Otakon 2005: Keep Sarah Away From Sharp Objects
First, I have music. A soundtrack, if you will.
Barenaked Ladies - The Humour of the Situation. This is another of those Dark Subject, Happy Song examples. I learned more than ever how to appreciate farce. I could have been paralyzed with guilt this weekend, but I wasn't. Might have swung too far to the other end of the scale... but at least you keep moving that way. I can angst or I can joke, and I prefer joking. It's brittle, but it feels better in the end.
Suikoden II - Orrizonte - Withered Earth. omgsqueeifinallyscoredacopyoforrizonteicanstopwhiningaboutnotbeingabletofinditnow. This is one of the two Orrizonte tracks that I heard way back in the day, along with "Currents." It's an instrumental and it's great. I can't say any more about it because the coffee hasn't kicked in yet.
I don't have pictures yet, but I hope to have them soon. If I find any related out there in the ether, I'll link 'em. [edit: Picture post lives here.] I did have two or three taken of me by other people *cower*. Ultimately, my con experience was split about half and half between AMV-related stuff and cosplay-related stuff. I'm happy with that.
Thursday
Preparation day. I was going to go out to my sister's, finish up the last bits of hand sewing, and kick around until leaving the next morning. Around one or two-ish, Sis and I went to the Strip, Pittsburgh's market district, to buy some terribly otaku snack food and various other things. (We had an excuse that unfortunately didn't pan out, but that's another story.) I got some cash for the preparations and tripped merrily on my way.
Let's remember this moment, shall we? Gun on the mantelpiece, if you will.
Dinner which I don't remember, many failed attempts to get Sis's Roommate to come with us. Which he turned down. I wish he'd come, but we'll look toward next year. Eventually we went to Gamestop, where I wound up sinking some of my cash (above) into Makai Kingdom and a cheap used copy of Wild Arms 2, since uh, I didn't own it yet and ...we'll skip the rationalizations. I don't remember anything I ever heard about that game, but hey, it's ten bucks. Makai Kingdom, however, may make me shut up about not being able to find Disgaea. Time will tell.
After the game store we stopped to gas up the car and get some coffee. I bought myself cans of Doubleshot for the next two days and, rifling through my wallet afterward, realized that my bank card was missing.
This is probably where I should mention that I don't own any credit cards. And that the hotel room was reserved on that card.
My brand of panic is jittery-spacey. So there's not much running around screaming. Still. I'll skip the rest of that rigmarole. It extends into the next day, with the hotel not accepting any of the forms of payment we tried to use and my mom coming to the rescue via cell phone and credit card at no small cost to herself. I don't know what to say about it, really. I made a small mistake with large repercussions, and all I can do now is wait till my new card comes in and pay back everyone who helped me.
Going back to Thursday night: Thursday night ended with cooking batches of chicken and chickpea masala while watching the Read or Die OVA ("hey Em, since we're about to go and all, want to up your anime intake to five things? It's short!") and finishing the last sewing on Sailor Saturn. My sister saved my butt this time, doing over half of the remaining sewing while I tried to stop tweaking over the bank card via cooking.
I didn't sleep more than oh, four hours, probably. And I'm not the sort who prides herself on not sleeping enough.
Friday
On the road. It rained most of the way, which slowed us down, but I think we were in Baltimore by one. See above re: hotel antagonism. There was no line to pick up our prereg badges. Hear me, people? NO LINE. BOOYAH. On the unrelated downside, my packet didn't have a schedule in it but NO LINE.
Ran into fungie and posse shortly after picking up prereg. They all more than did my stuff justice; I'm so happy everything turned out.
...did we seriously do nothing scheduled until the AMV screening? I guess so. Dealer's room haul: seven pins. Disgustingly adorable SD Yomiko Readman badge-type pin and six enamels: FMA Al and all five Saiyukis that they had (Kougaiji and the Sanzo-ikkou). And for my dad, since I wanted to get him a substantial souvenir or two for all the work he did on the glaive, a little Godzilla. Planned to get something else later.
That's seriously all I bought the first day. I think Sis might have outspent me slightly at that point, and she's seen all of four shows. (One of which, though, is the eminently merchandisable Fruits Basket.) But I saw lots of things I meant to comparison-shop for the next day. Because even though I do splurge, I want to at least get a decent deal on what I'm getting in huge quantity. Y'know? Also, I bought zero manga on this trip for a specific reason - the giant Barnes & Noble gift card that my dad gave me last month or so. I wanted to buy some, but I knew it made so much more sense to just wait and get them on the card. Which I will. But not yet.
After the dealer's room turn and a jaunt back to the hotel, we ran into logomachist in the hall. Not kidding. Thirty thousand people there and ...well, you know the rest. He is paunchier and has short hair. I haven't seen him for over two years, a fact that didn't really sink in until that moment. Anyway, we arranged to have dinner later, since I was then on my way to hand over gravenimaj's daughter's Saturn gear.
*breath* Did so. Kicked around a while, I guess; I've lost track. Went to dinner, California Pizza Kitchen. Watched an FMA-Ed cosplayer screaming on a cell phone, kind of entertaining. As for the dinner itself... I'm not very proud of being a bit frosty, but it annoyed me that he made a big deal out of meeting to catch up and then didn't say anything.
S: So what's up?
R: Nothing.
[five minutes of silence]
S: How've you been, the last two years?
R: Okay.
[five minutes of silence]
S: See anything neat at the convention?
R: Not really. One thing. It was weird.
[five minutes of silence]
S: Nnnnghhhh!
R: ...
Em tells me that he was always like that, though. Maybe I'm just not used to it anymore. I don't mind friendly silence, really. It was two things: a) he had made a big deal about meeting up TWICE during the con [I skipped out on one] and then showed zero interest in anything, and b) this is probably me reading into things, but he always seems to expect me to say something, which puts me on edge. Anyway, I'll think about that another time; back to the con stuff.
After dinner the three of us looked around the game room for a bit, watching a little Katamari, which Rob had never seen, and getting mesmerized by the flaming DDR badasses. Rob had somewhere to go at nine, and I believe we adjourned back to the hotel to rest a bit before the screening. (Yes, I'm old. Damn kids, get off my lawn.)
I think it was during the post-dinner pre-showing spin that I saw someone with a Haru hat and omg instant love. See, there's a series of fleece hats from Fruits Basket. I'd seen Kyo and Yuki several times, but hadn't seen any others till this con - where I saw Momiji and now Haru. OMG COW! Had to have. I babbled pretty badly right then omg harucow and my sister was like "Who?" and I'm like "The cow! The cow!" I'm hopeless. Anyway, out of order. Back to the hotel to rest before the screening.
We got back to the BCC early, expecting a line and finding none. Killed time playing Puyo Pop, which I'd borrowed from tsbaron (thank you thank you!). No line for that, either. I'm not exactly sure how it was seated. We just went in. Okay, that works! Unfortunately, two things:
- technical difficulties
- the dude next to me seemed to be tripping
...in splendidly irritating fashion. If he really did have a neurological problem, I'm sorry, but if that is the case it had an awfully sudden onset. I'm talking hyperventilating through the entire screening - which was usually drowned out by the music, but not always - and twitching. And mind you, no sign of this while we were waiting, with the brain-melting combination of No Doubt and Velvet Revolver. It started very suddenly. I'm guessing tripping, myself. And if so, dude, wtf. If you are watching, say, "Technique Beat" and need more surrealism? You have a problem.
But they left halfway through the action section. Twitchy the Weasel's friend had to see me make a really assholish gesture when they left. Well, hey. If you're going to do that, don't do it in a crowded theater. The rave is that way. Go.
After the screening we stumbled back to sleep.
Saturday
Up bright and early! Suit up! Realize that your costume is at least 80% polyester and that you are going to wind up with heatstroke! But otherwise it was all right. My boar ears had broken off the headband in transit, and I decided at the last minute not to wear all the makeup I'd brought. And my hair was hell, and would remain hell for the rest of the day. Otherwise it was okay. Sis went as Fruits Basket Schoolgirl Who Is Not Officially Anyone Specific. But I think it was close enough to Tohru to be Tohru, so there. It just had the longer skirt that Hana wears. Out of the people I heard making guesses/assumptions about it, two said Tohru and one said Prince Yuki Fan Club Member. Heh.
Anyway, Sorta-Tohru and Kagura headed out on their first day of cosplaying and took pictures that I've yet to get in email. *taps foot* Probably the best picture taken of me - and I'm not being a self-conscious tweak here - was of my back, showing off the cat backpack. The dorky pose just seemed to work. Oh well. Right after that both of us got stopped by somebody who (I think) was cosplaying a beaten-up Kyo, since (I'm guessing) they were in a wheelchair because of a broken leg. If so, that's making the best of the situation, totally. Kudos. Anyway, I think they only got uh, part of us? because I think the picture taker said not to worry about forgetting to take my glasses off, because my face wasn't in the shot. But anyway. Stuff.
AMV Creation Panel. It seemed to go well? I don't know from anything; I'm easily entertained. Not much of a critic. I'm at a frigging con, I'm just there to have fun. And I go to the panels as an audience member rather than an editor-wannabe, really. At any rate, I liked their idea of picking videos to show off concepts and picking one another's examples. And such. Pretend I said something original here. Wasn't that original? Great.
I met doki after the panel. He is super-nice. We know that, don't we? Of course. I wish I were a better conversationalist. Or that there were more time to chat. Meh. Such is life.
Thanks to being somewhat dragged by Tim and Daniel (who I saw at the beginning), I did make the AMV lunch afterward. After more pictures. I don't know who took them; I had my glasses off this time. I'm a bit afraid. Buuuut that's life too. Anyway, I made arrangements to meet Sis at the Fruits Basket cosplay meetup later that day, at what I thought was 3:30, and ran after the tail of the AMV lunch parade. Because you-all don't have to walk in dress shoes, do ya.
Lunch was at Capital City Brewery. A group of 30 got split up into four or five tables, which meant uh, basically no mingling. Meh, whatever. I was at the kids' table, no offense intended. :p We were last in line and I think some people didn't even think we were with the party, since uh, three out of the four were cosplayers and no one else in the AMV group was. CROSSOVER PRIDE, YO. Anyway. That was fine. dwchang came over to our table for a while, and he too is super-nice. As did Bakadeshi from the org. Also nice. Seeing a theme?
Painfully tried to mingle afterward, didn't really succeed, but that's okay. I'm not gonna force anyone to talk to me if they don't want to; that's their problem. The main reactions I got were "Hi, I'm Sarah." "I know." or "...Ohhh.", which is uh, kind of funny in retrospect. In a particularly surreal moment, I met Mroni from the org, who is, I have to say, exactly as he is online. Like...exactly. As much as my style / morality may vary from his, I have to admire the keep-it-real factor. Not so much for turning around 10 times during the dinner [edit: I meant lunch] to ogle the 12-year-olds at our table...but he keeps it real.
After lunch I hit the dealer's room again. I think all I bought in Saturday Round One were two DVDs, Cowboy Bebop 2 and Read or Die TV 1, and a Tonberry plushie. Properly from FFXI, but Tonberry is Tonberry. I also attempted to find a Kumagoro, but the only booth that had them were out. I would have caved and bought a Bad Luck shirt too, but they were sold out. (Most of the Gravi shirts were a liiiittle too fangirl for my tastes, though I will admit to wanting them anyway. But there was one with little sketchy SD-type art of Bad Luck. V. cute and didn't scream "HI I AM A STEREOTYPICAL SHOUNEN-AI FANGIRL" quite as loudly.)
Met Sis near the Furuba cosplay meetup. We didn't go exactly, since she didn't want to be roped into any pictures and I'm, well, shy as hell, as we know - but we watched it from the overlook near the doors. And I got to squee over the fact that THERE ARE HATORI COSPLAYERS OH MY GOD. I SAW TWO. I think. It was from the back. There were also at least four Shigures. ~♥ I'm not predictable or anything. There was also a Momiji in the pink coat and purple beret, which I didn't expect. hee.
On that note, I also saw five other Kaguras, one of which sat down next to me as they were entering the Inuyasha fan panel and we were leaving the AMV Creation panel. What're the chances. They didn't say anything, though. I have to wonder if there's some sort of unspoken rivalry between people who cosplay the same thing. I found myself checking out their technique, but that was out of curiosity more than anything.
Where was I. Oh. Met up. Back to the dealer's room. This was the uh, yeah. Time. Dealer's room haul 3: Rat-Yuki plushie, Hatsuharu hat YAY HARUCOW - by the way, they also have Shigure, and the Haru a) has earrings and b) is reversible into Black Haru and White Haru, which is quite possibly the most adorable part of it all. ...where was I. Two CDs at typical insane import prices - Suikoden II Orrizonte and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time Arranged - and two more DVDs, Cowboy Bebop 3 and 4. Yes, I still haven't finished it, quiet. I think in this spin we also got the second gift for my dad, a Monty Python shirt, and one for Roomie.
Met hicat during this jaunt, along with two of her friends, and chatted for a bit. Yay. I've also been tapped for two Final Fantasy Tactics commissions, w00t. A Time Mage (not sure if it's regular or enemy) and an Enemy Priest. Will hammer out details soon.
Also, during this trip through, took a picture of Sis with FUNi's Al statue - cuuuuuuuuute - got glomped by three random girls, only one of which (an FMA-Ed cosplayer) asked, thanks much - and got my picture taken by another one. Kagura has fans. Oh yes she does.
I still don't know what proper etiquette is for that, anyway. I don't mind per se, probably because I was just randomly tackled by genki girls instead of something sinister, but two times out of three I was just like "Oh...heehhhh..." and they were gone by the time I could get my bearings. Ed, who asked, I sortakinda hugged back, I think. So uh, if anyone's like "That bitchy Kagura totally didn't observe proper random glomping procedure," I'm sorry.
I probably look like hell in that picture, by the way. My hair was ghastly by that point. I'd forgotten - oh, here we go - some of my usual product~ back at my sister's, so there was lots of frizz. Bleh. I rabidly look forward to getting it cut; I prefer it shorter than this anyway.
Where was I. Oh yes. Way out of the dealer's room. Remember that I was operating on cash only since the loss of the bank card. And uh, apparently I cannot add, because I overspent drastically. I'm embarrassed about that, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. I mean, I got things I really wanted, so I don't think I wasted it per se. I just overdid it.
so. yes. Sorry. Anyway, I had a little disposable income left, and I really wanted to see the pins that my sister had talked about; she'd seen them in her spin through Artist Alley while I was at lunch. And yes. They cheered me up quite a bit. They were little round badge-type pins from Random Fandom. I could have bought a zillion. I settled on six. Four little round Furuba animal ones - Hatori-seahorse, Shigure-dog, Ayame-snake and Haru-cow (I'm not predictable at all, am I), FMA-Al, and an Ohtori crest. Hee. Since I was a Furuba cosplayer the booth owner gave me an "I ♥ Fruits Basket" sailor-riceball pin free and took my picture. ^_^ I probably looked like hell in that one too, but it definitely salved the money panic. Yes, this sounds like "Hello moron, you are short on money and you bought stuff?", but the enthusiasm-to-cost ratio was high. Five dollars for seven pins and a picture, yo. I'll take that and skip a meal out. Gladly.
After that, since it was ten thousand degrees outside (approx.) and my boots were starting to kill my feet, we decided to go civilian and went back to the hotel to change. It was dinnertime by then; we'd had a good run. Changed, scarfed some ramen in the hotel room, stopped to get dinner for Sis on the way (again, I'd been the ass who'd spent too much money, so I gave all of my remaining cash to her), and hit Iron Editor. I'd never seen one before, so I was curious.
So yes, if anyone happened to be curious why I wasn't at Iron Editor, I was. I am a ninja, you see. A ninja in street clothes and a dorky Furuba black-cow hat who spent most of the event eating Pocky. Behold my true non-tarted-up form. Actually, I was (even) more schlumpy than I usually am, since my spare might-change-out-of-costume clothes were sort of an afterthought. Not that I'm, uh, incredibly vain or anything. *cough*
Iron Editor, to an audience member, is two hours of random videos plus little contests. Hey, I'm happy. I didn't expect that, actually. I had no idea how they'd entertain the crowd while the editors did their thing. In fact, when they were still waiting to start I was thinking "You can keep on showing random stuff and I'll be entertained; I don't care." Sis said she thought they'd narrate more about what the editors were doing, but I guess that would reduce the element of surprise? *shrug* That is what they do on Iron Chef, come to think of it. Ah, anyway. I'm the least demanding audience member ever.
After that we went down to Saturday Fan Parodies - I'd never seen any of those, either, since our schedules just didn't work out the previous years. And... I feel really bad. We left after about an hour because the echo off the ceiling/walls/whatever made it incredibly hard to understand the audio. It looked really funny and I really wish I could have understood it... but I'm already bad at filtering out speech from background noise, and I probably understood one line out of ten. Maybe we were just at a bad spot in the room, or something - close to the front on the left - I don't know. :/ I hope somebody took our seats and enjoyed the show. It's nobody's fault, and I really wish I could have seen it, but I still feel guilty. So yes, two people skipping out around eleven was not a comment on the movie! I promise!
On the way back to the room we wound up behind a crowd of Saiyuki cosplayers. Big crowd. I think they had two Gokus, two Hakkais, a Sanzo and a Gojyo. They were a couple of doors down from us. When we slipped past, one noticed that I had a Saiyuki shirt and yelled, and I was like "^_^;;;;" and just gave a thumbs-up. I'm too easily embarrassed.
Then sleep.
Sunday
Checking out. Finding parking, getting messed up by a one-way street and winding up back on the interstate. Eventually, back to the BCC. Still being big Furuba dorks; I had White Haru-hat on today and Sis still had Kyo. Hit the Cosplaying with Fiberglass panel. Very cool stuff. Confusing-at-times but entertaining panel, too. Took notes. Yes.
After that, tried to call ladybug218, realized that I should have called earlier, headed out anyway and planned to stop if we got a call. Didn't work out, so meh. Maybe next time.
Trip home. Uh. We had less than twenty dollars left for a 250-mile trip, including lunch, gas, and turnpike tolls. I should be shot for that. But we made it work. Barely. Like, less than a dollar and a gallon of gas when we rolled in-barely. But we did.
The end.
You just don't wanna know how long this took to type up.
[edit: oh. I write up ridiculously long entries like this because I have a terrible memory - next year I might be like "Which year did xyz happen?" and I can check my entry and get my memory jogged. Sad but true. In fact, I forgot that I had a stuffed Dragon Warrior slime until I read last year's entry. I think it fell behind a shelf. Oops.]
Barenaked Ladies - The Humour of the Situation. This is another of those Dark Subject, Happy Song examples. I learned more than ever how to appreciate farce. I could have been paralyzed with guilt this weekend, but I wasn't. Might have swung too far to the other end of the scale... but at least you keep moving that way. I can angst or I can joke, and I prefer joking. It's brittle, but it feels better in the end.
Suikoden II - Orrizonte - Withered Earth. omgsqueeifinallyscoredacopyoforrizonteicanstopwhiningaboutnotbeingabletofinditnow. This is one of the two Orrizonte tracks that I heard way back in the day, along with "Currents." It's an instrumental and it's great. I can't say any more about it because the coffee hasn't kicked in yet.
I don't have pictures yet, but I hope to have them soon. If I find any related out there in the ether, I'll link 'em. [edit: Picture post lives here.] I did have two or three taken of me by other people *cower*. Ultimately, my con experience was split about half and half between AMV-related stuff and cosplay-related stuff. I'm happy with that.
Thursday
Preparation day. I was going to go out to my sister's, finish up the last bits of hand sewing, and kick around until leaving the next morning. Around one or two-ish, Sis and I went to the Strip, Pittsburgh's market district, to buy some terribly otaku snack food and various other things. (We had an excuse that unfortunately didn't pan out, but that's another story.) I got some cash for the preparations and tripped merrily on my way.
Let's remember this moment, shall we? Gun on the mantelpiece, if you will.
Dinner which I don't remember, many failed attempts to get Sis's Roommate to come with us. Which he turned down. I wish he'd come, but we'll look toward next year. Eventually we went to Gamestop, where I wound up sinking some of my cash (above) into Makai Kingdom and a cheap used copy of Wild Arms 2, since uh, I didn't own it yet and ...we'll skip the rationalizations. I don't remember anything I ever heard about that game, but hey, it's ten bucks. Makai Kingdom, however, may make me shut up about not being able to find Disgaea. Time will tell.
After the game store we stopped to gas up the car and get some coffee. I bought myself cans of Doubleshot for the next two days and, rifling through my wallet afterward, realized that my bank card was missing.
This is probably where I should mention that I don't own any credit cards. And that the hotel room was reserved on that card.
My brand of panic is jittery-spacey. So there's not much running around screaming. Still. I'll skip the rest of that rigmarole. It extends into the next day, with the hotel not accepting any of the forms of payment we tried to use and my mom coming to the rescue via cell phone and credit card at no small cost to herself. I don't know what to say about it, really. I made a small mistake with large repercussions, and all I can do now is wait till my new card comes in and pay back everyone who helped me.
Going back to Thursday night: Thursday night ended with cooking batches of chicken and chickpea masala while watching the Read or Die OVA ("hey Em, since we're about to go and all, want to up your anime intake to five things? It's short!") and finishing the last sewing on Sailor Saturn. My sister saved my butt this time, doing over half of the remaining sewing while I tried to stop tweaking over the bank card via cooking.
I didn't sleep more than oh, four hours, probably. And I'm not the sort who prides herself on not sleeping enough.
Friday
On the road. It rained most of the way, which slowed us down, but I think we were in Baltimore by one. See above re: hotel antagonism. There was no line to pick up our prereg badges. Hear me, people? NO LINE. BOOYAH. On the unrelated downside, my packet didn't have a schedule in it but NO LINE.
Ran into fungie and posse shortly after picking up prereg. They all more than did my stuff justice; I'm so happy everything turned out.
...did we seriously do nothing scheduled until the AMV screening? I guess so. Dealer's room haul: seven pins. Disgustingly adorable SD Yomiko Readman badge-type pin and six enamels: FMA Al and all five Saiyukis that they had (Kougaiji and the Sanzo-ikkou). And for my dad, since I wanted to get him a substantial souvenir or two for all the work he did on the glaive, a little Godzilla. Planned to get something else later.
That's seriously all I bought the first day. I think Sis might have outspent me slightly at that point, and she's seen all of four shows. (One of which, though, is the eminently merchandisable Fruits Basket.) But I saw lots of things I meant to comparison-shop for the next day. Because even though I do splurge, I want to at least get a decent deal on what I'm getting in huge quantity. Y'know? Also, I bought zero manga on this trip for a specific reason - the giant Barnes & Noble gift card that my dad gave me last month or so. I wanted to buy some, but I knew it made so much more sense to just wait and get them on the card. Which I will. But not yet.
After the dealer's room turn and a jaunt back to the hotel, we ran into logomachist in the hall. Not kidding. Thirty thousand people there and ...well, you know the rest. He is paunchier and has short hair. I haven't seen him for over two years, a fact that didn't really sink in until that moment. Anyway, we arranged to have dinner later, since I was then on my way to hand over gravenimaj's daughter's Saturn gear.
*breath* Did so. Kicked around a while, I guess; I've lost track. Went to dinner, California Pizza Kitchen. Watched an FMA-Ed cosplayer screaming on a cell phone, kind of entertaining. As for the dinner itself... I'm not very proud of being a bit frosty, but it annoyed me that he made a big deal out of meeting to catch up and then didn't say anything.
S: So what's up?
R: Nothing.
[five minutes of silence]
S: How've you been, the last two years?
R: Okay.
[five minutes of silence]
S: See anything neat at the convention?
R: Not really. One thing. It was weird.
[five minutes of silence]
S: Nnnnghhhh!
R: ...
Em tells me that he was always like that, though. Maybe I'm just not used to it anymore. I don't mind friendly silence, really. It was two things: a) he had made a big deal about meeting up TWICE during the con [I skipped out on one] and then showed zero interest in anything, and b) this is probably me reading into things, but he always seems to expect me to say something, which puts me on edge. Anyway, I'll think about that another time; back to the con stuff.
After dinner the three of us looked around the game room for a bit, watching a little Katamari, which Rob had never seen, and getting mesmerized by the flaming DDR badasses. Rob had somewhere to go at nine, and I believe we adjourned back to the hotel to rest a bit before the screening. (Yes, I'm old. Damn kids, get off my lawn.)
I think it was during the post-dinner pre-showing spin that I saw someone with a Haru hat and omg instant love. See, there's a series of fleece hats from Fruits Basket. I'd seen Kyo and Yuki several times, but hadn't seen any others till this con - where I saw Momiji and now Haru. OMG COW! Had to have. I babbled pretty badly right then omg harucow and my sister was like "Who?" and I'm like "The cow! The cow!" I'm hopeless. Anyway, out of order. Back to the hotel to rest before the screening.
We got back to the BCC early, expecting a line and finding none. Killed time playing Puyo Pop, which I'd borrowed from tsbaron (thank you thank you!). No line for that, either. I'm not exactly sure how it was seated. We just went in. Okay, that works! Unfortunately, two things:
- technical difficulties
- the dude next to me seemed to be tripping
...in splendidly irritating fashion. If he really did have a neurological problem, I'm sorry, but if that is the case it had an awfully sudden onset. I'm talking hyperventilating through the entire screening - which was usually drowned out by the music, but not always - and twitching. And mind you, no sign of this while we were waiting, with the brain-melting combination of No Doubt and Velvet Revolver. It started very suddenly. I'm guessing tripping, myself. And if so, dude, wtf. If you are watching, say, "Technique Beat" and need more surrealism? You have a problem.
But they left halfway through the action section. Twitchy the Weasel's friend had to see me make a really assholish gesture when they left. Well, hey. If you're going to do that, don't do it in a crowded theater. The rave is that way. Go.
After the screening we stumbled back to sleep.
Saturday
Up bright and early! Suit up! Realize that your costume is at least 80% polyester and that you are going to wind up with heatstroke! But otherwise it was all right. My boar ears had broken off the headband in transit, and I decided at the last minute not to wear all the makeup I'd brought. And my hair was hell, and would remain hell for the rest of the day. Otherwise it was okay. Sis went as Fruits Basket Schoolgirl Who Is Not Officially Anyone Specific. But I think it was close enough to Tohru to be Tohru, so there. It just had the longer skirt that Hana wears. Out of the people I heard making guesses/assumptions about it, two said Tohru and one said Prince Yuki Fan Club Member. Heh.
Anyway, Sorta-Tohru and Kagura headed out on their first day of cosplaying and took pictures that I've yet to get in email. *taps foot* Probably the best picture taken of me - and I'm not being a self-conscious tweak here - was of my back, showing off the cat backpack. The dorky pose just seemed to work. Oh well. Right after that both of us got stopped by somebody who (I think) was cosplaying a beaten-up Kyo, since (I'm guessing) they were in a wheelchair because of a broken leg. If so, that's making the best of the situation, totally. Kudos. Anyway, I think they only got uh, part of us? because I think the picture taker said not to worry about forgetting to take my glasses off, because my face wasn't in the shot. But anyway. Stuff.
AMV Creation Panel. It seemed to go well? I don't know from anything; I'm easily entertained. Not much of a critic. I'm at a frigging con, I'm just there to have fun. And I go to the panels as an audience member rather than an editor-wannabe, really. At any rate, I liked their idea of picking videos to show off concepts and picking one another's examples. And such. Pretend I said something original here. Wasn't that original? Great.
I met doki after the panel. He is super-nice. We know that, don't we? Of course. I wish I were a better conversationalist. Or that there were more time to chat. Meh. Such is life.
Thanks to being somewhat dragged by Tim and Daniel (who I saw at the beginning), I did make the AMV lunch afterward. After more pictures. I don't know who took them; I had my glasses off this time. I'm a bit afraid. Buuuut that's life too. Anyway, I made arrangements to meet Sis at the Fruits Basket cosplay meetup later that day, at what I thought was 3:30, and ran after the tail of the AMV lunch parade. Because you-all don't have to walk in dress shoes, do ya.
Lunch was at Capital City Brewery. A group of 30 got split up into four or five tables, which meant uh, basically no mingling. Meh, whatever. I was at the kids' table, no offense intended. :p We were last in line and I think some people didn't even think we were with the party, since uh, three out of the four were cosplayers and no one else in the AMV group was. CROSSOVER PRIDE, YO. Anyway. That was fine. dwchang came over to our table for a while, and he too is super-nice. As did Bakadeshi from the org. Also nice. Seeing a theme?
Painfully tried to mingle afterward, didn't really succeed, but that's okay. I'm not gonna force anyone to talk to me if they don't want to; that's their problem. The main reactions I got were "Hi, I'm Sarah." "I know." or "...Ohhh.", which is uh, kind of funny in retrospect. In a particularly surreal moment, I met Mroni from the org, who is, I have to say, exactly as he is online. Like...exactly. As much as my style / morality may vary from his, I have to admire the keep-it-real factor. Not so much for turning around 10 times during the dinner [edit: I meant lunch] to ogle the 12-year-olds at our table...but he keeps it real.
After lunch I hit the dealer's room again. I think all I bought in Saturday Round One were two DVDs, Cowboy Bebop 2 and Read or Die TV 1, and a Tonberry plushie. Properly from FFXI, but Tonberry is Tonberry. I also attempted to find a Kumagoro, but the only booth that had them were out. I would have caved and bought a Bad Luck shirt too, but they were sold out. (Most of the Gravi shirts were a liiiittle too fangirl for my tastes, though I will admit to wanting them anyway. But there was one with little sketchy SD-type art of Bad Luck. V. cute and didn't scream "HI I AM A STEREOTYPICAL SHOUNEN-AI FANGIRL" quite as loudly.)
Met Sis near the Furuba cosplay meetup. We didn't go exactly, since she didn't want to be roped into any pictures and I'm, well, shy as hell, as we know - but we watched it from the overlook near the doors. And I got to squee over the fact that THERE ARE HATORI COSPLAYERS OH MY GOD. I SAW TWO. I think. It was from the back. There were also at least four Shigures. ~♥ I'm not predictable or anything. There was also a Momiji in the pink coat and purple beret, which I didn't expect. hee.
On that note, I also saw five other Kaguras, one of which sat down next to me as they were entering the Inuyasha fan panel and we were leaving the AMV Creation panel. What're the chances. They didn't say anything, though. I have to wonder if there's some sort of unspoken rivalry between people who cosplay the same thing. I found myself checking out their technique, but that was out of curiosity more than anything.
Where was I. Oh. Met up. Back to the dealer's room. This was the uh, yeah. Time. Dealer's room haul 3: Rat-Yuki plushie, Hatsuharu hat YAY HARUCOW - by the way, they also have Shigure, and the Haru a) has earrings and b) is reversible into Black Haru and White Haru, which is quite possibly the most adorable part of it all. ...where was I. Two CDs at typical insane import prices - Suikoden II Orrizonte and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time Arranged - and two more DVDs, Cowboy Bebop 3 and 4. Yes, I still haven't finished it, quiet. I think in this spin we also got the second gift for my dad, a Monty Python shirt, and one for Roomie.
Met hicat during this jaunt, along with two of her friends, and chatted for a bit. Yay. I've also been tapped for two Final Fantasy Tactics commissions, w00t. A Time Mage (not sure if it's regular or enemy) and an Enemy Priest. Will hammer out details soon.
Also, during this trip through, took a picture of Sis with FUNi's Al statue - cuuuuuuuuute - got glomped by three random girls, only one of which (an FMA-Ed cosplayer) asked, thanks much - and got my picture taken by another one. Kagura has fans. Oh yes she does.
I still don't know what proper etiquette is for that, anyway. I don't mind per se, probably because I was just randomly tackled by genki girls instead of something sinister, but two times out of three I was just like "Oh...heehhhh..." and they were gone by the time I could get my bearings. Ed, who asked, I sortakinda hugged back, I think. So uh, if anyone's like "That bitchy Kagura totally didn't observe proper random glomping procedure," I'm sorry.
I probably look like hell in that picture, by the way. My hair was ghastly by that point. I'd forgotten - oh, here we go - some of my usual product~ back at my sister's, so there was lots of frizz. Bleh. I rabidly look forward to getting it cut; I prefer it shorter than this anyway.
Where was I. Oh yes. Way out of the dealer's room. Remember that I was operating on cash only since the loss of the bank card. And uh, apparently I cannot add, because I overspent drastically. I'm embarrassed about that, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. I mean, I got things I really wanted, so I don't think I wasted it per se. I just overdid it.
so. yes. Sorry. Anyway, I had a little disposable income left, and I really wanted to see the pins that my sister had talked about; she'd seen them in her spin through Artist Alley while I was at lunch. And yes. They cheered me up quite a bit. They were little round badge-type pins from Random Fandom. I could have bought a zillion. I settled on six. Four little round Furuba animal ones - Hatori-seahorse, Shigure-dog, Ayame-snake and Haru-cow (I'm not predictable at all, am I), FMA-Al, and an Ohtori crest. Hee. Since I was a Furuba cosplayer the booth owner gave me an "I ♥ Fruits Basket" sailor-riceball pin free and took my picture. ^_^ I probably looked like hell in that one too, but it definitely salved the money panic. Yes, this sounds like "Hello moron, you are short on money and you bought stuff?", but the enthusiasm-to-cost ratio was high. Five dollars for seven pins and a picture, yo. I'll take that and skip a meal out. Gladly.
After that, since it was ten thousand degrees outside (approx.) and my boots were starting to kill my feet, we decided to go civilian and went back to the hotel to change. It was dinnertime by then; we'd had a good run. Changed, scarfed some ramen in the hotel room, stopped to get dinner for Sis on the way (again, I'd been the ass who'd spent too much money, so I gave all of my remaining cash to her), and hit Iron Editor. I'd never seen one before, so I was curious.
So yes, if anyone happened to be curious why I wasn't at Iron Editor, I was. I am a ninja, you see. A ninja in street clothes and a dorky Furuba black-cow hat who spent most of the event eating Pocky. Behold my true non-tarted-up form. Actually, I was (even) more schlumpy than I usually am, since my spare might-change-out-of-costume clothes were sort of an afterthought. Not that I'm, uh, incredibly vain or anything. *cough*
Iron Editor, to an audience member, is two hours of random videos plus little contests. Hey, I'm happy. I didn't expect that, actually. I had no idea how they'd entertain the crowd while the editors did their thing. In fact, when they were still waiting to start I was thinking "You can keep on showing random stuff and I'll be entertained; I don't care." Sis said she thought they'd narrate more about what the editors were doing, but I guess that would reduce the element of surprise? *shrug* That is what they do on Iron Chef, come to think of it. Ah, anyway. I'm the least demanding audience member ever.
After that we went down to Saturday Fan Parodies - I'd never seen any of those, either, since our schedules just didn't work out the previous years. And... I feel really bad. We left after about an hour because the echo off the ceiling/walls/whatever made it incredibly hard to understand the audio. It looked really funny and I really wish I could have understood it... but I'm already bad at filtering out speech from background noise, and I probably understood one line out of ten. Maybe we were just at a bad spot in the room, or something - close to the front on the left - I don't know. :/ I hope somebody took our seats and enjoyed the show. It's nobody's fault, and I really wish I could have seen it, but I still feel guilty. So yes, two people skipping out around eleven was not a comment on the movie! I promise!
On the way back to the room we wound up behind a crowd of Saiyuki cosplayers. Big crowd. I think they had two Gokus, two Hakkais, a Sanzo and a Gojyo. They were a couple of doors down from us. When we slipped past, one noticed that I had a Saiyuki shirt and yelled, and I was like "^_^;;;;" and just gave a thumbs-up. I'm too easily embarrassed.
Then sleep.
Sunday
Checking out. Finding parking, getting messed up by a one-way street and winding up back on the interstate. Eventually, back to the BCC. Still being big Furuba dorks; I had White Haru-hat on today and Sis still had Kyo. Hit the Cosplaying with Fiberglass panel. Very cool stuff. Confusing-at-times but entertaining panel, too. Took notes. Yes.
After that, tried to call ladybug218, realized that I should have called earlier, headed out anyway and planned to stop if we got a call. Didn't work out, so meh. Maybe next time.
Trip home. Uh. We had less than twenty dollars left for a 250-mile trip, including lunch, gas, and turnpike tolls. I should be shot for that. But we made it work. Barely. Like, less than a dollar and a gallon of gas when we rolled in-barely. But we did.
The end.
You just don't wanna know how long this took to type up.
[edit: oh. I write up ridiculously long entries like this because I have a terrible memory - next year I might be like "Which year did xyz happen?" and I can check my entry and get my memory jogged. Sad but true. In fact, I forgot that I had a stuffed Dragon Warrior slime until I read last year's entry. I think it fell behind a shelf. Oops.]