This past weekend, I was lucky enough to have a day out at the MCM Comic Con in London with some of my best friends! We all cosplayed characters from the actual-play D&D web series Critical Role—I was Imogen Temult (image opens in new tab), but between the seven of us, we managed to represent all three campaigns and all the main cast members besides Travis and Sam (sorry you guys, I promise we still love you <3).
It was a fantastic experience, and it was by far the most effort I've ever put into a cosplay. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I felt like I actually held my own besides some of my friends who (despite having limited experience themselves) took to cosplay like ducks to water. There were people coming up to take photos with me and the others, and that was something utterly novel to me (and immensely rewarding).
A real highlight of the day for me was the meetup that was organised by Critters (fans of Critical Role). I'd never been to anything like it! There were hundreds of us. We must have been the largest single fandom there, at least in terms of the number of people cosplaying characters from it. I make no pretence to be the biggest Critter in the world—I love the show, but I'm only on, like, Episode 25 of Campaign 3 at the time of writing. I've seen even less of Campaign 2, and my only experience with Campaign 1 is through the excellent animated series The Legend of Vox Machina. But even so, for the first time at a con (and I've been to about five or so), I felt like part of a proper community. I felt like I was surrounded by like minds—fellow enthusiasts, nerds who are so shamelessly passionate about what they love that they're willing to put time and effort into paying homage to their favourite characters by making themselves look just like them.
Suffice it to say, I want to repeat the experience as soon as humanly (and financially) possible. Like I say, I'd been to cons before, but only with family—never amongst a group of friends like I did on Saturday. The idea of meeting new people at a con and then meeting them again at the next con, and basically just amassing actual cosplayer friends, makes me so excited. I'm someone who's always been super into Halloween (ironically, I'm not actually dressing up this year because of how much I spent on the cosplay this time around), so the idea of having a friendship group literally devoted to that whole passion for turning ourselves into other people makes me giddy with excitement.
And fortunately, I don't have long to wait. I'm hopefully doing the cosplay test for my next time in costume in just 24 hours! One of my friends (who played Laudna at the con) is having a “cosplay karaoke” birthday party (I can't think of anything more thoroughly up my street), and we're all cosplaying our D&D characters.
Here's to playing pretend more often!
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