Yaoi-Con Report, Part 1.
On the whole, Yaoi-Con 2010 was great, and I am glad I went. There were some many moments when it reminded me of the years Fanime was too big for it to know how to deal -- long lines with nowhere to go; stupid, unfair policies for how to deal with people in those lines; panels falling behind because of the time it took to empty the room and re-seat people... But, I went there for the guests (which Fanime can never deliver), and I got plenty of guests.
I think I've said before, but I'm not a star-chasing, "omg he shook my hand now I'll never wash it" type, and this is probably the first time I've really done something like this. But even for people like me, I think it's worth it. It was great to just bask in their presence, hear them share little tidbits about their work and lives. I guess it's much like what you would get from listening to a seiyuu free talk or reading a mangaka's little notes -- without challenging my Japanese reading skills like the latter -- but those tend to be more focused on the particular series, while the panels were more about the person. And, I guess, even for the huge number of people packed into the room for Yamane-sensei, there is still a sort of intimacy to be sitting there in the same room with the person, hearing their voices first-hand (and being really glad you know Japanese so you don't have to rely on the horrible translations). The seiyuu mentioned how fans don't get to get that close in Japan, and I was glad that we did.
In the end, I didn't get to go to any of the fan panels because all of the guest events ran over into any time I had marked off as, "Hm, spare time, I think I will check out panel X." Not that I really care, since the panels I was more interested in were scheduled at the same time as guest events in the first place. Maybe next time. But then, next time will also happen mainly because they bring in amazing guests again, so... maybe not.
I did go to main events -- including the Bishounen Auction, which I'm glad I didn't miss -- and those were fun. I think there is a dichotomy in Yaoi-Con attendees. There are the ones that are more like me, there to see the guests and love the series and cosplay and all that. Then there are these creepy people who seem to be there to drool over the bishounen and grope and spank them. (Which I still don't understand. I thought we are there to celebrate BL...) Sometimes the main events became a little too suffused with the latter. Especially closing ceremonies. I'm not sure I want to go to that again... especially if they don't teach people how to properly spank. It's like how they were saying at the fantasy writers panel that you have to actually try punching or stabbing someone (or a chicken) to write it... I had the feeling most of the people there did not really know what spanking is supposed to sound or feel like (whether you're the spanker or spankee). On the other hand, I did think the bishies were hot and well-selected, and it was fun to see more of them.
Anyway, so I guess we will go in chronological order now.
Friday
Originally, I planned to go on Friday to get my badge and maybe attend opening ceremonies and give Bishounen Bingo another try after Fanime 2009. But work got in the way of making it to opening ceremonies -- which I didn't regret at the time, but after hearing stray comments, I think I would try to go next time just to get that first glimpse of all the guests and such. So then I agonized whether I wanted to go anyway just to pick up my badge, so I could start lining up for Takanaga-sensei's panel first thing Saturday morning. I decided I'd just get there first thing when reg opened, and then hope it didn't take too long.
Saturday
(I didn't want to tweet -- plus, I'm way too wordy for that -- but I was emailing people short updates throughout the con, so I figured I'd include them here.)
10:11 AM Got here at 9, no line for badge, but already line for panel (only 10 people or so). So so far so good.
As I mentioned above, Yaoi-Con wasn't quite able to deal with its size this year, and there were lots of things they hadn't quite sorted out or communicated clearly. One of them had to do with this whole having the guest panels back-to-back. Were they going to clear out the room between each session? Should the Yamane fans be sitting through the Takanaga panel so they could save their seats? I don't know how it really got sorted out, but by the time they let us into the room for Takanaga-sensei, they were telling us that they would empty the room, and there were two separate lines -- the one being let in for Takanaga-sensei, and one already building up for Yamane-sensei an hour later. I had to start strategizing how I was going to balance seeing Yamane-sensei (lowest priority) with seeing the seiyuu (top priority).
They apparently expected fewer people for Takanaga-sensei because she was sitting off on one side of the big room, and we all gathered to her there. (The other guests sat on a stage in the middle and were shown on a screen on either side.) Because I lined up so early, I got to sit close enough to hear the off-mic comments between her, her editor, and the translator. Takanaga-sensei was really sweet and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed the little tidbits she shared. My favorite was her first story about meeting deadlines. She was very insistent that she had never missed a deadline. But one time, the deadline got pushed two days earlier maybe like a week before -- which is pretty insane. So she called in her friends from within a two-hour travel radius, and they worked and worked... but they still weren't quite done when she had to get on the train to Tokyo to deliver the manuscript. So she and one of her friends worked on the shinkansen all the way from Nagoya to Tokyo, and when they got there they were done and turned it in on time. But, because trains sway, they both got motion sick and threw up in the bathroom afterwards. ^^;;
They cut off the Q&A session with Takanaga-sensei so they could show the covers of a bunch of DMP yaoi titles that were coming out soon. It was kind of gratuitous, but I guess at least some of the newly licensed series were received with appreciation. Personally, I just didn't realize there were so damn many BL series out there. And how boring 99% of them looked. :P Then some executive of DMP announced Digital Manga Guild, their effort to bring scanlators up from the underground and into a profit-sharing licensing model. I like the idea a lot, actually, but I'm not sure yaoi is the right way to pioneer it.
They kicked us out of the room, and I promptly went to the back of the line for Yamane-sensei. I'd decided I should see her, stay for maybe half of the panel, and then step out and get in line for the seiyuu. I'd also wanted to use Yamane-sensei's panel as the test case for how they were handling the ticketed autograph sessions. (Takanaga-sensei's session was not ticketed, and had some issues, but that comes later.) I happened to have a guaranteed ticket for the seiyuu, so I wasn't as worried, but I was curious if they would guarantee a signature for everyone with a ticket, and maybe if it was possible to get multiple signatures if you had more than one ticket. I thought they were going to hand out tickets as we walked in, but there was nothing like that. So we got in and sat down, and they made the announcement.
11:29 AM In first guest of honor panel, and they just announced the autograph session tickets are by lottery. So glad I bid for the brunch (guaranteed ticket).
They then spent 10 minutes answering people's questions about the ticketing system. One thing I discovered during the con: most people are not like me and do not obsessively read all the policies and announcements on the website in advance and therefore know that the sessions are ticketed and are on the lookout for details that were not provided, like how the tickets are actually going to be distributed. Actually, many of the staff did not know about the sessions being ticketed either. I guess I've been like this so long, it just seems inconceivable to me that, if you're there solely because you want to see Yamane-sensei and have her sign your Finder artbook, you would not try to find these things out ahead of time. Anyways. That is my "superiority of J's" rant.
Oh yeah, and if you are there to see Yamane-sensei, why would you waste 10 minutes of her 60 minute session to ask stupid questions of the staff.
So they wove their way through the room handing out raffle tickets. I'm glad they did that early on, rather than, say, hand them out as people were exiting, since I had to slip out. But later on I learned that they wouldn't give tickets to late-comers who sat in the wrong session, and I felt really bad for this girl who was in the seiyuu line with me who found that out. That was one stupid aspect of their system -- why couldn't they just hand out tickets as people came in? It's not like handing them out once you were seated was more likely to avoid people getting multiple tickets. The other stupid aspect was that everyone in the room got a ticket. I'm sure there must have been people who were like me in previous cons, where I would go see the guest panel but have no interest in the autograph session. It pains my heart to think of the devoted fans who might not have gotten tickets because the lottery pulled a bunch of numbers held by people who never even bothered to check. I can't exactly say they should have gone with the "whoever can camp out earlier" model, but there should have been something else, like a waiting list or something. Anyways. I am spending all this time complaining about this because it is a major aspect of my point that the con was not particularly well run.
So, Yamane-sensei. I actually don't remember much because with all of the delays I got to sit in on maybe three questions before I panicked and left for the seiyuu line. She was very pretty, and very nice, and it was fun to hear her stories just like with Takanaga-sensei. And that is about all I really can say.
The seiyuu line was thankfully not that long yet when I got there. Actually, I don't think it ever got that long. I had been kind of worried by the number of switchbacks in Yamane-sensei's line. I guess, like I'd kind of thought all along, the overlap between seiyuu fans and BL fans is just not as large. But it's not like I was going to give up my spot and go back to hear more from Yamane-sensei.
12:37 PM We're in line for Okiayu-sama's panel. Girl next to me wants him to sign her Wiz. :) Am also bracketed by Seigaku jerseys. I am dumb, so it only registered like 20 min ago that both seiyuu are in PoT.
I chatted a lot with people while I was in line. I had felt kind of lonely with no one to go to the con with me, but there were lots of individuals or pairs of people in line, and it wasn't hard to strike up conversations. I don't think the same thing would have happened at Fanime.
The other amazing thing is that I was actually very well-prepared for this year's Yaoi-Con. I knew all of the main guests and was actually reasonably familiar with a few series from each of them. Kiuchi-san was probably the one I was most ignorant of -- not because I don't know his series so much as I didn't know he was in them. I also recently immersed myself in Togainu no Chi upon the start of the anime, so I recognized the many cosplayers for the series. (The anime is too new to know them just by having watched the handful of episodes that are out. I actually found the PC game and things like that. More on that in another post sometime, maybe.)
Anyway, so the seiyuu line passed in rambling conversation. The girls behind me were pretty hardcore, and they had seen both seiyuu before (I think) and had done a brunch event with Kiuchi-san in the past. They said it sucked, and the handshake/autograph session had been better, which made me a little worried, but what was I going to do. And, fortunately, the brunch with the seiyuu turned out to be awesome. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
They let us in to the seiyuu panel, and thankfully spent only a few minutes announcing the whole lottery thing. And then they started running through the pre-assembled questions they had. Both Okiayu-sama and Kiuchi-san were great. They were doing all sorts of silly things like squabbling over the mic and taking pictures of each other. And they were very thoughtful and open in their answers to the questions. I probably can't summarize better than the post over at okiayu-sama, so I won't try. The thing that struck me, as I said over there, is that Okiayu-sama seemed to be rather hung up on the fact that he always voices the cool, silent type. (And yet when I asked him during the brunch what kinds of personalities he likes to voice, he said かっこいい.) Oh, one thing I also noted that summer_queen didn't mention is that both of them commented that they often end up being cast as characters with deep voices, even though their natural voices are not all that deep. I'm kind of torn. I love his deep-voiced, evil characters, but I don't want him to suffer the strain on his voice. (As a soprano, I know how much it sucks to go deeper than you're used to.) On the other hand, those characters tend to be the type that don't say as much, so......
Anyway, the seiyuu panel was amazing and was enough to make attending Yaoi-Con worth it. I couldn't get enough of them and was sad when the moderator said we were out of time.
After the seiyuu panel came probably the least-awesome part of Yaoi-Con. Originally, my plan had been to try to get autographs from Yamane-sensei and Takanaga-sensei, then hop over to Lynn Flewelling's panel (which was in this tiny room in the corner where people had been lining up for the other guests). By the time the seiyuu panel let out, Yamane-sensei's scheduled session was half over, and since Takanaga-sensei's autograph session wasn't ticketed, I figured I should go over and get in line for that. I didn't even bother to stop by the info desk to see if I'd won a ticket for either Yamane-sensei or the seiyuu.
The line for Takanaga-sensei was long. Yamane-sensei kept signing half an hour past when she was supposed to stop. I don't know if they waited until then to start with Takanaga-sensei or were smart enough to start doing both sessions in parallel. They did have multiple rooms in the autograph area, though I didn't know it at the time. Anyhow, so the line was long and we were all getting antsy, even though they told us it would definitely go past her scheduled time, of which there was only half an hour left at that point. Then they started letting people with Saturday-only badges go to the front of the line. That really pissed me off. Looking back, I probably let my righteous, lawyer side get the better of me, but really, if you think about the situation in the abstract, it is really outrageous. The session was not ticketed, so no one there was guaranteed an autograph. Yet random Saturday person at the end of the line is now suddenly guaranteed an autograph, while random person in front who paid more to be at the con multiple days is guaranteed shit. I was frustrated enough to step out of line and argue with the staff about it, and they told us they couldn't even give the multi-day people any kind of guarantee for the Sunday session. Instead, they reassured us that only like 10 people had been moved up, and Takanaga-sensei would keep signing until 4pm, so hopefully everyone would get in. Also that DMP was running her session, unlike with the other guests, and they were the ones calling the shots. When I have time, I am writing them a nasty letter about all this. (I think I wrote a nasty letter to Fanime one year about their lines, too.) And the whole Saturday priority thing was inspired by Yamane-sensei's session, where Saturday people with tickets ended up being turned away. Why these lessons would transfer to a session that was not ticketed is beyond me. The girl behind me in line had come over, too, and was trying to be more reasonable and less outraged "I'll sue your asses" like I was, so she took the tack that it was great they were trying to be nice to the Saturday people but please recognize that in the process they were throwing the rest of us under the bus and please give us some kind of a bone. In the end, all they could promise us was that they would reevaluate at the point that the now-extended session was over and if we still hadn't gotten in. Which I'm sure they knew was an empty promise because we were close enough to the front to get in since they had extended the session by an hour. What pissed me off was that that hour screwed up everything else, and they would not make accommodation for that, which I guess is too greedy of me. I knew this whole con is about cutting losses and prioritizing, and maybe I shouldn't have thrown good time after bad. I skipped out of Yamane-sensei's panel, after all, and was I really there to get autographs? On the other hand, I think my life would have sucked if I had given up and then tried to get up early to camp out for the session Sunday morning.
Anyway, I did end up getting an autograph, but it made me miss most of Lynn Flewelling's panel, which really sucks because what little of it I caught was awesome. She was talking about the horrible cover art for Stalking Darkness, where everyone was holding their weapons in the wrong hand and the arrows in Alec's quiver were point up. XD She ended early to sign books, including mine. Then I was seized by another fit of stupidity/insanity and went off to do nothing more worthwhile than wander the dealer's room. I came back for the second half of the fantasy writers panel, which also included Lynn, which was also great. If I could do it all over again, I'd probably have skipped Takanaga-sensei's autograph and stayed for all two hours of panels with Lynn. But that's how these things go...
Oh, and on my way to her panel, taking up more time, I stopped by the info desk and found out I had won tickets for both Yamane-sensei and the seiyuu. Leaving me with two tickets for the seiyuu. I waffled all weekend about using it or giving it away. In the end, I did neither and I still have it, as a souvenir, I guess. There were a lot of unclaimed tickets when I went there, and it seemed like all the people I'd met in line who wanted one got one, so I hope supply met demand after all with the seiyuu. I think there were fewer people at their panel than Yamane-sensei's, so the percentage that didn't get a ticket was hopefully low.
After Lynn's panel, I had planned to go to the AMVs, but I sat in for three and they were mindnumbingly boring, so I went to wander the dealer's room again. Once, many years ago, I really enjoyed the AMV contests and might even say they were one of my favorite parts of a con after the masquerade. How times have changed. At least it wasn't the same series I see year after year at Fanime now.
So then came the masquerade. It was nice, though not of the same scale as the Fanime masquerade. As I said, I actually knew more of the series than I expected I would at a convention about yaoi and BL. Like regular cons, there was lots of Kuroshitsuji and Kingdom Hearts. And there was the Togainu no Chi skit. And, I admit, the random fanservice was fun. When I think of the con as a whole, I think the effect of it being 18+ is subtle, but it did make it more enjoyable in those shared fan-moment kinds of ways. I don't know how to explain it well. But like the intermission "who had sex with whom?" skit with the Kingdom Hearts cosplayers. It was just fun.
Then came the Bishounen Auction. I almost didn't go, because I couldn't figure out what it was about from any of the online materials, and after Bishounen Bingo at Fanime, I was kind of like, "whatever." But the girl I talked to in the Takanaga autograph line was saying how she went in the past and it was very 18+ and there was a lot of skin and whatnot. And somehow this convinced me to go. I know that sounds really bad. It was more like, "Okay, I see, this one of the spectacles of Yaoi-Con, and since I'm here I'd better go see it." I had been planning to go to the Iron Writer and Madlibs thing instead, which probably would have kept my interest for like 5 minutes.
I'm glad I went to the Bishounen Auction. It was a spectacle -- that lasted over three hours -- but generally not in a bad way. The boys were actually really hot. Having never been to a strip club, the performances were how I would imagine one. Except the boys were probably closer to my taste, and I was in the company of fellow fangirls, so it was probably a better experience than a strip club would be. I am still kind of disturbed by the amount of money that was flying around, and trying to imagine who was buying and what they were doing with the boys, but whatever. (Disturbed not in that I think horrible things were happening, but in that it's kind of creepy for a group of middle-aged women to pay $500 to spend time with a guy who's probably in his early 20's.)
Besides, if I hadn't gone, I would have missed...
11:21 PM Holy shit, the seiyuu guests just went at bishounen auction for $11K. REALLY happy with the brunch slot.
Yes, the seiyuu were auctioned off, for $11,000. When they stepped up, I spent about half a second wondering if I should bid. But considering several boys had gone for four or five hundred, I figured pretty quickly that this would be way beyond my price point. Still, I didn't expect it to go that high. I mean, I imagine most con attendees are young and not particularly rich, and many are probably students. How much of their future are they sacrificing to do something like this?
And does Yaoi-Con regret having auctioned the 11 brunch slots for only $75 each?
In the seiyuu autograph line the next day, I talked to a girl who sat near the seiyuu at the auction. (That would be the sound of my jealousy, yes.) And I guess they had come in and were a little confused, and suddenly there was a lot of back and forth between them and their translator and the staff, and then they were put up for auction. So clearly it was not planned at all. Obviously they did not strip like the other boys, but there was still some exhortation, and Okiayu-sama ended up taking off his cardigan and offering it up for auction as well. That went for $800.
I'm surprised, and glad, that something like the bishie auction didn't totally freak them out and convince them that American fans were creepy and that they should never come back again. Instead, they seemed to have a good time getting into all of the different aspects of the con. And I did my part by trying not to be creepy, too.
But that was Sunday, and this post has become ridiculously long, so I think I should stop and pick up with Sunday and pictures another time. ^^;;
I think I've said before, but I'm not a star-chasing, "omg he shook my hand now I'll never wash it" type, and this is probably the first time I've really done something like this. But even for people like me, I think it's worth it. It was great to just bask in their presence, hear them share little tidbits about their work and lives. I guess it's much like what you would get from listening to a seiyuu free talk or reading a mangaka's little notes -- without challenging my Japanese reading skills like the latter -- but those tend to be more focused on the particular series, while the panels were more about the person. And, I guess, even for the huge number of people packed into the room for Yamane-sensei, there is still a sort of intimacy to be sitting there in the same room with the person, hearing their voices first-hand (and being really glad you know Japanese so you don't have to rely on the horrible translations). The seiyuu mentioned how fans don't get to get that close in Japan, and I was glad that we did.
In the end, I didn't get to go to any of the fan panels because all of the guest events ran over into any time I had marked off as, "Hm, spare time, I think I will check out panel X." Not that I really care, since the panels I was more interested in were scheduled at the same time as guest events in the first place. Maybe next time. But then, next time will also happen mainly because they bring in amazing guests again, so... maybe not.
I did go to main events -- including the Bishounen Auction, which I'm glad I didn't miss -- and those were fun. I think there is a dichotomy in Yaoi-Con attendees. There are the ones that are more like me, there to see the guests and love the series and cosplay and all that. Then there are these creepy people who seem to be there to drool over the bishounen and grope and spank them. (Which I still don't understand. I thought we are there to celebrate BL...) Sometimes the main events became a little too suffused with the latter. Especially closing ceremonies. I'm not sure I want to go to that again... especially if they don't teach people how to properly spank. It's like how they were saying at the fantasy writers panel that you have to actually try punching or stabbing someone (or a chicken) to write it... I had the feeling most of the people there did not really know what spanking is supposed to sound or feel like (whether you're the spanker or spankee). On the other hand, I did think the bishies were hot and well-selected, and it was fun to see more of them.
Anyway, so I guess we will go in chronological order now.
Friday
Originally, I planned to go on Friday to get my badge and maybe attend opening ceremonies and give Bishounen Bingo another try after Fanime 2009. But work got in the way of making it to opening ceremonies -- which I didn't regret at the time, but after hearing stray comments, I think I would try to go next time just to get that first glimpse of all the guests and such. So then I agonized whether I wanted to go anyway just to pick up my badge, so I could start lining up for Takanaga-sensei's panel first thing Saturday morning. I decided I'd just get there first thing when reg opened, and then hope it didn't take too long.
Saturday
(I didn't want to tweet -- plus, I'm way too wordy for that -- but I was emailing people short updates throughout the con, so I figured I'd include them here.)
10:11 AM Got here at 9, no line for badge, but already line for panel (only 10 people or so). So so far so good.
As I mentioned above, Yaoi-Con wasn't quite able to deal with its size this year, and there were lots of things they hadn't quite sorted out or communicated clearly. One of them had to do with this whole having the guest panels back-to-back. Were they going to clear out the room between each session? Should the Yamane fans be sitting through the Takanaga panel so they could save their seats? I don't know how it really got sorted out, but by the time they let us into the room for Takanaga-sensei, they were telling us that they would empty the room, and there were two separate lines -- the one being let in for Takanaga-sensei, and one already building up for Yamane-sensei an hour later. I had to start strategizing how I was going to balance seeing Yamane-sensei (lowest priority) with seeing the seiyuu (top priority).
They apparently expected fewer people for Takanaga-sensei because she was sitting off on one side of the big room, and we all gathered to her there. (The other guests sat on a stage in the middle and were shown on a screen on either side.) Because I lined up so early, I got to sit close enough to hear the off-mic comments between her, her editor, and the translator. Takanaga-sensei was really sweet and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed the little tidbits she shared. My favorite was her first story about meeting deadlines. She was very insistent that she had never missed a deadline. But one time, the deadline got pushed two days earlier maybe like a week before -- which is pretty insane. So she called in her friends from within a two-hour travel radius, and they worked and worked... but they still weren't quite done when she had to get on the train to Tokyo to deliver the manuscript. So she and one of her friends worked on the shinkansen all the way from Nagoya to Tokyo, and when they got there they were done and turned it in on time. But, because trains sway, they both got motion sick and threw up in the bathroom afterwards. ^^;;
They cut off the Q&A session with Takanaga-sensei so they could show the covers of a bunch of DMP yaoi titles that were coming out soon. It was kind of gratuitous, but I guess at least some of the newly licensed series were received with appreciation. Personally, I just didn't realize there were so damn many BL series out there. And how boring 99% of them looked. :P Then some executive of DMP announced Digital Manga Guild, their effort to bring scanlators up from the underground and into a profit-sharing licensing model. I like the idea a lot, actually, but I'm not sure yaoi is the right way to pioneer it.
They kicked us out of the room, and I promptly went to the back of the line for Yamane-sensei. I'd decided I should see her, stay for maybe half of the panel, and then step out and get in line for the seiyuu. I'd also wanted to use Yamane-sensei's panel as the test case for how they were handling the ticketed autograph sessions. (Takanaga-sensei's session was not ticketed, and had some issues, but that comes later.) I happened to have a guaranteed ticket for the seiyuu, so I wasn't as worried, but I was curious if they would guarantee a signature for everyone with a ticket, and maybe if it was possible to get multiple signatures if you had more than one ticket. I thought they were going to hand out tickets as we walked in, but there was nothing like that. So we got in and sat down, and they made the announcement.
11:29 AM In first guest of honor panel, and they just announced the autograph session tickets are by lottery. So glad I bid for the brunch (guaranteed ticket).
They then spent 10 minutes answering people's questions about the ticketing system. One thing I discovered during the con: most people are not like me and do not obsessively read all the policies and announcements on the website in advance and therefore know that the sessions are ticketed and are on the lookout for details that were not provided, like how the tickets are actually going to be distributed. Actually, many of the staff did not know about the sessions being ticketed either. I guess I've been like this so long, it just seems inconceivable to me that, if you're there solely because you want to see Yamane-sensei and have her sign your Finder artbook, you would not try to find these things out ahead of time. Anyways. That is my "superiority of J's" rant.
Oh yeah, and if you are there to see Yamane-sensei, why would you waste 10 minutes of her 60 minute session to ask stupid questions of the staff.
So they wove their way through the room handing out raffle tickets. I'm glad they did that early on, rather than, say, hand them out as people were exiting, since I had to slip out. But later on I learned that they wouldn't give tickets to late-comers who sat in the wrong session, and I felt really bad for this girl who was in the seiyuu line with me who found that out. That was one stupid aspect of their system -- why couldn't they just hand out tickets as people came in? It's not like handing them out once you were seated was more likely to avoid people getting multiple tickets. The other stupid aspect was that everyone in the room got a ticket. I'm sure there must have been people who were like me in previous cons, where I would go see the guest panel but have no interest in the autograph session. It pains my heart to think of the devoted fans who might not have gotten tickets because the lottery pulled a bunch of numbers held by people who never even bothered to check. I can't exactly say they should have gone with the "whoever can camp out earlier" model, but there should have been something else, like a waiting list or something. Anyways. I am spending all this time complaining about this because it is a major aspect of my point that the con was not particularly well run.
So, Yamane-sensei. I actually don't remember much because with all of the delays I got to sit in on maybe three questions before I panicked and left for the seiyuu line. She was very pretty, and very nice, and it was fun to hear her stories just like with Takanaga-sensei. And that is about all I really can say.
The seiyuu line was thankfully not that long yet when I got there. Actually, I don't think it ever got that long. I had been kind of worried by the number of switchbacks in Yamane-sensei's line. I guess, like I'd kind of thought all along, the overlap between seiyuu fans and BL fans is just not as large. But it's not like I was going to give up my spot and go back to hear more from Yamane-sensei.
12:37 PM We're in line for Okiayu-sama's panel. Girl next to me wants him to sign her Wiz. :) Am also bracketed by Seigaku jerseys. I am dumb, so it only registered like 20 min ago that both seiyuu are in PoT.
I chatted a lot with people while I was in line. I had felt kind of lonely with no one to go to the con with me, but there were lots of individuals or pairs of people in line, and it wasn't hard to strike up conversations. I don't think the same thing would have happened at Fanime.
The other amazing thing is that I was actually very well-prepared for this year's Yaoi-Con. I knew all of the main guests and was actually reasonably familiar with a few series from each of them. Kiuchi-san was probably the one I was most ignorant of -- not because I don't know his series so much as I didn't know he was in them. I also recently immersed myself in Togainu no Chi upon the start of the anime, so I recognized the many cosplayers for the series. (The anime is too new to know them just by having watched the handful of episodes that are out. I actually found the PC game and things like that. More on that in another post sometime, maybe.)
Anyway, so the seiyuu line passed in rambling conversation. The girls behind me were pretty hardcore, and they had seen both seiyuu before (I think) and had done a brunch event with Kiuchi-san in the past. They said it sucked, and the handshake/autograph session had been better, which made me a little worried, but what was I going to do. And, fortunately, the brunch with the seiyuu turned out to be awesome. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
They let us in to the seiyuu panel, and thankfully spent only a few minutes announcing the whole lottery thing. And then they started running through the pre-assembled questions they had. Both Okiayu-sama and Kiuchi-san were great. They were doing all sorts of silly things like squabbling over the mic and taking pictures of each other. And they were very thoughtful and open in their answers to the questions. I probably can't summarize better than the post over at okiayu-sama, so I won't try. The thing that struck me, as I said over there, is that Okiayu-sama seemed to be rather hung up on the fact that he always voices the cool, silent type. (And yet when I asked him during the brunch what kinds of personalities he likes to voice, he said かっこいい.) Oh, one thing I also noted that summer_queen didn't mention is that both of them commented that they often end up being cast as characters with deep voices, even though their natural voices are not all that deep. I'm kind of torn. I love his deep-voiced, evil characters, but I don't want him to suffer the strain on his voice. (As a soprano, I know how much it sucks to go deeper than you're used to.) On the other hand, those characters tend to be the type that don't say as much, so......
Anyway, the seiyuu panel was amazing and was enough to make attending Yaoi-Con worth it. I couldn't get enough of them and was sad when the moderator said we were out of time.
After the seiyuu panel came probably the least-awesome part of Yaoi-Con. Originally, my plan had been to try to get autographs from Yamane-sensei and Takanaga-sensei, then hop over to Lynn Flewelling's panel (which was in this tiny room in the corner where people had been lining up for the other guests). By the time the seiyuu panel let out, Yamane-sensei's scheduled session was half over, and since Takanaga-sensei's autograph session wasn't ticketed, I figured I should go over and get in line for that. I didn't even bother to stop by the info desk to see if I'd won a ticket for either Yamane-sensei or the seiyuu.
The line for Takanaga-sensei was long. Yamane-sensei kept signing half an hour past when she was supposed to stop. I don't know if they waited until then to start with Takanaga-sensei or were smart enough to start doing both sessions in parallel. They did have multiple rooms in the autograph area, though I didn't know it at the time. Anyhow, so the line was long and we were all getting antsy, even though they told us it would definitely go past her scheduled time, of which there was only half an hour left at that point. Then they started letting people with Saturday-only badges go to the front of the line. That really pissed me off. Looking back, I probably let my righteous, lawyer side get the better of me, but really, if you think about the situation in the abstract, it is really outrageous. The session was not ticketed, so no one there was guaranteed an autograph. Yet random Saturday person at the end of the line is now suddenly guaranteed an autograph, while random person in front who paid more to be at the con multiple days is guaranteed shit. I was frustrated enough to step out of line and argue with the staff about it, and they told us they couldn't even give the multi-day people any kind of guarantee for the Sunday session. Instead, they reassured us that only like 10 people had been moved up, and Takanaga-sensei would keep signing until 4pm, so hopefully everyone would get in. Also that DMP was running her session, unlike with the other guests, and they were the ones calling the shots. When I have time, I am writing them a nasty letter about all this. (I think I wrote a nasty letter to Fanime one year about their lines, too.) And the whole Saturday priority thing was inspired by Yamane-sensei's session, where Saturday people with tickets ended up being turned away. Why these lessons would transfer to a session that was not ticketed is beyond me. The girl behind me in line had come over, too, and was trying to be more reasonable and less outraged "I'll sue your asses" like I was, so she took the tack that it was great they were trying to be nice to the Saturday people but please recognize that in the process they were throwing the rest of us under the bus and please give us some kind of a bone. In the end, all they could promise us was that they would reevaluate at the point that the now-extended session was over and if we still hadn't gotten in. Which I'm sure they knew was an empty promise because we were close enough to the front to get in since they had extended the session by an hour. What pissed me off was that that hour screwed up everything else, and they would not make accommodation for that, which I guess is too greedy of me. I knew this whole con is about cutting losses and prioritizing, and maybe I shouldn't have thrown good time after bad. I skipped out of Yamane-sensei's panel, after all, and was I really there to get autographs? On the other hand, I think my life would have sucked if I had given up and then tried to get up early to camp out for the session Sunday morning.
Anyway, I did end up getting an autograph, but it made me miss most of Lynn Flewelling's panel, which really sucks because what little of it I caught was awesome. She was talking about the horrible cover art for Stalking Darkness, where everyone was holding their weapons in the wrong hand and the arrows in Alec's quiver were point up. XD She ended early to sign books, including mine. Then I was seized by another fit of stupidity/insanity and went off to do nothing more worthwhile than wander the dealer's room. I came back for the second half of the fantasy writers panel, which also included Lynn, which was also great. If I could do it all over again, I'd probably have skipped Takanaga-sensei's autograph and stayed for all two hours of panels with Lynn. But that's how these things go...
Oh, and on my way to her panel, taking up more time, I stopped by the info desk and found out I had won tickets for both Yamane-sensei and the seiyuu. Leaving me with two tickets for the seiyuu. I waffled all weekend about using it or giving it away. In the end, I did neither and I still have it, as a souvenir, I guess. There were a lot of unclaimed tickets when I went there, and it seemed like all the people I'd met in line who wanted one got one, so I hope supply met demand after all with the seiyuu. I think there were fewer people at their panel than Yamane-sensei's, so the percentage that didn't get a ticket was hopefully low.
After Lynn's panel, I had planned to go to the AMVs, but I sat in for three and they were mindnumbingly boring, so I went to wander the dealer's room again. Once, many years ago, I really enjoyed the AMV contests and might even say they were one of my favorite parts of a con after the masquerade. How times have changed. At least it wasn't the same series I see year after year at Fanime now.
So then came the masquerade. It was nice, though not of the same scale as the Fanime masquerade. As I said, I actually knew more of the series than I expected I would at a convention about yaoi and BL. Like regular cons, there was lots of Kuroshitsuji and Kingdom Hearts. And there was the Togainu no Chi skit. And, I admit, the random fanservice was fun. When I think of the con as a whole, I think the effect of it being 18+ is subtle, but it did make it more enjoyable in those shared fan-moment kinds of ways. I don't know how to explain it well. But like the intermission "who had sex with whom?" skit with the Kingdom Hearts cosplayers. It was just fun.
Then came the Bishounen Auction. I almost didn't go, because I couldn't figure out what it was about from any of the online materials, and after Bishounen Bingo at Fanime, I was kind of like, "whatever." But the girl I talked to in the Takanaga autograph line was saying how she went in the past and it was very 18+ and there was a lot of skin and whatnot. And somehow this convinced me to go. I know that sounds really bad. It was more like, "Okay, I see, this one of the spectacles of Yaoi-Con, and since I'm here I'd better go see it." I had been planning to go to the Iron Writer and Madlibs thing instead, which probably would have kept my interest for like 5 minutes.
I'm glad I went to the Bishounen Auction. It was a spectacle -- that lasted over three hours -- but generally not in a bad way. The boys were actually really hot. Having never been to a strip club, the performances were how I would imagine one. Except the boys were probably closer to my taste, and I was in the company of fellow fangirls, so it was probably a better experience than a strip club would be. I am still kind of disturbed by the amount of money that was flying around, and trying to imagine who was buying and what they were doing with the boys, but whatever. (Disturbed not in that I think horrible things were happening, but in that it's kind of creepy for a group of middle-aged women to pay $500 to spend time with a guy who's probably in his early 20's.)
Besides, if I hadn't gone, I would have missed...
11:21 PM Holy shit, the seiyuu guests just went at bishounen auction for $11K. REALLY happy with the brunch slot.
Yes, the seiyuu were auctioned off, for $11,000. When they stepped up, I spent about half a second wondering if I should bid. But considering several boys had gone for four or five hundred, I figured pretty quickly that this would be way beyond my price point. Still, I didn't expect it to go that high. I mean, I imagine most con attendees are young and not particularly rich, and many are probably students. How much of their future are they sacrificing to do something like this?
And does Yaoi-Con regret having auctioned the 11 brunch slots for only $75 each?
In the seiyuu autograph line the next day, I talked to a girl who sat near the seiyuu at the auction. (That would be the sound of my jealousy, yes.) And I guess they had come in and were a little confused, and suddenly there was a lot of back and forth between them and their translator and the staff, and then they were put up for auction. So clearly it was not planned at all. Obviously they did not strip like the other boys, but there was still some exhortation, and Okiayu-sama ended up taking off his cardigan and offering it up for auction as well. That went for $800.
I'm surprised, and glad, that something like the bishie auction didn't totally freak them out and convince them that American fans were creepy and that they should never come back again. Instead, they seemed to have a good time getting into all of the different aspects of the con. And I did my part by trying not to be creepy, too.
But that was Sunday, and this post has become ridiculously long, so I think I should stop and pick up with Sunday and pictures another time. ^^;;