#go check out the IGs for the other cosplayers there are more pics there!!

[maukuja]

Milgram cosplay group from Tracon 2024

Photographer: Kim “KimSjopi” Sjöblom

IG: https://www.instagram.com/kimsjopi/

Fuuta Kajiyama: @iidakki (iidakkicos on IG)

Haruka Sakurai: cherricos on IG

Mikoto Kayano: me

Shidou Kirisaki: @yukarini (yukarini_ on IG)

[starglitterz]

Quill!!! if it's not too intrusive, pls give us your top 10 y/n moments lol!!!!

HAHAHSKDJKJSD omfg who sent this in 😭😭😭 this is so funny tho i'll def do it (shameless plug btw, i have a whole series based on my irl experiences w romance called to all the boys i've loved before [totally original, ik] u should check it out!!)

these aren't in any particular order btw it's just the ones i rmb HAHA also i think these are pretty recent i tried not to include any of the ones i alrdy have in the series 👍

10. when i went for an anime con and i had just arrived, and after taking a pic w this one cosplayer his friend (in a kirito cosplay) came up to me and asked if he could princess carry me for a pic HSKJDK

9. when i visited my highschool for a festival thing and found out that one of my juniors had a crush on me (and still did??) and had told all his friends abt how cute and pretty he thinks i am HAHAHA (a total ego boost tbh someone should have told him that i am actually not all that)

8. being in a love triangle except it wasn't really a triangle it was like my two guy best friends had crushes on me at the same time and had a falling out over me (not to be amy dunne from gone girl but i did always want 2 guys to fight over me GOODBYE)

7. this one guy that was texting me and asking me on a date kept flirting w me and it was so stupidly lame that it was cute

6. going for my college orientation party and having a few guys ask me for my insta (honestly i had never expected this would happen I WAS SO KJASKJDKSJD ABT IT)

5. at the same orientation party some random older guy tried to hit on me so i ran away and this other guy i had met earlier was rlly nice and waited w me until my transport arrived and texted later to ask if i had gotten home safely 🥺 (the bar for men is like 700 feet under the ground)

4. at the anime con (same as earlier) i got kabedoned by this girl cosplaying gojo and she said i looked rlly cute and i nearly collapsed

3. HAHA I CANT BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT THIS BUT on my birthday i went on the bus to get home and the guy behind me was in my course, and he recognised me so we were talking for a bit until he realised it was my bday, and he literally asked the guy next to him to please switch places so we could sit tgt and he could wish me properly 😭it was so cute he had like golden retriever vibes HAHA and we were talking the entire time it was vv fun

2. yk that thing where u compare hand sizes but then they hold your hand HAHAHA that actually happened to me w one of my new friends 💀 he has rlly nice hands tho so no complaints here PLSKJWDKJS

1, ok guys now this one is some real life kdrama bs istg i felt like it was a movie while it was happening 😭 so basically the bus was pretty much full and i ended up sitting next to this rlly cute guy. and my brain was going 'damn i wanna talk to him', but i had to put my purse away first. so i was trying to put it in my bag, but it slipped and fell onto the floor and he was like 'oh!', and then i had to bend down and pick it up while thinking 'NOO this is so embarrassing he probably thinks im a dumbass'. and then i managaed to embarrass myself further 👍 guess what? while trying to sit back up again i literally hit my head against the chair in front of me and went 'ow!' out loud and the guy was like 'oh no are you okay 😭⁉' and i was like 'yeah... just super embarrassed HAHA' and we started talking from there KJSDKSJD i could talk abt this forever bc so much cute stuff happened but tldr he was like the total package but then i got ghosted BYE

ok thanks for coming to my ted talk as u can see i love talking abt myself pls feel free to ask more but i don't think i have any more romantic experiences atm 😭😭😭 i'm currently trying to manic pixie dream girl one of my guy friends in college so we can see how that goes ig LMAO,,, anyways thanks 4 reading ! interact w this post and give me validation please and thanks <3 (/hj)

[leyyvi]

Full on ax overview below the cut

Despite the crowds I actually thought this was one of the most fun anime expos for me and I've been going since 2011. Though I mainly go for the artist alley and exhibit hall to buy stuff, don't really pay attention to panels so I can't say anything for those. People kept complaining about lines to get in and waited an hour but there was literally an entrance that NEVER had a line and staff was constantly telling people to go to the other entrance but I guess I can understand how confusing it is if you're not from the area. I never waited more than 5 minutes to get in. The problem was that everyone would just follow the crowds and not really look anywhere else 😭

It was hot this year but not NEARLY as bad as past years. Though I don't think they were running the air conditioning that well in exhibit hall the first 2 days bc I was on fire. The hottest it got was like 85 but I've been to cons when it was like 100s outside so it was more tolerable.

I will say the crowd vibes were super weird and people did smell bad. God especially when I went into the 18+ section 😭 luckily I had my mask on the whole weekend so that kinda helped? Exhibit hall doesn't really sell anything I care about anymore :( it's just the same demon slayer Hatsune Miku and dragon ball figures it's been for like the last 6+ years and it's kinda boring.

Artist alley had SOOOO many amazing artists. I couldn't find much aot fanart and the one booth I did find one but I already bought all their stuff before JGFUDJSJDJ.

I tried to go to cosplay meetups the first 2 days and staff did NOT know how to help people navigate to them at all. I missed a fruits basket gathering bc staff told me to go the wrong direction completely even when I showed a picture of the location :') I tried to go to a genshin meetup but the location was too small and too crowded and it created a fire hazard so they canceled it 20 mins in 🥲 aaaaand there was an aot meetup but I was so frustrated that I just gave up trying to go to them so hffhdhshchfh

I went to the 21+ area and got a couple drinks and maybe gotten a little hammered aaaaand impulsively made stupid financial decisions chdjdjfjfjfjfjvj and like....this group of guys kept trying to ask me and my friend questions and they were being uh a little sus haha 😬 (I thought I wouldn't have to deal with m*n if I dressed up like one BUT I WAS WRONG)

I BOUGHT AO MUCH SHIT YALL I saved up 2 months worth of tips for this con and I spent like...80% of that fund...🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲😭😭🥲 but WORTH IT BC the stuff I bought was so pretty aaaaaaAAA

ALSO ALSO people liked my cosplay and I was so happy. There were a lot of Yor cosplayers so I mostly stuck with Thoma for the weekend and 🥺 attention from women 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 loved it 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 I wasn't expecting ppl to ask for my ig but it happened a couple of times so I panicked and gave my art IG and TURNED OUT THEY WERE ARTISTS TOOO so that was cool!!! There were a lot of amazing cosplayers and I got too shy to ask for pics But I WISH I DID BC....THERE WERE AMAZING KUROO AND KENMA....AND XIAO AND ITTO I M DJDJDHDHDHDH and a couple of Thomas were like "AYYYY THOMA" Hehe...I didddddd get a pics with a lot Ayaka and Ayato ones too uwuOH AND CHILDE

There were def a few guys that tried to act like...idk 😭😭 so weird when I was cosplaying as Yor and just said the most random shit to me and all I did was laugh uncomfortably gjfjdjdjsj

Artist alley was crowded as fuck though and the people were SOOOO pushy at some points. Like not even saying excuse me or anything...I got cut in line a lot and I don't like to be confrontational but the people I went with were def getting annoyed.

Overall though I a had a lot of fun. I keep seeing people say people weren't checking vaccine cards and stuff but at least the first day they were pretty diligent about checking them, and people would boot you out if you didn't have a wristband signifying you were confirmed already.

BUT YAAAAA the complaints Abt the crowd and lines is like...kinda whatever to me like I didn't think people would be surprised? AX is notorious for the crowds and especially after 2 years this was gonna be the worst one for that. I'm probably gonna go back next year bc it's one of the ones that I enjoy the most like there's SOOOO many amazing cosplayers on a much bigger scale than a lot of other cons and the artists that get in are so talented. I'm REALLY hoping I can grab a table FOR SURE next year 😭 WELL SEE YEAH idk if you read this far wow I am sorry LMAO

[this-lioness]

So like... it’s been a really weird fucking couple of days.

I thought about password protecting this, ‘cause not everybody needs to know everybody else’s shit, but I’ll try to summarize in a way that doesn’t incriminate anyone.  Not that I think anybody cares.  This is gonna be super fucking long, so hold onto your butts.

Husband and I belong to a smallish but close circle of friends.  We all largely met one another through one another, if that makes sense.  Like, Person A and Person B meet Persons C and D, then A and B meet E, who has a lot in common with D, and they become friends, and then C’s roommate F starts tagging along to stuff, and now we’re all bowling together or some shit like that.  So when someone in the group meets someone new, and gets along with them, it’s a pretty sure thing that sooner or later they’re just going to be part of the group eventually.

This has worked out really well for us. But... there have been some exceptions.

Case in point, Husband and I met and became friends with a local dude who we thought would integrate well with the group, invited him to our local NYE party, and it seemed like he was starting to blend with everyone.  But then the dude started flaking out, and the fact that at 30-something years old he was still floating from retail job to retail job, didn’t really bathe or keep himself groomed very well, was telling weird, vague lies about completely unnecessary stuff, and we were kinda like... yeah... maybe we don’t want him super involved after all.

But like, you don’t know until you try, right?

A few years ago Husband and I were tabling a local geeky convention of some kind, and we ran into this chick -- we’ll call her Selina -- who was cosplaying there with her best friend -- we’ll call him Logan.  Logan and Selina, with me so far?  They seemed nice enough, typically geeky folks that we had a good deal in common with.  We became Facebook friends with them both.

Something to note about Selina: She was married.  She was also an avid cosplayer and pretty talented makeup artist.  She posted lots of pics of herself in costume on her IG.

Something to note about Logan: In spite of the fact that Selina was married, it was painfully, excruciatingly obvious that Logan was in love Selina.  Like head-over-heels, constantly making “vaguebook” posts pining away for someone nameless who he yearned for deeply, etc.  Like... nobody ever acknowledged that it was Selina that he was in love with, because she was married and she clearly had no feelings for him, but e v e r y b o d y knew.  You couldn’t NOT know.

Not too long after we met them and connected with them on social media, one of our good, dear friends (let’s call him Jay) messaged me privately and said, “Hey, what do you know about Selina?”

Long story short, Selina was really into roleplaying.  Jay mentioned he wanted to give it a shot, and wanted to check to make sure she wasn’t, like, crazypants.  We still didn’t really know Selina all that well, but we told Jay that she seemed cool, and there was no reason to think she was crazypants.

Jay was like, “Cool,” and so Jay and Selina began roleplaying together.

Now, I myself am an avid roleplayer.  I actually offered to roleplay with Selina, but Selina kind of... blew me off?  It turned out I’m a much more long-form narrative roleplayer than she is, and -- if we’re being honest -- probably a better writer than her overall, and I think she wasn’t into that.

Since I’m being so honest, I think she also turned her nose up at the fact that I had a vagina.

Something we came to learn about Selina, the longer we knew her: She loooooooved attention from dudes.  She was a not-particularly-fit-or-attractive chick who used cosplay as a means of surrounding herself with praise and male attention. Which, good for you, you do you, but that’s kind of a thing I don’t care to associate with.

So as time went on, Marc and I kind of... not distanced ourselves from her, but sort of side-stepped away from her into the “Nah, we’re cool” camp, if you know what I mean.  Marc wasn’t one of her drooling admirers, so Selina kind of didn’t give a fuck about him.

In 2016, Marc and I announced that we wanted to do a group cosplay for Baltimore ComiCon.  We wanted to do steampunk Marvel characters.  I was going to be Scarlet Witch, Marc was going to be Colossus.  Our friend Jay was going to be Cyclops, and his wife Julie (our other very good friend) was going to be Psylocke.  Selina and Logan decided they wanted to join in as well, and we met them there in Baltimore, but we weren’t really there with them.  We walked around with them in costume for part of the con, then we all went our separate ways.

Shortly before the convention, Jay’s wife Julie brought to our attention the fact that she and Jay were having some problems, and that Selina was at the center of them.  Jay’s roleplaying with Selina, and the amount of time they spent talking one-on-one with one another, had become problematic.

I’m going to leave it at that, because I’m sure you can kinda suss out what was happening.  Suffice it to say that although it took Jay awhile to realize how his actions were hurting Julie, eventually he realized that he needed to distance himself from Selina for the good of his marriage.  Jay and Julie worked this all out between themselves and all was well again.  There was a bit of awkwardness at the convention, but then we all went our separate ways again and things seemed like they were normalized.

However, the whole thing made us side-eye Selina even harder.

A short while later, Selina divorced her husband.

Now I’m going to introduce you to Karl.

Karl was long-time best friends with Jay, and was good friends with all of us, being part of “the group”.  Karl was in a committed monogamous relationship with Karol, and had been for some time.  We were all really glad about this, because we liked Karol a ton, and frankly Karl was kind of an awkward man-child with a lot of issues, and we all felt that Karol was good for him, and helping him mature.

Throughout all of this Karl had also become friendly with Selina.

One day Karl announces to all of us that he has broken up with Karol for reasons that made no sense to any of us.  We were all very confused and upset, but tried to be supportive of both of them.

Yeah, well, it turned out that Karl had been fucking around with Selina behind Karol’s back.  He broke up with Karol, blaming it all on her, because he wanted to fuck Selina full time, and didn’t want to look like the bad guy.

When “the group” found out we all turned on Karl and were like, “NOPE,” and basically everybody stopped talking to him.  Selina eventually broke up with him, claiming that she had no idea he was in a committed relationship during this time (which is bullshit, because she could clearly see on social media that HE WAS, but whatever), but of course in cutting Karl out we all cut Selina out as well.

Some time passed.  For reasons none of us really understood, in spite of everything he’d done Karol was still in love with Karl, and they continued to live together: initially just as roommates, but apparently rekindling some kind of relationship with one another as well.

Earlier this year, very suddenly and unexpectedly, Jay died.

This came as an absolutely gutting blow to the entire group.  In the wake of his death, we all sort of let Karl back into the fold.  He seemed incredibly repentful, and he knew it was going to be a long road to regain our trust and respect, but he was contrite.

It has been a very hard year for everyone involved, for reasons that I may get into another time.

At the time that Jay died, Selina -- on her cosplaying Instagram account -- posted a budoir-style T&A pic of herself in costume, and at the bottom added, “RIP Jay”.

I’m going to say this again, as judiciously as I can: If this is your thing, good for you, you do you, but in my opinion that was beyond fucking tasteless, and fuck her.

Well.  Earlier this week, Selina killed herself.

This sent a small shockwave back through the immediate group, although it settled again quickly.  Karl is the only one left who had any even remotely positive feelings about Selina, and I’m not 100% sure how he’s taking it. He seems OK, and until he says otherwise we kinda’ have to just accept that.  If he’s mourning her, he’s fortunately got sense enough not to do it where Jay’s widow Julie can see it, so... thank goodness for that, at least.

You may remember Selina’s BFF and unrequited love, Logan.  Let’s get back to him.

Well, Logan has spent the past week melting the fuck down.  I don’t even follow the dude anymore, myself, but out of morbid curiosity I’ve checked his FB page.

Holy shit.

This is not just... mourning.  He has gone way off the deep end, calling he and Selina soulmates, as if -- in spite of the fact that she never reciprocated his feelings (publicly, anyway) -- she was as madly, head-over-heels in love with him as he was with her.  He’s also doing this in full view of Selina’s recent ex-husband, with whom Selina was still friendly, and with whom he is supposedly friends.  God bless her ex-husband for watching this unfold and not driving over and stabbing this guy to death.

Logan even went so far as to talk about the cast of characters from a roleplay he and Selina had been doing together, which included a number of “in character” children born of their two characters, and saying they were AS REAL TO THEM as real live biological children are to actual flesh-and-blood parents.

To note: HE ALREADY HAS ACTUAL REAL-LIFE BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN.

Can you fucking imagine being one of his actual kids and watching him mourn these fictional children who did not actually exist, who your Dad concocted with some chick he was obsessed with, and basically saying that these FAKE KIDS mean as much to him as you do?

Like, he actually concluded the post saying (to Selina), “Please watch over our babies until Papa can come home.” Watching this unfold has been COOCOO-NUTS BANANAS.  I have never wanted to say, “DUDE,” so much to someone before.

I don’t know why I’m writing all this, except to say I really wanted to get it all off my chest.  Part of me subscribes to the whole “don’t speak ill of the dead” thing, and like... look.  I feel for Selina’s friends and family.  I feel for her, because clearly she was troubled, and I’m sorry that she felt this was the only way out of a dark place.  But also, killing yourself doesn’t retroactively erase the shitty things you did when you were alive.  And she did a bunch of shitty things. And yeah, I know I’m probably a shittier person for saying that, but whatever.

Anyway. Like I said.  It’s been a wild fucking year. :|