Ich can Acen gut!
Okay, here's my Acen report. This is probably going to be pretty incoherent because the con was a jumbled mess of me and the people I was with being utter imbeciles for a weekend. Also I do have pictures (though not many; there wasn't much I wanted to take pictures of and I was too busy goofing off a lot of the time). I'll post those in a separate entry, though. I'm exhausted and need to take pictures of the spoils of war still. They should be at the end of this entry. This entry is also massive and going under a cut.
Thursday: The Beginning of the Beginning
I didn't get to bed on Wednesday night until...4 AM I believe? I was busy with last minute preparations. So I ended up getting two hours of sleep, taking a shower...and coming out with my towel unadjusted on the way to my room to find Brooke in the hallway. SOB my boobs are ridiculously noticeable even when I'm fully clothed! I was incoherent all morning that day, and kept saying things like "Ich can brain gut" and I don't even remember what all, but I remember being severely cracked out and making Brooke die laughing, as well as Cassie and Rosie once they got here.
We abused decorated the van with paint markers again. I didn't take pictures of this but some of the others did I did take pictures of this earlier today, and it was pretty amazing. It ranged from "TSUNDERE WAGON" and "Einsamkeit ='(" to "MARRIED x3" and "beware the Frenchmen" (Married x3 meaning "MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED. We had space constraints. the x3 wasn't a face). Someone wrote five meters, so I raged and wrote "IS A LIE" underneath, and that caused an edit war. Also Brooke drew a blue Gilbird that had scary eyes that terrified Rosie. During the car ride, we had a lot of random people staring at our car. One group of people slowed down on the highway to take pictures, but we got a ton of disapproving looks, too. …Oh, and I brought my stuffed kitty, and made it hump Rosie’s stuffed unicorn at one point on the car ride. This is a recurring theme.
So this was the first year that we managed to get to Mitsuwa for snacks. Once we got to the hotel, we unloaded our stuff and located my lovely deecherrywolf for hanging out funtiems and dragging her along to Mitsuwa. I discovered that Japan has a Chopin magazine and took a picture of that nonsense with my phone. I also bought Japanese chocolate biscuit candy called "Cho-pan" lololol. I also bought a Pash magazine that had some cool Hetalia stuff, and we bought some mochi ice cream. The original game plan with the ice cream was to just buy a box or two and eat it on the spot. WELL we're morons and decided to buy like 4 different flavors, figuring "oh, we'll just keep it in the cooler! It'll last a while, right?" NO. NEIN. WRONG. VERBOTEN. WORST IDEA EVER. Shelby had to help us eat it later, and we STILL had like 2 extra vanilla ones that had to be thrown away. But the ice cream was delicious! aisuuuu....aisuuuuuuuu...aisuuuuuuuuuu.... Katie showed up eventually that night, too. Yay fanservice character!
I…don’t think anything else that was even remotely interesting happened on Thursday. Or if it did I don’t remember it at all.
Friday: I think I’ve developed a biting kink
Woke up in the morning feelin’ like P. Diddy, got dressed, and went to the dealer room. Rosie was Englanding love that day (and every day of the con. She had 3 England costume variations). Went in and bought a mini tophat from one of my favorite AA sellers whose dA link broke my HTML. It’s an adorable purple-ish hat with sparkly silver stars and a silver dragonfly on the rim. After that I blew $110 on doujinshi, then headed back up to the room, since that and the $35 for the hat was all I had on me, and I owed Rosie like $12 for what she helped me cover on my doujinshi. I felt a bit depressed for a bit there, but I think I just needed a nap because I woke up later and felt fine.
After naptime, Rosie and I went to the world folklore in anime panel. It was really cool! Most of the information was pretty basic stuff on examples of mythology used in anime, but some things were really interesting and I learned quite a bit from it. I learned what a Dullahan is, for example, and I learned the name “yuki onna”, which is basically what the CLAMP oneshot manga Shirahime-Syo is about. There were also some cool trivia bits, like the origin of the Grim Reaper was talked about (it came from a German story, and got introduced to Japan by way of a Japanese adaptation of it as a play and thus started the concept of shinigami in Japan). The only thing about that panel that wasn’t cool? Well, they’d said they might run out of time, so specific examples of shows that use whatever mythological element they’re talking about should be saved for later, but this one audience member insisted on raising her hand to give examples of places where such and such was used EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I think the panelist was sick of it, too, since at one point she [politely] said “Also, keep in mind, I haven’t seen every anime ever”.
I really have no idea anymore what happened between that panel and Aural Vampire…. probably more dealer room time. So yeah, next up was standing in line for about an hour for Aural Vampire. SPOILERS: that was THE best concert I’ve EVER been to EVER. Yo, m.o.v.e., I’m happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but Aural Vampire had the best Acen concert of all time. OF. ALL. TIME.
The Spoony Bards were really really good. Their female electric violinist temporarily stole my heart. That is, until Exo Chika came onstage once Aural Vampire took over. She has got to be the cutest Japanese entertainer there is in any genre. She really pulls off the cute/creepy combo well, too. She just has an incredible stage presence. She also has adorable outfits. The first was a “bloodstained” white dress, then there was a black and purple thing later. Raveman is also pretty damn cool what with his mask. Towards the end Exo Chika had a mini gun and was shooting balloons out of Raveman’s hands.
Incredible concert was incredible, but draining. I went back upstairs and we omnommed on Giordano’s pizza (mmmmm) and went to bed. Kinda. I forget what started it, but Rosie and I started making Snape pairing names again. These made even less sense than before. “People die if they are Snilled” got said. Oh, and my personal favorite; $ne$ha. But we did this for like an hour while Brooke was trying to sleep. She told us to shut up, and we finally did, but not before Rosie said “If we think of anymore Snullshit, we can save it for morning”. I died laughing. I thought it was intentional, but later she said she had intended to say bullshit correctly, but slipped because we’d been adding “Sn-“ to everything for the past hour.
Holy Jesus guys my Acen report is too long to fit in one entry. Part 2 coming once this one is up
Thursday: The Beginning of the Beginning
I didn't get to bed on Wednesday night until...4 AM I believe? I was busy with last minute preparations. So I ended up getting two hours of sleep, taking a shower...and coming out with my towel unadjusted on the way to my room to find Brooke in the hallway. SOB my boobs are ridiculously noticeable even when I'm fully clothed! I was incoherent all morning that day, and kept saying things like "Ich can brain gut" and I don't even remember what all, but I remember being severely cracked out and making Brooke die laughing, as well as Cassie and Rosie once they got here.
We abused decorated the van with paint markers again. I didn't take pictures of this but some of the others did I did take pictures of this earlier today, and it was pretty amazing. It ranged from "TSUNDERE WAGON" and "Einsamkeit ='(" to "MARRIED x3" and "beware the Frenchmen" (Married x3 meaning "MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED. We had space constraints. the x3 wasn't a face). Someone wrote five meters, so I raged and wrote "IS A LIE" underneath, and that caused an edit war. Also Brooke drew a blue Gilbird that had scary eyes that terrified Rosie. During the car ride, we had a lot of random people staring at our car. One group of people slowed down on the highway to take pictures, but we got a ton of disapproving looks, too. …Oh, and I brought my stuffed kitty, and made it hump Rosie’s stuffed unicorn at one point on the car ride. This is a recurring theme.
So this was the first year that we managed to get to Mitsuwa for snacks. Once we got to the hotel, we unloaded our stuff and located my lovely deecherrywolf for hanging out funtiems and dragging her along to Mitsuwa. I discovered that Japan has a Chopin magazine and took a picture of that nonsense with my phone. I also bought Japanese chocolate biscuit candy called "Cho-pan" lololol. I also bought a Pash magazine that had some cool Hetalia stuff, and we bought some mochi ice cream. The original game plan with the ice cream was to just buy a box or two and eat it on the spot. WELL we're morons and decided to buy like 4 different flavors, figuring "oh, we'll just keep it in the cooler! It'll last a while, right?" NO. NEIN. WRONG. VERBOTEN. WORST IDEA EVER. Shelby had to help us eat it later, and we STILL had like 2 extra vanilla ones that had to be thrown away. But the ice cream was delicious! aisuuuu....aisuuuuuuuu...aisuuuuuuuuuu.... Katie showed up eventually that night, too. Yay fanservice character!
I…don’t think anything else that was even remotely interesting happened on Thursday. Or if it did I don’t remember it at all.
Friday: I think I’ve developed a biting kink
Woke up in the morning feelin’ like P. Diddy, got dressed, and went to the dealer room. Rosie was Englanding love that day (and every day of the con. She had 3 England costume variations). Went in and bought a mini tophat from one of my favorite AA sellers whose dA link broke my HTML. It’s an adorable purple-ish hat with sparkly silver stars and a silver dragonfly on the rim. After that I blew $110 on doujinshi, then headed back up to the room, since that and the $35 for the hat was all I had on me, and I owed Rosie like $12 for what she helped me cover on my doujinshi. I felt a bit depressed for a bit there, but I think I just needed a nap because I woke up later and felt fine.
After naptime, Rosie and I went to the world folklore in anime panel. It was really cool! Most of the information was pretty basic stuff on examples of mythology used in anime, but some things were really interesting and I learned quite a bit from it. I learned what a Dullahan is, for example, and I learned the name “yuki onna”, which is basically what the CLAMP oneshot manga Shirahime-Syo is about. There were also some cool trivia bits, like the origin of the Grim Reaper was talked about (it came from a German story, and got introduced to Japan by way of a Japanese adaptation of it as a play and thus started the concept of shinigami in Japan). The only thing about that panel that wasn’t cool? Well, they’d said they might run out of time, so specific examples of shows that use whatever mythological element they’re talking about should be saved for later, but this one audience member insisted on raising her hand to give examples of places where such and such was used EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I think the panelist was sick of it, too, since at one point she [politely] said “Also, keep in mind, I haven’t seen every anime ever”.
I really have no idea anymore what happened between that panel and Aural Vampire…. probably more dealer room time. So yeah, next up was standing in line for about an hour for Aural Vampire. SPOILERS: that was THE best concert I’ve EVER been to EVER. Yo, m.o.v.e., I’m happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but Aural Vampire had the best Acen concert of all time. OF. ALL. TIME.
The Spoony Bards were really really good. Their female electric violinist temporarily stole my heart. That is, until Exo Chika came onstage once Aural Vampire took over. She has got to be the cutest Japanese entertainer there is in any genre. She really pulls off the cute/creepy combo well, too. She just has an incredible stage presence. She also has adorable outfits. The first was a “bloodstained” white dress, then there was a black and purple thing later. Raveman is also pretty damn cool what with his mask. Towards the end Exo Chika had a mini gun and was shooting balloons out of Raveman’s hands.
Incredible concert was incredible, but draining. I went back upstairs and we omnommed on Giordano’s pizza (mmmmm) and went to bed. Kinda. I forget what started it, but Rosie and I started making Snape pairing names again. These made even less sense than before. “People die if they are Snilled” got said. Oh, and my personal favorite; $ne$ha. But we did this for like an hour while Brooke was trying to sleep. She told us to shut up, and we finally did, but not before Rosie said “If we think of anymore Snullshit, we can save it for morning”. I died laughing. I thought it was intentional, but later she said she had intended to say bullshit correctly, but slipped because we’d been adding “Sn-“ to everything for the past hour.
Holy Jesus guys my Acen report is too long to fit in one entry. Part 2 coming once this one is up