Traveling and Checking In
After talking to ConnectiCon representatives at Anime Boston, they mentioned it was very easy to get from South Station in Boston to downtown Hartford. The trips took about 2-3 hours depending on traffic. From the bus terminal, you could take the free Star transit to the convention. I was wearing normal clothes when the bus did their routine pick up. "Aren't you glad you're not a part of this crowd," the bus driver said. I smirked, "I'm actually here on business." After about a 10 minute ride through historic downtown Hartford, I was dropped off at the Marriott and ready to check into ConnectiCon.

Gaming Hall
This was huge! It reminded me of Anime Expo's Entertainment Hall from the previous weekend. Tables were set aside for people who wanted to do pen and paper role playing games. Teams can check out books and guides if they wanted to try out something new. I'll admit, the maid pen and paper role playing game looked really interesting. There were also areas set up for miniature gaming; even though I'm not into miniature gaming, I do enjoy seeing the different set ups that people have. There were tables set aside for card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon. There was even your typical e-gaming area complete with current and classic consoles and Bemani arcade games. If you're into gaming, you could literally spend a whole day here and not get bored. There was certainly much to do and check out. If you're a people watcher like me, it was fun seeing people play rhythm games like Pump It Up, Para Para Paradise, and various Dance Dance Revolution incarations.

Paul and Storm Concert
I was quite intrigued that our copy editor's choice band from an award winning AMV he produced ("24: The Animation") was performing at CTCon. Paul and Storm are a comedic singing dup. Often times they have songs that cater to nerd culture. In this case, they had songs about cats on the Internet and just to let George Lucas to "fucking stop." This was a fun concert to stumble upon on Friday evening. However, I was not quite familiar with how they do their sets. Traditionally, they end with a pirate song to which they find as many "ARGH!" puns as possible. The last 20 minutes were defined as such. I immediately left because I thought it was getting too played out, but so you know, this is a tradition of their's.

Social Politics of Cosplay
I was intrigued by this topic presented at CTCon. This was presented by Allison. She has also ran panels on Feminism at other New England events. The description mentioned the double standards of females in cosplay, racial tensions, and if the Slave Leia variant is empowering or enslaving. There was a really good roundtable discussion between the crowd. One particular topic that came up was rule 63 – genderbent versions of existing characters. One lady cosplaying as Dhalsim mentioned she was cosplaying as Dhalsm, not a feminized version of Dhalsim. The trend of gender beding and sexualization of Marvel heroes was also discussed – why would a feminized Iron Man wear less? This was an interesting discussion panel and I'm glad that the attendees kept the discussion mature.

Most of the panels in the evening were targeted towards the 18+ crowd. Even the ever so popular Team Four Star Reads 50 Shades Darker was filled to capacity. You can see the video where they read the infamous "vanilla" scene here (nsfw). I was already tired from traveling and the usual 9 to 5 grind. The dance was happening in the Marriott ballroom, but even then I was too tired to dance. My roommates mentioned there was more action going on in the 18+ dance than at the 21+ dance. Otherwise, I plopped myself to sleep on the soft Marriott bed.

Pictures are copyright by Scarlet Rhapsody . If I took your picture, feel free to use it on your site or cosplay gallery. While you're here, do sign the guestbook. This site was brought to you by the font Bete Noir. Many thanks to Dream Host, Adobe Bridge, MS Photodraw, Picasa, and Dreamweaver for making this site design possible.