“You Only Love Me for my Special Beam Cannon!”- Metrocon 2010
Hooray, another long and hilariously rambly journal recording all of my con activities! :D GRAB A CUP OF TEA, AND A PASTRY, AND REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD. IT’S FUUUUUNNY.
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Bright and early on Friday morning, my dad drops us off at the Avenues Mall to hitch a ride with Robbie to Tampa. There’s a huge bag of food (since I hate to spend money on stuff llloooolllll) at my feet and a giant masquerade gown stuck uncomfortably by how too many people are in the car with too much stuff! But, after listening to the most ridiculous songs on my iPod, we get to Tampa: at 11:30a, I am no longer Julie: I am Seto Kaiba, and I hate everything, and I feel like curb-stomping little people, and I am going to frown in every freaking picture, and I have a giant bag of brownies.
I am immediately overwhelmed with awe at how many people are actually cosplaying as Yu-Gi-Oh characters. I am very used to the idea that Yu-Gi-Oh cosplays are rare; back in 2008 and early 2009, I was tremendously lucky if I found one or two other Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers at the entire convention. Last year, at Metrocon- biggest con in Florida, yo- there were only six or seven Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers. When I see six or seven Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers within the first twenty minutes of walking into the con doors, I can’t freaking believe it. The dealer’s room was about what I expected: quite a neat amount of vendors, but I’m on the hunt for specific things: …namely, of course, DragonBall Z and Yu-Gi-Oh-related things. …little luck: I did find one vendor that actually -WHODA THUNK- sold DragonBall Z plushies!: Gohan, Goku, Cell, Bulma, Master Roshi… ….but no Vegeta or Piccolo. But, this gives me hope that DragonBall Z plushies DO exist, and that maybe I’ll find my favorite characters at Otakon? :O I meet Spike Spencer, the voice of Shinji from Evangelion, and get his autograph today. I also met Dave Stanworth: the guy who helps create Yu-Gi-Oh: Abridged t-shirts!
Ben and I gather as many of the Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers as we can at 3:00p to have a photoshoot. It’s lightly raining, so it’s actually surprisingly cool outside- so, we go to a covered part of the beautiful riverwalk behind the convention center. Today I participated in the most violent Yu-Gi-Oh photoshoot I’ve ever been in- involing harpoon incidents, harsh club rejections, and …seriesism (generationism)? The pictures turn out FANTASTICccCCccCC; my favorite being the big group shot that we took at the very end.
By now I’ve gotten school supplies from a few people and have started giving out brownies in return for them. (By the end of the weekend I had to make several trips to load everything into the car!!!!!!) I wish that I could fully express my gratitude, my mom’s gratitude, my mom’s friend’s gratitude, and hundreds of Haitian children’s gratitude for your donations.
Friday night, we go to the masquerade. I’ve never been to a masquerade before: I like the idea that it’s formal (If I could get away with it, I would absolutely wear a prom dress to class every day. I’m honestly not kidding.)! My stupid hair is so horrendously deformed from wig-capping-ness that I actually just continue to wear my wig. We meet up with Seto and Amanda and Amanda; I’m surprised at how cute the skit is, and how good the music is that got played between scenes! My favorite song was a re-make of the “Dance, Magic, Dance” song from Labyrinth; it’s, like, a sort of jazzy version, and it was perfect to swing dance to! Swing is the only dance that I’m downright good at; there’s a club in my hometown that taught teens to swing dance a few times a month. I went to nearly every dance night there for almost three years!
Saturday promises to be interesting because of the panel opportunities; and, I expect that if that many Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers showed up on Friday, imagine how much would show up on Saturday! My instincts are proven correct: of course, the roots are planted for our second photoshoot.
I went to Robert Axelrod’s voice-acting panel first thing in the morning. I adore Robert Axelrod: I think he’s about the most adorable little smiley thing in the world. I kind of want to adopt him. His panel was neat: he gave out scripts for voice-over commercials and he let us practice in front of the audience, and critiqued our efforts. I think he liked me! I got to do a few scripts; I got the chance to tell him about my musical-theatre background there. He was like PEOPLE IN THEATRE HAVE A GREAT HEAD START YAAAY.
Today I got Kirby Morrow’s autograph. But, the particularly unusual thing happened moments after I got Kirby Morrow’s autograph: when I’d finished with him, I just stepped aside to a nearby empty table to organize my stuff. Scott McNeil (Piccolo in one of the dubs of DragonBall Z; Hoenheim in FullMetal Alchemist!) came up from behind me and put his stuff on the table. I say, “Oh! Am I in your way? I’m sorry,” and start getting my stuff off of the table. He says, “No, I just came over here to get a random hug.” Thrilled, I of course hug him and say “I would love to hug you, because, do you want to know a secret?” We let go of the hug and he keeps his arm around my shoulder and says “What’s the secret?” I say, “Piccolo and I are engaged.”
His eyebrows raise, and he says, in Piccolo’s voice, “Well, I was unaware of this, but I can certainly go along with that.” I then say “Oh, wait a minute… you reproduce asexually! Ugh, never mind.” He whines, still in Piccolo’s voice, “You’re always complaining about that! Can’t you just love me for who I am? Can’t we just cuddle sometimes?”
Shrieking with laughter, I promise him that I will be first in line to get his autograph the next day (I was holding up the current line!). I intend to keep this promise.
Saturday’s photoshoot is as fantastic as Friday’s. There are, hilariously, like 6 Kaibas at Metrocon- so, of course, pictures include moments like the Blue-Eyes summoning a bunch of Kaibas in one turn, and then Tristan and Duke falling over railings. I also see Heather and Sharon and Zoie- my favorite pictures that I took this weekend happen in the form of the Priest Seto/Seto Kaiba photoshoot that happens in the 100-billion-degree humid air on the back staircases!
Saturday night was eventful: Richard Ian Cox, Spike Spencer, Robert Axelrod and Scott McNeil hosted a hilarious panel that led to the ultimate new awesome inside joke: gay sharks, and how they’re the reason that the ocean is beautiful. You see those pretty, colorful corals? Gay sharks.
We went to the rave on Saturday night. Again, my hair is so violently hideous from the wig cap that I wear my wig to the rave, with my sxee red salsa dress. The lighting in there was freaking trippy, dawg.
Sunday proves to be a lazy, relaxingish-in-con-terms day. Ben (Canadian Bandit Keith) hosts the “Bad Trivia for Bad Prizes” panel- Blue-Eyes ends up winning me about half of DragonBall Z’s season 9 in DVDs!
We see the Human Chess Match; I’ve been stalking Vegeta in the match pretty much the entire weekend, and was very amused by his not-that-polite antics. Of course by this time I’d seen him around the con a few times and had asked for like 4358409830648640384 pictures. Poor Vegeta.
I’d rooted through a bunch of the dealer’s room merchandises and had turned up pretty much disappointed because nobody in the world ever wants to buy Yu-Gi-Oh or DragonBall Z stuff anyway so why the hell sell it? So, at about 1:00p, I’m hungry and, therefore, angry, and I was loitering around one vendor that had a bunch of wall scrolls. I’d already asked 564509468 other vendors, “Do you have any Yu-Gi-Oh or DragonBall Z things?” (they all said no). So, when I went up to this dealer and said, “I’m hungry. I want to eat the turkey sandwich that’s in my briefcase but I have a lot of bags in my hands and I don’t really feel like dropping everything to fish through my Do you have any DragonBall Z or Yu-Gi-Oh things? briefcase because it’s kind of a nightmare to open up and set in the way where everyone is walking and get the sandwich and eat it even though I’m pretty damn hungry” to this final vendor, he goes, “Oh, yeah- I think we’ve got a few. Wall scrolls are on sale for $10 today.”
My eyebrows raise; I hadn’t had this answer yet. Well, alright, then- I’m willing to hold up on reaching for my turkey sandwich if there’s actually hope (I’m an optimistic person!). I start picking through the wall scrolls and I find:
an enormous scroll from yu-gi-oh season zero of a green-haired kaiba in a white suit standing next to a blue-eyes white dragon; while yugi, on the other side, stands next to gaia the fierce knight
First, I crap my pants. Then, I crap my pants again. Then, once my pants are kind of starting to sag really hideously like a diaper that hasn’t been changed in three months, I say to the vendor “RLKDkfldgjdlfgdJGGJDLKaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiyeeeeeeeeeeeeeGJdlfkgskldjhjkhljshKLHJD” and he says “You wanted DragonBall Z, right? Here’s one of them…” and, he holds up:
a scroll with literally every dragonball z character in like, all of their forms- that is, there’s like, pictures of the characters from their outfits in every season and from dragonball and in all of bulma’s weird hairstyles and they’re all together
First, I crap my pants. Then, I pass out in the pile of my own crap. Then I wake up, brush the maggots off of my armpits, and say “$20, right?”
True to my promise (and because Seto got me a pass that got me to the front of one autograph line- THANKSSSSS), I’m first in line for Scott McNeil’s autograph session. I add him to StinkulousReddous’ Kiss List- he joins the honorable ranks of the voice actors who are special to me and, therefore, deserve a peck on the cheek. LittleKuriboh and Vic Mignogna are the only others who so far hold positions in this prestigious club.
Sunday ends with Ben videotaping some things for his live-action movie, and then, Metrocon is over. I’m thrilled with the weekend- the Marriott hotel was fantastic, I got those freaking rare things in the dealer’s room, I got to spend time with lots of friends that I don’t get to see all that often, I got lots of fantastic autographs, and I was surrounded by more Yu-Gi-Oh people than I hardly freaking knew what to do with!
But, of course, Otakon looms over the horizon: in only three or so days, I’ll be preparing to get up butt-fudge early to get on the plane to Baltimore. I’ll post another journal about Otakon on like, Wednesday, or something- until then, look forward to the pictures and things that follow Metrocon!
Also, I’ll add here that I’ll be posting neat videos soon: Blue-Eyes Witness News: Episode 2 isn’t far away, and I’m also putting together a compilation of clips from Otakon that, I promise, will be quite, quite amusing!