OmegaCon
OmegaCon is a gaming and anime convention held annually in Charlottesville, Virginia. Chris attended on Saturday, 29 August 2015. By all accounts, it was his first appearance at a convention since Anime Mid-Atlantic in 2005.
Overview
On 29 August Chris announced on Facebook:
| At #OmegaCon2015; totes #BassCannon the audience at #Cosplay Contest! |
This was accompanied with a couple of photographs. It is not known who took these photos, but apparently Chris went alone.
Someone on Twitter provided another pose:
Somehow Chris had managed to escape his domestic responsibilities to his mother and his dogs to spend the day having fun.
When William Elliott Waterman mistook his costume as a "vocaloid," Chris clarified:
| Vocaloid?! I am Not a Computer! I'm Vinyl Scratch, A.K.A. DJ Pon3! A Musical Soul with a deep sense into that bass. A slave to the beat and rhythm. You do not program me, because I'm already programmed in my biological CPU! |
Vinyl Scratch is a minor character in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic who also shows up in human form in the Equestria Girls film series, which Chris adores. She cohabits with another musically inclined pony named Octavia. Chris had been a fan of this character for some time. He had added 28 videos to a playlist called "Vinyl Scratch and Octavia" on his YouTube account, and had made a number of positive statements on Facebook. Vinyl Scratch brings together Chris's interests in music, dancing, and--while the children's cartoon doesn't go there--lesbianism.
Chris's costume appears to be largely homemade. He is wearing the same purple My Little Pony goggles as when he attended his first pride festival in August 2014, and when he maced a GameStop manajerk. Vinyl Scratch's purple tights are conveniently suited to Chris's tucking methods. He had first given himself the terrible blue hair dye job in July. He is also, rather surprisingly, wearing his famous medallion in public, possibly for the first time since 2010. This is similar to how he cosplayed "as himself" at Anime Mid-Atlantic for the sake of self-promotion. This time around, however, he's also promoting the medallions themselves, as they are his hottest eBay item.
Chris entered the cosplay contest, posing for the contest line and a group photo. His performance was presumably not unlike what the crowds at Impulse Gay Social Club have to put up with every weekend. A few days later Chris would reveal that he had just finished a seven-week belly dancing course, which undoubtedly influenced his moves.
He didn't win. This doesn't seem to have dampened his spirits, though--he gave the event a five-star review on Facebook.
Sightings
Someone on YouTube posted seven seconds of surreptitious footage:
| Chandler.mp4 | |
| Stardate | 29 August 2015 |
| Subject Matter | OmegaCon |
| TRUE and HONEST Sonichu Fan Videos | |
Chris can be seen very briefly in this walkthrough at 3:46 with a small group:
| OmegaCon Walkthrough | |
| Stardate | 29 August 2015 |
| Subject Matter | OmegaCon |
| TRUE and HONEST Sonichu Fan Videos | |
Another image of Chris on stage shows up at 7:21 of this slideshow:
| Omegacon 2015 Musical Slideshow | |
| Stardate | 31 August 2015 |
| Subject Matter | OmegaCon |
| TRUE and HONEST Sonichu Fan Videos | |
Chris also appears at 0:28 in this unembeddable video of the contest line.
He attended several panels focused around storytelling, world building, and publishing. He took every chance he could to shill his comic to the presenters and acted indignant when they said they had never heard of it. Despite this, he had homemade business cards for the event that he ran into someone who hadn't. He left the world building panel early after sitting through several over attendees discussing their own projects, apparently because they didn't get to him fast enough.
He carried several of his usual affects, including a Sonichu amiibo, is a bag bearing the marriage equality logo with the message "TOTES GAY" written in large letters.