What is Con-Questing? Where did I get the idea, and why did I start doing it?
Some of you may already know what Con-Questing is. After all, you probably came here just because you saw me at an anime con, thought it was neat, and wanted to know if I had somewhere where you could follow me. (Hello there! Thanks for showing interest.) But for those completely lacking context, allow me to explain. Since early 2018, I... Kinda got board of anime cons. And this is after a long history of attending them. Granted, I've never been the kinda guy who expects the con to have the fun for me, like many who may attend one and decide it's not for them. It was more a gradual shift in sociology within the American otaku community, as the scene became more mainstream and conventions began to swell with more people. The old school spirit of conventions (for example, like a group of friends who's name I shall not mention would find a random katamari ball in the hallway and decide to make it their mission to expand upon it by adding whatever trash they could find in the con to it with ductape, eventually strapping two people onto it, and using a luggage trolly to push it around the rave.) was starting to fade.
Partially because those of us who used to survive by sleeping under tables went on to become security staffing at cons, thus we knew all the tricks, but I digress. My point is, from my perspective, conventions just weren't what they used to be. It was harder to approach people, the weirdness and randomness levels were more subdued, and it was like the scene as a whole as a lot less intimate than it used to be. This of course made it hard for an introvert like me, since people of course were less willing to try to find a connection with strangers just because they shared interests. We went from "OMG, You like anime too! Let's become instant BFFs!" to "I'm just here with my friends, and I wasn't expecting this person to start talking to me, so I gotta be on my guard because he/she could be a creep." Which is a healthy mindset to have. Like I said, that's part of what it means to gain mainstream appeal. Can't be too careful when the otaku community appeals to very different types of people than it used to. Where once we were social outsiders trying to find other people in this world who were like us, now we're a group of social outsiders in a world of social outsiders. Being different doesn't mean as much anymore. Nobody fits in. Just kinda sucks for introverted demisexual, slow burners when people aren't as eager to get to know each other anymore. For those of us introverts who aren't actually shy, it just means we have to put a lot more energy into our interactions with potential friends than we used to at cons.
So it's pretty safe to say on some level that "Con-Questing" was just something I developed to make conventions about interacting with people again when simply roleplaying an OC wasn't quite enough. Of course I actually have been dressing as and lightly RPing as Tobias Wren for some time at cons. Though his origin came from an old 3.5 D&D game. Eventually, after going to enough ren fairs, I decided it would be cool to put an outfit together that matched how I originally envisioned him looking. Of course because I was in college at the time... I was dirt poor.
Of course I decided "Hey, I have this outfit. Why not wear it at anime cons, just so I have something cool to wear." Then after a while of walking around dressed as my D&D Ranger, I started to RP him a bit. At first this was simple stuff. Walking around the con as if I were in a fantasy dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Interacting with cosplayers in character. Even facing a wall like an afk mmorpg character would, just so others could walk past me, get the reference, and find some amount of amusement out of it.
The outfit, and the character continued to evolve, though if you look closely, the cloak and the Braccer remained. Eventually, my time in college ended, and I had obtained a job. All that meant of course was more money to help tailor the outfit closer to what I had originally envisioned. And of course the biggest advantage of cosplaying your own OCs is that you don't have to build an outfit all at once. Meaning I could build it over a long period of time.
Eventually of course, we get to Ohayocon in the start of 2018. Where I regarded my outfit as "Mostly" where I wanted it, to the point where I actually began to feel what it was like to walk around in my character's shoes. This is when I acquired my studded gamberson, the epic armory foam weapons, and the blade holsters. So slipping into character was far easier than ever. Except that around this time, I started to write a short story about the moonpsalm setting in my D&D world about the origins of how that setting transitioned from being a proper medieval world with fantasy elements into a more traditional medieval fantasy with the rise of the adventuring trade. And one thing I was always curious about freelance adventurers was how they market themselves and do quests. So, I decided to figure it out for myself. I went to the deeler's room, I bought a leather bound journal to use as a quest log, and... Well, I started trying to attain quests from random con-goers. And to be frank, it completely changed how I would go on to experience conventions.
As of writing this, I have three conventions under my belt, a new summer variant of my outfit I'm working on for colossalcon 2019 coming in through the mail soon (Complete with new foam weapons and leather armor), and have been asked by enough people if I have a facebook page or instagram where they could track my heroic exploits that I have decided to make a blog. I uh... Hope you like it. And if you see me out in the field, don't be afraid to ask to join my party, or give me a quest to do.
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