![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wow, so it’s been way too long since I last wrote in here. Almost a month. I’ve been bad. This is what happens when you don’t have the daily routine of going to work anymore. In any case, this is the reason my Otakon review is going to be short and to the point. So much stuff has happened in the last few weeks that it seems like it was a few months ago, not just a few weeks ago.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT/THURSDAY
This time, we got to wake up at a more reasonable hour. Of course, we’d been up late the night before getting stuff ready, fooling around with the curling iron (testing it out), and waiting for Louie to get to my house. I think she finally showed up around midnight or 1 am. Poor girl, she was finishing up our guitars for hours earlier that day, and then her mom was braiding her (long, long) hair into cornrows for her Kaoru (from Dir en Grey) costume.
In any case, we left around 9 am, I think, for Port Authority (our bus would leave at 11:30). We met up with our other friend, Yoshi, at Port Authority and had a small breakfast before getting in line for the bus. They loaded up a bit early, and we were on the road by 11:30. It was a long ride, sometimes boring, sometimes amusing – I had a bit of a nap for maybe an hour; the rest of the time I spent chatting and listening to music with Liz.
Yoshi and Louie
Me and Liz
We finally got to downtown Baltimore (approximately four hours later), and walked the 3 blocks down to our hotel – the Days Inn. Many people on the Otakon ML have complained bitterly about how small the rooms are there, among a myriad of other complaints. But I think, for its low room rate (it’s the lowest in comparison to all the other hotels in the area) and for how close it’s located to the BCC, it’s definitely worth the small rooms/low water pressure/etc. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that… we’re only in the room long enough to sleep and take a shower, change clothes, etc. Other than that, we’re in the BCC from 9 in the morning (sometimes earlier) til around 2 am. That’s 15 out of 24 hours spent outside of the hotel room! Who cares how small the thing is? Of course, it’s nice to have more space, but is it worth paying more? Not to me.
One of the other complaints about the Days Inn was that the staff would make several mistakes in charges at the end of your stay. I don’t know about last year because my mom and Angelica sort of took care of the payment. But this year, it was on my card, and they did happen to overcharge me – they charged me for a parking spot when I don’t even have a license, much less a car. But it was simple. I called the front desk, said that they overcharged me, and the charge was cleared from my bill. Easy as pie. I don’t understand what the problem is.
Anyway, we got to Baltimore and checked in. We went up to our room and put all our stuff away. We played with makeup for a while, in preparation for the next day. We even got to attack Yoshi with some makeup, which was fun even though he took most of it off, except for the eyeliner, I think… or maybe it was mascara. But after that, we were hungry so we walked over to the mall and sat down to eat.
Louie, Me, Yoshi
Angelica, Liz (they still had makeup on)
I don’t really remember much after that. We probably hung out for a while – getting Tazoberrys from the Starbucks in the mall (which was cheaper there than here in NYC, alas for my Tazoberry addiction!). I think we pretty much went back to the room and acted stupid until we fell asleep.
FRIDAY
The plan for the next day was that Liz and I were to wake up around 5:15 am, get dressed in our regular clothes and go downstairs by 5:30 to wait on line, so we could be in the front of the line come registration time (9 am). The others would take showers, get dressed in their costumes and come down to take our places by 6:30 so that Liz and I would have time to go back to the room to shower and get our costumes ready and be out by 8:30. Makeup takes a damn long time to put on, I tell you! Anyway, we didn’t know it, but it started raining, I think around 7 or 7:30. Around 8 they started to move the line to the other side of the BCC, so Angelica called my cell and told us we’d better hurry up, and that it was pouring outside. Luckily, we’d just been doing the finishing touches to our Friday outfits, and even luckier, Liz had brought along two umbrellas! So we made our way down the hill, across the 4-lane street, and over to the huge line in front of the BCC – half-walking, half-running in our 4-5 inch platform heeled shoes!
But everything was okay ‘cause we got back to them before the Otakon staff started moving the pre-registration line into the BCC. It thought it was really good of them to move the line in half-an-hour early ‘cause of the rain. The could’ve left us all out there to get soaking wet – most of the line, though, already was because only about 20 feet in either direction of the entrance to the BCC were covered by an overhang. Everyone else was exposed to the deluge.
So Friday was fun. We got inside (we didn’t have to wait very long because we were all the way in the front of the line) and hung out a little waiting for to see if we could meet the fourth member of our cosplay group for Saturday’s costumes (the Shiroi Yu~ki to match our Shiroi Mana, Kozi, and Klaha). But she didn’t show up, so we eventually started wandering. I think what we ended up (after checking the anime-showing and events schedule, and discovering that there wasn’t anything we really wanted to see) going for breakfast at Burger King (across from the BCC). After which, we decided to get on the line for the Dealers’ Room (which opened much earlier this year!).
There, we ran into a guy I’d recognized as Klaha from last year’s Malice Mizer/Saikai group. This year he was cosplaying Dir en Grey’s Die. So we ended up talking with him for about an hour and a half. I think that’s how long we waited on line, but I’m not positive. Later on we would end up hanging out with Jeremy quite often. While on line, we ran into a few other friends – MadamHydra and Amy (whom we’d met at Shoujocon) went past, and we roped them into line with us.
The Dealers’ Room was sugoi!!! I split off with Angelica and I think Louie and Liz stayed together. Angelica and I headed straight for the cel tables. They weren’t as disappointing as last year, although there was still nothing that I really wanted at a price I could afford. Soon, I got tired of looking at cels and wandered over to the far (and I mean far) corner of the room where two tables of doujinshi were set up. One of the dealers was the same guy from Shoujocon who kept calling out “Get your red hot YAOI doujinshi here!” LOL. He’s hysterical. I find it so funny that I actually don’t get as upset as I might that I spent $75 at Shoujocon on doujinshi that was misleadingly labeled. I mean, really! If that’s what their idea of graphic is, they ought to be shot! Or at the very least, made to watch a porn video or something!
But getting off my soapbox, I vaguely looked over the boxes of doujinshi, but I didn’t really want anymore YAOI doujinshi. I’d already gotten several (disappointing) 2x1 doujinshi from them, and that’s all the YAOI doujinshi I’m really interested in. What I was on a veritable mission to find was hentai Kare Kano doujinshi. I have a massive weak spot for hentai (het) doujinshi. LOL. So I walked over to the second table and asked a few of the guys who were pawing through the doujinshi boxes… “are these hentai?” One of them said, hesitantly, “Uh… yeah.” I said, “oh, good.” I started to look through the box in front of me, but didn’t see any graphic sort of covers, so I asked the guy who was working the table (he had to be at least 40), “Are these hentai?” He also said, hesitantly, “Uh… yeah.” Then I grinned this huge-ass cheesy grin and said, “Good. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” The guys sort of grinned and giggled. (It’s just too adorable to see guys giggle! Especially grown guys, 22+!)
Anyway, I asked the dealer if the doujinshi were in any particular order and he said they were in alphabetical order and what was I looking for? I replied that I was looking for Kare Kano doujinshi and he said that yes, he had them, but they hadn’t yet been filed into the boxes, so…. ::scrounge scrounge scrounge:: “Wait a second…” ::scrounge scrounge:: “I have a whole stack…” ::finds stack and pulls out at least 10 doujinshi:: “Take a look at these.” I swear, if someone had taken a picture of me at that moment, I would have at the proverbial starry eyes! I flipped through the stack and chose 4 that I thought might be as graphic as I hoped they were. I handed the rest back to him and asked how much each doujinshi cost. He said, “I tell you what, I’ll give all four of them to you for $40.” At this point I KNOW my eyes bugged out! I said, “I’ll take them!” without a second to lose. 4 for $40 is an amazing deal for hentai doujinshi, especially Kare Kano hentai doujinshi! Last year I got one for $15, but there was another one I’d wanted that was around $35. Ite! After that purchase (4 for $40! 4 for $40!) I was riding a high – I was practically done. If I didn’t buy anything else the whole con, I’d be satisfied with what I’d gotten. A truly amazing experience. I was telling anyone who’d listen that I got exactly what I’d been looking for – and at an amazing price, no less!
Oh, I do remember another table that had some Haruka and Michiru doujinshi (another one of my doujinshi weaknesses), but they were quite pricey. I have to hand it to them, though, at least they allowed you to look through the doujinshi to see if it’s what you wanted. If I’d found something I wanted I would have shelled out the $20-30 for the one doujinshi, but unfortunately, none of them were graphic.
After that, I met back up with Angelica at another cel table where she was eyeing the 30% off all cels sign. I went to the other side of the table and started looking through one of the cel books and found 3 kirei Nakago cels. Granted, they were $185 each, originally. But with the 30% off, it came out to only $130 each (plus tax)! She hadn’t seen them yet, and I knew that she’d just die over them – she’s been trying to acquire a Nakago cel for at least a year! So, with an evil grin hiding behind an innocent smile, I pulled her over to look at the cels and proceeded to persuade her to buy one! Ohhhhh, you can’t understand the satisfaction I felt when she dropped $150 on an admittedly sugoi cel, on the first day of the con! Whenever I think about it, I still get an amazing rush of self-satisfaction -- payback… for all those times she persuaded me to buy something while she stood by with nothing to purchase! She went into shock for a little while, but she soon snapped out of it. ^_~ I’ll have to get her to scan that cel some day.
I don’t know how long we spent in the Dealers’ Room. After a while, Angelica and I started looking for Liz and Louie. We ran into a Schu/Mana, named Kate, along with her two friends (one of whom I don’t remember her name, the other was Alison, whom we’d met last year and hung out with in Chinatown one time) whom Angelica had met on the pre-reg line earlier, and we asked her if she’d seen a green-haired Mana (Liz) and a purple-haired Kaoru (Louie). She said no, but Angelica gave her her cell phone number, just in case. A little while later we got a call from her saying she’d found our Mana and Kaoru. So we met up with them and decided that we’d all go back to our rooms, change into more decent shoes, and have lunch together at the mall.
It took us a while to finally get out of the BCC and over to our room where we crashed for a while. Liz and I changed into our more comfortable shoes and spent some time looking at our purchases. After a while, the others showed up and we all set off for the mall. After lunch, we went back to the BCC and hung out. It gets really vague right here – I can’t remember what the hell happened. The only things I can remember are the ones of which I have pictures to remind me.
I know that at one point we ran into Sharon (in red, leaning on me) and DC (pics from Shoujocon) , so that was fun. There was also a slight yaoi/yuri orgy going on on the other side of the couch we were on, and I was unashamedly going back and forth between conversations (Sharon & DC vs. The Orgy). I remember I had been talking to Sharon and DC when Angelica called out to me and told me that the Aya she was talking to had nipple rings. That really piqued my interest. (I’ve been dreaming about piercings lately.) Eventually we all went over to the women’s bathroom where she flashed us her nipple rings. They were very pretty. ^_~
Oh! I know that at some point we went over to the Art Show/Artists’ Alley, but I cannot remember for the life of me, when it was. I sort of zoomed in on the Art Show and saw this one kirei pencil sketch of Schu from Weiß Kreuz. Schu is usually not my favorite character, but he is Angelica’s favorite. But that sketch was just so beautiful, I couldn’t not bid on it. So I bid on it. And I went over to Angelica and told her that there was a sketch of Schu that I bid on, so she couldn’t bid on it. She cursed me when she saw it. It really was great. (I’m really pissed that I couldn’t check it before the Art Show closed on Sunday; I hadn’t realized that it closed so early this year!)
After that, I walked around and ended up bidding on only one other thing – a beautiful horizontal panel: a sketch of Kamui with wings, kneeling and clutching his shoulders; one wing was an Angel wing, the other a sort of tattered bat-ish wing. At the top, it said something about the mind – a beautiful quote, but I can’t remember it anymore. I bid on that. When I met up with Angelica again she asked me if I’d bid on anything else and I said yes, I’d bid on the X thing. She got this glare on her face, and I said, “What?” She said that that was what she’d bid on. Oops. How was I supposed to know?! I figured that if there was anything she’d bid on that she didn’t want me to bid on, she’d tell me like I told her. I was outbid on it anyway – it went over $80, and I really wasn’t willing to pay that much.
The only other thing I bid on – a Quick Sale for $30 – was a print colored in copic marker of dark Chii (from Chobits) sitting on a toy box in the middle of a room. It was very nicely done, and I thought it was worth the $30.
I think we had a late dinner and then went to bed.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT/THURSDAY
This time, we got to wake up at a more reasonable hour. Of course, we’d been up late the night before getting stuff ready, fooling around with the curling iron (testing it out), and waiting for Louie to get to my house. I think she finally showed up around midnight or 1 am. Poor girl, she was finishing up our guitars for hours earlier that day, and then her mom was braiding her (long, long) hair into cornrows for her Kaoru (from Dir en Grey) costume.
In any case, we left around 9 am, I think, for Port Authority (our bus would leave at 11:30). We met up with our other friend, Yoshi, at Port Authority and had a small breakfast before getting in line for the bus. They loaded up a bit early, and we were on the road by 11:30. It was a long ride, sometimes boring, sometimes amusing – I had a bit of a nap for maybe an hour; the rest of the time I spent chatting and listening to music with Liz.
Yoshi and Louie
Me and Liz
We finally got to downtown Baltimore (approximately four hours later), and walked the 3 blocks down to our hotel – the Days Inn. Many people on the Otakon ML have complained bitterly about how small the rooms are there, among a myriad of other complaints. But I think, for its low room rate (it’s the lowest in comparison to all the other hotels in the area) and for how close it’s located to the BCC, it’s definitely worth the small rooms/low water pressure/etc. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that… we’re only in the room long enough to sleep and take a shower, change clothes, etc. Other than that, we’re in the BCC from 9 in the morning (sometimes earlier) til around 2 am. That’s 15 out of 24 hours spent outside of the hotel room! Who cares how small the thing is? Of course, it’s nice to have more space, but is it worth paying more? Not to me.
One of the other complaints about the Days Inn was that the staff would make several mistakes in charges at the end of your stay. I don’t know about last year because my mom and Angelica sort of took care of the payment. But this year, it was on my card, and they did happen to overcharge me – they charged me for a parking spot when I don’t even have a license, much less a car. But it was simple. I called the front desk, said that they overcharged me, and the charge was cleared from my bill. Easy as pie. I don’t understand what the problem is.
Anyway, we got to Baltimore and checked in. We went up to our room and put all our stuff away. We played with makeup for a while, in preparation for the next day. We even got to attack Yoshi with some makeup, which was fun even though he took most of it off, except for the eyeliner, I think… or maybe it was mascara. But after that, we were hungry so we walked over to the mall and sat down to eat.
Louie, Me, Yoshi
Angelica, Liz (they still had makeup on)
I don’t really remember much after that. We probably hung out for a while – getting Tazoberrys from the Starbucks in the mall (which was cheaper there than here in NYC, alas for my Tazoberry addiction!). I think we pretty much went back to the room and acted stupid until we fell asleep.
FRIDAY
The plan for the next day was that Liz and I were to wake up around 5:15 am, get dressed in our regular clothes and go downstairs by 5:30 to wait on line, so we could be in the front of the line come registration time (9 am). The others would take showers, get dressed in their costumes and come down to take our places by 6:30 so that Liz and I would have time to go back to the room to shower and get our costumes ready and be out by 8:30. Makeup takes a damn long time to put on, I tell you! Anyway, we didn’t know it, but it started raining, I think around 7 or 7:30. Around 8 they started to move the line to the other side of the BCC, so Angelica called my cell and told us we’d better hurry up, and that it was pouring outside. Luckily, we’d just been doing the finishing touches to our Friday outfits, and even luckier, Liz had brought along two umbrellas! So we made our way down the hill, across the 4-lane street, and over to the huge line in front of the BCC – half-walking, half-running in our 4-5 inch platform heeled shoes!
But everything was okay ‘cause we got back to them before the Otakon staff started moving the pre-registration line into the BCC. It thought it was really good of them to move the line in half-an-hour early ‘cause of the rain. The could’ve left us all out there to get soaking wet – most of the line, though, already was because only about 20 feet in either direction of the entrance to the BCC were covered by an overhang. Everyone else was exposed to the deluge.
So Friday was fun. We got inside (we didn’t have to wait very long because we were all the way in the front of the line) and hung out a little waiting for to see if we could meet the fourth member of our cosplay group for Saturday’s costumes (the Shiroi Yu~ki to match our Shiroi Mana, Kozi, and Klaha). But she didn’t show up, so we eventually started wandering. I think what we ended up (after checking the anime-showing and events schedule, and discovering that there wasn’t anything we really wanted to see) going for breakfast at Burger King (across from the BCC). After which, we decided to get on the line for the Dealers’ Room (which opened much earlier this year!).
There, we ran into a guy I’d recognized as Klaha from last year’s Malice Mizer/Saikai group. This year he was cosplaying Dir en Grey’s Die. So we ended up talking with him for about an hour and a half. I think that’s how long we waited on line, but I’m not positive. Later on we would end up hanging out with Jeremy quite often. While on line, we ran into a few other friends – MadamHydra and Amy (whom we’d met at Shoujocon) went past, and we roped them into line with us.
The Dealers’ Room was sugoi!!! I split off with Angelica and I think Louie and Liz stayed together. Angelica and I headed straight for the cel tables. They weren’t as disappointing as last year, although there was still nothing that I really wanted at a price I could afford. Soon, I got tired of looking at cels and wandered over to the far (and I mean far) corner of the room where two tables of doujinshi were set up. One of the dealers was the same guy from Shoujocon who kept calling out “Get your red hot YAOI doujinshi here!” LOL. He’s hysterical. I find it so funny that I actually don’t get as upset as I might that I spent $75 at Shoujocon on doujinshi that was misleadingly labeled. I mean, really! If that’s what their idea of graphic is, they ought to be shot! Or at the very least, made to watch a porn video or something!
But getting off my soapbox, I vaguely looked over the boxes of doujinshi, but I didn’t really want anymore YAOI doujinshi. I’d already gotten several (disappointing) 2x1 doujinshi from them, and that’s all the YAOI doujinshi I’m really interested in. What I was on a veritable mission to find was hentai Kare Kano doujinshi. I have a massive weak spot for hentai (het) doujinshi. LOL. So I walked over to the second table and asked a few of the guys who were pawing through the doujinshi boxes… “are these hentai?” One of them said, hesitantly, “Uh… yeah.” I said, “oh, good.” I started to look through the box in front of me, but didn’t see any graphic sort of covers, so I asked the guy who was working the table (he had to be at least 40), “Are these hentai?” He also said, hesitantly, “Uh… yeah.” Then I grinned this huge-ass cheesy grin and said, “Good. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” The guys sort of grinned and giggled. (It’s just too adorable to see guys giggle! Especially grown guys, 22+!)
Anyway, I asked the dealer if the doujinshi were in any particular order and he said they were in alphabetical order and what was I looking for? I replied that I was looking for Kare Kano doujinshi and he said that yes, he had them, but they hadn’t yet been filed into the boxes, so…. ::scrounge scrounge scrounge:: “Wait a second…” ::scrounge scrounge:: “I have a whole stack…” ::finds stack and pulls out at least 10 doujinshi:: “Take a look at these.” I swear, if someone had taken a picture of me at that moment, I would have at the proverbial starry eyes! I flipped through the stack and chose 4 that I thought might be as graphic as I hoped they were. I handed the rest back to him and asked how much each doujinshi cost. He said, “I tell you what, I’ll give all four of them to you for $40.” At this point I KNOW my eyes bugged out! I said, “I’ll take them!” without a second to lose. 4 for $40 is an amazing deal for hentai doujinshi, especially Kare Kano hentai doujinshi! Last year I got one for $15, but there was another one I’d wanted that was around $35. Ite! After that purchase (4 for $40! 4 for $40!) I was riding a high – I was practically done. If I didn’t buy anything else the whole con, I’d be satisfied with what I’d gotten. A truly amazing experience. I was telling anyone who’d listen that I got exactly what I’d been looking for – and at an amazing price, no less!
Oh, I do remember another table that had some Haruka and Michiru doujinshi (another one of my doujinshi weaknesses), but they were quite pricey. I have to hand it to them, though, at least they allowed you to look through the doujinshi to see if it’s what you wanted. If I’d found something I wanted I would have shelled out the $20-30 for the one doujinshi, but unfortunately, none of them were graphic.
After that, I met back up with Angelica at another cel table where she was eyeing the 30% off all cels sign. I went to the other side of the table and started looking through one of the cel books and found 3 kirei Nakago cels. Granted, they were $185 each, originally. But with the 30% off, it came out to only $130 each (plus tax)! She hadn’t seen them yet, and I knew that she’d just die over them – she’s been trying to acquire a Nakago cel for at least a year! So, with an evil grin hiding behind an innocent smile, I pulled her over to look at the cels and proceeded to persuade her to buy one! Ohhhhh, you can’t understand the satisfaction I felt when she dropped $150 on an admittedly sugoi cel, on the first day of the con! Whenever I think about it, I still get an amazing rush of self-satisfaction -- payback… for all those times she persuaded me to buy something while she stood by with nothing to purchase! She went into shock for a little while, but she soon snapped out of it. ^_~ I’ll have to get her to scan that cel some day.
I don’t know how long we spent in the Dealers’ Room. After a while, Angelica and I started looking for Liz and Louie. We ran into a Schu/Mana, named Kate, along with her two friends (one of whom I don’t remember her name, the other was Alison, whom we’d met last year and hung out with in Chinatown one time) whom Angelica had met on the pre-reg line earlier, and we asked her if she’d seen a green-haired Mana (Liz) and a purple-haired Kaoru (Louie). She said no, but Angelica gave her her cell phone number, just in case. A little while later we got a call from her saying she’d found our Mana and Kaoru. So we met up with them and decided that we’d all go back to our rooms, change into more decent shoes, and have lunch together at the mall.
It took us a while to finally get out of the BCC and over to our room where we crashed for a while. Liz and I changed into our more comfortable shoes and spent some time looking at our purchases. After a while, the others showed up and we all set off for the mall. After lunch, we went back to the BCC and hung out. It gets really vague right here – I can’t remember what the hell happened. The only things I can remember are the ones of which I have pictures to remind me.
I know that at one point we ran into Sharon (in red, leaning on me) and DC (pics from Shoujocon) , so that was fun. There was also a slight yaoi/yuri orgy going on on the other side of the couch we were on, and I was unashamedly going back and forth between conversations (Sharon & DC vs. The Orgy). I remember I had been talking to Sharon and DC when Angelica called out to me and told me that the Aya she was talking to had nipple rings. That really piqued my interest. (I’ve been dreaming about piercings lately.) Eventually we all went over to the women’s bathroom where she flashed us her nipple rings. They were very pretty. ^_~
Oh! I know that at some point we went over to the Art Show/Artists’ Alley, but I cannot remember for the life of me, when it was. I sort of zoomed in on the Art Show and saw this one kirei pencil sketch of Schu from Weiß Kreuz. Schu is usually not my favorite character, but he is Angelica’s favorite. But that sketch was just so beautiful, I couldn’t not bid on it. So I bid on it. And I went over to Angelica and told her that there was a sketch of Schu that I bid on, so she couldn’t bid on it. She cursed me when she saw it. It really was great. (I’m really pissed that I couldn’t check it before the Art Show closed on Sunday; I hadn’t realized that it closed so early this year!)
After that, I walked around and ended up bidding on only one other thing – a beautiful horizontal panel: a sketch of Kamui with wings, kneeling and clutching his shoulders; one wing was an Angel wing, the other a sort of tattered bat-ish wing. At the top, it said something about the mind – a beautiful quote, but I can’t remember it anymore. I bid on that. When I met up with Angelica again she asked me if I’d bid on anything else and I said yes, I’d bid on the X thing. She got this glare on her face, and I said, “What?” She said that that was what she’d bid on. Oops. How was I supposed to know?! I figured that if there was anything she’d bid on that she didn’t want me to bid on, she’d tell me like I told her. I was outbid on it anyway – it went over $80, and I really wasn’t willing to pay that much.
The only other thing I bid on – a Quick Sale for $30 – was a print colored in copic marker of dark Chii (from Chobits) sitting on a toy box in the middle of a room. It was very nicely done, and I thought it was worth the $30.
I think we had a late dinner and then went to bed.
