Up until this point, I’ve had my online lives compartmentalized very cleanly. I have my legal name (which you—dear readers—will never know); my cosplay name, Ashweez Cosplay; and my explicit fic-writing pseudonym Silcoitus. Each name had its own email account, each alias its own space online. Then, at last KimochiiCon (then Waifu Expo), I was given a new title “Chair Lord” as I helped produce the many cosplay events on the main stage throughout the weekend.

This past weekend at KimochiiCon 2024, the lines I had so painstakingly crafted between the different parts of me and my creative pursuits started to blur.

And it was overwhelming.

But maybe that was just the ADHD-induced sleep deprivation.

Ashweez Cosplay

The 00’s: The Cosplay Wild West

Officially, I’ve been Ashweez Cosplay since 2016 when I made my cosplay account on Instagram, but the name “Ashweez” (then stylized ashWEEZ) came about much earlier on deviantart in 2007. I posted random digital art on that page as well as cosplays that I would put together through a series of thrifting and modifying. Deviantart is where I first started making cosplay friends and where I cut my teeth on crafting and later sewing.

Any account used with this name is the closest you’ll ever get to a “personal” account. (For an extensive list, visit this page! If you see my handle on a site not listed, beware—it’s an imposter.) I don’t have a separate, private account just for friends or non-cosplay; what you see is what you get. (I do, however, have an Instagram that’s just dedicated to my dog, if you so choose to follow it!) So for the longest time, Ashweez Cosplay has just been my identity. It was simple.

But then the brain rot hit.

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Silcoitus

May 8, 2022: The Brain Rot Hits

The hit Netflix show “Arcane” (based on Riot Game’s “League of Legends”) came out November 2021. I didn’t watch it until May the following year. I could not have ever predicted the long-lasting effect such a show would have on me personally and creatively. It is honestly a little bit wild how different my life is after having watched this show; the library of works I’ve written and the connections I’ve made because of one fictional man is surreal.

That fictional man being Silco, the main villain of the show. Like many before me, I found myself rooting for him rather than the stereotypical “heroes” of the story.

It wasn’t long until I was writing my first ever public fanfic based on the character.

May 24, 2022: First Ever Public Fanfic

I’ve written fanfiction before. But, at the time, it was about NSYNC and it was in the privacy of my diary. (Yes, “Turning Red” is basically a documentary save for the magic red panda stuff.) I read fanfics in high school and while I was doing lots of creative writing, I never actually wrote any fanfics.

“Bad for Business”—my first Silco/reader one-shot—was written in a haze on my phone from bed. I wrote the entire thing in one sitting. I had an idea and I wanted to hold onto it, so writing it down in fic-form seemed the best and only course of action. Almost immediately, I sent it to two close friends in a group chat and I told them I applied for an AO3 account under the name “Silcoitus,” the combination of Silco and coitus.

By June, I had both a Tumblr and an AO3 account. (Note that you must have an AO3 account to read my fics; this has been done to protect my writing from getting picked up from AI crawlers.) I was writing more than I’ve written in a very long time. I was embracing a side of me that I had never really truly explored. I would go on to write (as of this blog post) 64 works on AO3 in the span of two years.

I was thriving.

Cosplay, you see, is a very labor intensive and (potentially) expensive hobby. It was my main creative outlet for over a decade. With cosplay, I had honed my work/life balance through a philosophy of small, frequent progress—rather than long, unpredictably-timed bursts of crafting. I found myself using this same creative process with writing and soon I was averaging 800–1,000 words a day. (It also helped that writing is completely free!)

While I will always consider myself a cosplayer, it’s only because of this newfound community I found in writing that I will now also consider myself an author.

But that doesn’t answer—who the hell is Chair Lord?

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Chair Lord

I kept hearing about Waifu Expo (now KimochiiCon) through my friends in passing. It didn’t seem relevant to me at the time because I wasn’t really into the 18+ scene. But then I had some personal things go down and I knew my friends would be running/helping run the con. I wanted to help, if only to get out of my own head for a bit.

I wanted to attend a con without cosplaying. No shoots, no contests, no public-facing persona. For once, I wanted to just blend in with everyone else. So I threw on all black and my favorite hat—a Night in the Woods hat I’d purchased at a PAX South (RIP) so long ago—and went to the con with the goal of helping my friends run it in any way they needed me.

I got my friends drinks or snacks. I helped run supplies around. Then, I was asked to manage the cosplay pageant backstage. During the show, one of the cosplayers asked if I could set a chair on stage for them before their act since they would be using it in their dance for the talent portion. Naturally, being a stagehand, I said yes. I went up there, put the chair up, then went back down.

But once one cosplayer asked, a few others did as well. So here I am, trying to not be perceived, but having to go on stage multiple times to set and remove chairs and props.

And I couldn’t help myself.

I’ve always been a performer in some fashion, ever since I was small. Dance recitals, cheerleading competitions, football game halftime drill team performances, orchestra concerts; I did everything except theater surprisingly. So, naturally, that love for the limelight came through andI found myself hamming it up on stage, giving the audience a little jiggle of my butt or just any other silly pantomime as I went about my work. I was having fun with it. And I guess the audience was, too, because by the end, each time I’d go on stage to do my little stage ninja thing, I’d hear them yelling something. A name.

And Chair Lord was born.

I embraced the title. I associate it now with my NITW hat and wearing all black. It’s almost a uniform at this point: If I’m wearing this hat and mostly black, I am in work mode. I wore that when I volunteered for Dreamcon (with the exception of the blue volunteer shirt) and I wore it for Nishi Fest this past April.

And now we’re caught up to the present.

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KimochiiCon 2024: Aliases Collide

I knew I was going to be reprising Chair Lord again for KimochiiCon—I officially became staff for the cosplay department and I knew I was going to be stagehanding/managing again. So much so, I designed ribbons that said “Chair Lord Sighting” in silver foil with a folding chair next to it. To this day, my handle in our private friend discord reads “Chair Lord (Ash).”

It being an 18+ convention, I saw an opportunity. Why don’t I present something as Silcoitus? I don’t do lewd cosplays or sell on Only Fans or anything like that, so I don’t have much to contribute there. But my fics are explicit and they’re doing fairly well, so why not write a panel for it. I designed slides, polled my fellow-fic-writing friends for suggestions, and applied. I got accepted.

Once the con weekend finally arrived, my friends planted the seed early for the “Chair Lord” lore to spread. I distinctly remember Xaeri’s scream in particular during the first cosplay event of the weekend, the pageant on Friday night. And just like last year, I hammed it up on stage, mutely miming silly little antics as I set the stage. Apparently, people wondered if I was actually part of the act. They wondered this for the burlesque show as well. I don’t blame them, I’d be wondering, too.

By Sunday, thanks to friends spreading the word and me posting regularly on social media, Chair Lord was a con staple. People were trying to find out how to get badge ribbons, mine included. And yet, by Sunday, all my cosplay department duties were met—I was going to just be me again. No black outfit, no Chair Lord, in fact I’d be cosplaying Blathers from Animal Crossing. And not only that, I’d be giving my presentation as Silcoitus.

So here I am, handing out Chair Lord ribbons while cosplaying while giving a panel on fic-writing. To any other person, this would’ve been fine. It would be no big deal; we all have different personas and parts of ourselves that we switch between day-to-day. So what’s the issue?

The panel went well—really well, in fact—and after saying our goodbyes. I went home.

And proceeded to have an identity crisis and a breakdown.

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Con Blues Turned up to Eleven

Con blues—that crash you get after an exciting weekend of spending time with your friends cosplaying and being ridiculous at a con—is real. It’s so real. It’s being in a fairy tale for 3–4 days and then being shoved back into the real world with startling speed. (Not only that, con crud is real; getting sick from the sheer magnitude of people all in one space leads to colds and the like.) I go to conventions enough that my husband actually knows to look out for my con blues. He did for this one, but I don’t think either of us was prepared for just how bad it would be.

Turns out, I overdid it. In every aspect. I didn’t get enough sleep. I didn’t give my brain enough breaks. I did well on water and food, but not once did I let my mind just calm down. Come Monday morning, I was waking up too early again and unable to fall back to sleep. And I knew I had to clock into work. Despite telling everyone the day before that I was “so thankful I work from home,” I struggled to just get the hell out of bed.

My body still needed rest.

My brain was still in overdrive.

I cried.

I was suddenly so worried about how the lovely people I met throughout the weekend would find me. Should I follow everyone on my cosplay account and have them follow me on there? But so many of the guests and attendees were NSFW creators, what would the family that I have on Instagram feel if I’m out here sharing so many of those creators without warning? I had built a pretty tame online following (even going as far as bleeping curse words on my youtube channel) and now I’m just, what, suddenly blending these lives together?

It was too much.

From the outside looking in, this probably appears to be a vast overreaction on my part. And honestly? You’d be right. But tell that to my sleep-deprived brain.

My husband comforted me, told me to call into work, and that they’d understand. That I should just rest. I texted my boss, told her that I was worried if I looked at my work laptop too long, I would get sucked in and it would turn into me working and not prioritizing myself. She texted me back and gave me permission to ignore every single email and focus on one task (rescheduling a meeting I knew I had with my mentor) so that I could go back to getting some rest. I did that.

Or I thought I did.

Nope. Turns out, being glued to your phone all day isn’t actually rest. Obsessively checking Instagram for the latest KimochiiCon-related post or story isn’t good for your brain. I kidded myself thinking I gave myself enough of a break to go back to work Tuesday.

I was wrong.

Tuesday morning, I found myself kneeling in my walk-in closet, face drenched in tears as I couldn’t bring myself to move—I had too many thoughts all at once, each screaming for attention, each demanding I do something. We had to call my bestie Kasey over because I felt guilty knowing that my husband needed to go back to work, but I still needed support.

I had to have both of them keep my phone away from me. Like an addict. I would want to show them one thing, and they’d both reassure me that I could either show them later or that it’s not necessary. I knew just the simple act of looking at my phone screen would be enough to pull me into its vortex of doom scrolling, oversharing, and feeling guilty for not being more “productive.” It’s like I truly, desperately needed a social media detox—a device detox.

My phone, which had become my way of coping with daily issues—setting reminders, calendar events, taking notes on Discord—became my vice after five nights with poor sleep. During “normal” times, I’m able to limit myself, to focus on my work or chores or whatever necessary thing needs my attention. But the sleep deprivation and the “high” from KimochiiCon led to the biggest post-con crash I’ve ever had in my life.

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So… now what?

What happens now is me finding a therapist. I’ve had one since 2017 who helped me deal with depression and grief, but I honestly just want to find someone who can sit me down and diagnose what the hell is going on with me. We’ve suspected for a while that I have ADHD (and a questionaire with a Better Help therapist suggested I “might” have it), but I can’t help but think that there’s something else here, too. I don’t want to be one of those people who self-diagnoses Autism just from watching a few relatable Tiktoks or because it seems to be the new mental health fad. But there are certain aspects of how I interact with the world around me that lead me to believe that this is not a neurotypical brain in my skull. There is something else at play here.

We’ll get there. Navigating insurance and these medical things is always a nightmare. (Even without executive dysfunction.) I did a lot of learning about myself during this con. I learned that I will sacrifice my own health in the name of others if it happens to also be something I myself enjoy (in this case all things cosplay events). I learned that I really don’t want to deny that I am an adult who enjoys adult things. (But I also learned that I liked being able to have that separation online and that talking about it in person is very different from talking about it anonymously online.) KimochiiCon just felt like a thousand different mental health breakthroughs all at once and I was wholly unprepared.

But now we know. And we can avoid that in the future.

I’ll say no to the after party.

I’ll put my phone away in bed so I can calm my brain down for sleep.

I’ll give myself more breaks throughout the day.

I’ll take longer, deeper breaths when I need to.

You’ll be happy to know that I manage to finally get some sleep. After my Kasey left Tuesday night, my brain was finally calm enough to sleep through the night. I did, however, unfortunately develop con crud afterwards, but I’m basically back to normal as I write this (Monday, May 27). Some congestion and some sort throat, but nothing awful. (I was well enough to work Wednesday through Friday for work, so mentally I’m essentially back to baseline!)

Thanks

Thanks if you read this giant rambling mess. Halfway through writing it, I wasn’t even sure why I was doing it anymore. Maybe just to get my thoughts down and a bit more organized. Maybe as a reminder to myself to not fuck around with my mental and physical health.

And the biggest thanks to my husband and Kasey for pulling me out of that spiral. I would’ve been hopeless without you both.