Izumicon 2018: The Worst Con that Never Happened

When we talk about the worst fan conventions of all time, y'know generally, a lot of the same names come up: names like Anime Matsuri, Las Pegasus Unicon, and, well, I mean you can’t talk about bad cons and NOT bring up Dash Con. Okay, if everyone would like to collectively like, groan and sigh together, that's what I've been doing so we can take a second to do that. So on 3, we're all gonna sigh together, okay? So 1, 2... [sigh] GIMME BACK MY MONEY But today, I’d like to tell you about what I t

hink is a massively overlooked train wreck of a con, one that shockingly few people know about, and it’s called Izumicon– specifically, its 2018 convention was the awful one; the others were great– and that actually made it that much more surprising that 2018 turned out the way it did. Now, I realize that comparing it to the likes of Dash Con is a bold statement, but Izumicon 2018 was boldly awful–like, just to give you a little taste–a little preview–of what was going on, it had a new owner who

, before owning the con, came dangerously close to being blacklisted from volunteering at it. And while expectations for her leadership were remarkably low, she still somehow managed to surpass everyone’s worst nightmares; her communication was notoriously awful, her loose grasp of the con’s goings-on caused more than one incident that could’ve got the con into serious trouble, and I’ll get into the specifics later of course, but everything reached a crescendo only weeks before the event was sup

posed to happen, resulting in the messiest, most explosive con cancellation that I, personally, have ever seen. Like, I’m not even joking or exaggerating when I say that this con was at least as bad as Dash Con. Honestly, no clickbait, I would say that it was worse than Dash Con, really and truly I would. This con was bonkers. And yet, outside of the Oklahoma congoing community… there’s really not all that many other people who know about this con. But y’know what? That ends today. I’ve spent li

teral years learning pretty much everything there is to know about what happened to this con from several of its former directors, artists, panelists and more so that this story can finally be told. So without any further ado, let me tell you all about it: So first things first: before we can understand what made Izumicon 2018 so awful, we need to know more about Izumicon in general. So, Izumicon was a fall anime convention in central Oklahoma that was launched in 2007– though you can still find

posts talking about its planning that go as far back as 2006, which has caused some mild confusion that it might’ve started that year, but, I’ll draw your attention to Izumicon’s 2008 program, which called that year its, uh… 2th annual show. Anyways, the first Izumicon was held at the Biltmore in OKC, then it moved to the Reed Center in Midwest City for a while, and then finally, it moved to the Cox Convention Center —which is now Prairie Surf Studios—in downtown OKC in 2013. Incidentally, I we

nt to this con every year between 2007 and 2011, and then again in 2017, where I was a panelist. I was also supposed to be a panelist in 2018, but uh… you’ll see how that went later in the video. Anyways, Izumicon was founded by Scott Richardson, Stan Dahlin, and the late Marlon Stodghill. The three had previously all been involved with Anime Weekend Atlanta, and launched GE2 and Kawaii Kon together. And partially because Kawaii Kon’s launch was so successful, and also because Scott had moved fr

om Atlanta to Oklahoma in 2005, the idea to start another new convention in Oklahoma just seemed like the next obvious choice at the time. And that new convention would, of course, be Izumicon. Tokyo, OK–formerly known as Tokyo in Tulsa, but nonetheless Oklahoma’s largest anime convention now almost by default–wouldn’t have its official launch until 2008, and while there were a handful of smaller Oklahoma anime conventions like Ronin Con and Cos-Con that happened prior to its launch, there was s

till nothing quite the size or scope of Izumicon in Oklahoma at the time–and certainly nothing that was being orchestrated by a group with even half as much experience as Izumicon’s founders. And I’m telling you this so you can better understand just how easy it was for Izumicon to quickly become a huge hit among local anime fans. As a matter of fact, it was getting so huge so fast that rumors quickly circulated that its launch is why Ronin Con, which tended to be the local fan-favorite anime co

n in Oklahoma before Izumicon, ceased operations, as it had its last event in 2005, though they were hoping to plan another for 2007 that ultimately never happened. But neither Scott nor the handful of former Ronin Con staffers that I spoke to blamed Ronin Con’s decline on Izumicon. To be more specific, those former Ronin Con staffers said that the con had already been in a visible decline by the time Izumicon came around. None of them recall there being like, y’know, one, big specific reason wh

y Ronin Con went into decline, rather it just seemed to be a series of management mishaps that were never neutralized by a consistent source of income–and over time, everything just piled up. For example, one former Ronin Con staff member alleged that overspending on t-shirts seemed to be a consistent problem for the con. In other words, it’s sad, but nonetheless extremely likely that Ronin Con would’ve ceased operations sometime in the mid or late 2000’s with or without the launch of Izumicon.

But even though Izumicon isn’t responsible for Ronin Con’s decline, it still doesn’t really surprise me that people thought that it could’ve been, and I’m saying that not just because of the timing of all this, but because of how quickly and how thoroughly Izumicon’s popularity eclipsed Ronin Con’s despite Ronin Con being the older con. In fact, the former Ronin Con staffers estimate that their last event, which as a reminder was in 2005, had about 250-ish people in attendance; a number that was

pretty normal for them– meanwhile, there was an estimated 1,000 people at Izumicon in just its first year; and that number would only continue to climb over the course of the con’s lifespan. The con would never attract the several 10s of thousands of attendees that you could find at say, a lot of Texas conventions, and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like it was the perfect con, but for anime fans in Oklahoma–especially central Oklahoma–it was still something much closer, it was fun, it stil

l had pretty good attendance all things considered, and the con was generally pretty well-liked. But 2016 would end up being a pretty major turning point for the con; more specifically, its 2017 event would end up being the prelude to the beginning of the end of Izumicon. The foundation for this whole story seems to have been made with a scheduling conflict. Namely, that for reasons I wasn't able to 100% verify, the Cox Convention Center just wasn't available for the weekend that Izumicon was ho

ping to use for their 2016 event. Unable to secure a weekend they thought was particularly better, ultimately, Izumicon was more-or-less forced to settle for skipping their 2016 event, and just hosting their 2017 event in January. Izumicon was always more of a November event, so obviously this decision wasn't exactly ideal, but alas, that's just what the con's leadership felt was their best option. And in fairness to them, I mean, while the first weekend of January isn't necessarily perfect, it

could still be a lot worse. I mean, y’know really, the only thing they needed to worry about now was the impending possibility of winter weather, but, y'know, Oklahoma's generally a pretty warm state, so I mean think about it: what are the odds that there’d be winter weather at all, let alone specifically during Izumicon weekend, right? A final round of snowfall is possible in Oklahoma City Friday morning after overnight snow of 1-3 inches. Snow's possible til around noon on Friday according to

the National Weather Service. A winter weather advisory remains in effect for western and central Oklahoma as the system moves east. Roadways are slick and hazardous across central parts of the state, travel is discouraged. Several closings have been reported Friday morning, including the school districts of Oklahoma City, Edmond, Mid-Del, and Norman. On the night before the con was set to start, central Oklahoma got covered in about 2 inches of ice. And y’know, I get it, for some of you this pr

obably doesn’t sound like a big deal and you don’t understand why this is such a big problem, but Oklahoma is generally pretty warm, and by extension, not super well-equipped to deal with winter weather when it actually hits. But even though all the local schools were closed, for Izumicon the show still had to go on. So here was the good news: there were two hotels literally on the other side of the street from the convention center, and even forgetting about them, there’s still plenty of others

sprinkled throughout the downtown area. So people who either lived downtown or were staying in nearby hotels were still able to get to the con without much of a problem. Most notably, this included all of the con’s guests. But the bad news was, a substantial amount of this con’s attendance was local, but not like, living in the downtown area local– y’know, we’re talking people who already live in or close to Oklahoma City, y’know the kind of people who don’t need to stay in a hotel room through

out the weekend. In other words, attendance took a pretty big hit that Friday–and lemme tell you something: it showed. Several artists and vendors didn’t show up, several panels had to be cancelled– including one of mine, actually–and you could practically smell the disappointment in the air. Yea, it was not a good day for Izumicon. But, y’know, things were better on Saturday and Sunday, y’know the ice was starting to melt and more people started showing up, and I’m told that although it wasn’t

as much of a profit as all the other recent years, the con did still make a profit. But that Friday… y’know, it was rough. It was really, really rough. And that’s probably why the con’s owners, Marlon and Faisal of Dyad LLC– and yes, by the way, that is the same Marlon who helped launch the con– decided that something big needed to change. Now let’s talk about them for just a moment here: At the time, Dyad was a company that was co-owned by Marlon and Faisal. The company ran Kawaii Kon and Comic

Con Honolulu, but the two were still involved in plenty of other cons in addition to them— most notably including Anime Weekend Atlanta. It’s hard to say for sure just how long Marlon and Faisal had been considering putting Izumicon under new ownership, but it’s widely believed that the troubles the con had in 2017 is what cemented their decision: it was time to let Izumicon go. Or, more specifically, it was time to put it under new, and preferably local, ownership. According to Faisal, “Simply

put, it wasn't fun anymore. These conventions are volunteer based including myself, and I just didn't have the vacation/time off from my actual job to keep doing it.” So then, who was going to buy the con? Well, there were a few potential buyers, which included, but wasn’t limited to, the con’s then-head tech director and resident DJ– and for a while it looked like he was gonna get it, too. But alas, due to some problems in the contract, this deal fell through. And instead, the con ultimately b

ecame a property of a company called Ladder Entertainment. Oh, what’s the matter? Never heard of Ladder? Yea, nobody else at the time had either, but they did know the person who controlled Ladder– the person who now owned Izumicon’s name, and it was a late-20-something-year-old former Izumicon volunteer called Dez. And everything up until this point–the venue problems, the ice storm, y'know all that– yea, that was just the prelude to the beginning of the end of Izumicon, and it's Dez taking ove

r the con that officially marks the beginning of the end of Izumicon. Dez had two hobbies that are gonna be relevant to this story: There was occasionally volunteering at cons, of course, and also paranormal investigation. Hey there, demons, it's me. Ya boy. I’m sure it’s immediately obvious why her interest in cons is gonna be relevant to this story of course, but as for the paranormal investigations, that’s gonna be important because foreshadowing-slash-irony alert– she sure did like to ghost

people. [ba dum tssss] Jokes aside though, let’s go ahead and talk about Dez’s con experience. While I couldn’t exactly find a full list of all cons that she’s ever volunteered at, I have still managed to find at least six confirmed instances of her volunteering, and then one more that I’m gonna count for, let’s say half a point, that she claimed to own while all the Izumicon 2018 stuff was happening–though if I can be totally honest, even counting this one as a half seems pretty generous becaus

e all signs point to the idea that making this con happen was never a serious priority. Yea, in her email signature, Dez claimed to be the owner of something called Oklahoma's Paranormal and Horror Convention, but as far as I can tell, that con never actually happened. It had a Facebook page that was made in October of 2017, and I was able to grab screenshots of it in January 2021— yea, I was not kidding when I told you I’ve been working on this video for literal years!— but at some point betwee

n then and now, the page was removed. But at least as of January 2021, the last post was made in June of 2018, but really that was it. No event ever took place, no date was ever posted, no venue, not even much of a logo really, just nothing. The only substantial glimpse into this con is an email that Dez sent with some preliminary planning; y'know, things like, here’s some ideas for potential guests, here’s some ideas for badge pricing, here’s the venue I’m considering, here’s a few other ideas

for activities— nothing concrete, suffice to say. But back when it was still up, I tried messaging the con’s Facebook page to learn more about it, but to no surprise of mine, well, I didn't get a response. Someone saw the message though, so, I mean, there's that, I guess. In any case, as for the cons that she volunteered at, I've been able to confirm that she volunteered at least once at SoonerCon, twice at AnimeFest, once at A-kon, and twice at Izumicon prior to her ownership. Starting with Ani

meFest, she volunteered in 2016 and 17 as a regular press volunteer and then press manager respectively. I was unable to get in contact with anyone who was involved in the con’s promotion process, so the precise details of why Dez specifically was chosen to get promoted are still pretty fuzzy to me. In any case, nobody that I spoke to seems to remember anything about Dez as a volunteer in 2016, but 2017 was different; not least of all because AnimeFest 2017 was a particularly chaotic year for th

e con overall. You see, they managed to get a ton of fantastic guests, which most notably included some of the main staff of Yuri on Ice–which wasn't even a year old yet at the time. Yea, needless to say, the fandom showed up in droves, and the con wasn't exactly 100% ready for them. To put it into perspective, in 2014, the con had an estimated attendance of 10,297 people. In 2015, 10,090. In 2016, 10,751. And then in 2017, more than 12,000. Said Yatta-tachi's owner and editor-in-chief, Katy Cas

tillo, in her review for the con, "Anything Yuri!!! On Ice related (panels, autographs, etc) was a hot mess. We went to the first panel but ended up bowing out so that other people could get a seat at the others. I don’t think the convention had any idea on the size of the fandom and turnout." But to get back to Dez, the week before the con itself, she had sent an email saying that she'd be unable to be there; the official reason was for personal reasons, though she told the con's other director

s and managers that it was due to a medical emergency in her family. She therefore gave her position to a friend of hers who she referred to as "her lieutenant." I tried reaching out to her lieutenant to learn more, but alas, they never replied to me. That being said, I did speak to the lieutenant's girlfriend, who alleged that Dez hadn't told them about any of this until pretty much the last possible second– the literal day before they were gonna be leaving for the con, and as they were out get

ting dinner with friends, no less. "I was pissed and told her how unacceptable it was at that very dinner," she'd further say about it, "We showed up and did what we could and I feel like we did a good job with virtually no warning we'd be doing anything like that." And indeed–despite the rest of the con's chaos, I've actually heard pretty good feedback about press overall from the press's side of things–so whatever Dez had done prior, and her lieutenant and the other press volunteers did the we

ekend of the event, well, it worked. More specifically, I spoke to two members of AnimeFest 2017's press, and both had glowing things to say about their experience. In fact, one of them, Jaden, said about it, "It's because [my manager and I] had such a good experience with Afest we had plenty of trust in the Izumicon process." Next, there's A-kon 2017, where Dez was volunteering in guest relations. To be honest, I wasn't able to find much out about the quality of Dez as a volunteer. But one anon

ymous volunteer who I'll call A said about Dez that, "She did not do her job at all. I was in the main guest room helping the guests who wanted to rest in between their different events. Dez was late or sometimes never showed up for to help her guest or anyone else." But for as bad as that is, it wouldn't even be the worst claim I'd heard about Dez at A-kon 2017. Both A and former friend of Dez's who was at the con allege that it was here that Dez had offered a certain man sexual favors from A w

ithout A's consent, and that A quickly reported this to the con and that it resulted in Dez getting banned from volunteering at A-kon– possibly at all, or possibly just within guest relations. I reached out to A-kon directly to see if they could confirm this and/or tell me more about this, but they told me that unfortunately, they had no surviving documentation from the time. An anonymous member of the convention with a vague recollection of this incident added to this, quote, "Nothing came out

of the report. Also, there was no formalized procedures for record maintenance which was corrected in 2018 moving forward; so the lack of records is expected for 2017." I also reached out to two other volunteers that I know Dez worked with at A-kon, and neither of them got back to me. But I also reached out to Shane Holmberg, who was A-kon's Director of Operations at the time, who said about it, "I don't recall something like that being reported that high, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was c

overed up. A-Kon had a do not hire list and a blacklist. In order to get on it for anything aside from no call no shows there had to be a good reason and some involvement from upper management. My guess is Dez may never have been put on the list, or it never made it that high." Due to the lack of documentation, we'll probably never have the complete truth of what happened here. You're free to draw your own conclusions, of course, but the impression that I got from learning all this was that this

incident was reported, but for some reason the report never made it high up the ladder, letting it easily go undocumented at a con that, at the time at least, already lacked in record keeping. This lack of record keeping is also probably why there's so much fuzziness around the question of whether or not Dez was fully blacklisted. Based on what Shane and the aforementioned volunteer told me, it seems somewhat unlikely to me that Dez was ever like, fully and officially blacklisted, but I wouldn'

t be shocked to hear if there were miscommunications at some phase that caused some people to think that she was. But that's just the impression that I got. The provable facts of this situation are few, and basically boil down to that there's at least 3 people who claim to remember this happening or being reported, there's no surviving formal documentation of it, though a lack of documentation is typical for A-kon 2017. And as for SoonerCon, it’s unlikely but nonetheless not entirely clear wheth

er or not she had ever volunteered there before then, but at the very least, I can certainly say with confidence that she has not volunteered there since. In the interest of learning more about con operations and securing a contract for Izumicon with SoonerCon’s then-venue, the Reed Center in Midwest City, she, quote, “sorta ish volunteered over in [the] green room, like once for a few hours, on the hotel side of [SoonerCon’s] con ops.” And then as far as Izumicon goes, we know that 2014 was her

second Izumicon overall, and the first Izumicon that she ever volunteered at. She was on the events team, but didn't complete the critical paperwork as needed. So when she applied to volunteer again the next year, she was sent to ops; which, in this context, means that she'd be a door-watcher, so y'know, very little paperwork required. It's unclear what she spent her first few volunteer hours doing, but the reason that she'd become noteworthy, for better or for worse, was because of what she di

d when she was given what's largely seen as one of the most simple tasks that the con had available: to watch the exit of the dealer's room. Now, like I said: this is a pretty easy job that mostly just involves sitting there. Y’know, you can be on your phone, you can chat with people nearby, you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you’re physically present. Like, I cannot stress enough just how low maintenance this task is– in theory, this should not be a problem. Name a yellow fruit

. Orange. This is what Cisco, the then-director of con ops, as well as a few other then-Izumicon directors allege happened: At one point during Dez’s shift, Cisco is told that some people have snuck into the dealer’s room via the exit because nobody’s posted there– and he says, “no, Dez is supposed to be there.” “Yea, well, Dez is gone.” It wasn’t until at least a few minutes after Cisco confirmed that Dez was indeed gone, and who knows how long she’d been gone by that point, anyways, that’s whe

n she finally sent him a text saying that she reached her minimum hour requirement to get her free badge, so she was gonna go enjoy the con. Nobody that I spoke to about this knows for a fact why she did this, but there is some hearsay that she would later tell people that it was because she felt that she had been there for too long, and that no one came to relieve her. But regardless of why, it still created a massive problem for Cisco and the other volunteers. And to make matters even worse, w

hen Cisco checked the volunteer log, he saw that despite what Dez had told him, she was still a few hours short of that minimum requirement. She was then given the option of finishing her shift and actually hitting the requirement or quitting early, and she chose to quit early. Yea, needless to say, Cisco was furious, and he requested that she be blacklisted from volunteering again right then and there. And his request was sort of accepted–in more official language, she was put on probation. Thi

s resulted in her getting rejected from volunteering in guest relations in 2017. And this rejection is interesting, cause we can see Dez saying that she only applied because she spoke to the then guest-relations director at a dinner meeting, where she told Dez that she could always use backups. But the then guest relations director would say to the other Izumicon directors that not only did she never tell this to Dez, but that she also wanted Dez nowhere near her team; so, y’know, eyes emoji. No

body in Izumicon’s directorial circle heard anything new about Dez until several months later, when out-of-the-blue they saw a Facebook post saying that she was the new owner of the convention. ...Yea, you heard me correctly, the same person who was very nearly blacklisted from volunteering at Izumicon was now its new owner, and if that’s caught you off guard, just now, YEA. Just try to imagine how Izumicon’s directors felt about it when they heard the news. In fact, Cisco told me how every sing

le phone call he made to the rest of the ops team to tell them about this went exactly the same: “Hi, it’s Cisco. Okay, remember Dez? Yea, she’s the new owner of the con.” “...What the fuck?” It was a pretty well known fact that Dez was unemployed and rather broke at the time, so yea, confusion and surprise were definitely the initial reactions that all the directors had. In fact, the confusion is still kinda there, because none of the directors that I spoke to seemed to know for an absolute fac

t just how or under what conditions she was sold the con. I’ve been told that the story she would usually tell people when they asked about it was that she planned on paying Marlon and Fasial back over time, presumably with profits from the con. But the key word here is “usually”–I’ve heard other claims like that she said that she paid $10 grand for the con, or that she said she was gonna give Marlon and Faisal a certain percentage of the con's profits each year, y'know stuff that sounds kinda s

imilar, and like they may be able to co-exist, but also they're just different enough that you can't help but feel at least a little skeptical— especially if you know the fate that would befall this con and are therefore blessed with the power of hindsight. And y’know, the worst part of all this is that these weren't even the wildest "Dez-is-not-good-at-describing-how-she-obtained-or-planned-on-obtaning-money" stories that I heard throughout the research process of this video, yea, they’re not e

ven close. No, that dubious honor definitely goes to the weird ways in which Dez described how she was gonna get money to maintain the con. We'll talk more about this later, but Dez didn't seem to have a very strong grasp on what a sponsor was, and how she was gonna get them. That being said, many of the people that I spoke to recall her speaking in one way or another about having some kind of anonymous benefactor who was gonna take care of the con's finances. In fact, two directors allege that

she had privately told the two of them in person that– get this– the con was actually being bankrolled by a certain voice actor who wanted to save it, but this had to stay on the down-low because, well, if this information got out, it could jeopardize her contract. ...wait, what? ...Yea, many people seem to recall hearing Dez say that the aforementioned benefactor was a voice actor who she only sometimes name dropped. And I guess the idea was that this voice actor was gonna bankroll the con thro

ugh Dez because... reasons? A screenshot of a conversation Dez had with a then-friend of hers shows her alleging that the voice actor is giving her the money needed to start her LLC, and talks about him in a way that makes it sound like he’s not unlike a business partner of sorts. There’s another screenshot the then-friend gave me where Dez can be seen alleging that the voice actor’s involvement was limited to giving her $100 for her to start her LLC, and that he was never officially a partner.

For what it's worth though, I have contacted the voice actor in question, they understandably do not wanna be named, and they've denied having any interest or intent on bankrolling Izumicon in any capacity. I didn’t find out about Dez alleging that the voice actor paid for her to start her LLC until considerably after I spoke to the voice actor, and when I tried contacting them again to clarify whether or not they did that, I didn’t get a response. In any case, I've gotten really off-topic, so t

o go ahead and just swerve back to the peculiar issue of precisely how Dez came into owning the con, I asked Faisal about it and he told me, quote, “Dez contacted Marlon and said she was interested and did not want the convention to die. We sold/gave it to her to hope that the con would continue. We were paid 100 dollars for it. So this wasn't a profit motivated sale.” And I wanna make a little footnote here, y’know, just for the sake of clarity– by all accounts this, indeed, was never intended

to be a profit-motivated sale. To pay $100 for the name and IP of a convention the size of Izumicon is 100% not normal. As a matter of fact, really, you wouldn’t be totally off-the-mark if you said that this exchange was more like a conditional giveaway than a sales transaction. I can't go into specifics because I haven't actually seen the contracts– and actually, I'm told by Faisal that I can't see the contract because of clauses within them– but anyways, it's my understanding that contractual

problems, rather than finances, were at the heart of why other potential buyers–or the ones that I spoke to, at the very least– didn't actually go through with it. Obviously I have no way of knowing for sure whether or not Dez's contract was identical to theirs, but at the very least, it seems like Dez's wasn't exactly something that most buyers would consider perfect either, as it had a clause in it that could result in ownership being reverted back to Dyad. According to Faisal, the contract wi

th Dez says that, "If she decided to end the convention and not use the name there is a clause saying [Dyad] could reclaim the name. But ownership is a vague term; Her company still owns the IP. I would still need to reclaim the name and IP through a contract or agreement. I would not gain control of her company, but simply the ability to use the name Izumicon." I've heard just about every theory there is about why this con was given to Dez despite her being an extremely-not-great candidate, but

the most common two among the people who I spoke to about it who were involved with the con tend to be either: A. That finding a new owner was taking way more time and effort than Marlon and Faisal expected, and they just got a point where they just wanted to be done with the whole thing, and Dez was just the first person who threw her hat in the ring who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the details of the contract. And B. That it was a decision fueled by spite toward the older Izumicon

directors, some of whom attempted to “buy” the con but ultimately didn’t because of the contract. To re-emphasize though: both of these are just speculation. For the time being though, I'm more curious about why Dez was interested in owning the con– y'know, did she genuinely feel like she could save it? Did she wrongfully assume that being the owner of a medium-sized con is a super profitable job? Did she just not want someone else to have it? Y'know, maybe she thought it’d be a lot simpler of a

job than it actually was? Or, hey, y’know maybe it was something else all together? I don't know, and in the absence of any word from Dez, perhaps I never will. In fact, I'll also probably never know why she didn't make sure her team was on the same page about how she really came into owning the con. Obviously I can't say with total certainty whether or not anybody outside of she, Marlon, and Faisal knew the truth, but if nothing else, I can say with a lot of confidence that a lot of different

people allege hearing a lot of different stories. At best, you could interpret this as Dez's horrible communication "skills" at work, and that she was just being wildly misunderstood very frequently. But at worst, it’s really easy to look at this and see someone who’s intentionally lying– presumably so they can make it look like their shaky position of leadership is even somewhat credible in the eyes of their team. But, y’know, regardless of how you want to interpret this, it's still really hard

to hear about this and not feel like it’s an ill omen of what’s to come, or something like that. But anyways, before I start rambling too much about this, let’s go ahead and get back to that initial announcement Dez made about her ownership. Once the surprise had time to die down, the next feeling everyone shared was concern– and honestly, can you blame em? I mean, it’s not exactly a huge stretch to be worried when you’re told that you now have to take instructions from someone who has a track

record of not following instructions. In other words, it was INCREDIBLY important for Dez to be able to redeem her image in the eyes of her new team–y’know, your first action upon entering a position of leadership is perhaps your most important, because that’s what’s gonna reveal what your priorities are and it’s gonna give your team a good idea of what to expect from you. So with all that being said, how was Dez going to set the tone for her leadership? How was she going to prove to everyone th

at the almost-blacklisted slacker of 2015 was all in the past? Well, it’s simple: she was gonna have a meal with them. Now, the idea of assembling your team to have a meal together somewhere so you can all talk business… I mean, yea, that should be totally fine. The business lunch is a strategy as old as time; y’know, in theory, this shouldn’t be a problem. I have a banana peel on the ground and I'm gonna see if it's really slippery like it is in the cartoons. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Well, this busines

s lunch–or dinner, rather– did indeed set the tone for what Dez’s leadership was gonna be like, because by all accounts, it was incredibly chaotic. First of all, there was the suddenness of the whole thing–yea, nobody that I spoke to about this could recall getting more than a week’s notice about it, which was kind of a problem because a fair number of the directors didn’t live in or close to OKC. But, Izumicon’s team was nothing if not dedicated– so despite all that, they still managed to be in

OKC that weekend. Where in OKC though, you may be wondering? Uh, well… yea, actually, they were wondering, too. It wasn’t until pretty much the last possible second, according to the aforementioned people that I spoke to about this, that they had any idea where, specifically, they were supposed to be meeting, but that they ultimately settled on a Denny’s that they were dangerously close to filling to capacity since many of the directors had to bring their family members, and then Dez had brough

t along her husband and two of her friends as “her team.” Yea, “crammed” was the second most common word used to describe what this meeting was like– and the first, in case you were wondering, was “disorganized.” Yea, many of the directors could have–and would have, I’m sure–forgiven just how much difficulty Dez had in getting them all in the same spot if Dez had offered them even a single crumb of inspiring leadership; but the directors recall her being really inconsistent throughout this meeti

ng, saying stuff like that she didn’t want to change anything immediately before going on tangents about all the things she wanted to change. Their questions were given non-answers, Dez didn’t seem to have a particularly good understanding of how the con worked, and this is all to say nothing of the experience that she very clearly lacked. And she was–most of it boiled down to, "I really love this con and I want it to succeed." No business plan, no talk of investors, no–no concept of management.

I mean, the, the amount of information lacking was terrifying. By the end of the meeting, the more optimistic directors were thinking… okay, so, y’know, Dez clearly lacks experience and know-how, but, y’know, maybe that’ll encourage her to just leave the heavy lifting to us. Y’know, we can keep doing our jobs the way we always have, and Dez will just kinda be sort of a puppet or a placeholder leader. Yea… yea, maybe we can get this to work out after all. Everyone else, on the other hand, could

only think that Dez was completely and utterly incompetent. Shortly after this meeting, Cisco became the first of Izumicon’s directors to resign under Dez’s leadership–and he actually did so via a video: After about an hour of counsel with a number of close friends as well as the fellow leadership of Izumicon operations I have decided that I will no longer serve as director for Izumicon, nor will I be volunteering in any capacity. I wanted you to know that the crux of my decision is very simple,

and frankly, rests at your feet: I will not follow the leadership of someone who, of their own accord, decided they were not fit to follow my instructions. The basic tenet of security is never abandon your post. You broke that tenet, and you were likewise judged unfit for duty with security. I will not ask my people to follow instructions from me when I have to follow instructions from someone who is not fit to follow my directions. Shortly after recording this, Cisco would record another video

explaining his decision to his fellow volunteers who weren't at the Denny's meeting. He then put the video up on facebook, where it was set to friends only. While the general public would certainly never see this video, a significant number of Izumicon volunteers still did. And even though this video didn’t necessarily spread like wildfire, I still don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this video was still a signal–the first signal, as a matter of fact– that someone more-or-less from the outsi

de looking in could've got that things over at Izumicon... weren't exactly off to a great start. And things were only gonna go downhill from here. Within the following days, weeks, and months of this meeting, many followed Cisco’s example and sent in their resignations as well. But a core team of directors still decided to stay on board. Many of them were asked to take on responsibilities that were normally outside of their roles because of all the resignations. Presumably, this is also why Dez

would at least somewhat frequently try to offer directorial positions to some of her friends and other people involved in various facets of the con. In any case, throughout the planning process of Izumicon 2018, the turnover rate for convention leadership was not insignificant. The cosplay department, for example, proved to be a particularly difficult position to fill, and it was eventually reabsorbed into events and therefore went through three different leaders. But anyways, the bottom line he

re is that throughout the planning of Izumicon 2018, there were a lot of resignations coming from a lot of different people, but there were a few experienced Izumicon directors who toughed it out and decided to stay with the con despite all the extra work. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were effectively following Izumicon into its grave. Hey from Izumicon 2018! I'm [redacted] here to talk to you about everything Izumicon. Guys, this is a big year, and we got a lot of firsts. First thi

ng I wanna talk about, we got a whole new owner! Her name's Dez [redacted], she's worked with Izumicon in the past, she's worked with other conventions, she stepped on as owner of Izumicon this year and she's gonna try to make it a great convention. Planning Izumicon under Dez’s so-called leadership was, by all accounts, an absolute nightmare for everyone. For example, potential congoers can tell you horror stories like about how disingenuous Dez was about blacklisting people from the con–the ir

ony that she herself was very nearly blacklisted only a few years prior was evidently lost on her. Anyways, there were two documented instances where people were blacklisted at least temporarily, and they were both for flimsy and/or unapparent reasons. One was a former volunteer who was also one of the con's potential buyers. The cause given for blacklisting them was because they, quote, "...tried to manipulate [their] way into owning the con and started personal drama." Neither party would conf

irm nor elaborate on the incident at the time, and when I tried reaching out to the volunteer, I didn’t get a response. Anyways, the other instance was with a congoer called AJ. Now, a quick disclaimer. As far as I can tell, Dez was the only person within Izumicon who was at the center of this whole thing from the start. That she's the one who made this decision, seemingly without any input from anyone else within Izumicon until after she did it. And because of that–and because a lot of Izumicon

-related posts from around this time have been wiped from the internet, but more on that later–I didn't really have a lot of hard evidence to go off of for this incident. For example, there's only one surviving email I was shown about this, and while it's not explicit about banning AJ from the event itself, it is explicit about blocking her from the Izumicon social media, and that no one outside of Dez had much specific info to go off of while this was happening. Nonetheless, AJ is under the imp

ression that she was at least temporarily blacklisted from the event, and another director who I spoke to who was eventually roped into all this also believes that AJ was meant to have been blacklisted from the event. So with that outta the way, what happened? Well, in AJ's words,“At the end I was allowed back and not blacklisted as it had no grounds. [Dez] believed I made a nasty criticism about the con and posted in the [Izumicon facebook group]. Then wouldn’t tell me what the comment was and

just blocked me and blacklisted me. But if the staff felt that I was just being negative, no one said so. All of this action was done with no communication towards me." Now, for context, AJ wasn't exactly just some completely random congoer, no; AJ was actually a former con volunteer. I've been asked not to go into specifics, and those details are frankly irrelevant to this story anyways, so suffice to say, AJ loved the con, but she was, in the eyes of a lot of Izumicon's leadership, a handful.

So then, was Dez just looking for an excuse, no matter how flimsy, to not have to deal with AJ? Was she trying to inspire fear among people who might've otherwise criticized the con? Was this whole thing just a misunderstanding? Or maybe, was this just a knee jerk reaction that went too far? It's... hard to tell for sure. But judging by the fact that the decision was soon reversed, I'm hoping-slash-guessing that means that somehow, Dez at least eventually agreed that she was being unfair to AJ.

Nonetheless, this whole thing became a bit of a spectacle, and didn't exactly leave a good impression of Dez to those in Izumicon's community who watched it unfold. And then there’s the directors and volunteers who stuck around, whose Dez-related horror stories are a thousand times worse. For example, my personal favorite comes from the con’s Rapid Response Team leader, who alleges that at some stage, Dez told the venue that Izumicon’s security was FULLY ARMED. As a matter of fact, let me go ahe

ad say that one more time just for emphasis: IT'S BEEN ALLEGED THAT DEZ TOLD THE VENUE THAT IZUMICON HAD FULLY. ARMED. SECURITY. Yea, assuming this allegation is true, then beyond being a huge mistake at best or blatant lie at worst, Dez telling this to the venue also could’ve turned into a MASSIVE liability if the rapid response team leader hadn’t corrected it. And there’s another story that I think all of you are gonna be particularly interested in, and that’s about how Dez got a videographer

to help with the con’s marketing–and part of that marketing involved recording interviews with some of Izumicon’s would-be guests. But because the con, well, imploded, most of these interviews just never got published–and the only one that did get published, the one with Jad Saxton, was promptly taken down and now only exists as an unlisted YouTube video. [clip] But as wild as all that is, I think nothing encapsulates the chaos of Dez’s “leadership” quite as well as the messy story of Izumicon’s

promotional art contest. So here’s what happened: when Dez got Izumicon, the con lost its rights to its mascot character, Izumi. And I guess Dez wasn’t privy to the fact that–hey! Art costs money to make, and especially when it’s art that’s gonna be plastered all over your con’s marketing materials… yea, odds are, it’s gonna cost you a good chunk of change. An anonymous would-be attendee alleges having seen Dez posting in the Artist Alley International facebook group, asking about what would be

a fair price for such art, and being shocked that she was told to expect no less than a few hundreds of dollars. This lines up pretty well with what Carnival Grotesque, another artist who we’ll talk more about in just a moment, told me–that, quote, “Dez asked me what sort of prices she should be expecting from artists she commissioned. Apparently, everyone she spoke to had "exorbitant prices." I explained that it was best practice to add additional fees to commission prices if your art is going

to be used for promotional material (because artists lose revenue while the company using it gains revenue by using their art). She grumbled about it and asked what my prices would be (Spoilers: they would normally be SUPER high).” So now, faced with the reality that, well, art costs money, the Artist Alley Director alleges that Dez decided that she wanted Izumicon to do what every other corporate machine who wants art but doesn’t wanna pay for it does: to throw a contest and let the winner get

paid with the privilege of having their art featured by the con, as well as two special event tickets–yea, not con badges, but special event tickets so, y’know, basically they’d be getting free add-ons to their badges, but not their actual badges–yea, Dez still wanted them to pay for those. Foreshadowing alert: Dez not wanting to give away free badges, even to people who should normally get them, is gonna be a recurring element in this story. But yea, to get back to the contest prize, in case i

t wasn’t already obvious, this is all just a dressed up way of saying that the winning artists were gonna get paid with exposure, which itself is a dressed up way of saying that they wouldn’t get paid. Despite her concerns about the whole thing, Ashley, Izumicon’s Artist Alley Director, was given the task of operating the contest but unfortunately that didn’t really stop Dez from trying to involve herself throughout the process anyways. Yea, this is where things get messy: So, originally the con

test was supposed to end on Halloween 2017–and it did, and the winner was an artist called Via That One Artist. Except, she was supposed to be one of two winners, and a second winner hadn’t been picked, presumably because there were so few entries–yea, can’t imagine why people weren’t lining up to enter. Huh. Weird. Who’da thunk it. Anyways, shortly after Via is contacted congratulating her on her win, Izumicon announces that it’s just extending the art contest–which at this point, everyone thou

ght it had already ended, so a lot of people just saw this as a second contest all together. Although I don’t think this was made public information at the time–y’know, it’s possible that it got posted on Facebook at some point and left unarchived, but even if that’s the case, then that would mean that this was only mentioned on Facebook–but anyways, the only difference was that now the prize was being slightly upgraded: the winner would now get a free table in the artists alley and two weekend

badges, and luckily, yea, Via’s prize was getting upgraded as well. Foreshadowing alert: Dez eventually relenting on giving free badges to the people who’d normally get them is also a recurring element in this story. But anyways, while this upgrade was definitely a step in the right direction, make no mistake: this is still a far cry from fair payment for doing so much of the con’s official art. Nonetheless, the contest continued. Fast forward to late November. Dez sends a message to Carnival Gr

otesque about a post she was gonna make in the Artist Alley International group. The post was about Izumicon’s art contest, basically saying, “Yea, we need a lot of art, we're running a contest, but I don't think that's gonna be enough." She goes on to say that she's consulted with other artists, that she can't afford them, and that she was wondering if anyone in the group would offer some kind of affordable commission package deal. As a side note, I asked Via if she had any idea that Dez was do

ing this and she said: "I did not know about this. I had felt like after "winning" that contest that my art would have been finally used in a professional sort of way which was a dream at the time. But finding this out is kind of a slap in the face. [But if she was worrying about my work load, rather than the quality of my art] I can definitely see her point. But rest assured I was and still kind of am an artist with a pretty quick turnaround so the load wasn't much of a concern at the time for

me." I then asked if she would've preferred to have been paid with money for her work for Izumicon if she had the option, and she said, "I went into the contest expecting a prize if I had won to be a table and the art being used as promotional and whatnot. As weird as it might sound I'm not sure. If they came to me wanting to commission me, sure. I would have taken the money. Money wasn't the biggest thing to me at the time, but the idea of getting my stuff used professionally was. So my past se

lf would have probably wanted to still have the table and my art used." In any case, the post received one reply that would particularly stand out–one from a local artist called Purrwitch who'd been wanting to visit Izumicon and offered to help in exchange for an artist alley table and two badges. Ultimately, Izumicon would end up taking her up on this offer a few months later–more specifically, she'd be asked to handle the t-shirt designs. But in the meantime, another artist won the "second con

test" which ended on December 3, and for a while, it really seemed like Izumicon finally had a plan ready for who was gonna do what, regarding art. ...Or, y’know, at least, that would’ve been the case if Dez hadn’t got into contact with another artist and childhood friend of hers, Carnival Grotesque. More specifically, the problem was that she did this without any input from Ashley. So when Dez told Carnival to contact Ashley for more details, Ashley didn’t know what to tell them because Dez had

left Ashley completely out of the loop on this decision. Ashley recalled to me that, “It was honestly a huge mess because Dez would communicate one thing to me then turn around and, like she had completely forgotten we had it planned out already, would go off on her own thing and I'd have to respond to people she had contacted and basically tell them we already had it covered.” There was an idea, at some stage, to let Carnival do the site art, but the person who found "create Izumicon website"

added to their already overwhelmed list of responsibilities ("Dez said there were no funds to hire someone for the task.") opted for a bare bones design. And so, with all the other tasks accounted for, there was just nothing left for Carnival to do. And so, despite the promises that Dez had made, Carnival was told that their art wouldn’t be needed and that they’d have to pay for their artist alley table at Izumicon after all if they still wanted one. Carnival’s contact with Ashley had been prett

y limited up until this point, so understandably, this left them feeling pretty frustrated. As for Via, Purrwitch, and the second winner, well, although their art was still gonna be used–or at least, that was the plan–unfortunately, all their work would end up going to waste, but I don’t wanna get too ahead of myself. Bottom line, this whole situation was a mess. And remember: This is only one of many similar stories that pretty much anyone who stayed at Izumicon can tell you if you ask them abo

ut what kind of a leader Dez was. Whether or not Dez herself was under any illusions about the quality of her guidance is unclear, but she did at least seem to be aware that even early on, there was a lot of distrust toward her from Izumicon’s old guard–and y’know, in fairness, she was right about that much. After that meeting at Denny’s, the bar for her leadership was remarkably low. But even so, nothing could’ve prepared anyone for what she was about to do next. So, by the time August 2018, ak

a “the month of the con” rolled around, Dez knew that the con still owed a lot of money. To be more specific, Dez didn't give the precise details to everybody–in fact, her go-to line when asked about finances seemed to just be, "money is tight"–but based on surviving screenshots of budgetary info and a message that Dez sent on July 30, the con needed somewhere between 30 and 40 grand to happen. The con, however, had only collected a little over $20 grand from Square and Eventbrite, the third-par

ty ticket vendors from which prospective vendors and attendees respectively could buy their tables and badges. A semi-secret emergency meeting was called on August 4, but by that point, there really wasn't a lot that anybody could do. The con was still several thousands of dollars short, and Dez had failed to secure any paid sponsorships for the con–and that included both Loot & XP and Unlocked, both of whom it's been alleged that Dez attempted to get sponsorships from. It also possibly included

Midwest City's Convention and Visitors Bureau, who Dez alleged in the email about her aforementioned horror con that never really went anywhere, was giving at least $500 to Izumicon. That being said, despite what she says in the email, I could find no mention of them on archives of Izumicon 2018’s site. I emailed the person she claimed to be her contact within the Bureau, but I never got a response. But going back to Loot& XP and Unlocked since there’s more to talk about there, Loot & XP's is t

he less complicated of the two stories, so we'll go ahead and start with it; so, basically, they were a local game store who helped run and supply Izumicon's tabletop room for a couple of years. In exchange, they were basically treated as volunteers; y'know, they got free badges, they could hang out in the staff areas, all that good stuff. Allegedly, the first time that Loot's owner, DC, heard about the con going under new ownership is when one of the old directors told em that Dez was bad news.

Yea, definitely not a good first impression, but unfortunately, one that would be telling of the rocky experience Loot would have with her. DC wouldn't receive any kind of official word from Izumicon until November of 2017, when he got a message from one of the newer directors asking if he'd heard anything yet–which, well, he hadn't heard anything particularly concrete. Yea, turns out, there was a lot of confusion surrounding someone getting back to him, but it was settled now, at least. Never

of a fan of documentation much to my dismay, Dez later invited DC to an in-person meeting in February; DC's gave me the disclaimer that at the time of our talking about this, he was receiving treatment for a memory disorder, though he doesn't recall much getting done at this meeting because allegedly Dez was preoccupied with watching a child pretty much the entire time. Dez would therefore conduct most of her business with Loot & XP via a phone call with DC and his business partner. DC further a

lleges that Dez wanted Loot to sponsor Izumicon, and tried to get him to pay for both his badge and the badges of anyone else within Loot who was gonna be at the con. He said no, of course, and told her that this hasn't been the way his relationship with Izumicon ever worked. Dez eventually relented, and said that Loot could be a sponsor for the con without actually having to pay for it. She'd also later say in a facebook message that DC's business partner couldn't be present in future phone cal

ls; yea, a peculiar choice which DC attributes to the fact that his business partner "takes zero BS" which is probably why, in his opinion, Dez didn't like him very much. In any case, at its core, DC’s claim more or less boils down to highly questionable leadership on Dez’s part that could’ve been resolved easily if she had even a pinch of experience or know-how, which is very much the experience that I had with Dez at the time, too, actually, so personally, I find DC’s story incredibly believab

le. [semi-related tangent time “ugh.” - me, throughout this whole process, 2018] So I sent an email to Ladder–y'know, to Dez–in February 2018 because I heard that the con was under new ownership, and I couldn’t help but notice that despite the con being 6 months away, there was still no info on the site about panel apps. I was also wondering about how Dez intended to reimburse panelists; namely, I was wondering if she was either gonna keep doing what Izumicon had been doing–or at least the year

prior–and only giving free badges to panelists who did 6 hours or more worth of panels, if she was gonna do what a lot of larger cons do and give free badges to every panel organizer and then maybe a set number of co-panelists, or if she had a different plan all together. She replies to me a few days later with a link to a Google doc which didn't answer my reimbursement question. So I ask again. She says, "We will be resuming this policy." I do not know which policy she is referring to, and I as

k her to be more clear. Finally, and with information contradicting what was in the doc but I'm thinking that, y’know, she's the owner and I can screenshot this so whatever, anyways, she tells me that any panelist doing even one panel will get a free badge. Awesome. Fast forward to June. I recently got back from being out of town for a while, I got a new job, I was really busy, and in the midst of all this, I just kinda goofed up and missed the deadline for panel applications. I sent an email as

king if I could put in a late application–after all, the deadline had only passed about a week ago at that point, so I figured it was worth a shot. A month passes before I hear anything back, at which point a brand new event director tells me that the deadline for panel apps is being extended. I didn't know this at the time, but evidently it was almost certainly because Izumicon received remarkably fewer panels apps that year than it had in previous years. Yea, can't imagine why. Anyways, I'm to

ld that I can do my panel apps via email, and I do, and then I ask how they wanna handle getting my badge information. The event director tells me that the con's new owner–y’know, that Dez–was making it a new policy this year that panelists would basically just be a different flavor of volunteer, meaning that they needed to put in at least 18 hours of work before they could qualify for a free badge, and that my panels would only count toward 6 of those hours. This could not be any more opposite

of what Dez had told me several months earlier if it tried. Now, obviously, by this point, I'd heard through the grapevine that Dez wasn't exactly a well full of experience from which the con was now drawing generously from, but still, this was the moment wheree that all became real to me; it was where her lack of experience simply could not have been less subtle, even if it "painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing 'Dez is inexperienced '." Luckily for me, I had a

screenshot of the owner of the con–y’know, of Dez–telling me that anyone doing a panel gets a free badge, and I showed this to the event director–who, in hindsight, I feel really bad for because this simply could not have been any fun to deal with, new to the position or not. Anyways, the event director gets back to me saying that Dez says that I can have a Saturday-only badge for free–something that I remember thinking was really weird, because the con wasn't selling single-day badges on EventB

rite. But y’know regardless, I say, awesome: In that case, please go ahead and schedule any panels I have that make it into the con on Saturday, but then, a few days later, the con made a now-lost announcement via facebook that panelists who applied before a certain date would get free weekend-long badges. I ask if that includes me, and say that my panels can be scheduled for whatever day if it does, and lo and behold it did include me, and that was sort of that. The last thing I’d hear from the

con was an email on August 6 saying that the schedule would be up soon, but as you can probably imagine, nothing ever seemed to come of that. And just like with DC, this whole situation felt… I dunno, I don’t wanna blow this outta proportion and say that it was totally unacceptable behavior–cause it wasn’t, y’know, stuff happens–but being there, you could definitely tell that there was a weird vibe within Izumicon, that there were probably some internal issues surrounding communication and Dez’

s increasingly obvious lack know-how, y’know? [tangent end] In any case, the bottom line here–the point of me telling you all that–is that the idea of DC basically having to tell Dez how Loot's relationship with Izumicon worked in previous years–a relationship that probably would've been pretty easy to predict even with a little bit of experience, y'know, most cons have tabletop rooms, after all–and then Dez eventually relenting to giving away free badges after trying to squeeze any penny she co

uld get from someone who otherwise wouldn't and shouldn't be paying for a badge, yea, I noticed a lot of similarities in our stories, so even though he doesn't have many screenshots, I find his story pretty believable. Furthermore, it reminds me of yet another similar story by Jaden–a would-be member of the press at Izumicon—who had emails to back up his story. Essentially, Dez had pre-approved a press badge for him almost a year in advance to vlog at the event, but lo and behold, that didn’t se

em to work out either, as only a few weeks before the con he was told by Izumicon’s press director that the press team was full, so while he couldn’t get a badge, he could still attend as a regular attendee. Even though, y’know, Dez promised him a pre-approved press badge. I don’t know if this was rooted in a problem on Dez’s end, the press director’s end, a mix of both, or maybe even something else all together, but it’s nonetheless consistent with this, well, what appears to be a sort of patte

rn of misunderstandings and miscommunications surrounding badges. But before I veer too off-topic again, yea, so that’s the story about Loot’s experience with Izumicon–and mine and Jaden’s for that matter, but it’s my video so I’ll do what I want–but anyways, despite all that, things were still much more complicated when it came to the other alleged possible sponsor, Unlocked. Yea, brace yourself for this one: so, Unlocked was a short lived platform for voice actors to stream and interact with t

heir fans, and it was still pretty new at this point–it launched back in 2017. When asked about it, Dez’s contact within Unlocked couldn’t remember how, precisely, talks about getting Unlocked to stream at Izumicon began, but at some stage during late 2017 or early 2018, well, this happened. The idea was that Unlocked would stream some panels, some exclusive content would be made, everyone would have a great time, and the whole thing would just be a wonderful success. As a matter of fact, check

this out, that’s why those aforementioned interviews that never saw the light of day were made! They were supposed to get posted on Unlocked. [clip] A lot of the finer details of this deal have become lost because like the seeming majority of the rest of the con's planning, Dez seemed to prefer conducting business over the phone, via skype calls, and in-person meetings; so, y'know, ways that wouldn't leave any physical proof. And that, in addition to the small number of people that Dez involved

in making this deal "happen", made this peculiar part of Izumicon's story especially difficult to navigate. Nonetheless, I'll do my best to tell you what I can. So, it's unclear how many people she said this to, but there is physical evidence of Dez talking about getting a sponsorship from Unlocked at least once. And yet when I spoke to her contact within Unlocked, their exact words when asked if there was ever any intention for Unlocked to give money to Izumicon were, and I quote, “Hell no.” Ba

sed on a message that she sent to the the videographer on August 6th, Dez’s claim seemed to be that Unlocked had been planning on sponsoring Izumicon, but that at some point she criticized the app's then-current viability, and that her contact took this to heart and shared it to others within Unlocked, and that it, uh... had such a profound effect that it prompted them to rework the app from scratch. And only weeks before the con, no less. And that, in addition to the app's then-iOS exclusivity,

is why Izumicon received no financial support from Unlocked. Her contact said that they would speak to investors about finding some other way of supporting the con, but nothing ever seemed to come of that. Meanwhile, Dez's contact within Unlocked's claim is that they never had any intention of sponsoring the con or giving it money in any capacity; and they were really confused about how Dez might've reached the conclusion that they were. So. Fact: there's a lot of variation when it comes to con

s organizing sponsorship contracts, and a lot of it varies based on the size of the con, and the level of the sponsorship. That being said, I spoke to a few people who've worked on the con side and brand side of organizing con sponsorships, and here's a couple of general takeaways that I got: For starters, larger sponsorships are almost exclusively made at LEAST several months in advance–and in some especially high-level cases, it can even be over a year in advance via multi-year contracts. And

on the flip side of that, lower level sponsorships, while it's generally advised for their own sake that they can organize a sponsorship at least a few months in advance, some cons can be pretty flexible about making sponsorships happen relatively last minute if they need to. And the smaller the con, the more flexible they're likely to be. When contracts are drawn up, the payment is usually either up-front, or made within 30-90 days of the contract being signed. We know based on the would-be Unl

ocked interviews and a screenshot of an ultimately unused messenger group chat that Dez made for everyone involved in this deal that Unlocked and Izumicon were, y’know in at least sort of in contact with each other over 6 months in advance of the con; if Unlocked really was meant to be a sponsor, then there was plenty of time for contracts to be drawn up and for money to be paid. Opinion: Dez's story, just, in general is extremely naive to the point of being outlandish, but it's especially so in

the way it paints how sponsorship relationships work–namely, in that in her story, Unlocked just kinda is able to say, "hey, jk, we're not gonna support the con after all" literally weeks before the event despite several months of contact, and then they can just decide that they're no longer gonna give the con money even though under normal circumstances, they would've signed a contract and paid by now. Furthermore, there's seemingly no repercussions for them doing this, and not even a promise

that they’ll sponsor the con the next year instead or something like that. Dez's story gives off the vibes of someone who doesn't know anything about sponsorship organization making some kinda fanciful guess at how it works, but y’know, at the end of the day, it's exactly that: it’s a fanciful guess. And in this case, it certainly doesn't seem like an accurate one. Allegation: The videographer I mentioned earlier was present on either one or two calls with Dez and Unlocked and recalled to me tha

t, “She said there was money, and they would be a sponsor. But in the one or two calls I had with her Unlocked contact, it was never discussed; They just said that they wanted to stream there, and they also wanted us to put all our promo videos on there. I don't recall her contact mentioning the "sponsorship.”” Fact: even from the start, an Android version seemed to at least be something on Unlocked's radar. Although Unlocked's Android version wouldn't launch until December of 2018, sign-ups to

participate in an eventual beta could be made as early as Unlocked's launch month, September of 2017. Said Unlocked co-founder Bryce Papenbrook in an interview with ANN in February 2018, "We're bringing some really awesome content to the app, and we are in mid-development on an Android release. I would say one of the biggest requests we're getting is to come out with this app for Android, and it's just all a work in progress." Opinion: The idea that Dez's criticism of Unlocked was so meaningful

that it prompted the app to rework itself from scratch seems... extremely unlikely, to put it nicely. Furthermore, everyone at Unlocked knew that it was in iOS-exclusive from the start–y’know, somehow, the idea that they had only just then become suddenly aware of this and then wanted to back out of supporting the con because of this, seems... also extremely unlikely to put it nicely. Also, literally where did this “70% of potential users” number come from? Like, literally where? Is this suppose

d to be potential users in general, or potential users within Izumicon? Either way, Dez, cite your source. Allegation: According to Dez's Unlocked contact, the app's then-iOS exclusivity had nothing to do with why they would or wouldn't have been at the con. It had nothing to do with exclusivity, and everything to do with talks that just never progressed at the speed Unlocked needed them to, and then eventually the news that the con, well, imploded, but let's not get too ahead of ourselves. When

asked about whether or not Unlocked would’ve been at the con in the event that it, y’know, happened, her contact said “maybe.” In any case, regardless of how you wanna interpret what I've nicknamed The Unlocked Arc, the bottom line here is nonetheless that money was tight, and that despite what Dez was hoping, Izumicon wouldn’t be getting any financial support from Unlocked–or Loot & XP, for that matter. The con was effectively still at square one–which is a dangerous place to be with less than

a month until the event. Tell you what makes it even more dangerous is when you think you’re at square one when you’re actually even further back than that–and unfortunately, they didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly where Izumicon's leadership was at the time. Let's get back to that meeting on August 4. It was becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that the con was having money problems, but nobody had an idea how bad things truly were. Different people became suspicious of Dez at

different times, but this seems to be the turning point where even people who wanted to believe in Dez... were starting to see things differently. And what do I mean by that? Per documentation shared with me by a former Izumicon director, Dez was the only person with access to Izumicon's funding. The money made via Eventbrite and Square was forwarded to a bank account owned and operated by her–nobody else could pull money from it. And worth mentioning, by the way, even by the time the meeting h

appened, Dez had already pulled money from it–more specifically, there's records of her using Izumicon money on her phone bill, an Amazon prime subscription, and a car. Allegedly she justified these purchases by saying that she needed them to run the con, and presumably due to her unemployment, she couldn't afford them without dipping into the con's money. And assuming that's true, then I'm sure then maybe there was some truth to that, and that's probably why nobody really argued with her about

it at the time, though silently they were still very concerned. But that concern became amplified when, in the months leading up to the meeting, Izumicon's directors couldn't help but notice all the facebook posts about all the vacations she was going on and all the new tattoos she was getting. More specifically, their concern centered around how she was suddenly able to afford all these things. So now that you know that, you can probably understand why Izumicon's directors felt suspicious of De

z when they allegedly started noticing that money that the con should've had... simply didn't seem to be there. Furthermore, those that I spoke to about this meeting in detail recalled an incident where two parties had offered to loan Izumicon a very significant amount of money under the condition that Dez show them exactly what happened to the money that the con had already collected. But Dez, to everyone's immense confusion, wouldn't do it, effectively shutting down Izumicon's best chance at g

etting the money it needed for reasons that nobody could seem to comprehend. In fact, it's been alleged that when people would ask her about what happened to the money, she'd do anything from giving a dismissive and un-specific answer, to saying to talk to her lawyer. Screenshots of conversations Dez had with a then-friend around this time show Dez talking about not having to surrender the receipts if she doesn’t want to, which she very much doesn’t seem like she does; in fact, she goes so far a

s to say that she has, quote, “Nothing to hide” right before alluding to, “Something [she] admitted and didn’t hide.” Presumably, that something is spending Izumicon’s money; in fact, she’d plainly say in another message to that then-friend that she, “personally spent some money and was honest about it.” She claims to have spent $1800 of the con’s money. This is the same amount that surviving documentation given to me by a former Izumicon director has listed for Dez’s claimed expenses. So it’s w

ithout question then that Dez definitely spent at least $1800 of Izumicon’s money. It’s impossible to say for absolute certain whether or not she spent more than that, but in light of all the evidence against her, that seemed to be the conclusion that most, if not all, the directors reached at the meeting. And to be clear, it’s a very logical conclusion to reach: Dez was the only person with access to the money, Dez seems to be spending quite a bit of money lately, and Dez already had a proven h

istory of spending money that was meant for the con. Y’know, you don’t exactly need to be Sherlock Holmes for this. But regardless of the specifics of the meeting, everyone seems to have left it feeling a huge sense of dread. The bottom line was that the con didn’t have the money it needed, and even by her own admission Dez had spent at least $1800 of the money that was supposed to be for the con. The Izumicon directors felt more in-the-dark about how Dez was handling the con's inner workings th

an ever, and the con was only weeks away. And worst of all, things were still only gonna get worse from here. Everyone that I spoke to about this general time period for the con claims that it’s around this time that they stopped getting any kind of contact or response from Dez. That she started ghosting all of em. And sure enough, screenshots of a conversation between Dez and a then-friend show Dez saying that she’s “going dark” and getting a lawyer. And looking through my own documentation of

the con and other documents that others have shown me, August 6 and 7 seemto have been the last few days where contact from the directors to people like panelists or would-be members of the press seemed even somewhat normal. But the directors were trying to navigate an increasingly difficult situation, and very quickly, they’d realize that they didn’t exactly have a lot of options left. Allegedly, they considered taking out a personal loan to cover the venue, but they soon realized that they wou

ldn’t have money left for other expenses like hotel rooms, shirts, and badges. One of the directors told me, “We (minus Dez) couldn't in good conscience allow a supporter to loan the con money when he wasn't likely to get any of it back.” So finally, on August 11, the directors did the only thing they felt they still could: they resigned. According to one of them in a then-public post they'd make about it almost a week later, "All the directors found out something was going on when we were askin

g what was taking so long to get answers back for our budgets, the quotes we had gotten and contracts that still had not been signed when the owner finally said "Nope, not giving you any info, talk to my lawyer" and went dark. We couldn't get in touch with her for over a week so we all decided to resign because we didn't want any legal backlash coming back to us for something that was completely out of our control. We aren't part of the LLC that owns Izumicon. We aren't partners with the owner.

We don't have access to any records and can't make any official announcements without the owner's consent because of fear of legal backlash. We are just volunteers, we can't do ANYTHING." And so, they edited the website to list all of the directorial roles as completely vacant, and with heavy hearts, they washed their hands of this convention. Pretty much the only other signal that anyone else was immediately given that something had happened were resignation emails from directors like Ashley wh

o had to tell their contacts about their resignations, though they weren’t specific about the details. One of these emails, however, mentioned that the official announcement would be posted on Monday, August 13th, but that for legal reasons, they wouldn’t go into detail on what happened. And speaking of “legal reasons,” or more specifically the fear of legal ramifications, as was mentioned earlier, as was mentioned earlier that’s why nobody in Izumicon’s directorial circle said anything else abo

ut this publicly until later on; the con was Dez's responsibility at the end of the day, and with their resignations, they were no longer in a position to speak on behalf of Izumicon in an official capacity. But despite all this, that still doesn't necessarily mean that they were totally silent about this either. For starters, DC from Loot & XP quickly got contacted by not just one, but two of the newly-former directors. The first one to contact him did so via WhatsApp, which he can no longer ac

cess, but he did still have screenshots from the second one to contact him: "I'll be honest, you don't want to be associated with Izumicon. Not at this point. Trust me on this." with the context of knowing what happened that very day, these are very haunting messages to get–and he wasn't the only one to get messages like these, either. Perhaps the most interesting one was reportedly sent to Aislinn, SoonerCon's then-chairwoman, who recalls Dez seeking her out for advice around this time. More sp

ecifically, the precise timing of this conversation is a little fuzzy because she didn't save screenshots and this conversation took place via text message so they've long since been deleted, but Amber–more specifically, SoonerCon's director of communications, yea, there’s a surprising number of Ambers in the local con-organizing community but I digress–this Amber recalls hearing Aislinn talk about these about these messages at the time, and frankly I'm inclined to believe them both since the id

ea that Dez sought advice, especially from Aislinn, really doesn't seem too unusual–especially remembering not just Dez's inexperience, but also the fact that Dez volunteered at SoonerCon in 2017. In any case, here's what Aislinn alleges happened: Basically, Dez approached her, asking for advice because, well obviously things weren't going so well. Aislinn suggested issuing refunds, getting a lawyer, and filing for bankruptcy. Dez didn't like this idea for two reasons: one, she felt that the con

's current problems were her team's fault for leaving, and two, she just didn't have the money to issue refunds. This confused Aislinn, and she asked Dez what happened to the money, and sure enough, that's when Dez stopped responding to her as well. But in addition to unique situations like those of DC and Aislinn, a handful of miscellaneous people–most of whom were involved in various facets of Izumicon–received anonymously-sourced messages saying that all the directors resigned, but the main o

ne that got spread around to the public was one that was sent on the 13th–y'know, the day that it was believed Dez would make a formal cancellation announcement. Nobody seems to know for an absolute fact just who sent these messages, but given their timing and knowledge of the situation, I think it's a reasonable assumption that it was either one of the directors, or perhaps someone close to their circle. But y’know honestly, it really doesn't matter exactly who sent these messages, because rega

rdless of their source, their effect was still the same: these messages in tandem with all the other weird signals that everyone was getting from the con gave the would-be attendees plenty of reasons to start asking questions. Or y’know what, actually, it’s more accurate to say that they would’ve been asking questions if Dez had let them: It was around this time that Izumicon’s Eventbrite page stopped letting people buy tickets, people who tried posting in the Izumicon facebook group were either

having their posts deleted or not approved, emails were either ignored or given non-answers, and people who wanted to speak directly to the con’s registered owner, Ladder Entertainment, were shocked to find that the company was listed as “permanently closed.” Also suspicious was how Izumicon’s facebook group for volunteers was renamed and deleted, but I’ve been told that, at the very least, wasn’t Dez’s doing–that was actually one of the directors. In any case, as you’ve probably already pieced

together, yea, despite everything, the 13th came and went without any official word from Izumicon-slash-Dez. A few other people made warning posts about the con’s inevitable cancellation, and perhaps the most notable among these posts was one made by a then-friend of Dez’s–one of the newer directors who would’ve recently resigned–saying that, make no mistake, this con was cancelled–Dez just won’t make an announcement “until she figures out how to handle this situation.” When, exactly, that migh

t be, they had no idea. At this point, it was painfully obvious for those keeping tabs on the situation that this con was simply dead. With only a few weeks left til the weekend it was supposed to happen, there were no directors, no schedule, no organization, and at the rate they were announcing their own cancellations, pretty soon the con wouldn’t have any guests left, either. Yea, let’s go ahead and talk about this for just a moment, so, originally, in addition to Justin Nimmo (he’s the silver

Power Ranger for Power Rangers in Space), the con was supposed to have five voice guests: there was Morgan Berry, Jad Saxton, J. Michael Tatum, Austin Tindle, and Barry Yandell. The first two to cancel were J.Michael Tatum and Morgan Berry, who'd been double-booked by Saboten Con and SacAnime respectively. Tatum tweeted that he sent his cancellation as early as March, and I've spoken to Morgan Berry, who alleged that she sent in hers in as early as February, and that she sent it to both her age

nt and directly to Dez. And why Dez, and not an official guest relations director, you may be wondering? Well, Izumicon's old guest relations director was among the first few directors to leave once Dez took over, and claims to have left early enough to have 0 involvement in any capacity for booking any of the 2018 guests. The con's next official guest relations director claims to not have been given the position until 3-4 months before the con happened, and according to her, all but one of the

con's would-be guests had already been booked by that point. She further claims that she never spoke to Berry or Tatum the entire time she was with the con–something that, A, fits with the idea that Berry and Tatum had sent in their cancellation notices pretty early on and therefore didn't think that they had a need to talk to someone from the con so many months later, and B, Berry has vouched for this by virtue of alleging that outside of the unpublished Unlocked interview, that Dez was the onl

y person within Izumicon that she can recall speaking to about her appearance there. So, y’know, in short, if these claims are to be believed–and personally, I have no reason to doubt them–then that would mean that Dez–who we know had previously expressed a lot of interest in guest relations–was acting as the con's unofficial guest relations in at least some capacity for the majority of the con’s planning. So yea, you can probably guess what's gonna happen next. According to Morgan, Dez seemed t

o prefer communicating with her via Facebook, so she'd send her cancellation notice to Dez via a now-inaccessible Facebook message sometime in February… and then she'd simply never hear anything from Dez ever again–and Tatum's tweets suggest that he had a similar experience; that after allegedly sending his cancellation notice in March, he just wouldn't get a response. Worth noting, by the way, is that he had already been added to Saboten Con's guest list as early as January 9–and as for Morgan,

she'd be officially added to SacAnime's guest list on March 16. In other words, while we may not have precise dates, it seems extremely evident that both of them would've had to have been aware of their double-bookings pretty early on. So the idea that they sent their cancellation notices so early on, yea, that seems pretty reasonable to me. And yet despite this, the con wouldn't announce their cancellations and remove them from the site's guest list until July–so what was going on? While Dez w

asn't the one in charge of editing the website, she didn't seem to tell the person who was that Berry and Tatum needed to be removed from the guest list until mid-June. I asked a few guest relations staffers from various cons about how long it usually takes to announce guest cancellations, and I was told that a lot of it will depend on things like the reason for the cancellation, the size of the con, the gravity of the guest, how soon it is before the con, y'know plenty of variables that make th

is question really tricky to answer. That they happen as soon as possible, nonetheless, seemed to be the go-to answer. And that although that can mean different things to different cons depending on the circumstances, taking weeks–let alone months–to announce a known guest cancellation is 100% not normal. Kat Callahan, a journalist who covers anime and Japan more generally and has served in various convention positions including guest relations positions from the late 90s to the mid-2010s, specu

lated about it, "Assuming this was a major guest, I would speculate, without significant evidence to the contrary, that such a delay would be to avoid hemorrhaging refunds." In a screenshot of a conversation between Dez and a then-friend, Dez can be seen asking for help because the talent agent knows that J. Michael Tatum and Morgan Berry cancelled months ago, and is saying that not announcing their cancelations earlier is fraudulent. To which Dez says, “Which is true, but not in a sketchy way l

ike everybody is going to think.” Y’know, as though there’s a non-sketchy—non-fraudulent—reason to not announce this sooner. She goes on to allege that while there were, “several factors” involved in the delayed cancellation announcement, the main one is wanting to book a replacement guest which didn’t work out; she alleges that her contact’s subordinate, who had been managing negotiations for a prospective replacement guest, suddenly quit, and it’s therefore the fault of the agency. Whether or

not there’s any truth to this, I couldn’t verify. But just so we’re clear, even if that is true, it doesn’t stop the fact that her not announcing the cancellations sooner is still, well, false advertising and fraudulent. And their cancellations should’ve been announced with or without a replacement. But ultimately, Berry and Tatum wouldn't get removed from the site's guest list until sometime between July 1 and 6. And for reasons I can only speculate, the announcement wouldn’t get made until Jul

y 14th via a Facebook post, and then a tweet about it on July 30th. So it was WAY later than it should've been, but at long last, the general public finally knew that neither Morgan Berry nor J. Michael Tatum would be at the con–and interestingly, the public weren't the only ones finally learning about these cancellations, either. The new guest relations director claims that she had no idea that either Berry or Tatum had cancelled until she saw the Facebook post about it. In other words, that th

eir cancellations weren't just news to the con's community, but also to her–y’know, the con's guest relations director. Hopefully you don't need me to tell you how much of a massive red flag that is. [clip] So yea, the bottom line here is that it seems as though Dez was acting as the con's unofficial guest relations director in some capacity for sevearl months, Tatum and Berry both claim to have sent their cancellation notices several months in advance, and despite this, Dez didn't seem to make

any moves to let the public know this until June–and it wouldn't be until July that the website was updated and the announcements were posted. So yea, in conclusion, yikes. But the whole behind-the-scenes mess aside, the announcement still happened before Izumicon's deeper problems would become apparent to the public, so while people were disappointed to hear about Berry and Tatum's cancellations, of course, nobody really thought too deeply about it at the time. On the 31st, the con announced th

at Daman Mills–the last guest to have a contract drawn up for and the only one that the newer guest relations director claims to booked–would be guesting at the con, so y’know, seemingly everything was still moving on-track as far as the public was concerned. But then, fast forward about 2 weeks to August 13, Jad Saxton announced that she had to cancel her appearance at Izumicon because of “some recent issues.” This was, of course, after everyone noticed that all the directors walked out, so… ye

a, it was pretty easy to guess what those “issues” probably were. This was also the same day that Daman Mills posted some interesting tweets about being frustrated about cons that ghost their guests, so y’know, eyes emoji. Also interesting, is that Justin Nimmo replied to these tweets asking Daman if he’s heard anything from Izumicon–which I can only assume he hadn’t, because sure enough, the next day Daman would end up cancelling his appearance at Izumicon as well, citing “recent issues that we

re out of his control.” The writing was on the wall at this point–this con is beyond saving; it is completely and utterly dead. And after two more long days of wondering what Izumicon was gonna try to do next, the con finally announced its cancellation on August 16. The announcement came in the form of a facebook post blaming “logistical difficulties, talent scheduling, and other factors beyond our control.” So, y’know, it blames every possible thing BUT Dez. As a side note, by the way, it is a

really, REALLY good thing that word spread about this post pretty fast, because none of the con’s other platforms–which most significantly included ITS OWN WEBSITE–would be updated to reflect this change. As a matter of fact, rather than get updated, it was just completely taken down at least two weeks later. And while hardly anyone knew the details of why this was happening, they really didn't need to in order to know that this was just complete and utter bullshit–and I'll tell you who that was

especially true for was the talent that Dez tried blaming this cancellation on at least partially–yea, rightfully so, some of the con's would-be guests and a few other voice actors who heard what was going on were among those clapping back at Dez-slash-Izumicon's thinly veiled excuse. [clip] But the question of exactly why the con was being cancelled was quickly overshadowed by the question of refunds. The idea that this whole thing might’ve just been a misunderstanding was completely shattered

when some people started noticing that the event date was quietly changed on EventBrite to the 16th. To be more specific, the change would’ve had to have happened sometime between August 12 and the 20, and it would’ve had to have been made by someone with access to the EventBrite account. Per surviving documentation of a former Izumicon director, said account was in Dez and Ladder Entertainment’s name, registered to Ladder Entertainment’s email–which was owned and operated by Dez–and linked to

Dez’s bank account. In other words, this suggests that the EventBrite account wasn’t so much meant for Izumicon’s team, as it was just for Dez. And while it’s possible that there might’ve been a few other directors who previously had some access to the account, they would’ve already resigned by the time the changes would’ve had to have been made, and none of them stood to benefit from making a change like this anyways. Dez, on the other hand, did. So, in short, it is extremely, REMARKABLY reason

able to believe that Dez is the one who made this change. The odds of anyone else having both the means and motivation to have done this, and all without being switched back by Dez later are impossibly low. The timing of when this change would’ve been made is slightly debatable, but if nothing else, it can’t be argued that it happened after people started catching on that the con wasn’t gonna be happening, and during a super close proximity to cancellation announcement itself. But y’know, detail

s aside, the bottom line here is nonetheless that, well, this change happened. And this is important because the new date made it so that EventBrite thought that, well, the event had already happened by the time people started requesting refunds, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, only made the refund process more difficult for the would-be attendees. But luckily, this roadblock ultimately didn’t work, and people who bought their badges via Eventbrite were eventually able to get refunds via eve

ntbrite. But while the refunds were, officially, from Eventbrite, whether the money used to provide these refunds came from the pockets of EventBrite or Dez isn’t 100% clear. Still though, the fact that this didn’t work out in Dez’s favor should not take away from the fact that it’s nonetheless a roadblock that she almost certainly placed. Check this out, you can even see it in the refund emails–scheduled to occur “August 16, 2018” even though the event was actually scheduled for August 31 throu

gh September 2. But despite how scummy that was, the would-be attendees were ultimately the lucky ones since they were still able to get refunds eventually–unfortunately, the vast majority of the con’s would-be artists and vendors weren’t so fortunate. I reached out to several artists who bought tables at Izumicon 2018, and most of them alleged that they didn’t receive any refund of any kind. And in case you don’t know how much of a big deal that is, EmmyJane Arts told me, "I had bought my booth

and an extra pass which totaled to about $200. A huge loss as I had already spent money on my merch." So yea, a number of artists and vendors turned to their banks instead–and while there were a few people who were successful in getting a refund this way, they were still the minority. Furystarcat, for example, alleged, “Tried to file with my bank who told me to file with paypal who told me to file with bank @.@ i eventually gave up" The story seemed to be much the same for the vendors–that nobo

dy received a refund via Izumicon itself, but a few lucky vendors like Norman’s One Stop Anime were able to get them through their banks. That being said, there was one vendor who had spent $440 on her table and landed on the local news because of this whole thing. In the news story, she talks about the money she spent on her table, and that when she sent an email to the con about a refund, the reply she got was, "We have funds tied up in deposits and prepaid expenses as well." It’s also mention

ed that she filed a police report, though unfortunately, nothing ever really seemed to come of that. And although there were definitely a lot of people interested in the possibility of one, and at least one person interested enough to actually contact a lawyer, ultimately, nobody ever filed a lawsuit. Said the person who contacted a lawyer when asked about why they didn’t go through it, "The cost for the lawyer was exponentially more than what I lost or could recuperate. I would have had to get

many more people to join me in the suit, and that just didn’t come together. So I just filed it as a loss and knew never to pay with a check again." But, back to this article, the news station reached out to Dez for a comment, but surprise surprise, they didn’t get a response–yea, shocking, I know. While Dez never commented about the state of the Izumicon money, someone who was close to her up until this whole thing happened offered their insights to all the concerned would-be congers at the tim

e about what they believed happened to the money. Obviously this can’t be 100% verified, but they alleged that Dez had already spent the money on herself and on getting a lawyer, and that at least at the time of all this unfolding, regarded herself as a victim in this whole thing. [clip] The Izumicon Facebook group was deleted a few days later, and while the precise timing isn’t clear, the Izumicon Facebook was deleted sometime after the group was deleted but before September 4. Nonetheless, wit

h the page and the group deleted, so too were plenty of valuable posts that could’ve offered more evidence, insights, or clarity into the finer details of this whole situation deleted, too. It’s presumed that Dez would’ve had to have been the one to delete the page and group, or at the very least perhaps requesting it, being indifferent to or okay with it, or something else to that effect. And speaking of deleted content, it was a bit before this–it was sometime in the middle of August–but it wa

s around that time that Dez purged her main personal account. Not only did this shut down one of the quickest ways to contact her, but also it effectively closed the only window that most of Izumicon’s staff and leadership had into her life–a window that, for many, is still closed to this day. There have been a few brief and inconsequential Dez sightings over the years, but other than that, nobody that I spoke to seems to know what she’s been doing for the past few years. But one person that I s

poke to, Dez’s former friend that I’ve mentioned a number of times throughout this video, showed me a message that Dez sent them in October of 2021 in which Dez still doesn’t seem to be taking responsibility for what happened. And in fact, this message really adds credence to the idea that Dez thinks of herself as the victim in this whole thing, as she spends a lot of time talking about feeling betrayed. Interestingly, she also mentions that certain people will probably never know the truth abou

t what happened in Izumicon due to NDAs and “a certain lawyer-con owner” which is almost certainly a reference to Faisal. That being said, an earlier message from Dez to this former friend shows Dez saying that there’s no NDAs in place for the former directors, and certainly nobody that I spoke to claimed to be under NDA, so… whether perhaps there are some NDAs in place that I’m unaware of, Dez is lying so that she doesn’t have to talk about Izumicon publicly, or something else all together, I h

ave no idea. When asked about why Dez was ever allowed to get the con in the first place, Faisal said, “Marlon knew her and said she wanted to keep the con going. No clue if there was any more thought on his part. I didn’t really know her, so I had no opinion.” We’ll probably never know for sure whether the act of selling the con to Dez was an act of blind trust, sabotage, desperation, optimism, ignorance, manipulation, a mix of all of them, or something else entirely, but whatever it was, I wou

ldn't blame you for feeling like, y’know, maybe in some ways, Dez was being set up to fail. Because, in some ways, she was. The contract from which she got the con didn’t exactly leave her with an abundance of resources, and self-inflicted money problems or not, that almost certainly would’ve made the con smaller that year than it had been in a long time. These are obstacles that a more seasoned con organizer probably could’ve overcome, of course, but if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousan

d times: Dez lacked experience. But the ways in which you could argue she was set up to fail do not excuse her for what she did. They just don’t. She was not, in any way, set up for single-handedly destroying the con before it even happened. That is entirely, 100% on her. Regardless of whether or not it was a good contract, the fact of the matter is she still chose to sign it–she chose to take on the responsibility of Izumicon and she failed. And while I think there’s a fair point to be made in

the argument that the root cause of all this was the haste and lack of vetting that went on in the search for a new owner, Izumicon’s meltdown was nonetheless Dez’s fault first and foremost. And here we are, several years later, and she’s never so much as acknowledged her massive role in Izumicon’s failure–not publicly, at least. And as for privately? Well, one of the people that I spoke to knew someone who still had a way to contact Dez despite no longer being close to her, and they reached out

to that person, asking if they could get me and Dez in contact with each other. This came in the form of them messaging Dez, possibly with just with a screenshot of our mutual contact telling them that a YouTuber was trying to get in contact with Dez for a video about the fall of Izumicon, but I don’t know that for 100% sure. What I do know for sure, however, is that on the next day, Dez either deleted or locked down her facebook profile, and when I asked the person if I could see a screenshot

of what they sent her, they wouldn’t send one to me because they “[didn’t] feel comfortable sharing [their] private texts.” A few months pass, and after a while I noticed that Dez revives her facebook account again. In the interest of due diligence, I message her myself this time. I never got a seen receipt, but I still think she definitely saw it because sometime after I sent her this message, she definitely blocked me this time. So whatever she has to say about the end of Izumicon, we may neve

r know. The Aftermath “Here we are at last, Izumicon, Oklahoma’s first full anime convention. When we first started talking about doing an anime show in Oklahoma I did’nt know if we could do it, but after talking with ton’s of fans in the area I was soon convinced. Oklahoma needed a full fledged anime convention in its own back yard, and here we are. Thanks for helping us celebrate this event and making it great. Its because of your fan support that we can make this happen. Thanks again” - Scott

Richardson in the Izumicon 2007 con program Shortly after everyone had their collective moment to vent their frustrations, several members of the community decided to go ahead and take matters into their own costumed hands. And so, several anime events were planned across the metro during the weekend Izumicon was meant to happen. One Stop Anime, for example, hosted an artist alley sampler event. Jovial Hearts Cosplay hosted an event called Alt:Party at the Griffin Community Park, which was sort

of like a small convention in its own right–y’know, the OKC Tea Club came by and sold drinks and snacks, there were panels, a cosplay contest, a raffle,and more. But the biggest event was by far the RIP Izumi party at the Will Rogers Gardens and Main Event, which was orchestrated by Divine Creations Cosplay, Honor Lychee, and Lo-Fi Ky. Ky told me about the event, “RIP Izumi was two parts: We had the photoshoot opportunity at [the Will Rogers Gardens] and then the party itself at Main Event with

the costume contest. Anyone with one of our wristbands got a $10 play card (I believe) for free (also donated by Main Event). We had a whole lot of donors. It went really well and I think we had about 100 people at Main Event (going off how many wristbands we had left at the end of the night). I honestly think people loved it. We got a lot of good feedback from it and we had a lot of fun.” Christopher Parker, the owner of Reddirt 3D, added to that, “For what it was it turned out amazing. The ot

her events that went on, organized and run by other cosplayers, saw good numbers too. It was a nice distraction from the reality of what happened with the convention.” And sure enough, that reality didn’t leave the community’s collective consciousness after these events finished up; in fact, it was very much the opposite. And there are two things I’m referring to when I say that: The first is something I think SoonerCon’s former chair and current President of the Future Society of Central OK, Ai

slinn succinctly summarized when I asked her about the effect Izumicon’s untimely end had on the local congoing scene, and that was, “It drives up the costs of producing cons which are costs passed on to the attendees, pricing people out who might otherwise participate if they could afford to, making the con environment less inclusive. It makes it so celebrities and vendors don’t want to do business in our state for the poor reputation of events that don’t pay their talent and where there are to

o few attendees for vendors to turn a profit. It sows discord and needlessly disappoints people.” And the second thing I’m referring to, and this kinda feeds into what Aislinn said… is that 2019 was also a horrendous year for anime conventions in Oklahoma. Now, before I go into more detail on that, let me give you a bit of context–namely, let's talk about Oklahoma anime con problems before Izumicon, versus after–and I wanna take a brief moment to emphasize that I’m only talking about anime cons

and not general pop culture cons, comic cons, sci-fi cons, and so on. Anyways, 2016 and 17 saw the collapse of two much smaller anime cons that were trying to start up–and those are OtakuHoma and Otaku Matsuri respectively. And while I couldn’t find any concrete information about what happened to OtakuHoma, there really wasn’t a lot of concern over its failure anyways since the con was so small. Like, literally, the artists and vendors–all like, less than 10 of them, were all put in the same roo

m, where the panelists would be presenting at the front. The whole room was like, the size of the classroom, and then the room next to it was set up to be a cafe, and that was it. That was the whole con. As you can imagine, attendance wasn’t great. But Otaku Matsuri, on the other hand, that one caused some concern. From the outside looking in, Otaku Matsuri was a pretty well-put together con with a really solid guestlist. Attendance, one could easily surmise, would probably be pretty good. But a

ccording the con's director, while the con had anticipated an attendance of around 1200 people, "150 prereged if even that many." Nonetheless, the con was scheduled to be held in Norman, Oklahoma the weekend after Izumicon 2017. But against all odds, yet another ice storm was forecast to hit the weekend the con was supposed to happen, prompting Oklahoma's then-governor to declare a state of emergency the day before the con was supposed to happen; effectively cancelling it right then and there, t

hough the director told me that they, also "had issues with the hotel changing our payment schedule. " They didn't want to elaborate on what, precisely, that meant. But regardless, speaking of payment, like Izumicon, refunds would end up being a point of contention for the would-be attendees and participants of Otaku Matsuri. In fact, so many people felt reminded of Otaku Matsuri when all the Izumicon 2018 stuff started coming to light that a few rumors had spread that Dez was involved with Otak

u Matsuri as well. That being said, nobody that I spoke to who was involved in Otaku Matsuri recalls her having any involvement with it. My guess is therefore that Dez wasn't involved with Otaku Matsuri, and that these rumors were probably just the byproduct of people getting confused since the two situations did have some resemblance. But to get back to the matter of refunds... it was neither a quick nor easy process. The director alleges that everyone should've got them within a few months; an

d I spoke to a few people who were eligible to get refunds from Otaku Matsuri, and all but one of them claimed that they eventually got a refund, but that the key word is eventually. Artists and vendors, in particular, seemed to have waited quite a while with some getting theirs within the original 45 day window that the con promised, some getting theirs slightly after that, and others not getting theirs til several months later or in installments. Nonetheless, albeit after a significant wait, t

hey still got their refunds. The same couldn't be said for an anonymous would-be volunteer that I spoke to; an archive of Otaku Matsuri's site says that volunteers have to register for the con and that they'd be reimbursed later. As a side note, however, a separate would-be volunteer claims that not every single volunteer had to do this. Nonetheless, the first one I mentioned alleges that they went through this process and that they never received reimbursement. But regardless of how you interpr

et Otaku Matsuri's refund process, it's hard to argue with the notion that it was messy. And that seems to be at the heart of why Otaku Matsuri still hasn't and almost certainly never will resurface; said the director about its potential revival, "I moved out of state after marital issues and since I believe based on conversations very similar to the aggressive versions of these questions that the cancellation left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. We all felt defeated and rough so the convention

will never come back. I'll admit I'm more a convention vendor more than I am a convention director and even my confidence got shaken to the core at the whole thing." So that’s interesting and all, sure, but why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because I want you to understand that by the time Izumicon 2018 happened, there were some people feeling pessimistic about the state of anime cons in Oklahoma. And Izumicon’s meltdown really seemed to validate and amplify a lot of that pessimism. Whether

or not they realized it, that effectively put a pretty big task on the shoulders of Oklahoma’s anime cons of 2019; they had to prove to everyone that everything would be fine and that even if Izumicon wasn’t around any more, well, everything would still be okay–they still had their gathering spots and a space where they could express their love of anime. Y’know, hope was not lost. Or at least, that’s what should’ve happened, like, in theory–in practice, the two Oklahoma anime cons that happened

in 2019 were also pretty controversial, and really didn’t do anything except validate and amplify that pessimism even more. The first of those cons was Tokyo in Tulsa 2019–which has been “lovingly” dubbed by its attendees, “Hobby Lobby Con.” And why “Hobby Lobby Con”, you may ask? Well, to briefly summarize what happened, TnT had to get a new venue in 2019 since its usual venue was undergoing some renovations. So they got a venue in the nearby city of Broken Arrow, but then two weeks before the

con the venue changed their terms, thereby forcing TnT to have to suddenly choose between putting their artist’s alley outside in the middle of the hot, Oklahoma summer… or putting it in a dimly lit and only partially air conditioned building that was once a Hobby Lobby. And while this was definitely a step up from an outdoor artist’s alley, this Hobby Lobby was still incredibly unsafe–and that’s to say nothing of how distant it was from the rest of the con. Like, literally, the con had to shut

tle people there in school buses since it was so far off. But anyways, the building was incredibly dusty, people reported there being loose screws everywhere, there was open wiring, dripping water, dim lighting, and despite all this and the ridiculously short notice TnT gave their artists about this, there were of course no refunds to be granted to any artists who wanted to skip out on this con upon hearing about the change in venue. But anyways, since the state of the artist’s alley was so abys

mal, one artist, elefluff, made a joke on twitter that people should ghost the con, and shortly after that, the con told her that she’d have to leave for breaking her contract–and how, exactly, she did that, they never said. Yea, the whole thing was definitely sketchy, and not just because it was about an artist alley. [ba dum tsss] No but for real, puns aside, the sketchy nature of the whole incident was big enough that it actually landed on the local news. The whole clip is about 2 and a half

minutes long, but here’s an excerpt that pretty much sums it up: [clip] So in a nutshell, that was TnT 2019, and if you want a less brief summary of why this con was a disaster, Square One Cosplay has an hour long vlog that captures just how chaotic this convention was–you can see the buses, the venue, everything. I’ll leave a link in the description for anyone interested, but in the meantime, here’s a little highlight reel: [clip] The next anime convention to happen in Oklahoma was the aptly t

itled Anime Oklahoma. I cannot emphasize enough that what I’m about to give you is the condensed version of the story, because it’s so long and there’s still so many details that are fuzzy. Nonetheless, Anime Oklahoma started out as a very grassroots con, and it needed funding; and it some stage, word got out that a man named Steven was involved; but the problem here is that one, I don’t wanna derail this video by going into detail about this, but suffice to say, Steven isn’t exactly just some r

andom guy that nobody knew about, and two, he was also pretty involved in a remarkably unsuccessful con called Godaikocon 2017. [Quick-ish, Semi-Related Tangent: GoDaikoCon 2017 “And you are right it was a horrible failure this year.” - Brian O and Alex of GoDaikoCon, 2017] Honestly, I could make a totally separate video on this con if I wanted to, because there’s a lot to talk about with this one as well. There were plenty of things that made Godaikocon 2017 unsuccessful, but to sum it up, amon

g plenty of other problems like being scheduled the same weekend as a well-known local cosplay event, Youmacon’s Cosplay Beach Party, radio silence from the con’s leadership, and using a venue that was largely disliked by the local community because of how they’d canceled Midwest Media Expo earlier that year, by far the most discussed problem this con had was that despite promising would-be artists and vendors at least a thousand people in attendance and pricing their tables accordingly, the act

ual turnout was ridiculously low, leaving the artists and vendors struggling to so much as break even–let alone make a profit. For example, one of the artists who was present, BoldEgoist, paid $125 for her table and recalls barely breaking even. She told me about the price, “For a 3-day con to charge $125, it should have at least 1200 unique attendance, or 3-5k turnstyle. [If I had to guess how many people were at GoDaikoCon 2017, I’d say] 120, including staff. It was a very dull crowd.” ShoujoH

avoc, another artist who was there, also paid $125 for her table, and can’t remember whether or not she broke even, but said that if she did, then it wasn’t by much. She added that there were friends of hers in the artist alley who most certainly didn’t have that same luck. She further recalled to me, “If I had to guess it was maybe a couple hundred in attendance? Maybe? At one point during the show one of the vendors (artist? I don't remember who it was) went around with a paper getting signatu

res from other vendors and artists to try and get a refund on the table costs from the head due to the false advertising. They brought the list up to the head and we were told we'd see compensation (a check in the mail I believe?) from the AA head but it never came lol. Ahhhh what a terrible con.” OH! The signatures–yea, you can’t talk about GoDaikoCon 2017 and NOT talk about The Walk Out; so here’s what happened: so outraged by the fact that the con had promised at least a thousand people in at

tendance, and there just… oh God, to call it a ghost town would’ve been generous–tell me this isn’t the saddest rave you’ve ever seen–anyways, a fair-sized group of the con’s artists approached Steven together in an attempt to get a refund. There’s video footage of this confrontation happening, which I have seen, but the videos are unlisted, and I haven’t been able to get in contact with the uploader, so unfortunately I have no idea whether or not they’d want me to show it in this video. Nonethe

less, know that video footage of this confrontation exists, and that it certainly doesn’t paint Steven in a good light. The standoff ends with him ultimately promising everyone a meager $25, and while I can’t speak on behalf of everyone, none of the three artists who were at the con that I spoke claim to have ever got a penny of that money. Worth noting, by the way, is that one of them told me that they flat out declined the refund in the interest of pursuing a case with PayPal. In fact, that ar

tist, SugarySymbiote, was present during that confrontation with Steven, and she told me that she went back to talk to him personally later, as she was experiencing a lot of medical problems at the time, and was hoping that she could perhaps get him to understand why $25 simply wasn’t enough. In her own words, “That was a huge mistake.” She alleges that someone believed to be Steven’s sister started taking pictures of her without permission during this talk–something that can only generously be

described as completely unnecessary. Whether or not Steven asked this person to take photos isn’t known, but if nothing else, he allegedly didn’t seem to do anything to stop this overtly creepy act. And of course, the cherry on top is that ultimately, nothing really ever came from this discussion anyways. SugarySymbiote never got a refund of any kind, and has since vowed to not work with him ever again. And again, there were more problems with the con than all this, like, I haven’t even mentione

d the GoDaikoCon flyer-bombing at Cosplay Beach Party, [clip] But anyways, I’d encourage you to seek out people who were actually there if you wanna learn more about it, and if you’d like me to make a full video outta this con let me know, because like I said: there’s definitely plenty to talk about when it comes to GoDaikoCon 2017, but for now, I don’t wanna spend much more time talking about this con since it’s not really our main topic right now. God, I just can’t resist the sweet, siren song

of a good tangent. So yea, suffice to say, GoDaikoCon 2017 was a trainwreck, Steven was involved, so knowing that he was so involved with this trainwreck of a con in tandem with his horrible reputation—yea, it didn’t exactly inspire optimism in Anime Oklahoma’s potential attendees. [tangent end] It also didn’t escape notice that a man called Hightower was listed as a moderator in the con’s staff group. And this worried a number of people. In light of all this information, especially about Steve

n, the con basically said, “hey! It’s all good. We had no idea, but now that we do, we’re instead getting our money from a GoFundMe. Jk, we found a new investor. Everything’s cool now, so uh… carry on. But when people started asking about the new investor, not only was there no clear answer given, but at least one person was responded to with a legal threat. Many worried that this meant that Steven was still funding the con since, I mean, it’s hard to imagine another reason why they’d respond so

explosively. Things escalated to the point where Anime Oklahoma’s facebook page was completely gone for a while, and they’d later claim that it was because their page got hacked. A claim which nobody believed. Even during the weekend of the event, the question on everyone’s collective mind still didn’t have an answer: were Steven and Hightower actually gone? I mean, the con said they’re gone, right? So if they really are, then why is the con continuing to dodge the question? Footage from the de

aler’s room reveals booths that some people believe belongs to or are connected with Steven and/or Hightower, though frankly, the footage is so blurry that it’s impossible to say with 100% certainty whether or not they are. Also, to the farthest of my knowledge, nobody seems to have encountered Steven or Hightower personally at the con when it finally happened. I attempted to get in contact with Steven, AOK’s original owner, and the owner after them—to get answers for this whole thing; the first

owner told me to contact the second owner, and when I said that I was looking for insights from around the time that the original owner was in charge, they stopped responding. The second owner simply never responded to me at all. And as for Steven… he claimed that he wasn’t at AOK, and that the booth in the screenshot wasn’t his business’s. Furthermore, he alleged that he was “going to invest money only,” and that he, “was not supposed to deal with any day to day operations” but, “that was with

drawn.” However, a would-be staffer has alleged that at some stage, Steven did want some degree of control over security, which led to this would-be staffer’s resignation. This same would-be staffer alleged that Hightower was the one making legal threats using AOK’s page. The closest thing to an answer that I’ve seen AOK give about the new investor was in a comment at the time, in which they allege that “Multiple investors have heard about the convention’s issues and a few are interested in sign

ing a contract to come in help support this first year and take over the show.” In this same comment, they mention that the then-current director was stepping down. In a follow-up comment, they also claim that the incoming director asked Hightower to step down, and that he did so. Like I said at the beginning: I can’t emphasize enough that this is just the condensed version of the story, and that while I’d love to go into more detail, there’s still so much vagueness about this situation that it’

s really hard for me to do so without more clear information. In any case, in a nutshell, that was the controversy surrounding AOK 2019. So yea, after Izumicon’s implosion… things weren’t great for Oklahoma anime cons. And it made it that much harder to forget that Izumicon went out the way it did. It felt like we might be feeling the reverberations of its untimely end for… who knows how long? But for as chaotic 2019 was for Oklahoma congoers, it would, of course, be no where near as big as what

was to follow. I’m sure I don’t need to go into detail when I say that the pandemic changed everything for several people. And as far as anime cons go, most—or, certainly all the responsible ones—didn’t host events for most of 2020 and 21. And by 2022, the pandemic changed so many aspects of life—let alone congoing—that it’s become increasingly difficult to see what is or feels different because of the pandemic, and what is or feels different because of the lingering ghost of Izumicon. That bei

ng said, I would like to end this section on a positive note, I will say that Tokyo in Tulsa, which is now called Tokyo, OK is undoubtedly the Oklahoma anime con I’ve seen the most improvement in post-pandemic. Some backstory with me and this con: I went most years between 2008, which was its first official year, and 2014. I stopped going after that cause I usually do panels at cons, and Tulsa’s a bit of a journey for me, so badge reimbursement was a big part of the equation for me, and their pa

nelist reimbursement policy was garbage for a while, so combined with the distance… it just wasn’t gonna happen. But though their panelist reimbursement still definitely has room for improvement, I do see it being notably better than it was in previous years. And they’re at a proper venue again. Y’know, I see them making positive steps, and I wanna commend them for that. Right now, they’re without question the most stable of Oklahoma’s anime cons, and I definitely feel a lot more confidence in T

OK now than I have in a very long time. Epilogue “Oklahoma City and surrounding areas have an active anime fan community and the loss of Izumicon left a hole in that space for anime fans.” - Amber Hanneken, 2020 When asked about the possibility that Izumicon could return, Faisal said, “I do not think Izumicon will return. I still do not have the time or energy, and Dez is still the owner of the name/IP.” Seeing as how Izumicon’s absence is likely to be permanent, some local cons that aren’t spec

ifically anime-focused have done a great job of stepping up and picking up the pieces that Izumicon left behind. For example, Amber–again, SoonerCon’s director of communications–told me, “When Izumicon ended, some of those who volunteered and worked on that convention joined SoonerCon's ranks and we dedicated more resources to anime programming. We placed more budget into anime voice actors and other anime-related guests; listening to the community for who they'd like to see. We have worked on v

arious panels and content geared toward anime fans like teas, idols, J-fashion, floor cosplay contests, skits, trivia and games. While we will never be an anime convention, we strive to be a convention that brings all types of fandoms together. We hope we can fill a role for our anime community and they find other things to love about our convention as well.” So with all that being said, I hope Izumicon’s story is a worthwhile cautionary tale. There’s plenty of lessons to be learned here, and I’

d hate to see some other city lose its local con because of something like this. Furthermore, I also hope that I’ve cleared the names of Izumicon’s former directors. They really don’t deserve to have all the hard work they put into Izumicon invalidated just because of one tumultuous year that really wasn’t their fault, so I urge you to keep that in mind if you ever think about them. And as for Dez… As far as I can tell, Izumicon 2018 seems to have been her last attempt at running a major event o

f any kind–or at the very least, that’s the case as of when this video is being made. Y'know, one of the questions-without-answers that's still being discussed and debated a lot among people who were involved with Izumicon is the question of to what degree was what happened to the con purposefully planned. Like, had Dez been knowingly laying the foundations for a machiavellian plot to eliminate the con since day 1, was she painfully naive about the con organizing process and caught up in her own

web of lies, or y’know, maybe was she somewhere in-between? Although everyone certainly has their own theories about it, the facts still remain obscure. And more than any other detail that I mentioned in this video, this is one that I think is gonna remain a mystery until–or rather UNLESS–Dez ever decides to take responsibility and do right by Izumicon's community. As for whether or not I think she'll ever do that... I really don't know. But, for what it's worth, I really and truly hope that sh

e does. Oklahoma's congoing community is owed an apology and an explanation from her–not to mention, refunds for the people who still haven't got them. Simply put, it's just the right thing to do. And truly, I hope that she realizes that, and even if she needs a little more time, I really hope that she acts on it. But in the meantime... You can rest assured that regardless of whether or not Dez is aware of why what she did was wrong, a large portion of the local congoing community and even some

people in the nationwide con running community are. For example, an anonymous con staffer from the East Coast told me, “I recall Izumicon being discussed in a few con organizer corners with a mix of "what the heck is going on there?" and "this is a case study in what NOT to do" reactions. If anything it was just sort of a suprise that a con that had been around for a while would have this big a collapse. I can't speak about Dez specifically, but there are definitely some names that pop up when c

on runners talk to each other where they are not looked highly on. Some are cautionary tales, some are known bad actors who do questionable stuff that many of us wonder how they haven't gotten into financial trouble from poorly managing events or had a backlash from attendees. With a few exceptions, most con runners want to see other conventions succeed, because we can all learn from each other and make our own events better. No one con does everything perfectly. When one convention has a specta

cular failure like that, it hurts the general public's trust in ALL conventions, even if there is no overlap in staff.” So yea, bottom line here, is that I for one have a hard time imagining that any con is gonna knowingly put Dez in a leadership position any time soon–and that goes double, nay triple for any cons in Oklahoma. But anyways, I wanted to mention that radioactive status within the con-organizing community and the fact that Dez doesn’t currently seem to be active in con-organizing be

cause I really and truly do not want y’all to try and seek out Dez, her friends, or her family and harass them about this. Not only is that just a crappy thing to do in general, but y’know frankly, since she doesn’t seem to be active in con-organizing any more, it just wouldn’t really accomplish anything. But if you really wanna do something meaningful to help make the con-running scene a better place, I’d urge you to instead do something like making a point of no longer attending the cons where

problematic organizers are still active. [link] So… god, on that note, I think I’ve said just about everything I wanted to say. I can’t put into words how cathartic this was to work on, and how unbelievable it is that it’s actually done now. I wanna thank everyone who helped me with this video–cause just as there’s a lot of info in this video, there’s a lot of people who spoke to me, shared their insights, their screenshots, their photos, and so much more. A lot of the information in this video

has never seen the public before, so this video wouldn’t even be even a fraction of how great it is now if it weren’t for all the wonderful people who replied to my weird and out-of-the-blue messages about Izumicon, so, y’know, again, to all of you who replied and took the time to tell me about your experiences: thank you so, so, so, so much. I’d like to offer some especially big thanks to all the former Izumicon directors who helped with this video–some of whom really went above and beyond in

helping me out. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you all not just for your help with this video, but also for making Izumicon a wonderful con year after year. I think it goes without saying that neither you, nor the con, nor its attendees deserve what Dez did to the con, but you, the directorial team, especially didn’t deserve it. You all did such a fantastic job with this con, so again, thank you so, so very much. I’d also like to thank all of you, my wonderful viewers, for your pat

ience with this video. It took me way longer to make this video than I ever expected when I originally set out to make it, but y’all have been very patient with me and I’m very, very grateful for that. So, thank you, all of you. And finally, I hope I’ve answered the questions of anyone who was supposed to go to this con, cause as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it made a pretty lasting impact on everyone who was even sort of involved. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of this info has never been super ac

cessible before, and several of the people I spoke to about this con were excited to see me working on this video because they just had no idea what happened to it. But, voila! Now you know what happened. To be totally honest with you, I’m not really sure how to close a video like this off, so uh… Behold! Some old Izumicon programs and promo cards.