Read Part 1 here! Part 2 here!

Sunday at Ozine made Saturday look like a lazy day at the park. The con was packed with hundreds of cosplayers — so many that registration was still ongoing as the first cosplayers started strutting their stuff on the catwalk.

As expected, the “first ever cosplay photo studio in a con in the whole world EVAR” (or so Mike Abundo claimed repeatedly, but I distinctly remember having my picture taken as Lelouch at a Brother-sponsored cosplay photo studio setup at Cosplay Mania 2009) had a long queue. I was wondering if I would ever get to have that coffee with Richie dela Merced, who was busy clicking away and gently guiding the cosplayers’ poses.

Richie, one of the Cosplay Photographers’ Guild’s head honchos, spotted me, flashed a big smile and shook my hand. “I’ll be with you in a second, let’s go have that coffee!” The man’s personal charm was much stronger in person. I found myself predisposed to liking this jolly giant, at least compared to me. Why do I always feel so short at these things?

Another well-known photographer at the studio, Gian Bacuyag (who was rumored to have been sucker-punched sometime during the convention, although he seemed fine at that moment, rumors being funny ephemeral things) leaned in to whisper something to Richie. “Anong nangyayari (what’s happening)?” he said, flashing a suspicious glance at me.

“Wala. Si Otaking. Okay lang, (Nothing. It’s Otaking. It’s okay.)” Richie replied.

What was that about?

“I like your blog. I read it all the time. The last thing I wanted to do was pick a fight with you on your own blog,” Richie was telling me over green tea frappuccinos. “The difficult thing about having a discussion on a comments thread is that I have to wait a day for a response, and by then I’d have forgotten what we were talking about.”

“You know, we’re probably just disagreeing over terminology, and about a side issue at that,” I said. “My whole point with the dominance post is that any Us vs. Them thing, Pros vs. Amateurs or whatever, is bogus, is pointless. My whole point is that it’s a dominance strategy, and dominance ruins any scene.”

“That’s what I don’t get about the post,” Richie said. “What is dominance?”

“Dominance is a survival strategy. It’s not the only survival strategy but it’s the one most of mankind has favored since we started clubbing our enemies with femurs. Basically, to ensure that your tribe survives within your ecosystem, you aim to completely dominate it, to eliminate your competition.”

“But this is human nature,” Richie replied. “If you have a field with a hundred cows and one T-Rex, at the end only the T-Rex will be left. I guarantee it. Dominance works. Mankind will always use it, and it’s worked so far.”

“And now we’re killing the planet,” I replied.

“Ah. Well, that’s another issue,” he said.

“But that’s the whole point of my post. The natural consequence of the dominance strategy is the death of the whole. If the T-Rex’s strategy is to eliminate all the cows instead of coexist with them, when all the cows are dead, what would the T-Rex eat?”

“You’re right, I don’t think we’re disagreeing. Professionals and Amateurs will always have a place together in the scene,” Richie said.

“But I keep saying this isn’t about Pros vs. Ams,” I repeated. “This is about the dangers of wanting to dominate the scene.”

“The fittest will always survive, professional or amateur, especially when corporate sponsorship money comes pouring into the scene. Amateurs will always be free to cosplay, as long as they only do it for fun, but the best will always rise to the top. This is the future. Dominance is human nature,” he reiterated. Finally as we returned to his photo studio he flashed me another smile and said, “It was great talking to you and sorting things out.” He clapped me on the back and told Mike, “I told you Mike, we’re not really disagreeing!”

I stood there, sipping my green tea frap.

I was waiting for my friend Joey (aka bumbayker) to arrive at the con. It was 9PM. He said he was coming at eight. I rang him up.

“Hey Cliff,” Joey said on the other end of the line. “I’ve been here a while now but the guards won’t let me in to get my figures.”

“They won’t let exhibitors in?”

“Not until the con is over,” he whined.

“Wait there.” I made my way to the entrance and began using my lawyer-trained Negotiation skill. “My friend here has figures at the exhibit and needs to collect them,” I said to two security guards.

“Sorry sir, we can’t let anyone in until the event is over,” was the rote reply.

“The event IS over. It’s 9PM. Everyone is cleaning up. The remaining cosplayers are dancing in a conga line over there.” Sure enough there was a conga line of cosplayers holding up Free Hugs signs. Mike decided to take advantage of this, hugging everyone in the line one at a time. Some of the cosplayers ran away from him in fear. I nodded toward them in sympathy.

“Sorry sir. Take it up with the man in white over there,” they said, motioning toward Dennis Uy.

I walked up to Dennis. “Hi Dennis, my friend over there is an OtaKai exhibitor, and he–”

Another look of irritation crossed his face, the look of a man who had been dealing with this sort of thing for three days. I understood. He wasn’t irritated at me or at Joey. He was just… tired. Without letting me finish, he went up to the guards and said, “Let him in.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He grunted at me, probably the best thing he could muster. People don’t realize how tired someone in charge of an event of this scale can be. I silently hoped he would get three full days of sleep after this was all done.

“So if you don’t want the Pros or the Ams to dominate, what do you want?” Mike asked over a rum coke at Big Sky Mind.

“I don’t want anyone to dominate,” I said. “Hail Eris!”

“All Hail Discordia!” Joey said, raising a glass.

“So just… chaos, then?” Mike asked, unconvinced. “You want rival groups to fight amongst themselves without anyone emerging as the dominant faction?”

“You know, for someone who sings the virtues of the free market, you’re taking your time getting the point of all of this,” I said. “This isn’t about Pros vs. Ams at all. Here’s an analogy. When different TV channels have to fight over market share instead of one channel dominating the airwaves, who wins?”

“Nobody wins,” Mike said. “All this time and effort is wasted trying to best the competition.”

I shook my head. “No, of course the competing factions don’t win. The audience wins. They get more interesting stuff to watch on TV that way.”

Mike paused. “Ah.”

I grinned. “Popcorn, anyone?”