New York Anime Festival 2008 Arsen Photos

Arsen accompanied me to NYAF 2008. Instead of letting him have fun and hang out I put him to work. He was basically my assistant. I've never had an assistant before but I could totally get used to it. His main duty was to hold people's belongings as they posed for me. In his words: "I'm the coat hanger!" I also used him to test the exposure settings of my camera. With a few exceptions, these photos are all test shots.

You won't see much cosplay here but I sort of promised Arsen these photos would get posted first. Initially we joked about posting 2,000 photos of just him but in reality I didn’t even take that many. Enjoy!

Free Hugs

So, at the convention Arsen and I invented what we call "hugrolling." (Like Rickrolling, get it?) Remember all those girls walking around with the "FREE HUGS" signs? We were constantly flagging them down for free hugs. It was great. They would saunter over all happy with their arms open to give us a big squeeze, but as soon as they were in hugging range Arsen and I would hug each other! It's amazing how disappointed they'd get. Ha ha! We even managed to piss off some girls with our behavior. Most took it in stride. A few were left baffled and couldn't process it. It was great! We always said "Thank you" to the sign-holder for an extra dose of random.

Free Rape

Arsen and I were saying we should bring "Free Rape" signs to the next con. And no doubt, somebody will ask to be raped. (Why?) That's cool though because were that to happen we'd just refuse. Why?

Because it's not rape if you want it.

Hahaha! It's like the hugrolling but in reverse! See people, trolling isn't just for the Internet. You know, we could totally sell the Free Rape thing if we cosplayed as band members from Detroit Metal City.

If you're going to steal the Free Rape idea at the very least give us credit!

Wait… No, it’s a bad idea. Don’t do it. I forgot there’s children around. You don’t want kids asking their parents about rape, do you? It’s funny to think about as a prank but you don’t want to expose kids to that.