FANIME finally
Gee, 2008 sure is a con year. I usually never do this stuff. WonderCon 08, Fanime 08, ASI Techexpo, and AnimeExpo 08.
Fanime. Let's see, where to start... I don't have all the photos from Elizabeth's camera so I am going to make do with what was posted by other people on the internet.
DAY 1:
rabidpotato (Elizabeth) and I arrive sort of late-ish, but we're in our Touhou outfits! We meet up with breadf, sakura_nek0... actually, Day 1 was really a blur for me now. I can't recall it completely, but I remember when we were heading to the Dealer's Room, they had just about opened. Elizabeth had helped me pin my badge to my inner layer of clothing, and it was nice because you couldn't see the badge on my outfit. I could just raise my arm and just pull the top layer to show it. Apparently, the people at the Dealer's Hall didn't like that so much, so they stopped the entire line when we reached there and told us to put it around our necks. We did, and we were allowed access.
I am very disappointed at the size of the dealer's hall! I had no idea it would be THAT SMALL... so I barely bought anything at the convention! It's a huge shock to me, since I usually am able to find something to buy, but I just came out each time with nothing. I think that must have shocked Elizabeth in a way, because I normally come out buying things... but it's not my fault Fanime barely had any doujinshi! I was throughly disappointed!! Anyway... I did see a lot of things I already own, so maybe it's just coming to the point where almost everything that is easy to get that I want is already gotten (that isn't that expensive, since I don't have that much money.)
sakura_nek0 signed up for a karaoke contest of sorts, so we went to that room to see her sing. She also ended up winning first place, which was awesome. That also means later on in this entry she had to sing in front of everyone at Masquerade...
Later that night, we sat around near Stage Zero and had our tarot cards read. Kind of neat, 'cause the girl there was like "HEY! Why don't you guys sit down..." so we did, and she was like, "tarot~? Tarot card reading?" I was like oh, free stuff! FREEEEE. So we each had our cards read and honestly I don't really think much of these things but it was pretty accurate and awesome. Fun, fun. We also met stitchmind that night and chatted a bit. He had a table in the artist's alley.
We did visit the artist's alley! There was a girl there that recognized Eirin, and was like EIRIN! EIRIN! TASUKETE EIRIN! And I was like YEEAAAAH WHO AM I!? And she just stared at me. Just stared. "I don't have any idea" she said!! I was like WUUUUT HOW CAN YOU KNOW EIRIN BUT NOT KAGUYA!! And then it hit me that she didn't beat Imperishable Night on one credit, 'cause if you lose and continue you fight only Eirin... makes sense, fun times. (Well, you have to beat it twice, Kaguya is FINAL B, so you gotta beat Final A first...)
There was the (soon to be) Rinnosuke cosplayer (Michael, lisu) in the Artist's Alley, I purchased a bookmark to support him, and he also gave us a free one for dressin' up.
A little further from him, was a girl that loooooves Touhou. She drew us some free commissions (Marisa and Alice~ and then a Mokou and Alice that I paid for to support her) and during this time PoringMan, a guy from an IRC channel that I know of tried to talk to me, but so many things was going on (and so many people talking to me, it was overwhelming) that I didn't really speak to him. I ended up drawing some things in her book and... yeah we chatted a bit.
Liz and I exhaustedly went home. Fun times having people recognize us and doing the "EIRIN! EIRIN! TASUKETE EIRIN!" bit.
DAY 2:
I am at "home" in front of the hotel computer, and so is Kaguya.
PARKING WAS A BITCH. We ended up parking near the Children's Discovery Museum. Ends up being that Beauty and the Beast had their first night and something else that I can't remember was going on.
It was the day of the Touhou meet, and so we had a ton of people... It was half female and half male... and Touhou is a series full of girls. Kimberly showed up late because she had to go do her rehearsal thing, so I sort of twirled around with Liz until she got there. There are like three or four male characters, but we only had one that actually was his right gender. I think the event lasted a few good hours, and afterward we all went around together as a group just doing things... that is the people who wanted to hang out. I met Minh (Lyrica, moondabor) and Michael (Rinnosuke, lisu) there and ended up seeing them again at AX...
After the Touhou meet finished, Kimberly changed out of Marisa to go do her Masquerade Karaoke winner thing. Here's a vid. Sounded better in person but it's still cool:
There were a lot of people at the Masquerade, and during her songs, a guy kept looking back. I turned around to see what the big deal was, and oh man, there were SO many people waving around their cell phones during the song. I think it's also in this video, near the end. She sang another song, too, but I don't have a nice video of it.
They started going on and on about the judges and it was sure boring after the cool intros, so we left.
She changed back into her Marisa outfit to match our Touhou-ness. On the way out of the hotel after we changed, there was a woman and her daughter, talking about how crappy the Masquerade was and how long they waited. We ended up telling them we left because we knew how bad it was, and that Kimberly sang in the intro. They were like "oh you were cool."
Had some pizza in Iori E's room... can't remember anything else of that night.
DAY 3:
Came to the con late again. But we were getting better at putting on our outfits!! We headed to the Dealer's room, and walked around, had more photos taken... there was a giant ramen cup girl and I had to get her photo... probably on Liz's camera somewhere. (I still haven't gotten those photos...)
I think we met shizushizu on this day... but she was dressed up as Cirno and stuff. I really can't remember what day that was.
Met up with Kimberly and her friend Vivian. I think they just came back from the Haruhi group or something, but after a while, Kimberly changed out and went back to being Marisa (again) for more Touhou funs.
Dinner was at a place named Hydration (it was like our millionth time there those four days) and I randomly ran into John, a UCSC student that Jennie hung out with, and we sort of talked about like WHOA what are the odds of that, and WHOA what are the odds of him understanding Touhou, and WHOA WHOA WHOA...
I think what happened later after dinner was the Alice (dizzyconscience) and Youmu (fullmetal) cosplayer wanted to hang out, so we met up again and had a mini-Touhou meet that actually was -gasp- all female.
Later that evening, we hung out at the Marriott's couch thing and chatted the night away. It was nice nice. Some people recognized us and we got up to take a photo, and I was like YES SEAT STEALING, stole Kimberly's seat and we were sort of stuck trying to get the chair the rest of the time, until we came to a compromise. Minh came by and randomly stole Kimberly's hat but he gave it back a good half hour later (Was it longer? I dunno what he was doing, though.) We got all exhausted and Liz and I went home after she napped on the floor.
DAY 4:
We came in normal clothing. Hung around in Kimberly's room for a bit, and stuff stuff stuff... the best part of the day must have been when I asked Iori E if he crossplayed because it was expected of him or if he liked it. It took him a LONG TIME to wonder about an answer and finally he said both. But shouldn't it simply be "because I like it"...? We left for some foods, had it, etc, etc, etc... nothing too big happened on Day 4, so after Kimberly had to leave, we sat around on the couches of the hotel for a little, then her friend Vivian left, and then we left Brad, and then we drove home, and then we NAPPED in a PARKING LOT in front of a pho restaurant... because we can and it's free and I'm tired of writing this entry... okay enjoy my short trip into Fanime, etc.
And sprinkle breadf throughout this as he helped us keep our stuffs along with Poring and was a nice dadf throughout the entire thing. Oh, and random dudes hitting on me and everyone asking if Kaguya's wig was my natural hair.
tl;dr: Fanime was fun, touhou stuffs, but I ended up feeling like AX was more fun. Quality of cosplayers at AX were much higher and I was also Alice! Also Kaguya's outfit seemed better at AX... I think it was her wig, it looked more natural. A future AX post coming up... (hopefully)... and I was supposed to be doing something else but I did this instead. OH WELL. Enjoy.