The Pre-Shoujocon itinerary.

THURSDAY NIGHT

5:00 pm
Left work. Went to post office to send some NTP requests and an ebay auction. Finally got on the train around 5:45 with my mom.

7:00 pm
Got home. Ate in about 10 minutes (fast food from McDonald's) - not my usual preference, but Liz and I had things to do. We went down to my room (in the basement) and started on bleaching the end of Liz's hair. Which, at the time had been just past her butt, but is now 2.5 inches shorter. So we bleached about half of her ponytail (which is all that the one box of bleach would cover), which took about an hour and a half, then we put on the dye, which didn't take long to put on, but we let it set in for about 40 minutes, and that brought us to 10:30 pm.

10:45 pm
Liz got out of the shower with her newly dyed, green hair. We'd bought the Special Effects' color Fish Bowl, which was a really nice shade of bright blue in the bottle, but came out a really nice shade of green on her hair. Liz had wanted to dye her hair blue 'cause she's cosplaying Mana at Otakon on Saturday and Sunday, but then she had planned on dying it green afterwards. ::shrugs:: So, we skipped a step. Liz decided to keep it this way instead of trying to fix it in time. Wise choise. It would've been a nightmare otherwise. Tonikaku, I had also wanted to touch up my red streaks. The two streaks in the front of my hair had rinsed out to orange already, but that was a combination of (1) bleaching that particular spot too lightly, (2) not putting enough dye on, and (3) washing with conditioner after the bleach and before the dye. I don't know what happened - I just completely forgot that you're not supposed to wash with conditioner before dying. ::smacks self upside head:: But it didn't really affect much else. The underpart of my hair that's dyed red looked fine, although I did add a bit of dye there too, just in case. >_<

11:45 pm
I'm not quite sure when I finished with my dying/shower, but I'm pretty sure it was by this time. Then, I had to finish packing my stuff and Liz's things. We weren't bringing that many things for just two days/one night, so it didn't actually take that long. You know, I completely forgot to mention that I just happen to have a tape in my VCR, recording for a friend I was supposed to bring it for at Shoujocon? Oh, and the fact that I was also doing some laundry for stuff for the next day? Yes, I'm definitely a last-minute sort of person. But I work well under pressure. Really.

(insanely early) FRIDAY MORNING

12:45 am
I ended up talking to Angelica (and Liz) on the phone for a while, and pretty much fell asleep soon after we hung up at about 12:45. We were planning to take the first Suburban Transit bus from Port Authority to the East Brunswick Hilton, which is where Shojocon was being held. The first bus leaves the station at 6 am, so we planned to get there at 5:30 am. Which means we would have to get to the subway station in our area at around 4:30, to be sure that we'd get to Port Authority at 5:30. But the first bus on the Q88 bus line, which would take Liz and I to the subway station, doesn't run until 6am. Obviously, that wouldn't work. So we would have to call a cab to take us to the subway (which cost us $14, including tip) at 4 am, so they'd get to our house by 4:15, so we'd get to the subway station by 4:30. That meant that I'd have to get up at around 3:45 to use some last minute things and pack them, like toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. Oh, and I had just washed my Nuriko costume from last year in order to bring it for Aaeth Payne to try on. (She'd mentioned to the 1x2ML that she wanted to go as Nuriko, but couldn't afford the costume, so I'd emailed her saying that I had a costume and if she wanted it, I'd send it to her by overnight shipping so she'd get it the next day. She replied that she couldn't afford it'cause she's saving for her trip to Japan, but possibly next year… or for Yaoi-con in October. So I brought it for her to try on, nice person that I am.) In any case, the point was that I'd have to get up around 3:30-3:45 to do all those things, plus I wanted to check my mail one last time before I left. But I ended up waking up suddenly at 3:52. Kyaaa! Poor Liz had been trying to use the phone to call a cab, but when I fell asleep I'd left it on my bed and apparently knocked it onto the floor sometime in the 3 hours that I slept, so it was off the hook. I woke up because the alarm started ringing again (I'd apparently pressed the snooze button once before), and so I woke up a bit, but then I heard this clicking sound and realized what it was, so I was trying to find the phone in the pitch-black darkness of my room. ::rolls eyes::

Liz, apparently, hadn't gone to sleep at all. Then again, she did wake up at 2 in the afternoon that day. I, on the other hand, had been up since 6 am, and hard at work for the rest of the day. I'd been dead tired by the time I fell asleep at a quarter to one. Angelica later said that she'd only slept an hour.

4:15 am
The cab shows up at the house - I put the porch light on when I saw him, so he'd know we were coming out, but he called the house anyway. So Liz and I sort of ran out of the house and into the cab. And this cabbie took the most round about way that I know of to get to the subway station. We got there only about 2 minutes later than it would normally have taken, but it was so weird. Especially at 4:15 in the morning. It's not like he had to avoid traffic or anything. Anyway, we got to the subway at 4:30 and met Angelica a few minutes later. Then we took the train over to Port Authority.

5:25 am
We got to Port Authority at 5:25 am. There's an entrance from the subway into Port Authority that we went to, but it wasn't open yet. But there were several people waiting there for the doors to open, and it seemed like they'd open the doors soon. So 5:30, the doors were opened and we went on a search for the ticket windows for Suburban Transit buses to NJ. We finally found the place, and guess what? All the ticket windows were closed. If that wasn't the most rediculous thing…! Go through all the trouble to get there a bit early, and what happens? The ticket windows are closed! But we ended up talking to another person who was waiting for the Suburban Transit ticket windows to open - he asked if we were going to Shoujocon also, and we said yes… he told us that he was a gopher-cum-A/V tech. (And that's the latin "cum" and not the bastardized English "cum.")

When the ticket booths finally opened (I believe a bit before 6), we ended up buying a 10-ride ticket booklet, or something like that. Basically, we ended up saving about $1.50 per ticket. Since you need one ticket per ride, we each need two. There would be two tickets left over, but the A/V tech guy said that he'd take the extras since he goes back and forth to NJ often. So that was a really cool deal.

6:00 am
The bus finally gets moving. We (well, mostly me) end up talking to the A/V tech guy about local (college-affiliated and not college-affiliated) anime clubs, fansubs vs. commercial DVDs, Tokyopop's rape of Ini-D, and a few other general things. We exchanged email addy's, so that was cool. Conversation with him got boring after a while, but contacts are always good.

6:45 am
We arrived - surprisingly early - at the garage of the East Brunswick Hilton in NJ. We walked around the manicured grounds and over the lobby/entrance of the hotel. We could see a sign - REGISTRATION - hanging over a bare table, and another sign - SHOUJOCON 2002 -
hanging near the front desk. Did I mention that it was practically deserted?

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Shoujocon intinerary

The Shoujocon itinerary: day one of two.

FRIDAY MORNING

6:45 am
We went over to the front desk, hoping some rooms would be available so we would be able to check in even though check-in is technically at 4pm, and we're about 9 hours early. Fortunately, the very nice man at the desk said they did have a room available, and we were given card keys and walked over to the elevator to go put our stuff down and crash for a while. As were were going up in the elevator, my cell phone rang and it was my mom… we told her we'd just checked in and were on our way to the room - she was really surprised that we'd gotten there so quickly. So were we. Anyway, we got to the room - 1230 - and collapsed onto the beds. I should have thought to take a photo of the room at one point, because it was a really nice room. I mean, it wasn't a suite or anything, but it was a very brightly lit room (without the lights on), and it was just really spacious and nice. To the left of the door when you walk in was the bathroom, which was small but not cramped. To the left was a closet with mirror-doors. About six feet in, the room opens up more. To the left were the two double beds with a night stand between them. To the right was a small refrigerator/snack table thing. To the left of that was a dresser with a TV on it, and to the left of that was a desk and chair. The desk was in the far right corner of the room. To the left of that was a small circular coffee table with a lounge chair to the left of it. Behind that was sort of a bay-window without the sitting area under the window. When you looked out the window, you could tell that our room was right in the center of the hotel - it was a very nice view. I didn't even realize what a nice room it was until we went up to Sharon's room - but that was later.

6:55 am
Got to the room. Crashed on the beds. "Rested" until about 7:30. We decided to go down at that time to "wait" on the "line" for registration. Only having attended Otakon before this, our idea didn't sound as stupid as it does now. We went down to the lobby and sat in some lounge chairs until 8, when they announced that registration was open. We registered - were were the first ones on the non-pre-reg "line." So at 10 after 8, we sat down again in the lounge chairs and looked through the events and theater schedules. After taking about 20 minutes to plan out our interests, we were left with nothing to do. It was 8:30, and the first thing to open would be Artists' Alley, at 12.

8:30 am
At this point, things begin to get hazy. We were literally walking around doing nothing for hours, so you'll excuse me if I can't quite remember the details. I know that we went up to our room to drop off our registration bag/kit things. Oh yes, I remember, then we went downstairs and realized there was one thing open at this time - consuite! So we asked where consuite was and discovered it was in room 12-something, only a few doors down from our own room. Briefly, though, we signed up for a few workshops because spaces were being taken up rapidly. Liz signed up for Inking, Cel Painting, and Prismacolor, and Angelica and I got the last two seats for the Plushies workshop. Then, we went back up to the 12th floor and went to the consuite. They had free snack food, and since we hadn't eaten yet, we raided the rolls and chips. There was a lounge area with a large coffee table in the center, surrounded by couches and chairs, and I went over and took a look at some of the things that had been spread out on the table. There were a few random artbooks - in one of them, I found a really nice drawing of a sort of evil pointed-ear faerie with black feathery/angel wings (not the ethereal pixie-like wings, or leathery bat wings of most faeries) that I want to try to find online as a reference for that evil faerie tattoo that I want to get done above my shoulder blade. If anyone happens to know where I can get some .jpgs of images from an artbook called POISON by You Higuri, I'd appreciate a few links! >_< But anyway, we spent some time in there (I'm not sure quite how much), looking at some of the books, and talking a bit with the other girls who were in there - and this one scary guy who was around 18 or so, but was just very kowai - about the new Weiß Kreuz character designs.

10:00 am
Well, it's just an estimate, but I think sometime around 10, we left consuite - more people started to come in and it was getting boring - and we ended up walking around the 2 floors (Concourse and Ballroom) on which the con events were taking place. On a side note, though: I don't know why they called the floor above the Lobby, the "Concourse" - usually, well at least in NYC, the concourse level is usually below ground.

Anyway, we walked around, looking at where all the rooms were and stuff… and eventually we ended up on the Concourse level - above the Lobby - standing at the railing, overlooking the lounge chairs were we had sat in earlier. There were now 3 people sitting there: a girl with long purple hair, another girl with brown and blond hair, and her boyfriend who had blue hair. We were basically just wasting some time, looking at the people who were showing up in costume - I was looking at an odd-looking Muraki (the costume was great, but the silvery/gray spray-painted hair was kind of ewwww) when Liz brought my attention down to the people sitting below us. I looked down and the purple-haired girl was waving her hands at me, and I think she said "Are you Sara?" I think said "Yes….?" To which she said, "I'm Aaeth!" And I broke into a smile and said, "Aaeth? Hi! We'll come down." While I'd been emailing her back and forth a few times during the few days before Shojocon, I linked a pic of myself to her so she might recognize me during the con - I guess it worked! She said she recognized my red streaks, LOL.

So we went down the escalator and we all sat with Aaeth and what turned out to be her friend and her friend's boyfriend. We talked for a while about anime and other things… and then the Nuriko costume came up in conversation, so I suggested we all go up to our room and let Aaeth try it on. So we all went up to our room to let Aaeth try it on. >_< While Aaeth was trying it on in the bathroom, Angelica, Liz and I had a funny-turned-massively-hentai conversation. When she finally finished, showed it to us, then went to change back into her normal clothes, we were already laughing our asses off. Then she joined us, and we stayed there until just about 12 talking and laughing. Thank the gods. If we hadn't run into her, I think we might have died of boredom. When we were hanging on the railing watching people go by, I had just said - in a sort of forlorn voice - "I'm bored. How can I be bored, we're at a convention! I'm not supposed to be bored! I should have been working today!"

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

12:00 pm
We left our room - Aaeth and her friends went to go eat, and the three of us went downstairs to check and see if Sharon had checked in yet. (Sharon is a person I'd become friends with last year when she wrote me some amazing feedback to a fic I wrote. We ended up meeting at Otakon 2001 where she gave me a 2x1 doujinshi which I had signed by Midorikawa-san…) In any case, Sharon was planning a get-together in her room at around 5 to 7 pm on Friday night. And she'd mentioned in one of her emails that she'd probably get to the hotel around noon. So we went to the front desk and I asked for her, but she hadn't checked in yet. ::sigh::

So we had nothing to do, but go see Artists' Alley. We went up the escalator and the sign in front of Artists' Alley said that they wouldn't be open until 12:30. So we went away - I can't remember what we did - and when we came back at 12:30, apparently the word was that they wouldn't be open until 3, but if you wanted to help set up, you could come back in 15 minutes. So much for that idea. We didn't want to help set up, so I think we walked (as slowly as we possibly could) over to the line for the Dealers' Room. I don't remember if we stopped along the way or what, but I'm pretty sure we got on the line at 1 pm. I think Angelica and Liz went ahead - I have no recollection of why I was delayed - but when I got to where they were on the line, guess who I saw standing with them?

1:00 pm
Sharon. I went over there and said hi. She pointed to a group about 20 people ahead of us and said that's where she was, along with her friends D.C. Logan, and Susan. We talked for a while, but she eventually went back to her place in line with her friends. The Dealers' Room opened at 2, so we spent the hour on line, looking at the cosplay, holding our spot, going to the bathroom, getting up & walking around, etc. All the things you usually do on lines that won't move for a good amount of time. (You can see how I'm looking forward to the Otakon pre-reg line.)

2:00 pm
Finally, the line started to move. I think we got into the Dealers' Room about 10 minutes later. Not bad at all. I was on a mission to find/buy doujinshi. Mostly 2x1 and/or hentai doujinshi, but really anything that caught my interest. Most of the doujinshi - well, all that I was interested in, anyway - were located in the "adult" section of the room, where you couldn't get in unless you showed the staff your "over 18" wristband. Poor Liz was stuck wandering the Dealers' Room without us. Angelica and I were firmly planted in that section.

They had really great deals - although I've heard that Yaoi-con doujinshi are cheaper. But it's really difficult to get decently priced doujinshi online, and these were all reasonably priced. Of course, it's to the seller's advantage that you're not allowed to look inside the doujinshi (they're packaged in clear plastic envelopes so you can't open them), but hey, you have to take what you can get sometimes. I ended up spending $75 on six 2x1 doujinshi (mostly shounen-ai, only one of them was slightly graphic - a great disappointment to me), one MikiXSeki doujinshi that I just couldn't resist, one 1xR hentai (yay!) doujinshi that I had planned to sell on ebay, but I liked it more than most of the others so I decided to keep it, and a Weiß Kreuz (the seiyuu) shitajiki. I wouldn't have regretted it if most of the doujinshi had been what I was looking for - graphic sex, mostly - but they weren't, so I regret spending so much. But I'll try to load them off on ebay and at least make my money back, if I can't get a profit. It's sort of too bad that I really like that 1xR doujinshi- usually you can make a nice proft on a 1xR doujinshi on ebay. Ah well.

The only other thing I was looking for that they didn't have, was hentai doujinshi (as in het). Yep. I only like graphic YAOI, or hentai HET doujinshi. Everything else is boring. Jeez, I'm perverted. Whatever. But they didn't have any hentai doujinshi that I was interested in. I think the only one that slightly tempted me was a hentai WolfwoodXMilly (that's her name, right?) from Trigun, but I had already spent the $75, so I didn't want to spend more. =(

After murdering my wallet in the adult section, I went out and looked around the rest of the Dealers' Room. It was surprisingly boring. Practically every place had the same thing. There were a few merchants with interesting things - namely Catzia, who had a lot of Sailor Moon stuff, which I still love - and some other table with cute anime-themed embroidery on bookbags.

3:15 pm
Finally, we worked our way out of the Dealers' Room. We wanted to go over to the Artists' Alley, but we remembered the sign there from earlier that day - no bags allowed in the room, and there was no bag check. So we (along with Aaeth) went up to our room and dropped off our bags. Then we went over to the Artists' Alley and spent a while in there. I think around 3:50 we finally finished looking and we all went back up to our room. Aaeth picked up her bag, and mentioned (although I don't remember how the it came up) that she and her friends had ordered two pizza pies with toppings for $20 and they delivered right to the room door. She kindly showed us the ad in the mini-yellow-pages in the desk drawer. After she left we ordered two green-pepper pies and a 2-liter of soda, and decided to have one of the pies for lunch and save the other pie for lunch or dinner the next day. That way, we'd save on money.

While we were waiting for the food to be deliveered, we looked at our purchases. Angelica got a great deal on 4 Recca cels (which I have first dibs on if when she ends up selling one or more of them on ebay). Liz got 3 shitajiki - she only spent $13 in the Dealers' Room!

We got the food at 4:30 and there was hardly any talking as we completely scarfed one of those pies down! We finished about 10 minutes later, that's how hungry we were. Then we sort of rested until 5, which was when we were supposed to go meet Sharon and her friends at their hotel room.

FRIDAY EVENING

5:00 pm
We left the room and went up to Sharon's room. This was when I realized what a nice room we had. Sharon's room was smaller than ours - not by much, it had the same basic dimensions - but they didn't have that sort of bay-window area and it made the room feel a lot smaller in comparison. Also, the lighting and color scheme in their room wasn't that great. The walls were a sort of yellowish color, I think. Or if not, the lights made them seem yellow. And the bedspreads were green. I suppose it had a sort of homey/earthy feel, but that's certainly not my preference. Our room had white walls, and burgandy bedspreads.

In any case, it was just the three of them, the three of us, and Sharon's purple-and-blue cake (purple for Duo's eyes, blue for Heero's) and other snacks and drinks. So we did what any group of Gundam Wing YAOI fans would do. We started talking about the G-boys. The conversation developed from there - it was really lots of fun. In fact, it was the most fun we'd had all day. D.C.'s really cool - she has a kind of cynical attitude that I can completely identify with. Susan's so hyper and jumpy, and really into things - she makes you feel like she's completely interested in what you're saying, and the cool part is, that she is. And Sharon - Sharons's so sweet, it's impossible to dislike her… and she's so much fun to tease! ^^

Some time into this get-together, another group of online friends/GW YAOI fans showed up. Aaeth Payne (a fic writer), Shi-chan (the owner/admin of the 1x2ML) and some of her friends came in and so from then it started to break up into smaller groups. Although people kept switching back and forth from group to group, butting in with their own two cents here and there… but Angelica, Liz, and I ended up mostly talking with D.C. and Susan. At one point I'd been talking with D.C., and Liz had left the room for a bit, and all of a sudden Aaeth came up to me and said, "You're the one that wrote Something I Can Never Have?!?!" And I kind of stuttered and said, "Uh, yeah…" and Aaeth started to take a deep breath to say something, but I cut her off and said, "Well, actually there are two fics by that name; which one…." And she said, "the one with Duo who's angsting after Trowa and Heero." And I said, "Oh, yeah." (I really thought she was talking about the other one.) And she got down on her knees and started bowing to me. I bent down to drag her back up, and I was like, "It's okay, Aaeth. Really. I'm so glad you liked it."

OMG, it was too cute! It was so cool that she'd liked my fics just as much as I like hers! And then Shi-chan asked, "That's you?" LOL. She mentioned that she'd sent me feedback about it when it came out, and I vaguely remember it… it was really cool/embarrassing/fun to meet people who give your praise about your fics in person!

Well, a while after that the Aaeth/Shi-chan group left, and a while after that the 6 of us went down to the "Crossing Over" panel that I'd been really interested in from the description in the Shoujocon booklet. The description was something about anime that crossed over between shounen and shoujo. And since I really love both of these genres, I was very interested in what the panelists might have to say about it, and what anime they would mention. In the booklet description, one of the anime mentioned was Angelic Layer, which I really enjoyed earlier this year. I didn't particularly like the main character - she was a little too shoujo-ish for my taste, but the fight scenes were amazing (in my opinion), and the plot was entertaining.

8:00 pm
Blech. That panel was horrible! First, the only people in the room were the 6 of us. We were all seated in two rows on the left side of the room. Then, this woman opens the door and sticks her head in. I recognized her and groaned under my breath. She's a woman I met on the FAKE ML,when I was still on it, whom I met in Grand Central Station a few weeks before Otakon 2000 - and have regretted it ever since - because she is just the rudest woman person I've ever met in my life! She just has no respect for anyone besides herself! I swear, I don't know how she got to be on the Shoujocon staff - they should filter their staff better because I know I wouldn't be going to anything where it might be possible to run into her! BTW, her name is Mae, she's Asian (I think Chinese, but I'm not sure), and she's a graphic designer who lives in NY or NJ, but works in Manhattan. I've often seen her in Asahiya… ::shudders::

Anyway, her first words were something about "Is this it?" Not a great start. Then she sort of looked panicked/annoyed at the prospect of being the only panelist for this panel. Someone (I think it was Sharon) said something about us being Gundam Wing fans and she said, "Oh," ::haughty laugh:: "Gundam Wing is so dated." Obviously, if we'd just said we're big GW fans, you'd think she'd realize that her attitude would alienate us. But I don't think she cares very much. She went over to the panelist table and set her stuff down, and stopped, staring at us, hand cocked at her hip and said, "Well, come on, move over." No one said anything. I think we were too shocked. Then she said, "I'm the panelist, and I feel like I should be the center of attention. Come on, move over." Oh, please. Does she really think she'd get people to move that way? And that wasn't even the worst! Then she said, "Come on, you have to obey my orders." I swear, my eyes must have bugged out. I don't know why we stayed. I think we were all too shocked. If I ever run into her again here in NYC, I'm going to give her a good talking-to. She acted like a spoiled brat!

But we stayed. After a few minutes another panelist came in, and they started the panel. Remember how I said it was supposed to be (according to the website and booklet description) a panel about anime that crosses over between shoujo and shounen?

Here's the description from the website:
X-ing Over
Is it shoujo or not? If it's not shoujo, why is it so popular among the US anime/manga crowd? Why isn't Angelic Layer or Saiyuki shoujo, although shoujo fans love them? What about decidedly shounen series like Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho and Gundam Wing with their committed female fans, young and old? This discussion covers all those questions about series that have crossed over from one genre to another genre's fan base, about artists traditionally considered "shoujo" mangaka who are doing series work that appeal to both sexes, and about shoujo series that have filtered from the underground to the spotlight.

Well… this became a lecture about anime that crosses over between Japan and America. Forget about shoujo - I don't think there was any mention of any shoujo anime (and considering this was Shoujocon we were at, it was completely rediculous). Actually, after getting this far into this post (which I've been writing in MS Word), I got all worked up and sent an email of complaint to someone at Shoujocon. If I get a reply, I'll post the original email and the reply.

Anyway, after that debacle we went over to the fanfiction panel, which was more of a discussion than a panel. The moderator - Julie Farel - was very nice and very knowledgable about fanfiction. There were a lot of familiar faces there, and everyone knew what everyone else was saying. It was refreshing, and fun.

10:00 pm
After the fanfiction discussion, we sort of had nothing planned, so we all went back up to Sharon's room again and proceeded to talk for another 2 hours. Jeez, who knew we could talk for hours? It was really great. Most of what we talked about was anime-related, but not all. A lot of things started out anime-related, and jumped over to something completely different. We left at around midnight 'cause the poor girls were starting to look tired.

12:15 pm
Got back to our room and after a bit of talking and getting ready, we finally went to bed. I'm pretty sure we were all out pretty quickly. But have I mentioned how COLD it was in the rooms? They have a great air conditioning system! I didn't think to turn it down, though, before we fell asleep, so Liz and I (we were sharing one of the beds, Angelica had the other) were freezing all night long! But it was nice - it's been years (or so it seems) that we've been cold at night. ^_~