Cosplayers At Pride: Portcon Maine at Portland Pride 2019
Written by Aesthel
This year Portcon Maine marched in Portland Pride’s parade! While many of Portcon’s staff and attendees usually take part in the pride parade every year, this is the first year that Portcon has had any official presence at the event.
I was so happy to join Portcon this year at the Pride parade, and it was so much fun to celebrate not only my sexuality with pride but also my fandom and interests with the Portcon crew. Pride is always such a fun event and this all just made it even better. Though I’ve been going to Portland Pride for a couple of years now, this was the first time I’ve ever marched and taken part in the parade. I was a little worried about marching at first because I have pretty bad knees, but having my friends around the whole time really helped with that!
Since I was marching with Portcon, I decided to cosplay for Pride this year and I went as K/DA Ahri. As a bisexual woman I was excited to also involve my personal identity with my cosplay, and I did make up inspired by the colors of the bisexual flag. It was so much fun to see all of the other cosplayers walking at Pride, and they surprisingly fit in pretty well with the amount of other people all in crazy and colorful outfits. I think it’s actually one of the first times I’ve felt like I totally fit in while in cosplay that wasn’t at a convention.
Other people marching with Portcon were also in cosplay, and many had fun signs too! Some sign highlights from the portcon crew included “Hatsune Miku Says Trans Rights”, “Non Baahnary” (with a picture of the Wooloo Pokemon), “Fandom is for Everyone” and “Dragons for Bisexuals”.
Walking through the parade for the first time was a pretty incredible experience. It felt so good to see the crowds around us, all cheering us on. Everyone was waving their flags or signs and yelling and cheering. Some people in the crowds were even blowing bubbles and throwing confetti! Some of my favorite moments was when we were walking and people in our group saw their friends over on the side lines. They would run up to their friends to say hi and give them hugs before joining back with the group and walking through the parade! I also recognized a lot of people around the parade whether they were friends or other people that are regular Portcon Maine attendees. Those people in particular were really excited to see the convention having a presence at pride this year.
While at Pride, our friend Shawn Wilson Photography took the time to take a lot of photos of other cosplayers and things going on around the event and parade. I also made sure to vlog as much of it as I could, so if you’d like to see more of what happened at the event this weekend, check out the video below!