A Community I Love

I wanted to talk a bit about the anime and cosplay community. That might be a bit of a generalisation actually. Well anyway, like everything else on this blog, this is of course just opinion.

Community of course refers to a group of people connected by a common location or interested. I’m not really part of that many, but I want to say that this one is my favourite.

What else do I have? Well, there’s the area where I live, which I love, but aside from my parents and a couple of others I don’t have much to do with the people there. Everyone’s nice and there are occasionally parties or other events where we talk, but still.

Then there was school. That was bad. Aside from the odd couple of people now and then, people either ignored me or were abusive. College was pretty much the same with a little less abuse and a couple more nice people. University is a lot better, people in class talk to me, they’re all nice, but aside from a couple they’re not what I would call friends, yet anyway.

I haven’t really been a part of any other community. I guess you could say music. I was always going to gigs until a couple of years ago. I was one of the people who had to get there really early in the morning and wait all day. It was like a tradition, plus it was the only way you could really see anything when you got in there. The line was boring unless I went with friends though. I did make a couple of friends at some, but that was rare. People weren’t very talkative to those they didn’t already know, that surprised me because I thought that that was a place to make friends too. Usually when I tried to speak to someone though they’d either ignore me completely or be unfriendly. I wouldn’t have minded if they didn’t want to talk to me but I don’t see why they couldn’t have just said that. I wasn’t really enjoying it for the last year or so anyway and that wasn’t the only reason.

So when I got out of that I needed a new obsession and began focusing more on something else I’d loved since I was a kid – anime. I started getting more into video games at that time too. A while later I started cosplaying and getting more involved in the community surrounding these hobbies.

I love all the friends I’ve made from this; they’re great, fun people. In online communities everyone is so friendly, talkative and welcoming. There are arguments sometimes of course, but that happens everywhere. I hear about worse people but I’ve never had any experience with them myself.

The anime society at my university is something I look forward to every week. Again, they’re all friendly, fun people and it’s great to be able to spend time with people with the same interests. It’s so much fun watching anime together and it makes it a lot funnier too, even when it isn’t supposed to be comedy.

My favourite thing though is going to the MCM Expo in London. I’ve gone four times now, twice for the whole weekend (I’m going to both this year as well, along with Alcon hopefully). I still have all the wristbands, two of which can still be worn and I keep on me most of the time. It’s the place I most feel at home aside from my actual house. Unlike some other things in this post I feel like I actually belong there. It’s the one place I feel truly comfortable in a crowd. It seems like everyone you talk to talks back, even if it’s only for a little while.

It’s generally a great place not just for all the stuff going on and the awesome things you can buy (some of which being hard to find anywhere else) but for the people too. They make it an even more interesting and fun place to be.

Again this is all based on my opinions and experiences so others may feel differently about this.

I just wanted to thank everyone in this community for generally being awesome.

Anyone else feel like I used that word way too much in this post?