Anime Detour 2008
Sakura-Con 2008
Anime Boston 2008
Sogen Con 2007
AnimeIowa 2007
Anime North 2007
Anime Boston 2007
Anime Detour 2007
Otakon 2006
Anime North 2006
Anime Detour 2006
Otakon 2005
Offsite Links
Rickrolls, Portal, and the Game
Thursday, March 20
AB2008 was... full of problems ^^;; but fortunately none of them affected me. :D
We got to the hotel right around check-in time, and were given the extra rollaway bed I'd requested as well as a nice corner room. It was even behind a separate door in the hallway. o.o;; I wonder if the hotel bumped me up a bit since I'd had such trouble modifying my reservation.
I took this picture when we were packing up on Sunday, but still.
Two windows! And a great view! :D
The afternoon was largely taken up by cosplay preparation. I unpacked everything and got it all organized, and got my wig and dress hung up and straightened out. Tragically, somewhere in there Aarana's Sailormoon wig turned into a giant mess. ^^; One of the pigtails was a bit tangled, and when she tried to straighten it out, it got worse and worse until the whole thing was one big knot. x_x I was glad I'd brought all my supplies. We did take a break in there for an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and to find a Walgreens, hoping to locate some detangler. No such luck, but they did have some Motions Oil Sheen spray which came in handy.
Around 6 PM, Tesh arrived. :D She unpacked all her cosplay stuff, too, which included a wig that was also dreadfully tangled. x_x I was able to get that one mostly straightened out without too much trouble, though.
Around nine we headed over to the convention center to pick up our badges (thank GOD), since we'd all preregistered (thank GOD). (If you've read anything about AB2008, you'll know what I'm alluding to, but I'll explain later.) We were in the Sheraton, which wasn't the official con hotel this year due to a scheduling conflict, but it did have a small room block. "Not THAT far" or not, I didn't want to have to walk through the entire mall in cosplay on Saturday, so I snagged the Sheraton despite the required up-front deposit. It's just so beautifully convenient. :D
The convention center entrance is on the right, and the hotel entrance in the background on the left. They're connected via a downtown mall. So close and easy, you forget you're not at a hotel convention.
The prereg pickup line was pretty bad compared to last year's, which in retrospect was an Omen of Doom, but it moved rather quickly, so we were happy. Got our stuff and tried to check in with Programming Ops as panelists, but there was an all-staff meeting going on at the time. The first staffer we asked about it didn't know, and the second staffer was already crabby and rude even though it was only Thursday. That was a bit off-putting... but whatever.
We noticed while flipping through the programming guide that the Fanfiction Workshop, being run by unknown parties in addition to my Fanfiction Panel, wasn't on any of the schedules. Odd, but we thought maybe it had been canceled or something.
Late that night, Nigoki, NOS, and their friend Tom came up to our room for pizza. All three of them were working in Security, and all three of them already seemed stressed. :\ It was a fun evening, though, and good to see them again. T.M. Chiba and his GF also came to visit. It was a happy fun room. :D Aarana entertained them with a CD of old con pictures that she'd found. I believe I was already working on detangling the afflicted Sailormoon wig at that point, something I'd spend a lot of the weekend doing. ^^;
Friday, March 21
The Sailormoon panel was the first thing on the schedule for the whole con, at 12:30 on Friday afternoon. We didn't have to get up too early, but it was still unfortunate being scheduled first thing when half the con wouldn't even be registered yet. That turned out to be a valid concern, when we got to the convention center and found the registration line seemed to be badly backed up. Thank goodness for Thursday pickup. Oh, and a crazy thing happened! When we got in the elevator to leave the hotel, it started going down and then went back up for some unknown reason. Another girl got on, and about halfway down to the lobby Tesh realized it was Kitty Silver from .moon! Weirdest random encounter ever. She said she was going to meet up with Meech and they'd be at the Sailormoon panel.
I brought the Anti-Ego Sword and my Pluto staff to Security to be tagged and then headed to the Sailormoon panel room. So I "just happened" to have my staff with me at the panel... hee. >3 A bunch of people took pictures of it. xD
The panel went really well. T.M. Chiba was the organizer, but he didn't get there until right before start time, so I pulled together an outline for the panel to follow. We showed some of the Dubtitle Project, and the nightmare that is the Saban trailer, and did some Q&A over a soundless video compilation Aarana had put together. At the end, we had a little raffle. Aarana had some posters, and I had a couple of extra plushies and a few bootleg items left over from some store's closeout sale a while back. We had given out tickets at the door, and drew numbers for the items. Giving away stuff is really fun! :D
Annoyingly, there was a sound check going on in the room next door during part of our panel. It was so loud that we couldn't hear the questions being asked by the audience, even with a microphone. Afterwards, we went to Prog Ops to complain, and they said they might be able to give us another panel slot on Sunday.
Let's see... what else happened on Friday? ^^;; I honestly can't remember now what went on Friday afternoon. We probably had lunch, and went to the dealer's room. We didn't see Kitty Silver and Meech at the SM panel after all, which we found odd...
There was a certain wallscroll in the dealer's room, which I found both really disturbing and really illustrative of everything I've heard about a particular series. I happened to catch part of it in the background of one of my pictures.
I will never understand what people see in such a manipulative and abusive character.
Aha! Next we went to the AMV 101/201 panels that were being held by the big Boston AMV names. We missed most of the 101 panel, which was the one I was more interested in, and now I can't remember why we were late. I got bored rather quickly during the 201 panel, because it was about how to create specific special effects, so I left early to head down to the fanfiction panel room. I'm really realizing more and more that my tastes in AMVs don't mesh with the congoing AMV crowd. I didn't really get what was so amazing about some of the examples they showed during the panels. Also, when they invited the audience to critique a video by one of the panelists, he got a bit defensive and started to explain why he'd done this and that. IMHO, when it comes to vids, the audience doesn't care why or how you did something. The resulting effect is all that matters. If you spent 5000 hours perfecting a five-second bit, but the effect you were aiming for is lost on the audience, then that bit was a failure and a mistake. End of story. You don't get to explain. (Hence why I have a bit of a problem with J.K. Rowling's post-DH interviews...)
So I went downstairs to wait for the panel before the fanfiction panel to finish. A bunch of people were milling around, Sean Gaffney among them, of all people. I'd seen him working the Yuricon booth in the dealer's room earlier. I thought "This should be interesting..." and it was, but in a completely different way than I anticipated.
My panelists were all there, and when the previous panel finished we went in... to find Gaffney and another woman up on the panelist platform. When I got to the front, the woman introduced herself as the panel organizer. Uhm. There was a moment of confusion before we figured out that she and Gaffney were supposed to do the fanfiction workshop, the one that had mysteriously vanished from the schedule. They saw my panel was the only fanfiction event and assumed it must be theirs. Innocent mistake. Once we cleared things up, they left to try to find out what had happened to their workshop. Afterwards T.M. Chiba told me the woman was Erica Friedman, founder of Yuricon and owner of worldshaking.net. She was up for a UFO award last year. I read on her blog that they were offered a rescheduled time, but nobody communicated the final details to them or anyone else, so they ended up not doing their workshop. Unfortunate. :\
My panel, however, went extremely well. In an awesome contrast to last year, it was completely full. I had made a number of handouts with the panelists' websites on them, and as far as I noticed none of them ended up abandoned or on the floor. We had lots of great questions and lots of good discussion. I had been a bit uneasy about having two panelists from the same slash archive, but they both had good input and comments, so it was no problem. Happy happy joy. ^___^
Here are some rather painful pictures from the panel, I made Tesh take them so it's only fair I show them. x_x
I'm gonna EAT YOUR FANFIC! Like a sandwich. Om nom nom.
After the panel, we finally ran into Kitty Silver and Meech. That's when we really started to become aware of what was happening at the con. Meech had arrived Friday, so he had to wait in line for registration. The line was an eight to ten hour wait. A ten hour wait! Fortunately, he ran into a friend who helped him out, otherwise he would've been one of the many many people who missed the entirety of Friday. Registration at AB this year was an absolute disaster. As it turned out, they'd decided to switch to using self-service terminals where attendees would enter their own information. They had only about half a dozen of these computers for pre-reg and at-door combined, for over 10,000 attendees. Things backed up quickly and never got back on track. Hundreds of people spent all day Friday waiting in line.
The line was still all over the building at 8 PM. We ran into a badly fraying NOS at one point, hurriedly scarfing down food while rushing back to his post. He'd been working the registration line most of the afternoon. Apparently a lot of security staffers didn't show. I am so, so grateful for Thursday night pre-reg pickup.
Moving on, I finally met Meech and was able to get the photo I'd been craving since last year.
Meech > Plush Lobsters xD
He was even all dressed up nice for the ball. ^^
At 9:00 we met up with NOS, who finally got a break, to watch the AMV contest. There was pictochat. Hoorays! :3 Of course, a lot of it was drawings of certain parts of the human anatomy, because people are so mature. -_- But once things started up, it was nice to have a chat to share commentary in.
The entries on the whole were somewhat underwhelming, but there were a handful of excellent ones. I've now downloaded the Death Note one that won Best Drama, a Cowboy Bebop one that didn't win but was very good, the Ouran Best Romance winner, and the Kingdom Hearts one that won Best in Show. There was also an Advent Children Ghostbusters spoof that I had already downloaded before the con.
There was an obnoxious but somewhat amusing comedy entry that rickrolled the entire con. It started off with an annoying and repetitive song that went on and on and on until people were screaming for it to end, and then busted into "Never gonna give you up..." People roared with laughter, but there's been some complaining on the AB forum that that one didn't win Best Comedy and frankly I don't think it was deserved. It was amusing, but it's a dated joke that isn't going to last, and the video itself didn't take much effort or creativity to produce. Of course, the actual Best Comedy winner wasn't that much better IMHO. It was like AMV Hell, but using theme songs from old TV shows. Pure nostalgia appeal. Also amusing, but really not that impressive.
There was also a rather confusing entry in the drama category. It was Ayanami Rei singing the Portal song, accompanied by various clips from Evangelion. We found out later it was a comedy and was put in the wrong category after the judges misinterpreted it. This thing was huge at the con, btw, as indicated by my subtitle at the top of this entry. "The cake is a lie" was everywhere. People were walking around with stereos blasting "Never Gonna Give You Up." Every few minutes someone was yelling that they'd lost "The Game." It was Linecon and Memecon.
After the AMVs we headed back to the hotel room for more cosplay work. Tesh's costume wasn't quite finished, and Aarana helped her with that while I continued working on detangling the Usagi wig. We were up until the wee hours of the morning slaving away on various cosplay stuff, but by the time we went to bed, Tesh's costume was finished... and Aarana's wig was still a mess. :\
Pictures from Friday!
Saturday, March 22
Saturday we slept in really late, since we'd been up into the wee hours of the morning the previous night. When we finally got up around noon, I decided I wasn't going anywhere until T.M. Chiba's Cosplay Court Case event at 3 PM, since I was tired and it takes me an hour to get my cosplay on. Aarana got us croissants for "breakfast," and I lazed around for a while since I was still really tired. ;_; I did get some more work done on Aarana's wig, but there was still a long way to go, so unfortunately Aarana missed out on the cosplay fun. I felt bad. :( Tesh's Sailor Pluto cosplay was ready, though.
When I finally stopped lazing around and got ready, I was running a little late. I told Aarana and Tesh to go ahead without me while I finished my makeup and got my costume on. Then I was even later getting to the panel, because I forgot it takes twice as long to get anywhere when you're in cosplay. I got stopped for pictures three or four times. ^^;;
I had gotten an ominous text message from Aarana, and when I finally got to the panel my worries were confirmed. We had warned and warned T.M. Chiba that the Cosplay Court Case event needed more organization, and needed to be limited on how many people could participate. But he still let everyone up front who wanted to. -_- There was a giant mob on stage, it appeared to be chaos, and a lot of people were walking out when I got there. The open format had worked okay in 2007, but this year the event was in a bigger room that was completely full, so there were a ton more volunteers. Aarana had tried to help but eventually had to give up. :\
Things did seem to settle down in the last half of the panel, though. The strong characters emerged with some tactics that were actually pretty smart and funny, and it ended on a high note. Even so, the Cosplay Court Case is way too popular for such loose organization, and I hope T.M. Chiba nails down a more solid process before next year. I didn't get any pictures this time, since I was in cosplay and way at the back and had no idea what was going on by the time I got there.
After that I think we got something to eat and checked out the Artist's Alley. I didn't have much money on me at the time, so I mostly just glanced at everything. By this point, I had flat-out taken the train off my dress. It came off practically every time someone bumped into me, and I knew it would never hold up in the Alley. The snaps were just not good enough.
Aarana was an angel through the whole afternoon. She carried my bag and reattached my train every time it came off. I'm sure it got annoying, but she kept doing it like it was no big deal, and I was so grateful to her for that. ^___^ I found out my DS bag works well to carry stuff in when I'm in cosplay, so I might not have to put pockets in my dress after all, but it also had a tendency to disconnect my train. -_-
Aarana also took some awesome pictures of me and Tesh in our costumes. ^^
I'm still not sure about the makeup. I got some eyeliner, and now I have raccoon eyes. ^^;; What do you think?
The staff looks a little bent in this picture ;_; Often when Tesh and I were together, we both held the staff between us. :)
Of course, there were times I let Tesh hold it by herself too. :D
You know... I really, really love my Princess Pluto costume. I really do. Now that it's just about finished, I think it looks great, and it looks great on me. ^___^ I love the new wig (although I need to fix the bangs), it's a much better color and the bun's in a much better position (although I think the cap stiffened up with all the dye rinsing, it seems smaller than my old one and slides a bit ;_;). The staff is FINALLY 100% done, and I have the jewelry and everything I need, and I love it. ^_____^
Still too much of a pain in the ass to wear on more than one day, though. @_@
I've also resolved to start carrying around a picture of Pluto in her princess dress. So many people have no idea what the Senshi's princess forms look like. They could only identify me by the staff. It's kind of disturbing.
Wearing wigs makes my brain stupid. The new one is really tight and uncomfortable, and it tends to make me zone out a bit or get a nasty headache. So we went back to the hotel room so I could take it off for a while before the Masquerade. On the way out of the convention center, we ran into the Neptune and Uranus cosplayers that had been wearing the awesome musical costumes last year. They were wearing the normal fuku this year, and grabbed Tesh so they could take pictures together. A bunch of people crowded around and took pictures of them. :D
The staff was pretty wobbly by this point in the day... the center joint is a bit loose, and I padded it with some tape, but it was wearing out after a few hours. :\
We went back to the room where I took my wig off and worked on Aarana's some more.
I still had quite a ways to go by the time the Masq rolled around. :\ But I convinced Aarana to wear her costume anyway even without the wig. She still looked so cute. ^^
We got a couple of requests for pictures of the three of us together. ^^ On the way to the Masq, we picked up something to eat at Dunkin Donuts, and some normal people who were eating there took a picture of me with their cell phones. xD
So then there was the Masq. T.M. Chiba wasn't feeling well and went back to his hotel, but we had his GF with us. And priority seating, again, since we were all panelists. Right up front and no waiting in line. :D I saw the awesome Sailor Cosmos I'd been wanting a photo of, but I still didn't have a chance to get a picture of her. :(
During the pre-show they had a singalong to the now-famous Portal song, with the lyrics up on a screen and accompanying emoticons of adorableness. xD People were waving their arms and singing along.
I still didn't have an easy time getting pictures of the Masq, even though I was up front. I remembered to use my camera's Action setting, but the camera doesn't absorb as much light on that setting, and I had to turn the flash off. :\ Still, I tried.
The same emcee was back this year. Ugh. At least we only had to hear about her shoes once. The presentation as a whole was much tighter this year, with a lot less stalling for time. They also had a railing around the stage this year to prevent anyone falling off like last year. xD
In this skit, Navi summoned all the various Links on stage to figure out which one was "the weakest Link." xD After this, they all battled each other to the death.
Awesome props.
All I remember about the following pics is that they were from obscure anime I know some of my friends like. But I can't remember the titles now.
These were from a funny Deedlit vs. Ghim skit that I sadly can't remember the text of anymore. :\ That's what happens when I don't do my con reports right away...
The Masquerade was really heavy on dance skits this year. Apparently a lot of people liked them, but I sighed every time yet another dance skit came on. They just don't seem to have the creativity of scripted skits.
At the end was a guitar battle between the robot and the girl of FLCL. The robot won. :D
The icing on the cake, however, was the new skit by the Tetris Ninjas of last year, who put together a Duck Hunt skit involving the deaths of several annoying anime characters. The awesomeness of this skit cannot be described. Go to YouTube and search for "anime boston duck hunt." Do it, do it now! Go, go, go! :D
After that, the AMV contest winners were announced and shown. I already mentioned some of them yesterday. Some good choices, some poor IMO, for example the action one that probably only won because it was set to Dethklok. I was present for three different showings of that thing and I was never able to watch it in its entirety. It was just a seizure-inducing mess of randomness. I couldn't sit through it. x_x
We had to leave before the awards this year, Tesh had to go home Saturday night and her mom was picking her up. A ton of people left right after the AMVs, and I read later that there was hardly anyone in the audience for the hall cosplay fashion show. I wish I could've stayed. :(
When we got back to the hotel I tied up Tesh's wig so it wouldn't turn into a big mess again. :P She packed up and headed home. Aarana and I ordered pizza again, and sent text messages to Nigoki and NOS asking if they wanted to come have some. Nigoki was busy, but NOS came right over, he must've been hungry. xD I spent another few hours working on the troubled Sailormoon wig while we had pizza and talked. And that was Saturday.
Sunday, March 23
Oh, I forgot to mention, Friday night T.M. Chiba got a phone call saying we had a second time slot for our Sailormoon panel Sunday morning at 10. It wasn't printed in the updated schedule on Saturday, so it was only advertised on the TV screens and the Sunday schedule that was printed half an hour before the panel, but we went anyway to see if anyone would show up. A handful of people did, including some that had been at the Friday panel, and we ran the basics of our panel again. We didn't have any prizes left, and only the same clips to show, but it was still fun. ^^
After that it was time to get out of the hotel. On the way to the SM panel that morning, I had had to stop by the front desk about my bill. Aarana had picked it up that morning and noticed a problem. There was a charge of over $2000 on there from the hotel's business center. o_o The only thing we'd had to do with the business center all weekend was Aarana had had a small package delivered there on Friday. $2000! So I went downstairs, and yes it was a mistake, it was only supposed to be about $7, haha. So that was random and exciting. xD
Anyway, we checked out around noon and then had to figure out what to do with our stuff. The hotel was storing some bags, but there were way too many people, and they had to stop accepting them. So Aarana called Nigoki and found out there was a mass bag check in the official con hotel at the other end of the mall. So we dragged all our stuff through the mall all the way to the other end... only to be met by a staffer in the skywalk warning us that the bag check there was full too. -_- There was, however, a parking ramp entrance right next to us. So I stayed there with all the luggage while Aarana went back to the Sheraton, got her car out of the valet parking, and drove over to the parking garage. We quickly tossed all the stuff into the car and then parked in the garage for the afternoon. It was expensive, but not as expensive as another day of valet.
With that sorted out, we hit the dealer's room and the artist's alley again. I bought stuff. Lotsa stuff. :D Not as much as previous cons, but I'm trying to restrain myself a bit, since I'm doing three cons in a row here.
I got the final boxset of Fullmetal Alchemist, so now I finally have the entire series. :D Also, some FMA pins, a couple of Sailormoon keychains that upon closer examination might be bootlegs :\, a Kirby keychain that I'm using as a cell phone charm, a My-HiME symbol keychain, and a couple of gifts for my sister (the L pin and pig bento box - which I got for only $7 because the guys manning the booth weren't sure what to charge for it, mwahaha). I also picked up a couple of prints that aren't pictured and a few more original comics from the Artist's Alley, as I am wont to do. I'm thinking about writing reviews for the original comics I've been buying.
After we finished shopping, we went to Closing Ceremonies. It wasn't anything special; even the pre-show bumpers were largely recycled. Except for an animated Kirby emoticon dance, which made me think of Jason. ^^ And then it got rickrolled. xD
At the end of Closing Ceremonies they ran the AMV winners again, and we left during the showing of the Action winner, which I still couldn't sit through. Plus, it was time for me to go to the airport. Aarana gave me a ride there, and the flight back was completely uneventful. There was a brief moment of panic when the golf bag containing my staff didn't show up on the baggage carousel, but I found out there was a separate arrival area for oversize items. ^^;;
And that was the end of that. Overall, I had a good time, but a lot of it was due to being lucky enough not to get caught in the problems. ^^;; I was thinking seriously about going again next year, but then I found out AB2009 is scheduled for Memorial Day weekend. That's the weekend Anime North always, always chooses. So now I don't know what I'm going to do. :(
In the meantime, here are the rest of my cosplay pictures. :D
