Blue Pink and Green Con 2012
Despite the fact that we felt like we had S O M U C H to do like, the entirety of the con, in hindsight we didn't ACTUALLY do all that much. On top of that, there was some nasty shit that I don't really want to fling around on the internet; so as a result, this isn't gonna be the world's most comprehensive, in-depth con report. A lot of shit is blurring together in a whirl of BluePinkAndGreen and Kill Bill.
Thursday Jessi drove down to get me and got lost tryna get both to my house and to Chipotle. I was hanging out with Cullen, who had come in to get some food, when she finally got there, and they were able to briefly meet for like 2 seconds before she and I took off back to my house to switch cars and get on the road forreal. We also stopped at Food Lion and the ABC store to get weekend ~supplies (that we didn't end up using p much at all, whomp) and the Chinese place that's right there for some fucking dinner that we basically annihilated in an embarrassing, car-window-fogging display of gluttony of which we are literally not ashamed, fight us.
Then it was driving driving driving. We rocked out to the ghetto mix CDs I'd brought with me and tried not to drop our shit in my bowl of increasingly-gross pudding (that is not a metaphor, it was literally chocolate pudding in a red plastic bowl). One of us said something funny and I was going to tweet it when I reached down and discovered that contrary to what the two of us had believed this whole time, my phone was not in fact in my pocket. We had Jessi call it, and then eventually pulled over to look, and discovered that it was also not in fact in the car at all. We were more than halfway there at this point (having raged some as Google Maps took us through some fucking toll roads) so there was nothing to be done about it at this point... but it meant that I had no way of contacting Claire to tell her that our Cheese Shop plans had gone belly-up, and it also meant that I was like SHIT, I DON'T HAVE A PHONE for the entire weekend. (Spoiler alert: I left it in the Chinese place and my mom was able to get it for me, so I DO still have my phone and everything went better than expected, but still. All of Nekocon with no phone. INCONVENIENT.)
We arrived at our hotel a little bit earlier than the other car of people and ducked to McDonald's for a quick potty-and-trash-throwing-away break before reconvening with them and checking in. We were on the third floor which was kind of a pain in the ass. But yeeeahhhhh we unloaded and pretty much spent all night working on the rest of our cosplay shit we had to do. I forget what got accomplished here, what we did for most of the day Friday, and what we didn't work out until Saturday before rehearsal/between rehearsal and the masq proper. All I know is that no one slept anywhere near as much as she needed to and that most of Friday was spent working on cosplay while watching Kill Bill, which was marathoning in a vol 1-vol 2 back-and-forth for a lot of the day. Here's the stuff we still needed to get done:
+ Remaking the rings because my original ones looked fucked up and nasty once the glue dried. This was really easy.
+ Sewing the goatse-butthole-fabric-donuts onto our gloves and shoes, plus making sure that our shoes were functional at all. Also not so bad, Kristen and I were able to knock this out relatively painlessly. Though my handsewing skills always take a while to warm up from being shit.
+ Styling a bunch of wigs, which mostly Avery was doing. Mine for Bubbles was apparently giving her a LOT of problems and she was scream about it. She was like "THIS WIG TOOK ME A KILL BILL AND A HALF." Whatever, it turned out awesome, and her own stupid-crazy animu spikes for Buttercup did too.
+ Sewing the buttons onto our vests which I almost forgot we even did because it took Avery 0 time.
+ Ironing on the "P" letterman shits to our vests, which I did quickly.
+ Sewing the straps onto our dresses and ironing them which happened I think not until Saturday morning I don't even know WHAT IS TIME.
+ Jessi also had a lot of Mojo painting and gluing and sewing to do but she managed to do it all and it all looked really good!! Mostly the whole room was just errybody going crazy and knocking these costumes out.
So anyway after like a day of doing all that bullshit, we did as much as we felt like we were gonna be able to do, took one small break to go over and pick up our badges + claim our masq rehearsal slot (11:10 was somehow miraculously still available and we were like DONE, SOLD), and then came back over with Jessi Pugh in tow to take some sillyfuck pics in our Harry Potter costumes. This was definitely a nice little reprieve from our hotel room cosplaying madness, with the exception of one supremely shitty panic-attack moment where we ran into this dickbag we really didn't want to see and Avery had to go work that out of her system. :(((( Fortunately we were already planning on being in the bathroom so we just stayed in there and took some more stupid potty pictures with Harry and Draco fffff.
This part's kind of a blur too?? We went over to the lobby of the Embassy to try to get some nicer pics in there because it's very common room-esque but ultimately that didn't quite pan out because we were kind of dead (Avery had slept the least of anyone because she was staying up to knock some stuff out for her panel she was doing Saturday night); while we were there, our bffs Lauren and Christina surfaced again, and rather than shouting at them from a distance we were able to talk to them properly and golly they're just the best. Lauren even said I might be able to move in with her (????!!!!!) so alksjfdhgah. They told us about their plans for the masq and mentioned that they were rehearsing at 11:20 and we were like SHUT UP WE'RE AT 11:10 HELL YES LET'S PARTY.
After them we kind of gave up on the Embassy and went back to the con center proper, and I think this is when Jessi was going to go connect with Kyrie and Krysta, so the three of us decided to like half-de-costume and start running through our skit choreography a little up in this secluded corner. This was MUCH-needed and I think our Friday-night dance session was a big boost to how well everyone knew what she needed to be doing. Weirdly, we still had people coming up to us wanting to talk and take pictures, and I was like...we're not even 100% IN our costumes I don't understand. One of them was this cool dude tho who was like "I'm actually a dancer I wanna see how your dancing looks" and like "I'm gonna look for you tomorrow in your real costumes for real pictures" and yeah I liked him. Eventually Kyrie, Krysta and Jessi came back to check if we wanted to go to the J. Tatez panel but we were like "eh probs not" because Avery was still kind of dead from not sleeping + uncomfortable from her earlier situation so we just practiced some more and then people wanted to go back to the room so I was like "Okay, just a couple more pictures, I want Harry and Draco dueling" and stuff so we suited back up and were going downstairs to the fountain area when suddenly, THIS REALLY NICE PHOTOG WOMAN WANTED TO TAKE A CRAPTON OF PICTURES OF US ON THE STAIRS AREA. It was so niiice! I can't find my copy of her card - I think I gave it to Jessi Pugh after she showed up midway through and jumped in as Luna - but I'm betting all of these are going to look super great.
And then we also took a couple of videos for Kristen to gif and that ended up here and got way too many notes because Petty reblogged it ahahaha.
Then Friday night was more crazy costume making!! And listening to the skit audio over and over and over again to make sure we understood exactly how it went so we could choreograph the fighting part of it more concisely. This was also when Kristen and I made the pompoms which are fucking stupid and FUCKING AWESOME~ and I forget, was this when we were watching Storage Wars? Like we literally went to sleep with Storage Wars on and slept so little that Storage Wars was still on when we woke up. Kristen and I went to bed earlier but Jessi and Avery had so much left to do that neither of them did until like 5 am and then we were waking up at 8:30 or 9 to get shit done in the morning. D:
Saturday was basically a BluePinkandGreen blur also. I was the first to wake up I think and I was like WELP FUCK THIS I CANNOT SLEEP so I showered and started finishing up the pompoms (they needed trimming) and in general did whatever I could think of to help. We ironed shit. We suited up. We REALIZED WE DIDN'T HAVE A BLANK CD TO PUT OUR SKIT AUDIO ON and texted Jessi Pugh to make sure she could bring one but she brought one and it didn't work??? So we were like JOE. GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN TO THE FUCKING WAL-MART and that actually managed to work out with PERFECT timing but like literally we were still freaking out and doing shit up until the WIRE of making it to the con at 11:10 for our rehearsal. Jessi especially still had a good chunk of Mojo shit to do and didn't even wear her cape over (partially due to a long, stressful incident regarding her contact lenses D: poor mamasaur). BUT IT DIDN'T MATTER...BECAUSE WE GOT THERE AND REHEARSALS WERE RUNNING LATE.... cool story bro. At least that gave us time to practice a few times through with all 5 of us AND the big cardboard props. We knocked it out pretty well actually! And our rehearsal went smoothly enough that Avery was like "wow I think this is the most prepared we've ever been at a rehearsal ahaha." Then we stayed just long enough to watch our other friends do their Senshi And I Know It skit before heading back to the room and doing the rest of Jessi's shit and our final touch-ups. People were already asking us for pics on our way out of the con center even though none of us were wearing our correct shoes and Jessi was still only half-dressed with no makeup? Whatever haha.
We knocked out everything we needed to knock out with just enough time to make it to craftsmanship judging which was ALSO running late, and so we hung out in there with our friends the master-class folks (Lauren and Christina's group and also this cool badass group that did like nightmare!Disney princesses including a very tall dude dressed as a scarecrow version of Cinderella with straw popping out everywhere aahhh so neat). Crapsmanshit judging went super-smoothly with Tohma, this cool bro dressed as Felt Duds!Dave and some other folks. They all seemed p impressed especially with our tiny details like the rings, the shoe-and-glove-donuts and our light-up LED belts (!!!). Not to mention Jessi's furry arms~~ We felt like badasses.
When THAT was finally over, we were like "Okay, time to find a chill corner to practice in." Unfortunately, our chill corner from the day before was full of Megucas, including a dude we were trying to avoid, so we scooted over a little bit from there, only to be trapped in a Photography Loop™ by a bunch of people which was aaaahhhhh no stop we have to practice. Fortunately some of those people were a) Chelsie and Chelsea the Rocket Grunts, whom we weren't expecting to see at all and got really excited about, and b) This cute girl on crutches who took a TON of REALLY NICE pictures of us with Mojo and the pompoms and everythiiiiing. And we also saw Kyrie and Krysta and Jessi Pugh again. Eventually it was almost green-room time so we just...went to the green room...and practiced in there. But they wouldn't let us in until EXACTLY 3:30?? So we had to pause for a couple minutes and like we got some water and over by the water coolers I ran into this girl in a big mascot suit of Toothless that she had made and she was like...crying :(((( I chatted to her for a couple of seconds and tried to cheer her up; it sounded like a lot of the same stress we had been having, of things just not going right and bits of her costume fucking up, and I was like "well the green room is right there and you can come hang with us if you want and bawwww toothless :C" I hope she felt better eventually wahhhh
In the greenroom we practiced A LOT. Things got worked out for the best and I feel like we were finally satisfied with what we were doing, though Avery still felt a little unsteady on some things and was kind of beating herself up about it and I was like noooo you will be fine D: One-Up Pimp stopped by and said hi and made sure he could pronounce Azzarelli and then we practiced some more and some mORE and then the thing was starting! Kristen and Joe and I (and eventually Avery) went up front to watch the video feed of the skits ahead of us (which they finally had this year!) and I chatted with some of the non-Lauren-and-Christina Sailor Scouts in our friends' skit that was right behind us in the lineup and la la la~ then a couple more quick practices and then the walk-on ahead of us was MIA so we just totally went on aaannnnnnd
KILLED IT!!!!
I felt SO good about our skit, we were kawaii as hell and the light-cues guys managed to give us BluePinkAndGreen lights which was SO COOL and we just danced and bounced around and idk I was happy. We got a lot of applause and things felt great~ and then we were able to sit down and actually watch the two skits we wanted to, our bros' Senshi ANd I Know It and the creepyDisney's puppet nightmare sort of business. Yaayyy!! Also we blissfully avoided any Gangnam Style-centric skits which I felt was sort of impressive. Even Nekocon has realized how dead it is now. (That didn't stop us from taking elevator pictures in our HP costumes Friday night but still.)
Then halftime was anime Jeopardy! with mario!Bernie and for the most part people were dumb and didn't know the answers~ and at one point we sent Joe up and he got his question WRONG!! SHAME ON U PROFESSAH oh well ahaha. Also, there was this girl dressed as Sailor Moon who got a Sailor Moon question wrong and that was embarrassing and hilarious. Sorry girl but omg. Thennnn judging results and we WON THINGS!!! JOURNEYMAN PERFORMANCE AND JOURNEYMAN CRAFTSMANSHIP!!! WHICH MEANS WE'RE ACCIDENTALLY MASTER LEVEL NOW WHOOOOPPPSS!!!! um yeah so that was kind of ri-fucking-diculous. We won a crapton of cool stuff like sewing equipment and cute plushies and some Strike Witches cat ears that Avery gave to Peter. Also some yaoi DVDs that I guess I got by default...somehow......
When the whole thing was over (our friends got Master Performance; Disneybros got Best In Show :D) they started playing Party Rock Anthem over the sound system and we danced really hard to that and got fanboyed by Adam and then fucking leeefffft. We were like, Let's just take a couple of pictures and then leave so that Jessi can get out of her Mojo suit because it's making her sad and uncomfortable, but that turned into a whole lot of pictures because we were just so damn cute and high off our cuteness and like, we had pompoms, you guys. But yeah eventually we just got the fuck out of there. Went back to the room and tweaked some Homestuck wig styling before doing our joke PowerpuffStuck pictures, then de-Powerpuffed entirely and became Alpha Kids and went to fucking McDonald's because we were hella hungry. Staying in the Days Inn right across the street pretty much turns Nekocon into McDonald'sCon a lot of the time, and Kristen was craving Snack Wraps like ALL WEEKEND and omg this was worth it. We took Alpha Kids pics with the Ronald McDonald that's in there including one of Avery with her face in its lap???? HOMESTUCK.
And then back over to the convention center for the 18+ J. Tatez panel which was wooorrrrtthhh it. ahahaha omg Tatum is the new Greg. Avery'd forgotten her gun belts (she took them off to wear into McDonald's like a very smart person) and Kristen had forgotten her phone but Jessi managed to bring those back over to us before she died entirely and then we were just kinda killing time until Avery's panel which was for some reason scheduled for ONE FUCKING AM. Booooo.
We went over to the Embassy lobby in an attempt to find Lauren and Christina but drunk Christina is not the best at texting and stuff so we were mostly just hanging out over there for a little bit. Avery was pretty dead and Kristen wasn't much better, and I felt guilty for being more like "omg yay! let's take pictures and have fun!" while they were feeling crappy but D: idk. We did roll around and take a couple stupid ones of cupcakes and butts and stuff, and also while we were there Jessi Pugh uploaded her video of our skit and we watched it on Kristen's phone and that was pretty coooool~ then when we figured Lauren and Christina weren't rly going to come we just went back to the con. On our way through we ran into literally the two people/groups of people we wanted to see THE LEAST, which super-DUPER set Avery off and she just had to like, go die in a corner D: D: D: D: Avery was having a really REALLY hard time all weekend and like the rest of us were powerless to help her which is just so hard for me, too. This was shitty and our parade was getting totally fucking rained on and uuggghhh :(((( But she connected with Peter and he and Kristen stayed with her while I finally found Lauren and Christina long enough to give them their promised cupcakes, and I bro'd at them and Cinderella-bro and the Dave craftsmanship judge guy for a little bit and then went back to Averytown.
She was feeling really low but we got comforted by another Jake English and the Kanaya who was with her, who were also of the "We like Homestuck but we want to stay as far away from the other fans as possible" mindset, so that was kind of fun and nice. I managed to unload the rest of my cupcakes off on some Homestucks in this mass of people who were playing Gamzee Says - apparently the prize was...cupcakes, and I was like lol no fuck that wouldn't you like mine for free? I didn't actually get to eat one myself but apparently they were a big hit.
We died after that and then did Avery's panel and a bunch of people she didn't want to see at all came to it so that was stressful for her and for me too and we were like DDD: and then the panel was over (it actually went pretty well other than that, though the 1am!low attendance was kind of a bummer) and we walked back to our hotel and died some more.
I woke up like three times in the night because there was just not enough room for me on the fucking bed blehhh and finally just gave up and got up for Sunday for real, took a shower, and fucked around on the internet/tried to collect my stuff up a little while I waited for everyone to wake up. When Kristen was awake I snuggled into her nest on the floor with her and we chatted some and she showed me some internet stuff with our pictures and whatever and yeah conventions. Joe and Jacob woke up and went to go get breakfast or go back to the con or something?? and then Jessi and Avery woke up and Avery was having a really hard day/life and this dumb Over Her Dead Body movie was playing on TV and we all just kind of snuggled Avery until she could manage to stop being dead. This was really hard, you guys. I'm really fucking mad at anyone who made Avery feel this way the whole convention. Hence me literally tweeting "If any of you come near her today I'll fucking kill you." I'm not playing this goddamn game any more. Get. Out.
Sooooo we finally managed to pull all our shit together, load up the cars, check out, and duck back into the con for just a little bit to spend our masq prize money. (This included standing out in the cold waiting for Peter and Evan to come find us so Avery could put her shit in their car, and I think this is when Avery finally sort of came back to life and we were having a good bit of fun fucking around in the freezingness and talking about random shit and being bros. God I miss my bros. DDD: ) Then we went back into the con and Wizzywig was sold out of like E V E R Y T H I N G. DISAPPOINTMENT. I just let them have all the giftcard money because there was legit nothing I really wanted. I did end up skulking around the dealers' room looking for something for Shaquanda (no fucking dice; a disappointment also!) and eventually secretly buying a Gomamon plush for Avery to try to cheer her up, since none of us could really figure out anything else to do. D:
No but like in the dealers' room I ran into EVERYONE!! I saw BroDad Nick again (we'd seen him for a small second Saturday night also), I saw Alex Woodley, and my cousin Daniel and his friends, and Heather, who'd been Sailor Moon in our bros' skit and whom I really need to bro it up harder with in the future. In this moment alone with the two of us I was able to explain some of Avery's situation to her, with instructions that she pass it on to the rest of them, and I think we're finally getting to a point where they're starting to understand how serious some of the shit is. Ugh it's such a stressful and awful situation. Then we had our standard Sunday-afternoon powwow outside on the floor and that was so niiiiice because FRIENDS. Just eatin' weird food and broing about life and gaahhh and then we all had TO LEAVE WHICH WAS SO DEPRESSING NO COME BACK I WANT NEKOCON FOREVER AND I JUST CAN'T........ so yes a lot of tearful goodbyes and then driving home. Gross.
Jessi and I went to Wawa for lunch+gas, had a lot of bro-venting in the car, tried not to fall asleep, and then finally I was back in Lynchburg and I totally didn't want to be there. And that's where I am now, eating my leftover granola bars from this weekend and hoping the intense soreness in my thighs from kneeling/unkneeling in skit practice over and over again finally goes away.
D:
All in all not the world's best Nekocon, considering our accomplishments and fun got kind of overshadowed by dickbags and bullshit. It was a super mixed bag and I hope next year (or next con, or whatever - who knows when/if we'll do Nekocon again, with the way it's going now) turns out a lot better. Right now I'm trying to focus on the positive, which is mostly HOW FUCKING ADORABLE WE WERE.
To conclude: get yourself some Tall-Ass Cookies, watch Kill Bill, and try not to talk to cranberries because I'll be super worried if they talk back.
Reminder to check my tag #blue pink and green con on Tumblr for all the photos and other shit. :3
Thursday Jessi drove down to get me and got lost tryna get both to my house and to Chipotle. I was hanging out with Cullen, who had come in to get some food, when she finally got there, and they were able to briefly meet for like 2 seconds before she and I took off back to my house to switch cars and get on the road forreal. We also stopped at Food Lion and the ABC store to get weekend ~supplies (that we didn't end up using p much at all, whomp) and the Chinese place that's right there for some fucking dinner that we basically annihilated in an embarrassing, car-window-fogging display of gluttony of which we are literally not ashamed, fight us.
Then it was driving driving driving. We rocked out to the ghetto mix CDs I'd brought with me and tried not to drop our shit in my bowl of increasingly-gross pudding (that is not a metaphor, it was literally chocolate pudding in a red plastic bowl). One of us said something funny and I was going to tweet it when I reached down and discovered that contrary to what the two of us had believed this whole time, my phone was not in fact in my pocket. We had Jessi call it, and then eventually pulled over to look, and discovered that it was also not in fact in the car at all. We were more than halfway there at this point (having raged some as Google Maps took us through some fucking toll roads) so there was nothing to be done about it at this point... but it meant that I had no way of contacting Claire to tell her that our Cheese Shop plans had gone belly-up, and it also meant that I was like SHIT, I DON'T HAVE A PHONE for the entire weekend. (Spoiler alert: I left it in the Chinese place and my mom was able to get it for me, so I DO still have my phone and everything went better than expected, but still. All of Nekocon with no phone. INCONVENIENT.)
We arrived at our hotel a little bit earlier than the other car of people and ducked to McDonald's for a quick potty-and-trash-throwing-away break before reconvening with them and checking in. We were on the third floor which was kind of a pain in the ass. But yeeeahhhhh we unloaded and pretty much spent all night working on the rest of our cosplay shit we had to do. I forget what got accomplished here, what we did for most of the day Friday, and what we didn't work out until Saturday before rehearsal/between rehearsal and the masq proper. All I know is that no one slept anywhere near as much as she needed to and that most of Friday was spent working on cosplay while watching Kill Bill, which was marathoning in a vol 1-vol 2 back-and-forth for a lot of the day. Here's the stuff we still needed to get done:
+ Remaking the rings because my original ones looked fucked up and nasty once the glue dried. This was really easy.
+ Sewing the goatse-butthole-fabric-donuts onto our gloves and shoes, plus making sure that our shoes were functional at all. Also not so bad, Kristen and I were able to knock this out relatively painlessly. Though my handsewing skills always take a while to warm up from being shit.
+ Styling a bunch of wigs, which mostly Avery was doing. Mine for Bubbles was apparently giving her a LOT of problems and she was scream about it. She was like "THIS WIG TOOK ME A KILL BILL AND A HALF." Whatever, it turned out awesome, and her own stupid-crazy animu spikes for Buttercup did too.
+ Sewing the buttons onto our vests which I almost forgot we even did because it took Avery 0 time.
+ Ironing on the "P" letterman shits to our vests, which I did quickly.
+ Sewing the straps onto our dresses and ironing them which happened I think not until Saturday morning I don't even know WHAT IS TIME.
+ Jessi also had a lot of Mojo painting and gluing and sewing to do but she managed to do it all and it all looked really good!! Mostly the whole room was just errybody going crazy and knocking these costumes out.
So anyway after like a day of doing all that bullshit, we did as much as we felt like we were gonna be able to do, took one small break to go over and pick up our badges + claim our masq rehearsal slot (11:10 was somehow miraculously still available and we were like DONE, SOLD), and then came back over with Jessi Pugh in tow to take some sillyfuck pics in our Harry Potter costumes. This was definitely a nice little reprieve from our hotel room cosplaying madness, with the exception of one supremely shitty panic-attack moment where we ran into this dickbag we really didn't want to see and Avery had to go work that out of her system. :(((( Fortunately we were already planning on being in the bathroom so we just stayed in there and took some more stupid potty pictures with Harry and Draco fffff.
This part's kind of a blur too?? We went over to the lobby of the Embassy to try to get some nicer pics in there because it's very common room-esque but ultimately that didn't quite pan out because we were kind of dead (Avery had slept the least of anyone because she was staying up to knock some stuff out for her panel she was doing Saturday night); while we were there, our bffs Lauren and Christina surfaced again, and rather than shouting at them from a distance we were able to talk to them properly and golly they're just the best. Lauren even said I might be able to move in with her (????!!!!!) so alksjfdhgah. They told us about their plans for the masq and mentioned that they were rehearsing at 11:20 and we were like SHUT UP WE'RE AT 11:10 HELL YES LET'S PARTY.
After them we kind of gave up on the Embassy and went back to the con center proper, and I think this is when Jessi was going to go connect with Kyrie and Krysta, so the three of us decided to like half-de-costume and start running through our skit choreography a little up in this secluded corner. This was MUCH-needed and I think our Friday-night dance session was a big boost to how well everyone knew what she needed to be doing. Weirdly, we still had people coming up to us wanting to talk and take pictures, and I was like...we're not even 100% IN our costumes I don't understand. One of them was this cool dude tho who was like "I'm actually a dancer I wanna see how your dancing looks" and like "I'm gonna look for you tomorrow in your real costumes for real pictures" and yeah I liked him. Eventually Kyrie, Krysta and Jessi came back to check if we wanted to go to the J. Tatez panel but we were like "eh probs not" because Avery was still kind of dead from not sleeping + uncomfortable from her earlier situation so we just practiced some more and then people wanted to go back to the room so I was like "Okay, just a couple more pictures, I want Harry and Draco dueling" and stuff so we suited back up and were going downstairs to the fountain area when suddenly, THIS REALLY NICE PHOTOG WOMAN WANTED TO TAKE A CRAPTON OF PICTURES OF US ON THE STAIRS AREA. It was so niiice! I can't find my copy of her card - I think I gave it to Jessi Pugh after she showed up midway through and jumped in as Luna - but I'm betting all of these are going to look super great.
And then we also took a couple of videos for Kristen to gif and that ended up here and got way too many notes because Petty reblogged it ahahaha.
Then Friday night was more crazy costume making!! And listening to the skit audio over and over and over again to make sure we understood exactly how it went so we could choreograph the fighting part of it more concisely. This was also when Kristen and I made the pompoms which are fucking stupid and FUCKING AWESOME~ and I forget, was this when we were watching Storage Wars? Like we literally went to sleep with Storage Wars on and slept so little that Storage Wars was still on when we woke up. Kristen and I went to bed earlier but Jessi and Avery had so much left to do that neither of them did until like 5 am and then we were waking up at 8:30 or 9 to get shit done in the morning. D:
Saturday was basically a BluePinkandGreen blur also. I was the first to wake up I think and I was like WELP FUCK THIS I CANNOT SLEEP so I showered and started finishing up the pompoms (they needed trimming) and in general did whatever I could think of to help. We ironed shit. We suited up. We REALIZED WE DIDN'T HAVE A BLANK CD TO PUT OUR SKIT AUDIO ON and texted Jessi Pugh to make sure she could bring one but she brought one and it didn't work??? So we were like JOE. GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN TO THE FUCKING WAL-MART and that actually managed to work out with PERFECT timing but like literally we were still freaking out and doing shit up until the WIRE of making it to the con at 11:10 for our rehearsal. Jessi especially still had a good chunk of Mojo shit to do and didn't even wear her cape over (partially due to a long, stressful incident regarding her contact lenses D: poor mamasaur). BUT IT DIDN'T MATTER...BECAUSE WE GOT THERE AND REHEARSALS WERE RUNNING LATE.... cool story bro. At least that gave us time to practice a few times through with all 5 of us AND the big cardboard props. We knocked it out pretty well actually! And our rehearsal went smoothly enough that Avery was like "wow I think this is the most prepared we've ever been at a rehearsal ahaha." Then we stayed just long enough to watch our other friends do their Senshi And I Know It skit before heading back to the room and doing the rest of Jessi's shit and our final touch-ups. People were already asking us for pics on our way out of the con center even though none of us were wearing our correct shoes and Jessi was still only half-dressed with no makeup? Whatever haha.
We knocked out everything we needed to knock out with just enough time to make it to craftsmanship judging which was ALSO running late, and so we hung out in there with our friends the master-class folks (Lauren and Christina's group and also this cool badass group that did like nightmare!Disney princesses including a very tall dude dressed as a scarecrow version of Cinderella with straw popping out everywhere aahhh so neat). Crapsmanshit judging went super-smoothly with Tohma, this cool bro dressed as Felt Duds!Dave and some other folks. They all seemed p impressed especially with our tiny details like the rings, the shoe-and-glove-donuts and our light-up LED belts (!!!). Not to mention Jessi's furry arms~~ We felt like badasses.
When THAT was finally over, we were like "Okay, time to find a chill corner to practice in." Unfortunately, our chill corner from the day before was full of Megucas, including a dude we were trying to avoid, so we scooted over a little bit from there, only to be trapped in a Photography Loop™ by a bunch of people which was aaaahhhhh no stop we have to practice. Fortunately some of those people were a) Chelsie and Chelsea the Rocket Grunts, whom we weren't expecting to see at all and got really excited about, and b) This cute girl on crutches who took a TON of REALLY NICE pictures of us with Mojo and the pompoms and everythiiiiing. And we also saw Kyrie and Krysta and Jessi Pugh again. Eventually it was almost green-room time so we just...went to the green room...and practiced in there. But they wouldn't let us in until EXACTLY 3:30?? So we had to pause for a couple minutes and like we got some water and over by the water coolers I ran into this girl in a big mascot suit of Toothless that she had made and she was like...crying :(((( I chatted to her for a couple of seconds and tried to cheer her up; it sounded like a lot of the same stress we had been having, of things just not going right and bits of her costume fucking up, and I was like "well the green room is right there and you can come hang with us if you want and bawwww toothless :C" I hope she felt better eventually wahhhh
In the greenroom we practiced A LOT. Things got worked out for the best and I feel like we were finally satisfied with what we were doing, though Avery still felt a little unsteady on some things and was kind of beating herself up about it and I was like noooo you will be fine D: One-Up Pimp stopped by and said hi and made sure he could pronounce Azzarelli and then we practiced some more and some mORE and then the thing was starting! Kristen and Joe and I (and eventually Avery) went up front to watch the video feed of the skits ahead of us (which they finally had this year!) and I chatted with some of the non-Lauren-and-Christina Sailor Scouts in our friends' skit that was right behind us in the lineup and la la la~ then a couple more quick practices and then the walk-on ahead of us was MIA so we just totally went on aaannnnnnd
KILLED IT!!!!
I felt SO good about our skit, we were kawaii as hell and the light-cues guys managed to give us BluePinkAndGreen lights which was SO COOL and we just danced and bounced around and idk I was happy. We got a lot of applause and things felt great~ and then we were able to sit down and actually watch the two skits we wanted to, our bros' Senshi ANd I Know It and the creepyDisney's puppet nightmare sort of business. Yaayyy!! Also we blissfully avoided any Gangnam Style-centric skits which I felt was sort of impressive. Even Nekocon has realized how dead it is now. (That didn't stop us from taking elevator pictures in our HP costumes Friday night but still.)
Then halftime was anime Jeopardy! with mario!Bernie and for the most part people were dumb and didn't know the answers~ and at one point we sent Joe up and he got his question WRONG!! SHAME ON U PROFESSAH oh well ahaha. Also, there was this girl dressed as Sailor Moon who got a Sailor Moon question wrong and that was embarrassing and hilarious. Sorry girl but omg. Thennnn judging results and we WON THINGS!!! JOURNEYMAN PERFORMANCE AND JOURNEYMAN CRAFTSMANSHIP!!! WHICH MEANS WE'RE ACCIDENTALLY MASTER LEVEL NOW WHOOOOPPPSS!!!! um yeah so that was kind of ri-fucking-diculous. We won a crapton of cool stuff like sewing equipment and cute plushies and some Strike Witches cat ears that Avery gave to Peter. Also some yaoi DVDs that I guess I got by default...somehow......
When the whole thing was over (our friends got Master Performance; Disneybros got Best In Show :D) they started playing Party Rock Anthem over the sound system and we danced really hard to that and got fanboyed by Adam and then fucking leeefffft. We were like, Let's just take a couple of pictures and then leave so that Jessi can get out of her Mojo suit because it's making her sad and uncomfortable, but that turned into a whole lot of pictures because we were just so damn cute and high off our cuteness and like, we had pompoms, you guys. But yeah eventually we just got the fuck out of there. Went back to the room and tweaked some Homestuck wig styling before doing our joke PowerpuffStuck pictures, then de-Powerpuffed entirely and became Alpha Kids and went to fucking McDonald's because we were hella hungry. Staying in the Days Inn right across the street pretty much turns Nekocon into McDonald'sCon a lot of the time, and Kristen was craving Snack Wraps like ALL WEEKEND and omg this was worth it. We took Alpha Kids pics with the Ronald McDonald that's in there including one of Avery with her face in its lap???? HOMESTUCK.
And then back over to the convention center for the 18+ J. Tatez panel which was wooorrrrtthhh it. ahahaha omg Tatum is the new Greg. Avery'd forgotten her gun belts (she took them off to wear into McDonald's like a very smart person) and Kristen had forgotten her phone but Jessi managed to bring those back over to us before she died entirely and then we were just kinda killing time until Avery's panel which was for some reason scheduled for ONE FUCKING AM. Booooo.
We went over to the Embassy lobby in an attempt to find Lauren and Christina but drunk Christina is not the best at texting and stuff so we were mostly just hanging out over there for a little bit. Avery was pretty dead and Kristen wasn't much better, and I felt guilty for being more like "omg yay! let's take pictures and have fun!" while they were feeling crappy but D: idk. We did roll around and take a couple stupid ones of cupcakes and butts and stuff, and also while we were there Jessi Pugh uploaded her video of our skit and we watched it on Kristen's phone and that was pretty coooool~ then when we figured Lauren and Christina weren't rly going to come we just went back to the con. On our way through we ran into literally the two people/groups of people we wanted to see THE LEAST, which super-DUPER set Avery off and she just had to like, go die in a corner D: D: D: D: Avery was having a really REALLY hard time all weekend and like the rest of us were powerless to help her which is just so hard for me, too. This was shitty and our parade was getting totally fucking rained on and uuggghhh :(((( But she connected with Peter and he and Kristen stayed with her while I finally found Lauren and Christina long enough to give them their promised cupcakes, and I bro'd at them and Cinderella-bro and the Dave craftsmanship judge guy for a little bit and then went back to Averytown.
She was feeling really low but we got comforted by another Jake English and the Kanaya who was with her, who were also of the "We like Homestuck but we want to stay as far away from the other fans as possible" mindset, so that was kind of fun and nice. I managed to unload the rest of my cupcakes off on some Homestucks in this mass of people who were playing Gamzee Says - apparently the prize was...cupcakes, and I was like lol no fuck that wouldn't you like mine for free? I didn't actually get to eat one myself but apparently they were a big hit.
We died after that and then did Avery's panel and a bunch of people she didn't want to see at all came to it so that was stressful for her and for me too and we were like DDD: and then the panel was over (it actually went pretty well other than that, though the 1am!low attendance was kind of a bummer) and we walked back to our hotel and died some more.
I woke up like three times in the night because there was just not enough room for me on the fucking bed blehhh and finally just gave up and got up for Sunday for real, took a shower, and fucked around on the internet/tried to collect my stuff up a little while I waited for everyone to wake up. When Kristen was awake I snuggled into her nest on the floor with her and we chatted some and she showed me some internet stuff with our pictures and whatever and yeah conventions. Joe and Jacob woke up and went to go get breakfast or go back to the con or something?? and then Jessi and Avery woke up and Avery was having a really hard day/life and this dumb Over Her Dead Body movie was playing on TV and we all just kind of snuggled Avery until she could manage to stop being dead. This was really hard, you guys. I'm really fucking mad at anyone who made Avery feel this way the whole convention. Hence me literally tweeting "If any of you come near her today I'll fucking kill you." I'm not playing this goddamn game any more. Get. Out.
Sooooo we finally managed to pull all our shit together, load up the cars, check out, and duck back into the con for just a little bit to spend our masq prize money. (This included standing out in the cold waiting for Peter and Evan to come find us so Avery could put her shit in their car, and I think this is when Avery finally sort of came back to life and we were having a good bit of fun fucking around in the freezingness and talking about random shit and being bros. God I miss my bros. DDD: ) Then we went back into the con and Wizzywig was sold out of like E V E R Y T H I N G. DISAPPOINTMENT. I just let them have all the giftcard money because there was legit nothing I really wanted. I did end up skulking around the dealers' room looking for something for Shaquanda (no fucking dice; a disappointment also!) and eventually secretly buying a Gomamon plush for Avery to try to cheer her up, since none of us could really figure out anything else to do. D:
No but like in the dealers' room I ran into EVERYONE!! I saw BroDad Nick again (we'd seen him for a small second Saturday night also), I saw Alex Woodley, and my cousin Daniel and his friends, and Heather, who'd been Sailor Moon in our bros' skit and whom I really need to bro it up harder with in the future. In this moment alone with the two of us I was able to explain some of Avery's situation to her, with instructions that she pass it on to the rest of them, and I think we're finally getting to a point where they're starting to understand how serious some of the shit is. Ugh it's such a stressful and awful situation. Then we had our standard Sunday-afternoon powwow outside on the floor and that was so niiiiice because FRIENDS. Just eatin' weird food and broing about life and gaahhh and then we all had TO LEAVE WHICH WAS SO DEPRESSING NO COME BACK I WANT NEKOCON FOREVER AND I JUST CAN'T........ so yes a lot of tearful goodbyes and then driving home. Gross.
Jessi and I went to Wawa for lunch+gas, had a lot of bro-venting in the car, tried not to fall asleep, and then finally I was back in Lynchburg and I totally didn't want to be there. And that's where I am now, eating my leftover granola bars from this weekend and hoping the intense soreness in my thighs from kneeling/unkneeling in skit practice over and over again finally goes away.
D:
All in all not the world's best Nekocon, considering our accomplishments and fun got kind of overshadowed by dickbags and bullshit. It was a super mixed bag and I hope next year (or next con, or whatever - who knows when/if we'll do Nekocon again, with the way it's going now) turns out a lot better. Right now I'm trying to focus on the positive, which is mostly HOW FUCKING ADORABLE WE WERE.
To conclude: get yourself some Tall-Ass Cookies, watch Kill Bill, and try not to talk to cranberries because I'll be super worried if they talk back.
Reminder to check my tag #blue pink and green con on Tumblr for all the photos and other shit. :3