kodalai | (no subject)

Well, I got home from Otakon about two hours ago, and spent most of that babbling about it to my mother while waving my arms about, and I think post-con letdown is setting in. I mean, I've been looking forward to this con all summer, and a lot of my activities have been either attempting to earn money for the con, or attempting to put together a costume for the con. Now what do I do? (Answer: Watch FMA again.)

Sooo, I doubt I'll ever manage to come up with a really decent con report, so I'll just say what I saw.

When you last saw me, I was staying up much too late to write fic on the night before the con. I'd been up about until 1 finishing my costume, and about till 2 packing, and then till 3 writing. Even so, my Roy costume wasn't *quite* finished by the end of the night -- I was missing the shoulder decorations and also the rank bars on the front. But it was late enough that I decided "The heck with it" and just got a couple colors of origami paper to bring along with me.

Lockheed (

oysterverse) and I went up on Friday morning. We actually got up pretty early by my standards and ran around finishing stuff, packing the cooler, getting accurate directions to the convention center, etc. We brought a RL friend of mine, who didn't come around the con with me, but he was good company for the drive. We also played anime music really, really loudly, so overall it was fun.

We got there around noon, and found a parking garage a few blocks away from the con center. I changed into my Haruka costume, but kept on sneakers. (Please note: That's the outfit, but that picture is from two months ago, so that isn't actually what I looked like.) I completely forgot everything I knew about the layout of the BCC, so we actually ended up walking completely around the entire complex before we found a place where we could get in to the pre-reg line. (I'd actually told my Japanese student, who also attended the con, that the at-con reg lines were often shorter than the pre-reg lines. Well, this time the pre-reg line was all the way inside, and at-con was stretched all the way around the building. Oops.) Air conditioning, by the way, is a wonderful, wonderful invention.

So, we got in, stood in line to register, and I changed my sneakers for the heels. Let me digress a moment to ask why in hell anyone would voluntarily wear heels *all the time* *every day?* I only wore them for a few hours and they left my feet aching all weekend. I think that if there's ever more a symbol of the male exploitation of women in the workforce, it's the heels. I hereby vow that I'm never going to work at a workplace that requires me to wear heels unless they are willing to provide insurance for my foot and back problems.

Once we got in, we didn't really have anything in mind -- there wasn't much on Friday afternoon we wanted to see (since we got there too late for the early AMV showing) and we had to stay open and available for Zan and Eliza to contact me about hotel arrangements. So we went to some of the old AMV showings -- not the contests, the random stuff, and wasted a long time there. Then we hit the dealer's room, but we hadn't been there for more than a few minutes before Zania called to say they were there, so we went up to meet her, Zeal, and Sol (

solitude1056.) Sol was very nice, very cool, though I kind of got the feeling that I didn't make too good an impression on her. When I talked about having to cut my hair, and Zan was making I-couldn't-possibly noises, Sol stepped forward and started explaining exactly how the hair should be cut to achieve the proper Roy/Heero messy boyish effect. I was all @_@;; even I didn't think about it that closely! Plus, she explained what was up with those split skirt things on the FMA uniforms, which I'd been wondering about for a while, but that wasn't until later.

We also saw a couple of the t-shirts around that said (in Japanese) "Searching for a Japanese high school student girlfriend." I considered buying a babydoll cut version that said "searching for a Japanese high school student boyfriend," but didn't bother. By this point, what with the driving through lunch and the walking around, we were pretty hungry, but the high food prices and long lines turned us off. The frustrating part was, we had a whole cooler full of food, but it was stuck in the back of our trunk because we couldn't get into the hotel room and so couldn't unload it!

We went back to the dealer's room again -- and again, we'd barely gotten there before my cell phone rang again. This time it was Eliza, saying she was at the hotel and we should come up. Back out into the heat, over to the hotel to get checked in. We were all overheated (did I talk about the unbelievableness that was Zan and Zeal's costumes? I mean, wow. Let's just start with they involved wigs, corset, and full body paint, and leave the rest to imagination, and pictures, when I can get them. It also left them very, very overheated) so we just hung out in the hotel room for a while. By this time the dealer's room was near closing, so we went out to dinner (the Afghan Kebob) and did more of the walking and shooting.

Costume spotting and picture taking were definitely the high points of this con. Let's see, what did I get on Friday? The first and most impressive was a Naruto one of Sasuke's older brother (don't know his name) shown here, with a closeup to display the really creepy sharingan eyes. (She told me she couldn't see a damn thing with those things in, but it looked impressive. ^^;) My next favorites were an Alexiel from Angel Sanctuary; a Naraku from Inu-Yasha; a Yomiko and a Nancy from ROD; a Seung Mina and Kilik from Soul Calibur II; and a costume of The Cheat. There was also a whole family cosplaying as Inu-Yasha, with the mother Kikyou holding an itty bitty Inu-Yasha, which reminded me of the end of Slayers Try in an incesty sort of way. Yes. Then there was a Talim from SCII (followed the next day by another Talim) a Rakka from Haibane Renmei, a Nanami from Utena, an Akito from Nadesico, a Hotohori and a Miaka and Yui pair from Fushigi Yuugi, an Ed from Cowboy Bebop, a Jack Sparrow and Zombie Monkey from POC, an alien from Excel Saga, and a Drunk Vash.

Okay. Now that I'm done with pictures (at least for now) what else happened? Zan and Zeal heard that there was karaoke at the Otakafe and wanted to check it out. The manga library was in the same place, as it turned out -- that was a bit of a problem, actually, that none of the con information listed where some things like the library, or the photo suite, were -- so we checked that out. Lockheed was very impressed with the idea, and wanted to spend a lot of time there, but we had to go to the AMV contest.

While we were at the library, though, I got to talking with some Eva cosplayers -- a Ritsuko and a Rei -- about what costumes were popular and what were not. I said that I was cosplaying, I was being Haruka Shitou from RahXephon, and she said, "Oh, really? I couldn't actually tell if you were cosplaying -- those clothes are almost civilian clothes. The only way I could tell you were cosplaying was because of the wig."

T__T but that was my normal hair! I wasn't wearing a wig!

It kind of reminded me of the old MAD cartoon, in the Lighter Side, where this woman is going to a party and telling her husband, "God might not have given me a good face or figure, but He blessed me with this beautiful naturally blond hair, so I'm going to show off the gifts He gave me." So she goes out into the party, and behind her back, some of the other ladies are saying, "Who is she trying to kid? That's so obviously a wig!"

Anyway, enough on that. It's now time for the AMV contest. There were some scheduling conflicts -- the "Yaoi Western" panel was scheduled for half an hour after the contest started, and Zan said she wanted to go there since a lot of the other Gundam Wing fans would be there. I wanted to meet them, so I suggested that we go to the contest, stay for the first 45 minutes, then duck out to catch the last 15 of the yaoi panel, and see the rest of the AMVs the next day. As it turned out, the panel started 15 minutes late, so we got there just as it was starting. However, despite Heartfelt being one of the panelists, we didn't stay for long. We couldn't find *anyone* there -- despite Zan and Zeal swearing they were right where we were looking -- and the panel was, frankly, boring. Maybe three years ago it would have been news to me, but there was nothing new, and it wasn't practiced in a particularly entertaining fashion.

After that, we wandered about for a bit at a loss. We decided to check out Fan Parodies, but while they were entertaining and funny, they weren't enough so to really hold our attention. Also, it was getting late -- around 11 -- and we'd been up for a long time and hadn't slept much the night before, so Lockheed was phasing out. I said we should go out and look for scissors. I needed them to cut my hair, and to finish my costume. And so the Great Scissors Hunt of Baltimore began.

Did you know that in downtown Baltimore, everything closes after 10? @__@ On a Friday night, no less! What are these people thinking? What's the point of big grocery chains or pharmacies if they don't stay open all night, or at least until midnight? It was bizarre! We walked in a circle around the entire Inner Harbor, and couldn't find a single place that was open. I was getting a little antsy and upset, because I absolutely could *not* be Roy on Saturday without scissors. Not only was my hair about four inches too long, but my costume still needed finishing decorations! At last, in an attempt to placate me, Lockheed suggested we ask at the front desk of our hotel (the Marriot Inner Harbor hotel, fyi, an excellent hotel if expensive) if they knew where we could get a pair of scissors. And behold! They have them to lend out! It was excellent.

We went up to the hotel room, and since Lockheed absolutely refused to cut my hair, I worked on cutting and pasting origami paper onto my outfit while we waited for the other people to get back. First Eliza wandered in, still in her Rinoa costume, and said that *she* couldn't cut my hair either, but she was happy to show us her swag and experiences. We compared notes for a while, until Zan and Zeal showed up, and both said that *they* didn't know how to cut hair either. @_@;; Now, I *do* know how to cut hair, but I obviously can't do my own! So I eventually managed to convince Zan to take on the challenge, and despite her nervousness, she did an excellent job. She also helped me finish my Roy costume, and in between this and a lot of chatting and fangirlish squeeing, we all dropped into bed at around 2 AM.