Another Missed Munchie Squad

I got in to cosplay a number of years ago. I was aware of it for quite a while but I really started to take an interest on a trip up to Connecticut to visit me mum. Back then I was in #CO2Fre3 or #CO2Fre2 and in those Nissan LEAFs, I had to stop a number of times to get enough electricity to get to my destination.

So, I stopped a Hotel in Baltimore to use the CHAdeMO charger and get some fuel when I passed some cosplayers going to a convention. I asked to get a picture and kept it as part of my trip log memories on Swarm, as I used to do back then.

Of course I was intrigued so when I heard about this new group, D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot, forming on Facebook, I joined right away, getting in on the ground floor. I remember that phone call very well as I was driving #CO2Fre home from work. Sarah Brice, an amazing cosplayer in her own right, was there with the other founders. That’s when we planned out what the group would be and how it would be organized. In those early years I was more of a lurker rather than a participant.

I started going to a local Doctor Who convention, ReGeneration Who, now defunct. Seeing all those Whovian cosplays, I decided it was time for me to start building my own cosplays. That’s where I met one of my very best friends in the entire world, Ilona Hull Berberich, who is a dead-ringer for Susan [Foreman].

I was finally ready to attend my first D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot event. I invided Ilona so I would have someone I met there and we made a great team, having a number of photos taken of us.

From that point I attended a number of D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot events, building my cosplay database up from a since Doctor Who companion to various other media franchises, getting some great photos and making some great friends.

One of the best parts of all from those events was the Munchie Squad. After an afternoon of posing and snapping picture, we’d all gather and have a friendly meal together. I so enjoyed chatting with my very dear friends Rachael S. Norberg, an amazing cosplayer, and Kevin K. Nguyen, an outstanding photographer, and so many others! It was the perfect capstone to a great event.

But then I got burned.

Back in 2018, Regeneration Who was in its fourth year and they had an amazing lineup. The actress who played Tegan Jovanka, an Australian air hostess, Janet Fielding, was going to be there. Janet, in fact, is one of only a half-dozen my official Twitter aggregators. She’s wonderful! Mark Strickson, who played Vislor Turlough, was also coming. As was Matthew Waterhouse, who lived at the time in Connecticut, where I was born. And also Sarah Sutton, who is the sweetest, and Peter Davison, who was a wonderful Fifth Doctor, and the amazing Nicola Bryant.

I was going to do a Tegan crossplay for the convention. Ilona was coming and would be in a Turlough crossplay. We were both very excited.

I had commissioned a Tegan crossplay months before the convention. I obtained all the COTS elements of the cosplay: blouse, pantyhose, pumps, wig, and purse. I just asked the commissioner for a skirt, a belt, a jacket, and the pill-box hat. I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. I would have done it myself but I didn’t feel up to the measuring and sewing, especially by hand.

Days before the convention my commissioner said she couldn’t do it. She really, valiantly tried, but it was just beyond her. I hold no ill will and have not asked for my money back but the whole event soured me to cosplay. I prepared and prepped for this perhaps once in a lifetime photoshoot and to come up short. It still hurts, to this day.

Tegan and Turlough meet the 1980s Doctor Who cast
My dead friend Ilona and I are cosplaying Vislor Turlough and Tegan Jovanka as the now-defunct Regeneration Who convention’s 4th and last year. Pictured with us are, in order, top to bottom, left to right, Mark Strickson, Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Nicola Bryant. © 2018, Bryan Humphrey

All that said, Bryan Humphrey took a wonderful photo!

Today there was a D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoots event in Leesburg, VA. I haven’t been to a photoshoot in years because I have no new cosplays to share but I really wanted to go to the Munchie Squad! I miss all my cosplay and photographer friends, like Rachael, and I go to Leesburg at least once every fortnight, so it would have been no big deal.

But I forgot.

I really miss cosplay. What will you see me as next?