Okay, so, NORMALLY, I don't do a full con report for Big Apple Comic Con. It's really just a market to sell mostly comic books, some merch. Nothing much happens besides walking around for a few hours browsing, running into friends, maybe some photoshoots.

Nevertheless I managed to spend several hours at the convention, and managed to screw up every single one of those things. Allow me to elucidate.

As soon as I got off the up escalator, and started to head in, I saw my friend Denny with a table displaying some of the goods from his Museum of Interesting Things! He didn't recognize me right away (the last time we met, on our friend Richie's music video shoot, I had my usual hair, up in a bun, in mundane clothes, and glasses. Picture the Clark Kent version of Crissy.) Nevertheless once he realized who I was we started to catch up.

Now, as I said, the way his table was set, literally everyone who wanted to enter the convention had to pass us. And quite a few people stopped, because they wanted to take Black Widow's picture. Then, who should pass by but my friend Rob, the moderator of DC Cosplayers East, who I had last met when he took me to see Black Panther, so then we stopped to catch up a bit. Then more people wanted to take a picture of Black Widow. Then I recognized my friend Captain Zorikh, who I had met twelve years ago at my second ever comic book convention. Then I wanted some pictures of some people. You see where this is going, don't you? Before I knew it, an hour had gone by.

And *then* this show called It Came From The Radio! wanted to interview Denny for their podcast, and when I moved to get out of the way, they asked me to stay and kind of act as his assistant, so *that* took another half hour. Then Denny had to run off for bit, and asked me to man the table while he was gone, and another half hour went by.

I didn't mind too much--as I said, being the first thing people passed on their way in meant I got to see a lot of my friends I hadn't made specific plans with, like Kate, and Chris, and I was in an easy spot for people I had made plans with--namely Doc--to find. By the time Denny had come back and I was free to roam the con, I had less than an hour before my next scheduled activity. On the plus side, Denny offered to keep my bookbag underneath his table, so I could browse the con without being weighed down.

So, I can't tell you *anything* about the con that I might otherwise have mentioned--I don't know who was there, I don't know what was selling, I don't know who was exhibiting. I took the quickest of walks around the floor with Doc, and managed to run into my friend Nina (the White Mage Sailor Pluto from my Final Fantasy Sailor Moon cosplay group at New York Comic Con 2017) and her son as Squirrel Girl and Tippy-Toe. I told her there was a big Marvel group photoshoot planned, so we left the Hotel Pennsylvania and headed outside and across the street.

The photoshoot started out well--there were a *lot* of awesome cosplayers in awesome costumes there, and we took a lot of big group pictures. Then, as per usual, they started to split us up into smaller groups. I had been standing up on a ledge in the back with Nina because we're pretty short and would've gotten lost in the crowd below, but now that the crowd was thinning out, I jumped down and tried to move to the front.

It was a windy day, being early April. At one point a breeze gusted into my eyes, and I blinked hard against it.

And then I could no longer see.

Oh, I wasn't blind, thank God. But my vision was blurry, and my eye hurt like *hell*. I stumbled over to Doc, because, with bag back at the hotel, I didn't even have a compact on me! "Doc, I can't see, I think something's in my eye!" I whimpered. He gently steadied my face to stop me from squirming, and looked into my eyes.

"You're not going to believe this," he said.

"What?"

"I...think one of your contacts ripped in half."

Pause.

"It's still on your eyeball."

If...if there's a sentence you definitely don't want to hear...I mean, "You have cancer" would definitely beat it out, but still, it is RIGHT up there. It took me a good ten years of wearing glasses before I finally worked up the nerve to even ATTEMPT contacts, and I hate to tell you, but the first few times I wore them (usually only for performing in theater productions in school), I had to have two people to help me--one to hold me down, one to hold my eyelids open and put them in for me. I'm not kidding. It's only in the past few years--primarily thanks to cosplay--that I've gotten even halfway decent at putting them in and taking them out myself, and because I have extended wear contacts that I wear abusively past their expiration date, I'm *still* not as good at dealing with them as the average wearer is.

So, with me in pain and no mirror, I had to stand still and let Doc STICK HIS FINGER IN MY EYE AND TAKE IT OUT.

And you'd think that would be the end of it.

But I am incredibly, incredibly stupid.

 

Because, you see, I am really, REALLY blind (20/750, which means objects that are 20 feet away are as hard to see for me as objects that are 750 feet away are for people with normal vision.) And...I mean, I couldn't be photographed as Black Widow with one blue eye and one brown eye, could I? (Shut up.) So, I did the only natural thing--if, by natural, you mean, as I said above, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY!!! stupid.

I tried to put the ripped-in-half contact back in.

Yeah, that didn't end well. I was in pain and it wouldn't stay in place on my iris (BECAUSE IT! WAS! RIPPED! IN! HALF!), so even I had to call it quits. Doc led me over to a place to sit, and went back to the Hotel Pennsylvania to get my bag--luckily, I at least had my phone, so I took a quick picture of myself on it, pointing to my eye, and then gave the phone to Doc, so he could show it to Denny, so Denny would know Doc had my permission to get my bag, and wasn't some random thief. Luckily, by this point our friend Alicia, who Doc had plans with for after the con, showed up, so she was able to sit with me and keep me company while I was blind.

We also made friends with a cool person who was cosplaying and, thank God, had a mirror and contact lens solution, so I could, at least, get the ripped contact out of my eye again--all while this adorable but...just so very interactive little girl dressed as Wonder Woman ran in, out, and in between the sculpture we were sitting under, and asked us about a billion questions. I love kids, but it's hard for me to keep up a steady stream of appropriate patter WHILE I AM POKING MYSELF IN THE EYE.

Doc came back with my bag and my phone, so I was able to call Steve, the guy I was seeing (and who I was supposed to go to karaoke with afterwards) and tell him what had happened. I pleaded with him to stop by my house and bring me another pair of contacts, so that I could still go out with him that night--if not, I would have had to give up and head home. He agreed, but it was going to take him some time to get to my house, find my contacts, and get into the city, so I had some time to kill. Some of the cosplayers I knew had decided to get some lunch at The Pennsy, a food hall right across from the Hotel Pennsylvania, so Doc and Alicia felt safe leaving me in their hands while they went off on their plans.

I also ran into CHris and Jen as Hawkeye and Lady Hawkeye, so they sat down to commiserate with me as well. Jen was doing a vlog for her YouTube channel, so I got to tell her 700+ subscribers the folly of going to a convention without bringing your glasses. I hope someone can learn from my pain. Or at least chuckle at it.

Even on the way to The Pennsy, a bunch of photographers kept wanting to do photoshoots of me--so if you see some pictures of me out there with one brown eye and one blue eye, you know why. In between, I got to hang out at the "cool kids" table with Rob, and Charlie and his girl Victoria, and two new friends, Michael and Jonathan, and just a score of other really nice people.I was actually in the middle of a shoot when Steve showed up with my contacts, so I popped back into The Pennsy, popped the new contacts in my eye, and finished my shoot--yay! I got so many cool shots of Black Widow, it was worth all the pain and suffering. And I even got to dress the costume back down, and made it out to karaoke with Steve and his friends that night.

That being said, between the calcium dip, abusing my eyes *badly* that day, staying out late drinking and singing my throat sore that night, and waking up to first no hot water in my house and then horribly cold and rainy weather outside the next day...I ended up not making it back to the con on Sunday.

Oh well. There's always next year.

Two agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Me with the Avenger Flappers

It's too bad these came out blurry!

This Bucky was super nice.

Wish we had had Squirrel Girl in Infinity War...

Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers

OTP?

My first time meeting Kate in person!

My like...umpteenth time meeting Chris...and he didn't recognize me at first.

Me and Denny

I'm actually not sure who would win

One of the interviewers from It Came From The Radio

The face of a girl who finally got her contacts fixed!

Our group at lunch

This is what cons are really all about.

Scarlet Witch, Denny, and me

Me, Alicia, and Doc