightful earrings that look like a cloud with drops and rain and lightning. I chose a pair with pearlescent purple clouds, naturally. ↩︎