It’s Called Fashion
It ended up being quite the exercise crossing the convention floor, but we managed to fill our books fairly quickly. It was strange. With all the walking that I’d done on the farm, and my lovely new undies that didn’t chafe, I expected this to be a walk in the park. Maybe a little smellier but altogether less taxing on any physical level. Right now though my hooves were complaining about the straps of my sandals, and I felt all sorts of uncomfortable. Despite promises and reassurances, I’d drawn plenty of attention today, and I’d only felt up to humoring a couple photo ops before falling into the habit of polite but firm refusal.
"Why did you even participate anyways?" I asked Ellen as she collected her slip for the gem drawing.
"Another chance for you in the raffle, naturally. Though after seeing all the costumes and characters today I may be coming around to the idea of trying it out as well. There's multiplayer, right?"
"Yeah, we can explore in co-op but the story is locked to single player… Still, I'd like to watch it all again I suppose."
"Sounds fun," Ellen gestured in the direction Mary had headed off, "You better hurry to the judges booth though, the cosplay contest is starting soon."
"Do I have to?" I whined but she just laughed.
"I thought you wanted to win the little magical girl wand!"
"Damn it… And it's her catalyst. There's a difference."
"Uh huh." Ellen made a shooing motion. "Knock 'em dead, shake a leg, and remember to have fun."
"Fine, Fine." I grumbled and headed off after Mary.
The judges booth was a fairly private area, sectioned off in part by giant movable walls and the remainder by free standing curtain hangers. A few dozen cosplayers crowded the area, almost half were dressed as the newest couple of characters, while the remaining majority were old favorites of the community. Mary was in fairly good company since the character sharing her name was a goddess, but it was a little surprising to see even two other people dressed as the same character as me.
I joined the line to the judges table and steeled myself for whatever interrogation would commence.
"Whoa, that's a pretty interesting take on Vanessa."
I looked up to see that I'd gotten the attention of the person in front of me in line. He was dressed as the inexplicably popular himbo oni from a game version a couple years back. He even had a plushie of the little bull companion tucked under his arm.
"Ah, thanks." I stuffed my hands into the front of my romper as was swiftly becoming my habit.
"How do you get the ears to move like that?" his voice took on an awed tone, and he half knelt to be more at eye level, though blessedly he wasn't getting up in my face or reaching out to touch.
"Funny story." I tried to fake a laugh. "Those are uh… just my ears." I reached up to give one a tug and wiggled it around a bit.
"How?" He was stunned into silence, and I wondered just how much I was willing to lie, or even tell the truth. Though, it wouldn't be that bad to be called a liar if he couldn't believe the truth.
”Gene modding.” I tried to act self assured as I shrugged. “Over the last year I’ve been undergoing therapy to permanently grant me animal characteristics.” I half turned so that he could see the swing of my tail.
“You’re that much of a Vanessa fan?” He sounded almost awed, and I wasn’t sure why I found that reaction surprising.
”I’m that much of a cow, honestly.” I decided to go for broke and pulled the bib out to reveal the farm logo. “I work at Tristate farms. Look us up.”
His eyes widened further, and I rolled my eyes as he seemed to take advantage of this explicit permission to stare at my chest.
”Wait, you work there?” Another voice chimed in behind me in line and I turned to address the eavesdropper. This cosplayer was dressed as one of the newest characters, a moon goddess.
“Mhmm, I’m a dairy producer, though I’ve been known to assist with admin tasks and the operation of harvest equipment.”
”Producer? Like you…” she trailed off. I was tempted to point helpfully, but that seemed like a bridge too far. Oh how tempted I was to shock them, to cheerfully tell them about how my owners would hook me up to milking machinery, and how I was even already pregnant. Fuck, Carolyn really was corrupting me.
I settled for a nod. One of the judges waved Mr. Oni Himbo over so I took a step forward in line. I’d managed to stun the woman behind me into silence, so I felt like it might be my duty to lighten the atmosphere.
"That's a really nice 'Bina costume." I gestured at the headpiece, she had used real white feathers to make the six little wings, and seemed to have leaned a bit harder into the subtle 'biblically accurate angel' vibe that the developers had attached to the character.
"Thanks! I— like your costume too."
I chuckled at the hesitancy. "Yeah, I know this isn't much of a costume. Like, Vanessa definitely inspired the finer details of my ears, horns, and tail, but the clothes themselves are kinda just a, 'what if she wore something more casual and practical for her farm work?' ya know?"
"Absolutely. Yeah, it does strain the imagination a bit to think that she wears that same luchador outfit for orchard work. Do you play her a lot?"
"You could say that." I laughed again, it was the understatement of the century. "I kinda went nuts on her, pulling two extra copies every time her banner came up. At this point I have a total of seven copies of her, three of her weapon, and I've farmed so much equipment for her that the leaderboards have me in the top 2%. Fingers crossed for 1% soon." I held up my fingers for emphasis as she laughed too.
"Are you going to get the last two copies of her weapon? Just to finish her off?"
"I hope not. It really wouldn't make much difference and it would be soooo much money. How about you? Are you enjoying the new moon stuff?"
"So much, I've only gotten two extra copies of her but honestly I'm tempted to go for the full seven."
"Don't let me be a bad influence."
One of the judges waved me over, so I waved goodbye to my new acquaintance and approached the table. The other folks had phones and tablets out showing their build process and such and I realized a little late that I hadn't prepared and didn't have anything to show anyways.
"Alright… so I guess you're going for a little bit of an alternate outfit Vanessa? Did you make the ears and horns yourself?"
"Hah," I rubbed the back of my head. "Yeah, it's a funny story. In the most literal sense I did um… grow them."
"Grow?"
"Yeah, it's all gene mods, I have to admit that this really isn't as much of a cosplay as it appears to be, but I just wanted to take a stab at maybe winning her catalyst… I totally understand if you need to disqualify me though!" I held up my hands, "I definitely am not trying to cheat or anything."
"Have you… entered into any other cosplay contests as Vanessa?"
"No, this is my first ever convention."
The judge chewed her lip. "Alright. We have a few categories. The cash prizes are for the home-made costumes and. Well…"
"Oh, yeah my outfit was bought for me, so I don't fit there."
"I mean, like you said, you grew the horns yourself right?"
"Sure, but my girlfriend programmed the gene therapy, so I can't even take all that much credit. Should I… just not?"
"No, no." the Judge waved dismissively and began writing on her clipboard. "Folks will love your take on the character. We can put you in the novice bracket and exempt you from the cash prize. Let's just see how it goes. You're just hoping to win her catalyst?"
"Yeah… I just think it's neat."
"Those are awarded by the prop makers. I like your odds of winning it though, there aren’t too many Vanessa’s and the one I do see already has her own catalyst. Anyways, we’ll announce you as ‘farmer Vanessa’ and all you have to do is come out on stage, wave, strike a pose if you want, and then wait off to the side while we announce the rest of the entrants. Sound good?”
”Cool, cool. There… aren’t going to be too many people, are there?”
“Participating? Or watching? All the participants are here in this room, but there is a small gem reward for filling out a ballot soooo, do with that what you will.” The judge handed me a sheet of card stock.. It was surprisingly sophisticated given its purpose. Half the card was columns of bubbles to specify every digit of the user ID with, and the other half was already printed with numbers in various categories for people to vote on. “Also, can you move your bib to waist level? We want everyone’s number in roughly the same place so that people can easily determine who to vote for.”
Fuck.
“There’s uh… a farm logo under the bib. Is that okay?”
The Judge nodded cheerfully. “No problem whatsoever. Would you like us to plug the farm as we announce you? It’s no trouble.”
”I… can’t ask you to do that.” I worked on undoing the safety pins. Why couldn’t I ask her not to? Why couldn’t I find some other way to cover up the machine-embroidered logo?
The judge checked her watch and beckoned to the next person in line. “You’re all set then, just hang out for a bit while we wait for our timeslot on the stage.”
“Of course it's the big stage.” I muttered under my breath as I looked for somewhere to be idle. Mary at least was a friendly face, so I lurked next to her while she chatted animatedly with the moon goddess cosplayer I’d talked to earlier.
“Oh, hey Maddie. Bri was just telling me about this Vanessa main who has one of the top builds in the world.” Mary smirked at me and I rolled my eyes.
“It didn't seem relevant when we were talking about the game earlier, and I’m not exactly proud of my spending on the game.”
“I’m not going to shame you~” Mary held up her hands, “But I am gonna need you to add me as a friend before we forget, I wanna borrow your Vanessa the next time there’s a character sharing event.”
“Sure, sure,” I pulled up my profile page on my phone and handed it to Mary. “I’d be happy to add you as well, Bri. I don't have many friends in the game.”
“Sure. Hopefully I have some characters you can borrow as well.” Bri pulled up her profile as well while I finished re-pinning my bib in the requested location.
“So…” Bri seemed to be struggling to choose her words. “How did the whole farm life thing come about?— If it's not too personal.”
“It's fine.” I reassured her on instinct without even really thinking about how fine it was. “I took the job for a variety of reasons, and It's been a really nice community, I've even dragged a couple friends across the country to join me there.”
“And a bunch of you just produce milk? To sell?”
“Sure. I mean, for a lot of people the reason to go Vegan is because the cow can't consent, and there's all sorts of ethics to consider, but I do consent. A bunch of us produce a very high quality product to help serve a niche for… I don't know, I guess tailoring to the people who have the money to blow on ethical consumption. We have a whole gene mod package that reformats our digestive systems to be more akin to a cow’s and then we just go about our lives: processing greens into milk I suppose.”
“And people buy it?” Bri sounded incredulous.
“Absolutely.” Mary spoke up, “Addie swears by it for baking, and she has even churned some of it up into butter. Let me just say— it's expensive, but it's premium as hell.”
“You… buy it?” I turned to Mary.
“Sure. We’ve been customers about as long as I’ve known Carolyn.— shit, Ellen said you didn’t want to hear about that.”
“It's fine. I think. I’ll just assume it's one of the other producers… I really just don't want to hear product reviews about my milk. It’s— I don't know...”
“Totally valid boundary.” Mary handed me back my phone. “I’m gonna go get in line, break a leg— or break whatever it is you’re supposed to for a glorified beauty pageant.” She gave me a thumbs up as she headed for the front of the queue. Several people had already been passively lining up in bib number order and it very much felt like a throwback to elementary school productions.
I could dimly hear an announcer voice working up the crowd and giving instructions to the audience. At least I assumed there was a crowd. Any rabble was being successfully filtered out, but the headphones couldn’t seem to decide if the announcer was merely noise.
I wasn’t sure if being further back in the line was nice to have more time to prepare, or worse for having more time to agonize. The line was grouped by character anyways, so I joined the other two Vanessa’s.
It was at least encouraging that none of us were super accurate in the first place. The girl going on ahead of me had really leaned into the luchador persona, and the girl after me had gone more casual, using an uncropped sweater and knee length skirt rather than a glorified belt with frills.
They each had their games up, chatting about equipment stats. I had to wonder if I was even uniquely obsessed with the character, hell, there were still a couple thousand spots ahead of me on the leaderboard so it wasn’t even that unlikely that one of them had something better.
“Hi~” I stalled out on ice breakers as I joined them in the slow moving queue.
“Oh hey!” The lucha Vanessa looked up. “I like what you did with your costume, it's actually kinda fun that we cover such different moods, her fighting, working, and leisure.” She gestured to us in turn.
“Yours definitely nails the accuracy though, I bet you’ll win if it comes down to the three of us.” My hands found their way into the front of my romper again, but unfortunately now that only emphasized the tristate logo.
“I’m not so sure, there's a good bit of buzz going around about a hardcore body-modder who is going to sweep the novice ranks.”
“Who?” I looked up and down the line wondering if I’d somehow missed seeing another modded cosplayer, but my two fellow Vanessa’s cracked up.
“You're funny~” the casual Vanessa pushed gently on my shoulder. Her voice was much deeper than I expected, but then again, anything would be deep compared to the original voice actor.
“Haha.” I forced a laugh. I couldn't even bring myself to play it off as an intentional joke. “People aren’t seriously talking about me, are they?”
“I mean, nobody has been able to get your attention, your whole posse has been zipping all over the convention, and you in particular have seemed deaf to the world. Though, I don’t think anyone necessarily blames you.” She pulled up a candid photo of me that someone had posted online. It hadn’t gone viral by any stretch but I still found the double-digit comment count intimidating.
“Shit.” I touched my earbuds. “I’ve had these filtering background noise. I mean, I’ve tried to be polite when refusing photos but I never intended to flat out ignore anyone.”
“That’s just tristate manners for ya. I doubt anyone took it personally, and if they did: fuck em. Oh, and you moved your bib, that was one of the things people were asking about. It looked like you might be going for some grand reveal.”
“Fuuuuck.” I groaned. “Nooo~ it was specifically to prevent spreading intrigue. How the hell did that backfire so spectacularly?”
“No telling.” Lucha Vanessa shrugged as she scrolled her phone. “Oh, there’s a modding clinic attached to the farm. Is that where you got the mods?”
“I… yeah? Did you just look it up?”
“Mhmm. I bet there are more than a few therians in the crowd today that would love to go permanent like you have.” She leaned to the side to look down “Do you have full control of your tail? Can you feel stuff with it?”
I felt suddenly out of breath as I tried to plan a response. “I— I never intended…” I trailed off. I found myself searching for exits. They wouldn’t catch me and drag me up on stage would they?
“I think you might have overestimated her confidence.” Casual Vanessa nodded toward me, but she was talking pretty pointedly to the other cosplayer.
“Mmm, yeah, my bad. Forget I said anything.”
I scoffed, as if I could just simply put the fear of an entire crowd out of my mind. We were just a few people from the edge of the stage now, and I’d still been following along on autopilot.
Shit. It would be impossible to bail and make a clean escape from the entire convention, one way or another I’d have to go out on that stage.
Mary had already gone out and there weren't many cosplayers left between me and certain… well, not death… but certainly something bad. Something unpleasant.
“Are you okay?” Lucha Vanessa looked really concerned now.
“I’m fine. Uh, sorry for ignoring your question. Yeah, I can feel stuff with my tail, and I use it to balance, I’m just not used to going out. I’m really just out of sorts right now.”
I wasn’t sure why I was telling her that. I didn’t want her to pity me, but I still couldn’t stand to have even a stranger think ill of me. And to think so many people already got a bad impression from me not hearing them or refusing photos…
“Oh, yeah, costumes can be a lot of new sensations.”
“It’s not even that, these are my actual regular clothes, well, plus the new patch that my own— ah… nevermind. The sandals are the only thing out of the ordinary.”
“Yeah I can’t say they really do anything for the costume either.” Casual Vanessa remarked. “I’d lose em, personally.”
“But, isn’t footwear required?”
“Im not a narc.” She shrugged. “If you’re really worried you can put them on after the stage stuff is over, but I have a feeling you really don’t want to trip while you’re up there.”
“I… yeah.” I sighed. I don’t know why I was so reluctant either. These internal things had been fucking my balance all day and they’d probably given me blisters between my toes. I found a nearby chair and unlaced them.
The relief was weirdly immediate, and I took a deep breath as I felt like I had real ground beneath me again. I joined Casual Vanessa next to the stairs
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Good, because they just announced you.”
“Aw fuck.” I hurried past her up the stairs and stepped out into view of the convention hall.
Ahead of me, Lucha Vanessa was striking one of the game poses, but I decided ‘fuck that’. I was more concerned with my earbuds cutting in and out as they struggled with the cacophony.
“— tristate farms!”
I heard the tail end of the announcer’s spiel as I took out the buds. He was holding out a handheld mic, but I shook my head. I kept a wide berth as if it was going to bite me as I hurried over to stand next to the other Vanessa.
There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd but I figured I’d take that over boos any day.
I chanced a look out onto the crowd. There was a small throng gathered near the stage, which was only about waist high for them, but the majority of the convention was oblivious to the proceedings.
Once I remembered to look for the crummy straw hat I’d made, it was a fairly simple task to pick out Ellen from the crowd.
She wasn’t all that focused on the show either. I followed her gaze to a couple of paramedics who were shouting over the noise, muscling a stretcher through the crowd, and Ellen only glanced at me for a moment before heading off after them.
Well shit.
Appearances be damned, I dug out my phone, expecting at least a text message explanation, but the notifications were as empty as the cell signal indicator next to the battery icon.
Ellen was already out of sight.
No cell service, no information. Just gone.
If the sandals had put me off balance, this was enough to put me in crisis mode. The WiFi wouldn’t connect, and I was distracted from my phone as the other cosplayers began to file off stage.
Mary was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “See? That wasn’t so bad, it was probably even good publicity…” she trailed off, “are you okay?”
“People keep asking me that.” I stared past her, out at the crowd. “And I’m starting to think I’m having a very bad day.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Ellen just noped off to who knows where, and my phone evidently hasn’t been getting service. I’m honestly not even sure where to go from here.”
“Shit…” Mary’s carefree demeanor evaporated as well, and I felt a little sad to see it go. I hated when I sucked the joy out of people. I was so tired of people being concerned about me.
“I… I know where we parked I guess. I can go meet them at the car.”
“Okay, yeah that’s a good plan.” Mary nodded. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Honestly? I don’t have the first clue what you could do. I don’t even want to speculate about— no. I’m just going to go to the car, and then I’ll have more information.”
“Okay… good luck.”
I nodded and muttered some sort of goodbye before retracing my steps. Even having walked the entire convention floor it was still a nightmare to navigate, but I eventually found someone with a badge and got myself oriented to the entrance we’d come in through. The walk to the parking garage was vaguely familiar, and the stairwell was even moreso. The photos I’d taken earlier came in clutch too so in no time I’d found the precise parking spot where a certain blue sedan should have been.
“Fuck.”