ACen 2012 was 20% cooler
This is late and copypasted from tumblr because I'm dumb.
Thursday morning I drove over to Brooke’s house to pick up her, Holly, and Jessii, my group for the year. We did our tradition of decking my car out with paint markers yet again. My Kia now says such intelligent things as “DAMMIT ANDERS”, “Kyoko <3’s mermaids” “contract?” (as a speech bubble coming from my Kyubey bumper sticker at that), and “…too loud?”. I. yeah. This part is always fun. We went straight to Mitsuwa for Japanese noms once we got into Chicago. Brooke..ate an entire 6 pack of mochi ice cream in one sitting. Mochi ice cream is delicious but there’s no way to save it so you have to eat it all before it melts, and sadly Brooke and I don’t like the same flavors so we can’t split a package. I ate 4 of mine and Jessii took the other two.
From there, getting my badge was…interesting. I was a panelist this year so I had a comped badge, I got a 50% discount on it. But comped badges can’t be mailed. As such, I was supposed to pick it up in a special room in the Hyatt instead of in the convention center.
Welp. That printer wasn’t working. So some guy sent us down to the con center will call line.
Where they proceeded to tell us they couldn’t do it either.
The printer system just wouldn’t let them print the comped badges for some reason. Or well. Some of them. I waited for a while. They attempted some people and a couple went through. They didn’t even offer to try me for a WHILE though. But then finally did.
And it went through.
So I stood there for like 45 minutes for no good reason. Fun.
At least it did work, though, since idk what happened re; the ones that didn’t want to print…
Once that was taken care of I did some last minute panel prep and messed around online for a while since the Hyatt had free wifi this year, and just goofed off with the others before going to bed.
Friday morning, I put on my Applejack cosplay. It turned out really good, considering it’s all stuff out of my closet except the wig! I got stopped for pictures a lot, too. It was pretty neat. Brooke started as fem!Karkat (human!fem!Karkat, however, she found out that the setting powder for her grey makeup wasn’t working right, so she couldn’t wear it without getting it all over everything), then switched to Fluttershy. OMFG her Fluttershy was SO cute, even though the wig was a bit too bright of a pink.
I walked the dealer room for a while, then went to the SLGBT Otaku Unite panel, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, though, it was painfully overtaken by men. The panelists were two guys who were a couple, and most of the audience was male as well. As such, pretty much the only time issues that weren’t specifically gay male issues got discussed was if myself or one other girl who was talkative spoke up. That? Kind of sucked.
Also this one girl basically said “oh it’s Japan’s fault because their culture is more homophobic and sexist so being gay is only just now becoming alright and it’s easier for men, so we just have to accept that” when I pointed out how there’s so little yuri available in English, be it scanlated or official releases. Which was such racist shit imo, and makes no sense anyway because that issue has nothing to do with Japan. There’s plenty of yuri manga. A ton of it’s by lesbians! It’s that it’s not TRANSLATED. This idiot tried to claim it’s “because Japan doesn’t want us to see it” lmao. No, it’s because the companies haven’t figured out how to market it and idefk what the fanbase is doing re; not scanlating. But I just. Wow ew.
Other than that it was a good panel, though, and the other girl was cool and we befriended each other during the con.
After that was more dealer room wandering, and then meeting up w/ a group of people who RP at Discedo on Dreamwidth. That was fun! One of them was a longtime ACen friend of mine, another was someone I have a ton of CR with and am good online friends with. I didn’t know the others too well but they were cool too!
Then there was the MLP photoshoot. It was really fun. I got some cute pics of myself posing with a Rarity and a Rainbow Dash at the end of it (since I adore RariJack and AppleDash~)
Giordano’s pizza was another tradition we continued to honor. So. fucking. good. I changed clothes and hung out with my friend Shelby before picking up the pizza. After dinner I got ready for my panel, Burn All the Witches: a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fan panel. I was super nervous for it, but it turned out really well in the end! I had two people come up to me and say they loved it, and it was really fun to do. I’ll do it again next year if I can come to ACen at all (I hope I can, but I’ll be in college! So we’ll see re; finals)
Saturday I was going to cosplay again, but the boots I wore for Applejack hadn’t been worn much before and had rubbed on my right ankle bad enough that I couldn’t wear them again, so I wore my rave outfit all day. It consisted of a rainbow bow, my Rainbow Dash 20% cooler shirt, a rainbow rubber bracelet, neon blue shorts, and neon blue fluffy rave legwarmers with silver streamers that I bought the day before. It was super cute ;3; and I got a lot of compliments for it and my makeup all day.
I didn’t make any panels before the FUNimation panel because I overslept, but that was okay. I spent a lot of the morning chilling with Nika, then eventually went to the FUNimation panel. After that, something amazing happened.
I ran into Charlene Ingram from FUNimation in the bathroom. I think she’s one of the coolest people ever and I’ve always wanted to meet her, so I introduced myself and said hi. We chatted for a bit and she asked me if I was coming to the Panty and Stocking dub premiere. I was on my way to it, actually, and said so, and she had me follow her and she got me in and got me a front row seat! SO COOL. I helped her a bit with setup by marking reserved seats, and ;3; omfg she gave me one of the first 5 bandannas that have been made so far for Hetalia season 4’s special edition set. It’s orange and has Baltics~ This way I can actually wear one since I’ll def. get the LE season 4 set so I’ll have two. So cool.
Also guys? The Panty and Stocking dub is phenomenal. Seriously. I haven’t loved a dub this much since…well besides Hetalia I do not remember and I love Hetalia’s dub in a different way. But yes that was awesome and Char is the coolest~
Hi Char if you’re reading this, since I know you’re on here! /waves
From there I was on the way up to the hotel room to put away the massive poster they handed out to everyone at the premiere when I ran into Katie and followed her to the Touhou photoshoot for a bit before going back up to put the poster away. Then I wandered around the hotel for a bit and hung out with a really sweet Princess Kraehe cosplayer and a Kotetsu that was also super cool that she was with for a while before going to get ready for the Soap Bubble.
Once myself, Brooke, and Amber, a new friend we met at-con, were decked out with glowsticks, we headed downstairs….and someone set off the fucking fire alarm =’|. No idea if there was a fire or not, but. Yeah. Not cool. The masquerade took a while to start back up because of that, so the rave got a late start. We got an awesome spot in line, though.
Except then Brooke and Amber kind of derped. At one point after we waited a while, someone asked IRT how much longer until the rave would start and she answered about an hour. Brooke and Amber were immediately like “I’m not waiting another hour, let’s bail” and did so.
Then the rave started like 15-20 minutes later.
They apparently had a good time hanging out in the room, so it wasn’t a total loss for them, at least. I stuck it out because it was one of the main things I wanted to do, and I’m glad I did. It was fucking AWESOME. Somehow I ran into my friend Liz once we were both in, so I got to see her for a little bit. That as amazing, you never find your friends IN the rave! But I did. I got to dance with a lot of hot women, also, including a really pretty Black Rock Shooter cosplayer that seemed pretty into me, and ofc the music was awesome, especially DJ Maru’s set. DJ Heavygrinder’s set rocked, but unfortunately I only stayed about halfway through because by then the place where my boots had rubbed at my ankle the day prior was hurting too much.
Oh I also got my first piece of kandi in line in exchange for a glowstick ;3;
Once I got back to the hotel room it was 1:30 and everyone was asleep. I went out and hung out with Katie for a half an hour before crashing myself.
Sunday was mostly goofing off with my friends, both roommates and otherwise. Brooke was having too much fun being gay Karkat with the rainbow flag she got on Friday rofl. I spent most of it with Kaitlyn (the girl from the LGBT panel) wandering the dealer room and talking. Also we ran into the Mami and Chibitalia cosplayers from last year that Brooke and I ran into over and over! It was good to see them again ;3;
Kaitlyn also followed for a bit while we worked on packing and loading the car, and I showed her one of the gorgeous doujins I got. She was jealous. I don’t blame her, it was a delicious Ui/Nodoka and quite frankly it’s some of the best yuri smut I’ve ever seen. But yeah we hung out until she went off for a panel. Once the car was loaded I went to the Video Game Orchestra concert, which was kind of a disappointment honestly. Then I met with my roommates and their at-con friends for a while and we goofed off before finally heading off. I ran into Kaitlyn to say goodbye since I spotted her, then we parted with the others at the car. I started making dumb Titanic comments =’|
…Then played the drunk Russians version of My Heart Will Go On. It was perfection. That’s our official ACen closing song now.
So yes, this was one of the best ACens I’ve ever had. Maybe even the best. Here’s a short list of some of the best things I bought. Not everything since that’d take ages to list, though.
-a Nightmare Moon handmade plushie that is super cute
-fluffy rave legwarmers
-4 doujins (K-ON! Ui/Nodoka, Panty/Stocking, Fate/Zero multiple m/m pairings, and a safe for work AusHun, which is the only Hetalia thing I bought)
-a SNSD poster, a large print of Madoka and Walpurgisnacht, a print of a very pretty OC done in watercolor, and a Marceline/Princess Bubblegum print
-Sayaka and Kyoko petit nendoroids and a Mami rubber strap
-$20 down on a f!Hawke/Merrill commission that will be done in a few months
My pics are here and here (you need to click both links, flickr allows 200 pics and I had 220 so the other 20 are on imgur).
This entry was originally posted at http://nachtmusik.dreamwidth.org/92560.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Thursday morning I drove over to Brooke’s house to pick up her, Holly, and Jessii, my group for the year. We did our tradition of decking my car out with paint markers yet again. My Kia now says such intelligent things as “DAMMIT ANDERS”, “Kyoko <3’s mermaids” “contract?” (as a speech bubble coming from my Kyubey bumper sticker at that), and “…too loud?”. I. yeah. This part is always fun. We went straight to Mitsuwa for Japanese noms once we got into Chicago. Brooke..ate an entire 6 pack of mochi ice cream in one sitting. Mochi ice cream is delicious but there’s no way to save it so you have to eat it all before it melts, and sadly Brooke and I don’t like the same flavors so we can’t split a package. I ate 4 of mine and Jessii took the other two.
From there, getting my badge was…interesting. I was a panelist this year so I had a comped badge, I got a 50% discount on it. But comped badges can’t be mailed. As such, I was supposed to pick it up in a special room in the Hyatt instead of in the convention center.
Welp. That printer wasn’t working. So some guy sent us down to the con center will call line.
Where they proceeded to tell us they couldn’t do it either.
The printer system just wouldn’t let them print the comped badges for some reason. Or well. Some of them. I waited for a while. They attempted some people and a couple went through. They didn’t even offer to try me for a WHILE though. But then finally did.
And it went through.
So I stood there for like 45 minutes for no good reason. Fun.
At least it did work, though, since idk what happened re; the ones that didn’t want to print…
Once that was taken care of I did some last minute panel prep and messed around online for a while since the Hyatt had free wifi this year, and just goofed off with the others before going to bed.
Friday morning, I put on my Applejack cosplay. It turned out really good, considering it’s all stuff out of my closet except the wig! I got stopped for pictures a lot, too. It was pretty neat. Brooke started as fem!Karkat (human!fem!Karkat, however, she found out that the setting powder for her grey makeup wasn’t working right, so she couldn’t wear it without getting it all over everything), then switched to Fluttershy. OMFG her Fluttershy was SO cute, even though the wig was a bit too bright of a pink.
I walked the dealer room for a while, then went to the SLGBT Otaku Unite panel, which was pretty good. Unfortunately, though, it was painfully overtaken by men. The panelists were two guys who were a couple, and most of the audience was male as well. As such, pretty much the only time issues that weren’t specifically gay male issues got discussed was if myself or one other girl who was talkative spoke up. That? Kind of sucked.
Also this one girl basically said “oh it’s Japan’s fault because their culture is more homophobic and sexist so being gay is only just now becoming alright and it’s easier for men, so we just have to accept that” when I pointed out how there’s so little yuri available in English, be it scanlated or official releases. Which was such racist shit imo, and makes no sense anyway because that issue has nothing to do with Japan. There’s plenty of yuri manga. A ton of it’s by lesbians! It’s that it’s not TRANSLATED. This idiot tried to claim it’s “because Japan doesn’t want us to see it” lmao. No, it’s because the companies haven’t figured out how to market it and idefk what the fanbase is doing re; not scanlating. But I just. Wow ew.
Other than that it was a good panel, though, and the other girl was cool and we befriended each other during the con.
After that was more dealer room wandering, and then meeting up w/ a group of people who RP at Discedo on Dreamwidth. That was fun! One of them was a longtime ACen friend of mine, another was someone I have a ton of CR with and am good online friends with. I didn’t know the others too well but they were cool too!
Then there was the MLP photoshoot. It was really fun. I got some cute pics of myself posing with a Rarity and a Rainbow Dash at the end of it (since I adore RariJack and AppleDash~)
Giordano’s pizza was another tradition we continued to honor. So. fucking. good. I changed clothes and hung out with my friend Shelby before picking up the pizza. After dinner I got ready for my panel, Burn All the Witches: a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fan panel. I was super nervous for it, but it turned out really well in the end! I had two people come up to me and say they loved it, and it was really fun to do. I’ll do it again next year if I can come to ACen at all (I hope I can, but I’ll be in college! So we’ll see re; finals)
Saturday I was going to cosplay again, but the boots I wore for Applejack hadn’t been worn much before and had rubbed on my right ankle bad enough that I couldn’t wear them again, so I wore my rave outfit all day. It consisted of a rainbow bow, my Rainbow Dash 20% cooler shirt, a rainbow rubber bracelet, neon blue shorts, and neon blue fluffy rave legwarmers with silver streamers that I bought the day before. It was super cute ;3; and I got a lot of compliments for it and my makeup all day.
I didn’t make any panels before the FUNimation panel because I overslept, but that was okay. I spent a lot of the morning chilling with Nika, then eventually went to the FUNimation panel. After that, something amazing happened.
I ran into Charlene Ingram from FUNimation in the bathroom. I think she’s one of the coolest people ever and I’ve always wanted to meet her, so I introduced myself and said hi. We chatted for a bit and she asked me if I was coming to the Panty and Stocking dub premiere. I was on my way to it, actually, and said so, and she had me follow her and she got me in and got me a front row seat! SO COOL. I helped her a bit with setup by marking reserved seats, and ;3; omfg she gave me one of the first 5 bandannas that have been made so far for Hetalia season 4’s special edition set. It’s orange and has Baltics~ This way I can actually wear one since I’ll def. get the LE season 4 set so I’ll have two. So cool.
Also guys? The Panty and Stocking dub is phenomenal. Seriously. I haven’t loved a dub this much since…well besides Hetalia I do not remember and I love Hetalia’s dub in a different way. But yes that was awesome and Char is the coolest~
Hi Char if you’re reading this, since I know you’re on here! /waves
From there I was on the way up to the hotel room to put away the massive poster they handed out to everyone at the premiere when I ran into Katie and followed her to the Touhou photoshoot for a bit before going back up to put the poster away. Then I wandered around the hotel for a bit and hung out with a really sweet Princess Kraehe cosplayer and a Kotetsu that was also super cool that she was with for a while before going to get ready for the Soap Bubble.
Once myself, Brooke, and Amber, a new friend we met at-con, were decked out with glowsticks, we headed downstairs….and someone set off the fucking fire alarm =’|. No idea if there was a fire or not, but. Yeah. Not cool. The masquerade took a while to start back up because of that, so the rave got a late start. We got an awesome spot in line, though.
Except then Brooke and Amber kind of derped. At one point after we waited a while, someone asked IRT how much longer until the rave would start and she answered about an hour. Brooke and Amber were immediately like “I’m not waiting another hour, let’s bail” and did so.
Then the rave started like 15-20 minutes later.
They apparently had a good time hanging out in the room, so it wasn’t a total loss for them, at least. I stuck it out because it was one of the main things I wanted to do, and I’m glad I did. It was fucking AWESOME. Somehow I ran into my friend Liz once we were both in, so I got to see her for a little bit. That as amazing, you never find your friends IN the rave! But I did. I got to dance with a lot of hot women, also, including a really pretty Black Rock Shooter cosplayer that seemed pretty into me, and ofc the music was awesome, especially DJ Maru’s set. DJ Heavygrinder’s set rocked, but unfortunately I only stayed about halfway through because by then the place where my boots had rubbed at my ankle the day prior was hurting too much.
Oh I also got my first piece of kandi in line in exchange for a glowstick ;3;
Once I got back to the hotel room it was 1:30 and everyone was asleep. I went out and hung out with Katie for a half an hour before crashing myself.
Sunday was mostly goofing off with my friends, both roommates and otherwise. Brooke was having too much fun being gay Karkat with the rainbow flag she got on Friday rofl. I spent most of it with Kaitlyn (the girl from the LGBT panel) wandering the dealer room and talking. Also we ran into the Mami and Chibitalia cosplayers from last year that Brooke and I ran into over and over! It was good to see them again ;3;
Kaitlyn also followed for a bit while we worked on packing and loading the car, and I showed her one of the gorgeous doujins I got. She was jealous. I don’t blame her, it was a delicious Ui/Nodoka and quite frankly it’s some of the best yuri smut I’ve ever seen. But yeah we hung out until she went off for a panel. Once the car was loaded I went to the Video Game Orchestra concert, which was kind of a disappointment honestly. Then I met with my roommates and their at-con friends for a while and we goofed off before finally heading off. I ran into Kaitlyn to say goodbye since I spotted her, then we parted with the others at the car. I started making dumb Titanic comments =’|
…Then played the drunk Russians version of My Heart Will Go On. It was perfection. That’s our official ACen closing song now.
So yes, this was one of the best ACens I’ve ever had. Maybe even the best. Here’s a short list of some of the best things I bought. Not everything since that’d take ages to list, though.
-a Nightmare Moon handmade plushie that is super cute
-fluffy rave legwarmers
-4 doujins (K-ON! Ui/Nodoka, Panty/Stocking, Fate/Zero multiple m/m pairings, and a safe for work AusHun, which is the only Hetalia thing I bought)
-a SNSD poster, a large print of Madoka and Walpurgisnacht, a print of a very pretty OC done in watercolor, and a Marceline/Princess Bubblegum print
-Sayaka and Kyoko petit nendoroids and a Mami rubber strap
-$20 down on a f!Hawke/Merrill commission that will be done in a few months
My pics are here and here (you need to click both links, flickr allows 200 pics and I had 220 so the other 20 are on imgur).
This entry was originally posted at http://nachtmusik.dreamwidth.org/92560.html. Please comment there using OpenID.