8/31/2025, 6:00 AM

MOT GOES TO DRAGONCON 2025

(and she remembered her having fun hat this time)

the first ever post on this website was about my experiences going to Dragon Con in 2024, and i vowed to go another year to give it another shot, since i didn't have a great time back then. and boy howdy, am i glad that i did! now that i knew what to expect and what to do, it was WAY more fun. who'da guessed? so let's go ahead and hop right in to my experience.

first and foremost difference: last year i really wanted to go in cosplay, but i just didn't have anything i could do for it, at least not in time. cosplay is a huge part of con culture, and i wanted to be a part of that this year. so, i went as my best backup cosplay that i always have on speed dial: Madotsuki from Yume Nikki! it also helps ive been getting back into Yume Nikki Online, so i was totally into it. i had to learn to braid my own hair to pull off the fit, thats how dedicated i was. you never realize how difficult it is to reach back and braid your own hair until you try to do it yourself, and it didn't help that i had to do it on both sides... still, i got it to stay all day somehow, so i guess i was doing something right. also, for the way i did the outfit, i had to wear two layers of long sleeves. i wanted a white collar to go with the sweater, so i wore a white dress shirt underneath. this is a pretty unassuming detail, until you remember that this event is held in Southern Georgia Summer. (well, it's technically at the very end of summer, but still...) my point is, it was pretty toasty out there, and i was wearing two layers the whole time. the dress shirt i wore was pretty well ventilated at least, so it did keep me mostly cool, but i was still VERY sweaty. it was all worth it though, because up until we were leaving i STILL had people recognizing my cosplay! unfortunately, i had one person guess that i was from Harry Potter, which was a pretty low blow. they then asked what i was from, and i told them i was from Yume Nikki. they said, "oh, i still have to watch that." i told them it was a videogame, and they looked so broken. they said, "i'm so sorry." and then walked off, which was kind of funny. one guy asked if i was from "the creepy game where you play as a girl in an apartment" and that was a pretty apt description of Yume Nikki. he then tacked on the additional description of "you also collect eggs, and once you get all of them you kill yourself" which... i mean, YEAH, that IS what happens, but... pretty blunt way to put it, man. at least i didn't get misgendered like i did last year!

once we arrived we stood in line for badges, and we arrived at the very front of the line. by the time we were walking out, the line stretched all the way outside and around the corner, so we got lucky. just like last year, we arrived SUPER early, so we didn't really have stuff to do as soon as we got our badges. that being said, we did continue a tradition started last year, and went to early morning AMVs. i dont remember if i mentioned this last year, but there's an event where you go to a room and sit down and watch fanmade AMVs on a projector screen. it was pretty fun, there was one Bomb Rush Cyberfunk one that was super entertaining and fun to watch. after that we headed on over to the arcade, but i noticed something was missing.

one of my pins had fallen off my bag. and not just any pin, my Vinesauce is Hope 2018 Charity pin, a very exclusive pin that i got for donating to the Vinesauce is Hope 2018 charity event. that's one of my favorites, so i was super bummed when i noticed it was missing. we tried retracing our steps, but no dice. my hope is that it fell off in my car or at my house, because losing that thing in the big city is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack. plus, there's always the possibility someone picked it up and stole it, so i might just not be able to find it no matter how hard i look. i'm still pretty bummed about this, i'll keep looking around the house but i highly doubt it's anywhere here... at the very least, there are listings for ones on ebay for like 15 bucks, so i might get one of those if it comes down to it. HUGE UPDATE FROM FUTURE MOT: i found it! it did indeed fall off in my house, i found it right next to the door in my room! that'll teach me to lock it up nice and secure using a locking pinback next time. crisis averted, though! thank goodness.

to try and bring my mood back up, we went to the arcade, which was my favorite part of the trip last year. i had a great time playing fighting games there, so you know i was immediately drawn to it. and to my amazement, they had 3rd Strike this year!! yall know how much i love 3S, so this immediately brought me back to life. i played a couple of rounds as Q and scored some wins, lost a couple times, and had a great time the whole way. i actually ended up showing some kid, couldn't have been older than 10, how to play Twelve. he was asking me stuff like "how do you do that diagonal dive move?" and "how do you turn invisible?" and i taught him everything i knew. it was a super cool experience, the kid picked up motion inputs way faster than anyone else ive ever tried to get into fighting games, for what that's worth. oh, and they also had a Cosmic Smash cabinet there!! Cosmic Smash is one of my favorite Dreamcast games, and it was originally released in arcades on the Sega Naomi hardware, which was essentially a Dreamcast built into an arcade cabinet. it was used to run stuff like Rival Schools/Project Justice, and even things like the Rhythm Tengoku arcade game, made by Nintendo. Cosmic Smash is like, if you turned tennis wallball into breakout, with some of the sickest visuals of any game i've ever played. i'll admit, i hogged the cabinet for a good long while, but can you blame me? i LOVE Cosmic Smash, it was a big moment for me. there was also Puyo Puyo, just like last year, and i owned everyone i played against, as i am known to do. they also had a couple rhythm games, but i didn't touch em, as they were mostly full the whole time. plus, i always get so nervous playing rhythm games in public, they're SO loud. something about that rubs my social anxiety the wrong way, always drives me nuts. so i went back to fighting games after that, and got my first couple of pictures with cosplayers i liked. there was a guy going as a Tonberry from Final Fantasy with a super cool mask and everything, it was sick. there was also a Sunny from Omori, and as your local RPG Maker expert, i had to get a picture with them. i mean, i was going as Madotsuki, you know i had to do it. i played Samurai Shodown with the Tonberry guy, i think it was V Special? i know it had Enja in it, but i had to play my man Kyoshiro. I love them Kabukis, what can i say? i then also played this random anime game, we literally couldn't figure out what it was. it wasn't BlazBlue, it wasn't UNI, it certainly wasn't Guilty Gear... It had like, 16 characters i think, the sprites were handdrawn, there was no airdash but there was a midair jump, it had a focus-attack type button, ala SF4, and the backgrounds were 3D models... if anyone recognizes this, PLEASE tell me what it is. we seriously couldn't figure it out. i also played a bit of Tekken 7 with my roommate, and absolutely washed her using Panda. she couldn't combat my winning strategy of back+LP+RP > dash.LK+RK. i let her win just once so there was no animosity between us, but don't tell her that...

after the arcade, we went on over to the vendor's hall, and good god i've never seen a line that long. the line stretched all the way around an entire block, went inside into a parking garage and snaked back and forth for a while, went back outside for a bit, and then finally entered the building. at least the line was always moving so it only took us like, 30 minutes to get through, but it was still insane to look at. it took us like 10 minutes to even find the back of the line,we just kept walking and walking and kept getting comically longer... it was pretty insane. in the vendor's hall there were the classic "i don't really care" vendors, at least for me. lots of DnD stuff, lots of high fantasy props, those just aren't really my thing. ya'll know i'm all about the pins, so i had to pick up some of those. i found a Purple Pikmin pin i really liked, a DDR arrow one that was super cool, and i picked up some patches as well. i've been trying to get into patches more, it's just really hard for me to find ones of stuff that i like. luckily, they had one for Talking Heads, which i am a BIG fan of. Psycho Killer is a little bit of a basic pick in my opinion, but it was better than nothing. there was also this really cool Aperture Labs patch that i picked up for a good price, i'm really exicted to put this on my jacket somewhere. the sticker on the far right was from a fellow named Dave Law, who was selling a comic called The Space Odditorium. i was operating off of a budget of 50 bucks so i didn't really have the money to buy any comics, but his booth drew me in for one reason: the guy was doing yoyo tricks!! he was sitting there doing all the cool shit, double or nothing, cold fusion, some other stuff i didn't recognize. we got to talk about yoyo a little bit, and it was a really cool moment for me. he said that he picked it up to give himself something to do while waiting at his booth at events like this, which sort of made me think of why i picked up yoyo as a kid. (to give me something to do while waiting for stuff at school.) he was even selling a custom made Duncan yoyo with some of the character art on it! i honestly wish i had gone for that now, but i was operating on a strict budget. i was already down to 15 bucks with all the other stuff i bought, so i just bought a 2 dollar sticker. the guy was nice enough to throw in a bonus sticker though, which was super super nice. it makes me really wanna get my hands on this comic someday... hopefully. my roommate also found a really cute pin of Vivi from Final Fantasy IX, which she gave to me, and it was so nice of her to do that!! i was surprised at the severe lack of Final Fantasy stuff in general, the only things i saw were for Final Fantasy VII, which is the only one i haven't played yet. and like, Aerith is cute and all, but damn it dude i wanna see some Freya Crescent or Faris Scherwiz rep out there!! now THOSE are my girls. additionally i saw some really cool stuff i didn't get to buy, namely a UMD of Persona 1 for PSP. it was unfortunately 100 dollars, which was kind of a bummer to see, but it's still neat to see it in person. it's like how i got to see Rule of Rose last year!



after going to the vendor's hall we decided to get some lunch. i hadn't had anything to eat since 5 am that morning, so i was running off of fumes at that point. so we met up with a friend of mine for pizza at Mellow Mushroom, a really good pizza joint that was within walking distance. i saw an Engineer TF2 cosplayer there which was super cool, though i didn't get a picture unfortunately. i gotta say, that pizza hit EXACTLY the way that it needed to in that moment, and it was so nice to sit down for the first time since arriving. as i am typing this my legs still hurt like hell, so i think i might've walked a little too hard. after lunch we decided to head back to one of the buildings so my roommate could get a few good pictures, and we saw one of the coolest cosplays yet, a full fursuit for Ralsei from Deltarune. it was SO sick, my roomie got a picture and i'm so glad i got to see it.


while she took some more photos with her fancy camera i headed back to the arcade for a bit since it was in the same building, and i wanted to get a few more games in. there, i saw some people playing on the 3S cabinets again, and one guy from Texas was playing Q. another guy was playing a bit of Necro, and i always love to see a bit of Necro rep in 3S. then, there was this guy playing as Alex, and he went on a 19 game winstreak, which probably lasted even longer than that. then, a guy cosplaying as MF DOOM came by, and turns out, this was my old game design teacher! i think i've mentioned him before, but this guy is seriously the coolest on the planet. he's been on Games Done Quick, he ran a thing back when i was in high school where after school he'd set up one of the classrooms like an arcade for students to play games at, he let me borrow his N64 for a week to do Doubutsu no Mori 64 speedruns on, he's so killer. on top of that, he's also insanely good at fighting games and Mario Kart, to the point where he almost beat the Alex guy using Remy, who's considered to be a pretty low tier character in 3S. for reference, he was the only one of all of us who even got one round off on him. and that third match-point round was pretty damn close!! and as it turns out, the Alex guy was ALSO a former student of his, so it was a pretty awesome moment. he pitted me against him so we could have the two students of his fight it out, and of course i got washed. i tried to run Q but i could barely make anything happen, and it didn't help i hadn't played in a hot sec. still, it was a ton of fun, and i'm so glad i got to play at all. the arcade has to be my favorite part of this event from the two years that i've gone, it's always so electric in there. that was essentially the last thing we did, we stopped by Artist's Alley for a bit but all of the artwork there, while being really impressive, was the kind of generic fantasy stuff that makes me yawn. just because i like Final Fantasy now doesn't mean i'm any more interested in DnD, sorry folks.


a couple more misc things i saw before we wrap things up, first i took this pretty funny picture of me with a sign that just said "Pool." couldn't tell you why i thought it was funny, i just did.


we also saw the entire Roman phalanx there, for some reason, still not sure what they were up to. was pretty funny though, can confirm that.


then we finally went home. and man, i gotta say... this was SO much better than last year. or at least, i had a lot more fun than last year. im really really glad i gave DragonCon another shot, because things went so much better this time. probably due in part to the fact that i went on a Saturday, instead of the final day like last time. oh, and i got a BUNCH of streetpasses! yeah, i brought my 3DS, and the turnout was huge! i got like, 18 new tags, 10 new ones for ACNL, one for Brain Age: Concentration Training, and even one for Theatrhythm! the only thing that put a damper on my day was that i thought i lost one of my favorite pins that i own, but even then that was later found to not be the case! so like, hell yeah man! i had a really excellent time at DragonCon this year, and i can't wait to go again in the future. i think going as Fio from Metal Slug as my cosplay next year might be fun... either that or Sabitsuki from .flow. one of them i need a wig for, and the other i need to get new clothes for, so we'll see.