I went to my first Otakon this July with a media pass and a shot list. By Saturday afternoon I was being walked out of the Washington, D.C. convention center by security, my press badge revoked, a bandage on my right hand where a stranger had drawn blood the day before. Room 204 sits at the center of this story. It’s the office where Otakon staff treated my injury and took my incident report on Friday, and the office where the convention’s vice chairman expelled me on Saturday. Same room, about twenty-four hours apart.

Friday

I’d been granted press credentials to cover the convention, and I was excited about it. First Otakon, downtown D.C., a hall full of things worth pointing a camera at. Friday afternoon I was in the exhibitor hall, setting up to shoot some B-roll around the video game area. I want to be precise here, because it matters later: I was preparing to record. I had not recorded anything.

A man started shouting at me. Loud enough that I flinched, loud enough that people turned. I couldn’t record there, he said. I told him I was credentialed media and showed the badge. His answer, word for word: “I don’t care. You don’t have the girl’s consent.”

Then he leaned over and whispered something to a young woman playing one of the stand-up arcade cabinets nearby. She quit her game mid-play, walked straight up to me, threatened to destroy my phone, and grabbed for it.

We wrestled over that phone for a good twenty or thirty seconds, in the middle of the exhibitor hall, and people just watched. The whole time I kept thinking security would step in any second. Nobody did. She scratched my hand hard enough to draw blood before she finally let go.

I went straight to the information desk and reported it, and staff walked me up to the Otakon office in Room 204. They took it seriously. Otacare cleaned up my hand, put antibiotic ointment on the scratch, and bandaged it. Staff ran a full investigation, wrote up a detailed incident report, and spoke with both the man and the woman. That’s when we found out the man wasn’t staff at all. He was just another attendee. Which surprised me, honestly, because in the moment he carried himself like someone whose job it was to stop me.

Credit where it’s due: the people in that office were professional. Nobody treated me like I’d done anything wrong, and the staff made a point of saying they were glad I reported it instead of just walking away. And walking away would have been the easy thing to do.

I left that evening thinking the matter was closed. I was in my car when my phone rang. Access control, asking me to come back to the convention center for a meeting. I told them I’d already left and would be happy to meet the next day.

Saturday

I came back and did my job. Over five hours of footage, panels, the con floor, the stuff I’d been credentialed to shoot in the first place. Then I was summoned back to Room 204.

This time the person across from me was the vice chairman of Otakon. He told me I had violated the convention’s media policy. My press badge was revoked, and I was escorted out of the building by the same access control staffer who had called me the night before.

I want to lay out, plainly, why I believe that decision was wrong.

Otakon’s own website grants attendees the right to record on the convention floor. I’d read it before I ever packed a camera. When I picked up my credentials, press operations walked me through the rules, and no one said a word about needing individual consent to shoot B-roll in the exhibitor hall. All weekend, other media were openly shooting B-roll of crowds and gameplay, the same footage I was setting up for. Otakon’s published press policy describes an escalation process for violations, a graduated series of warnings before any badge gets pulled. I received no warning at any step. I went from a filed incident report, as the injured party, to expulsion. And underneath all of it sits the fact I keep returning to: I never actually recorded the woman. The entire chain of events started over footage that does not exist.

What’s left

Nobody used the word “ban.” Nobody handed me anything in writing. But when the vice chairman pulls your badge and security walks you to the door, I don’t expect a press application from me will be landing in the yes pile next year. After this post, probably even less so.

I want to be careful about who this is aimed at. The staff who handled my report on Friday were thorough and decent, and I’d say that to their faces. My dispute is with one decision, made by one person, that as far as I can tell skipped the process his own organization published.

Two days at my first Otakon, and the person with the least authority in the building set all of it in motion. The man who screamed at me held no position with the convention. Nothing gave him the right to police that hall, and nothing needed to, because volume did the job. I believed him for a few seconds. The woman at the cabinet believed him enough to bloody my hand. And by Saturday afternoon, Otakon itself had finished what a random attendee started. I walked out with a bandage and a dead badge. He walked around the con, as far as I know, wearing the same attendee badge he had on when he decided he was in charge.