I AM A FILIPINO

i d o r u

Last Saturday, at the Mangaholix event, we were lucky enough to be placed on the same side as Alodia Gosiengfiao’s booth. (I think Kajo had plans of leaving after our interview on stage, but when he went back to the booth, he decided to stay.)

For the uninitiated, Alodia has won numerous cosplay events in the past couple of years. She maintains a website that gets thousand of hits every time she uploads a new set of photos.

Most of the time at Mangaholix, the people at the booth were Alodia’s sister Ashley and her DeviantArt/cosplay friends Tricia and Crissey. Some family and friends were also there and they were selling posters and prints of Alodia. (And they were selling faster than copies of TRESE. Hmmm… must re-think marketing plan!)

I’ve heard of Alodia before and have been linked to her DeviantArt site since last year, but I never knew she THAT FAMOUS.

Alodia was one of the judges of the cosplay, so she didn’t really spend a lot of time at the booth. Every time she did drop by to sign autographs, she was accompanied by four bouncers built like football players and right behind them were all her fans. In a matter of seconds, there would be a crowd in front of booth (and most of them spilled over to our booth).

Digicams flashed and phone-cams waved in the air-- all trying to get a shot of her.

The bouncers had to control the crowd and strictly enforced that only one person could approach Alodia for her autograph and get their picture taken with her.

Every time she and her friends posed for the camera, they had their smiles ready. There was that tilt of the head that made their hair fall and cover one eye and then they’d smile that little smile. One of them would always flash the “V” sign with her fingers and placed it ever so slightly at the corner of her mouth. The poses seemed all too natural and yet it felt rehearsed. No … rehearsed isn’t the right word. It was… pre-programmed?

And I remembered William Gibson’s book IDORU, about the artificial intelligence that was programmed to be a celebrity. My brain hyperlinked to an old TIME magazine cover story about a Japanese teen pop star named Ayumi Hamasaki, which talked about Japan’s idol-making machinery. Her quote at the end of the article was: “I don’t have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.”

I had to step away from the booth and hang out at the Toy Kingdom area because the crowd was getting bigger.

I was just amazed that someone can achieve such celebrity status without having to be on TV or in the movies. In our country, our “idol-making machineries” force actors to become singers and singers to become actors who also double as TV hosts and VJs and DJs and become a “love team” with some one they don’t really love.

And then there’s Alodia, who just happens to be doing the thing she loves a lot and it has brought her fame that would rival the TV network’s so-called stars.


As the crowd pushed to get closer to Alodia, I saw an impatient cosplayer dressed as a … I really don’t know what he was dressed as … but he was at the other end of the booth and he was trying to get the attention of Alodia’s friends. He yelled out their names, but they couldn’t hear him with the crowd and the camera clicks. He cursed under his breath and yelled louder. Finally, the girls turned towards him and they smiled and waved. He pretended to be disappointed that they had forgotten him. They all shook their heads and put on a sorry face that would make any one forgive them even if they just spilled hot instant noodle soup on his lap. And the girls smiled again, titled their heads in that certain way and waved as Mr. Impatient said bye-bye.

I saw a girl edge her way towards Alodia. She was probably still eight feet away from her idol and even though Alodia’s back was turned to her, she told her friend with the phonecam, “Ayan! Kita na siya! Bilis! Kunan mo na kami!” And she smiled for the camera.

Pictures from: http://blackmage9.deviantart.com/