Fanime 2011
Better late than never!
There are a lot of things missing from this report: lots of shout outs, pictures of friends in costume, steamtanks, etc. Fanime is such a hard con report to write because so much happens and it's hard to capture it all. If I ran into you at any point throughout the con, give yourself a tiny hug from me; sailor_asteroid,enginoshouzoku, laragoth and noin_hime to name a few. Onto the report:
Megan and I got to San Jose about midnight on Thursday, after suffering through an extremely delayed flight. Kayla, Mandy and Chris met us at the airport and we drove back to the hotel together. We ran into Erik and Tim right away so we hung out with them for a while and ate animal cookies and other horrible/delicious food before going to bed.
Friday morning I wore Sakura from Tsubasa. It worked out very well because it was a windy day, which helped make the flowy dress look more dynamic (it made the bottom poof out like a sting ray). I walked around with the regular gang and was quickly reminded of why I like Fanime so much. Unlike Sakuracon which often feels a bit isolated, Fanime is full of so many familiar faces that I’m constantly running into someone I know. It’s also a great place to meet people I have only ever met online, like koneko and rosa-bella.
Anyway, I took some photos and was also featured in Ackson’s video below:
After walking around for a bit, I went back to the room to rest and get ready to get into Chell for judging. However, Kayla and I didn’t feel like getting in Chell so we skipped our appointment and went to Vince’s cosplay picnic instead. The picnic was a bit dead when we arrived so we took some photos by the beautiful creek area instead. We had never walked over to that park before so I’m glad to know it exists for future reference! Before we left, we interrupted sparklepipsi’s photoshoot to say hello. Sorry Vince!
Afterward, we changed into regular clothes and probably went to Peggy Sues. Every time there’s a gap of time unaccounted for at Fanime, I just assume we were at Peggy Sues.
Friday night, Chris went to pick Krystal up from the airport while the rest of us started putting together the choreography for the Portal skit. We found a room downstairs to practice in near the WCS practice spot (instant anxiety - aah!) and, conveniently, the room was full of metal coat racks (?) that were the general size of our portals. I hit my head on one of the steel “portals” at one point but otherwise things went smoothly. We got about half way done and decided to go to bed.
I had a hard time waking up on Saturday so I puttered around a bit while everyone else changed into costume. Eventually, I changed into Thage, which was my new costume for the con. I had wanted to make Thage for a long time and I’m relatively happy with it, except for the boots. I used glue to tack down the velvet rows to the boots though it didn’t hold (shocking) so I will have to hand sew those down next time. But the chest stayed put and I didn’t flash anyone so I consider it a victory!
Someone asked me to hold their VERY SMALL baby for a photo….wearing a revealing, all-black, obviously BAD GUY costume. I was extremely confused but even MORE scared that a stranger would give me the responsibility of holding their soft little baby.
Ackson video #2
Aside from falling apart, my boots were also extremely painful so I could only wear the costume for a little over an hour. I went back to the room and changed and took a nap for a bit, which was a good call as I wouldn’t sleep again for 36 hours. Eventually the girls changed into Hetalia so I wore Kayla’s Canada costume to go out to eat.
We like to try to replicate posters/paintings sometimes and this one is particularly…unique?
We went to McDonalds because it provides instant fuel for Hetalia humor and we’re nerds. We went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit while everyone changed into regular clothes/costumes then we packed in the car to head to Olive Garden! Like usual, the heavy food made us a little crazy and we laughed a lot. We stopped at Walgreens on the way back which sold a large variety of piñatas. Mexican themes continued to pop up throughout the weekend so we considered buying one until we realized the piñatas don’t actually come with candy.
When we got back to the hotel, we dove into Portal work. There was SO much to do and I don’t think any of us expected that preparations would take as long as they did. We built all of the portals using fabric and EL wire and mounted them to PVC pipes. We all had energy drinks and sang Disney songs while we worked. Once the portals were finally assembled (which took several hours), we dragged everything downstairs to figure out the rest of the choreography. We worked until 8AM and no one complained - I seriously have the coolest, most dedicated friends.
At 8AM, we got back to the hotel room and everyone passed out immediately.
Before I fell asleep, Chris pointed out that the Fanime schedule had been changed and that Cosplay Registration was listed on Friday and Saturday only. This was a discrepancy from the schedule we had printed out and I immediately freaked out and was unable to sleep. We had worked really hard and if we were not able to perform, I would have been so, so upset. At 10AM, Chris, Megan and I walked down to the cosplay room where we registered with no problem, which was a relief but cause of a completely unnecessary anxiety attack. Krystal and I wanted to go to the Princess Tutu shoot at 11:30AM so I woke Krystal up and changed into Rue. We went to the Tutu shoot, which was kind of weird. There was another girl who cosplayed as Rue who was very nice but everyone else seemed sort of rude and unwelcoming. Not totally surprising, as Princess Tutu cosplayers in general can be very critical, so it was just a bit disappointing. We walked around for a bit and got some photos with Lionel. We were also supposed to shoot with Leonard right after but, since we had to get ready for the skit, Leonard rushed over and did a drive-by 2 minute shoot. Literally 2 minutes. It was amazing.
You guys have already seen enough pretty pictures of this costume
Ackson video #3. I was constantly in the right place at the right time. XD
We went back to the room to gather our 1,000 set pieces and brought them over to the theater. After standing around looking lost for a while, we were able to rehearse on stage. Afterward, we went back to the hotel to change into Chell/ninja gear. We all scarfed down some sandwiches and rushed back to the theater. I was more nervous than usual, largely because of the new venue and not knowing what to expect. I also felt very out of place in our simplicity in a sea of such gorgeous costumes! We all sat around and made jokes and Kayla and I worked on some last-minute costume details until the show started. Honestly, while the pre-show was interesting, I thought it was a really unnecessary part of the event, especially since the contest had an obscene amount of entries to begin with.
When the show started, we were one of the first skits so we filed backstage early. Literally ONE minute before we went on stage, my leg brace broke. I panicked and asked everyone backstage if they had any sort of adhesive (I would have super glued the damn thing to my leg) but no one had anything so I went on stage with a broken leg brace. I was so worried about it that I screwed up the performance several times and literally ripped off the brace entirely half way through the skit. Afterward, we got off stage and just started crying - which was largely a result of sleep deprivation and pent up stress but I felt absolutely terrible. I felt like I ruined the skit and everyone assured me that it didn’t matter and we just did it for fun anyway.
We went back to watch the rest of the skits but I couldn’t shake the gloom and ended up sulking until the badass Avatar skit came on. For the most part, the quality of the skits was really impressive! There were so many unique ideas and the quality of the costumes was insane. By the end, we were totally okay walking away with nothing but were pleasantly surprised to win Best Dramatic Presentation. I was just happy because it verified that I didn’t screw up as badly as I thought. After the skit, we took some photos with the portals and managed to gather a small crowd, which was really cool! I don’t know if I’ve (we’ve) ever been stopped so much for photos in my life. EBK took some photos for us inside the parking garage so we gave him one of the companion cubes as a gift and signed it like a yearbook.
I am not cute without bangs
The portals and guns looked so great in the dark!
The whole gang
The skit
We made it back to the room around midnight but were starving so we drove over to Denny’s where we waited for a waitress for 10 minutes, waited another 10 minutes for our drinks, and left immediately after because the service was so terrible. We drove through a drive-in, which was closed - we were not destined to eat so we just went back to the hotel. We wanted to go to the hentai/game rooms but we all passed out immediately after getting back to the hotel. Next year!!
On Monday, we all woke up and packed. Chris and I were done first so we went down to watch the Angel Hearts Idolmaster performance.
We ran into spwinkles which was fabulous because I missed her when everyone else hung out with her earlier that weekend! The Angel Hearts girls did really well and made me want to do it too. D: Afterward, we went to Artist Alley and the Dealers Room before going to Peggy Sues for food. We ate a bunch and found tseuq! (I have no idea how I neglected to mention Heather yet, as we hung out with her practically the whole weekend. SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO HEATHER!!) Then we went back to the con center and got to say goodbye to strongest_shld and thefadingdream before grabbing our luggage and heading to the car.
We dropped Krystal off at the airport then drove to San Francisco for some giant sandwiches! I had wanted to go to San Francisco for a long time and I was happy to finally see it (in the daylight). We drove around and went to the Full House house and Golden Gate Bridge before going to the airport.
We ran into traffic and ended up missing our flight, which was really upsetting at first but meant we got to spend a little more time in San Francisco. We went to a mall and shopped, then drove around for a while. At one point we discovered that our Portal skit had started to attract a strange amount of attention online and we had a happy little laugh about it until it turned into “What the heck is happening??” We also went to Lombard Street, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip! Megan and I ended up catching a red-eye that night - I flew to Chicago, took a bus and a train home, changed, and went straight to work.
I’m a superhero.
There are a lot of things missing from this report: lots of shout outs, pictures of friends in costume, steamtanks, etc. Fanime is such a hard con report to write because so much happens and it's hard to capture it all. If I ran into you at any point throughout the con, give yourself a tiny hug from me; sailor_asteroid,enginoshouzoku, laragoth and noin_hime to name a few. Onto the report:
Megan and I got to San Jose about midnight on Thursday, after suffering through an extremely delayed flight. Kayla, Mandy and Chris met us at the airport and we drove back to the hotel together. We ran into Erik and Tim right away so we hung out with them for a while and ate animal cookies and other horrible/delicious food before going to bed.
Friday morning I wore Sakura from Tsubasa. It worked out very well because it was a windy day, which helped make the flowy dress look more dynamic (it made the bottom poof out like a sting ray). I walked around with the regular gang and was quickly reminded of why I like Fanime so much. Unlike Sakuracon which often feels a bit isolated, Fanime is full of so many familiar faces that I’m constantly running into someone I know. It’s also a great place to meet people I have only ever met online, like koneko and rosa-bella.
Anyway, I took some photos and was also featured in Ackson’s video below:
Click to view After walking around for a bit, I went back to the room to rest and get ready to get into Chell for judging. However, Kayla and I didn’t feel like getting in Chell so we skipped our appointment and went to Vince’s cosplay picnic instead. The picnic was a bit dead when we arrived so we took some photos by the beautiful creek area instead. We had never walked over to that park before so I’m glad to know it exists for future reference! Before we left, we interrupted sparklepipsi’s photoshoot to say hello. Sorry Vince!
Afterward, we changed into regular clothes and probably went to Peggy Sues. Every time there’s a gap of time unaccounted for at Fanime, I just assume we were at Peggy Sues.
Friday night, Chris went to pick Krystal up from the airport while the rest of us started putting together the choreography for the Portal skit. We found a room downstairs to practice in near the WCS practice spot (instant anxiety - aah!) and, conveniently, the room was full of metal coat racks (?) that were the general size of our portals. I hit my head on one of the steel “portals” at one point but otherwise things went smoothly. We got about half way done and decided to go to bed.
I had a hard time waking up on Saturday so I puttered around a bit while everyone else changed into costume. Eventually, I changed into Thage, which was my new costume for the con. I had wanted to make Thage for a long time and I’m relatively happy with it, except for the boots. I used glue to tack down the velvet rows to the boots though it didn’t hold (shocking) so I will have to hand sew those down next time. But the chest stayed put and I didn’t flash anyone so I consider it a victory!
Someone asked me to hold their VERY SMALL baby for a photo….wearing a revealing, all-black, obviously BAD GUY costume. I was extremely confused but even MORE scared that a stranger would give me the responsibility of holding their soft little baby.
Ackson video #2
Aside from falling apart, my boots were also extremely painful so I could only wear the costume for a little over an hour. I went back to the room and changed and took a nap for a bit, which was a good call as I wouldn’t sleep again for 36 hours. Eventually the girls changed into Hetalia so I wore Kayla’s Canada costume to go out to eat.
We like to try to replicate posters/paintings sometimes and this one is particularly…unique?
We went to McDonalds because it provides instant fuel for Hetalia humor and we’re nerds. We went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit while everyone changed into regular clothes/costumes then we packed in the car to head to Olive Garden! Like usual, the heavy food made us a little crazy and we laughed a lot. We stopped at Walgreens on the way back which sold a large variety of piñatas. Mexican themes continued to pop up throughout the weekend so we considered buying one until we realized the piñatas don’t actually come with candy.
When we got back to the hotel, we dove into Portal work. There was SO much to do and I don’t think any of us expected that preparations would take as long as they did. We built all of the portals using fabric and EL wire and mounted them to PVC pipes. We all had energy drinks and sang Disney songs while we worked. Once the portals were finally assembled (which took several hours), we dragged everything downstairs to figure out the rest of the choreography. We worked until 8AM and no one complained - I seriously have the coolest, most dedicated friends.
At 8AM, we got back to the hotel room and everyone passed out immediately.
Before I fell asleep, Chris pointed out that the Fanime schedule had been changed and that Cosplay Registration was listed on Friday and Saturday only. This was a discrepancy from the schedule we had printed out and I immediately freaked out and was unable to sleep. We had worked really hard and if we were not able to perform, I would have been so, so upset. At 10AM, Chris, Megan and I walked down to the cosplay room where we registered with no problem, which was a relief but cause of a completely unnecessary anxiety attack. Krystal and I wanted to go to the Princess Tutu shoot at 11:30AM so I woke Krystal up and changed into Rue. We went to the Tutu shoot, which was kind of weird. There was another girl who cosplayed as Rue who was very nice but everyone else seemed sort of rude and unwelcoming. Not totally surprising, as Princess Tutu cosplayers in general can be very critical, so it was just a bit disappointing. We walked around for a bit and got some photos with Lionel. We were also supposed to shoot with Leonard right after but, since we had to get ready for the skit, Leonard rushed over and did a drive-by 2 minute shoot. Literally 2 minutes. It was amazing.
You guys have already seen enough pretty pictures of this costume
Ackson video #3. I was constantly in the right place at the right time. XD
We went back to the room to gather our 1,000 set pieces and brought them over to the theater. After standing around looking lost for a while, we were able to rehearse on stage. Afterward, we went back to the hotel to change into Chell/ninja gear. We all scarfed down some sandwiches and rushed back to the theater. I was more nervous than usual, largely because of the new venue and not knowing what to expect. I also felt very out of place in our simplicity in a sea of such gorgeous costumes! We all sat around and made jokes and Kayla and I worked on some last-minute costume details until the show started. Honestly, while the pre-show was interesting, I thought it was a really unnecessary part of the event, especially since the contest had an obscene amount of entries to begin with.
When the show started, we were one of the first skits so we filed backstage early. Literally ONE minute before we went on stage, my leg brace broke. I panicked and asked everyone backstage if they had any sort of adhesive (I would have super glued the damn thing to my leg) but no one had anything so I went on stage with a broken leg brace. I was so worried about it that I screwed up the performance several times and literally ripped off the brace entirely half way through the skit. Afterward, we got off stage and just started crying - which was largely a result of sleep deprivation and pent up stress but I felt absolutely terrible. I felt like I ruined the skit and everyone assured me that it didn’t matter and we just did it for fun anyway.
We went back to watch the rest of the skits but I couldn’t shake the gloom and ended up sulking until the badass Avatar skit came on. For the most part, the quality of the skits was really impressive! There were so many unique ideas and the quality of the costumes was insane. By the end, we were totally okay walking away with nothing but were pleasantly surprised to win Best Dramatic Presentation. I was just happy because it verified that I didn’t screw up as badly as I thought. After the skit, we took some photos with the portals and managed to gather a small crowd, which was really cool! I don’t know if I’ve (we’ve) ever been stopped so much for photos in my life. EBK took some photos for us inside the parking garage so we gave him one of the companion cubes as a gift and signed it like a yearbook.
I am not cute without bangs
The portals and guns looked so great in the dark!
The whole gang
The skit
We made it back to the room around midnight but were starving so we drove over to Denny’s where we waited for a waitress for 10 minutes, waited another 10 minutes for our drinks, and left immediately after because the service was so terrible. We drove through a drive-in, which was closed - we were not destined to eat so we just went back to the hotel. We wanted to go to the hentai/game rooms but we all passed out immediately after getting back to the hotel. Next year!!
On Monday, we all woke up and packed. Chris and I were done first so we went down to watch the Angel Hearts Idolmaster performance.
We ran into spwinkles which was fabulous because I missed her when everyone else hung out with her earlier that weekend! The Angel Hearts girls did really well and made me want to do it too. D: Afterward, we went to Artist Alley and the Dealers Room before going to Peggy Sues for food. We ate a bunch and found tseuq! (I have no idea how I neglected to mention Heather yet, as we hung out with her practically the whole weekend. SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO HEATHER!!) Then we went back to the con center and got to say goodbye to strongest_shld and thefadingdream before grabbing our luggage and heading to the car.
We dropped Krystal off at the airport then drove to San Francisco for some giant sandwiches! I had wanted to go to San Francisco for a long time and I was happy to finally see it (in the daylight). We drove around and went to the Full House house and Golden Gate Bridge before going to the airport.
We ran into traffic and ended up missing our flight, which was really upsetting at first but meant we got to spend a little more time in San Francisco. We went to a mall and shopped, then drove around for a while. At one point we discovered that our Portal skit had started to attract a strange amount of attention online and we had a happy little laugh about it until it turned into “What the heck is happening??” We also went to Lombard Street, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip! Megan and I ended up catching a red-eye that night - I flew to Chicago, took a bus and a train home, changed, and went straight to work.
I’m a superhero.