my moral standing is lying down

So after 10 years of faithful attendance at Otakon, this year, potentially to be year eleven, is the one in which I will not be going. It feels crazy and weird and wrong to not go, but there are a few things which just naturally point in that direction for this year.

A little higher up on my travel priorities right now are Berlin (sometime before 2nd week in August) as I mentioned previously, and Vancouver (theoretically over Thanksgiving).

The other two cons that I'm planning on attending this year are Dragon*Con and possibly Wincon. D*C's "cheap rate" deadline is coming up (end of the week!) and I've got to shell out the $80 for that. Wincon's second pre-reg deadline is at the end of the month, but is $100.

I'm less sure about Wincon, truthfully, because I don't know anyone in the fandom all that well (except for you two) and... well. Not that I wouldn't have a good time, but in light of the lack of connections, and not wanting to do the *I DON'T KNOW ANYONE, LET ME CLING TO YOU* thing... the cost might be prohibitive? (But the potential for going to a Blackhawks game! DO WANT!)

Sigh. I'm just going back and forth, thinking aloud now. Why is this so difficult!

Anyway, back to the point: I'm not going to Otakon this year. Neither are Liz or Juliet. And probably not Maryann either, come to think of it. What is up with that?!

SO SAD. ;_;

So one of the rooms is taken. Does anyone need the other?

I'm going to cancel the other some time this weekend.

Details here:
http://koyasunomiko.livejournal.com/309948.html

Hello all.

I've got 2 rooms for Otakon that I don't need. Info below. Comment or email me if you're interested. Please pass this along to anyone who might be interested. If no one takes these off my hands by the end of June, I'm going to cancel them.

Radisson Lord Baltimore Hotel
Check In: Thursday, July 16 2009
Check Out: Sunday, July 19 2009
Rate: $149/night + taxes
2 ROOMS, each with 2 double beds, no smoking

While this wasn't my most favorite Otakon, it was pretty darn enjoyable. Cosplay this year was much more relaxed, and while I missed the energy and chaos of our more eye-catching cosplay, I also enjoyed feeling like I could change out of costume earlier than I normally would. It certainly allowed me more time to just hang out with everyone this year. Yeah, it seemed like this year was hang-out con. Not that I don't hang out every year, but it was certainly more concentrated this year.



Here's a reference pic: http://www.naruto-world.com/animebook/naruto-animebook-04.jpg

( THURSDAY )

( FRIDAY )

( SATURDAY )

KATIE & KELLY! GUYS! I was just thinking we should really hang out again and I mentioned as much to Judy and then she reminded me that you'd be coming down for NYAF! Awesome! =D Are you guys staying with us?

( SUNDAY )

All in all, an excellent weekend of hanging out. Not so much for cosplay, though I did enjoy our cosplay thoroughly. I think we all looked very good, actually. Next year I'd like to go back to video game cosplay, though.

More pics of us from Refractor Productions can be found here. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and you can see our set. Haha, in the close-up one, you can kind of see my tattoo inside my kimono. ^^;

PIC SPAM NEXT POST! YAYE~!

Cake is going to be playing at the Starland Ballroom!!!!

Wednesday, October 1st
7:00pm
$31.50 GA
tickets

I want to go SO BAD! And it's relatively cheap! But it's at Starland, which means it's a PAIN to get to from the city by mass transit and it's on a weekday, to boot. ;_; I've never seen Cake before live, and I'd really like to, dammit!

It's times like these I really wish I had a car.


In other news, Zoltan confirmed that he & Jon would both be joining us, so yaye~ more people in the room. =D I wonder what their experience will be like, with a 25,000-people con as their first. It's actually really difficult for me to imagine what it's like coming to cons for the first time nowadays since it's been so long since I started attending these... and since it's been so long since I've actually done anything but cosplay and hang out.

I passed out last night at midnight -- on the floor, no less -- after sewing the collar onto Liz's kimono. Tonight I will be making up for it by most likely not sleeping until I get on the greyhound tomorrow morning. Ah, crunch time. >_<;

So this year's Otakon was crazy and fun and disappointing. It was really awesome to be able to see Seki Tomokazu! And I was able to have him sign that hard-to-find Weiß photobook that I have. Which was so exciting! I was unbelievably lucky to have done all those things. I have to thank Judy's coworker Manny for getting such a sweet spot on the line, and for letting me take his place! =D

Unfortunately, Seki's Q&A and autograph sessions, on both days, were scheduled at the SAME TIME as the Kingdom Hearts photoshoots! T_T It was so mean! So we missed the KH photoshoot for Friday, which was probably the better one. And even though we went to the Saturday shoot, we only stayed for like 15 minutes because it was totally lame. So that really sucked. I don't quite regret staying at Seki's Q&A session instead of going to the Friday shoot, but I almost do. Dammit.

( photos of Seki )

Anyway, besides that I think we really didn't go to any panels or anything. We stopped into a video room for like 2 minutes because it was semi-dark in there and we were glowing! ^^; We basically did what we normally do -- walk around and get stopped every few minutes for photos. =D

I think our costumes were pretty good considering we really only started working on them 2 weeks before the con. I didn't feel as satisfied by them as I think we might have had we started a bit earlier. But they worked out well. And in some respects, maybe even better than they would have, since we had Judy working with us at the hotel on Thursday night -- she has amazing paint-mixing powers, srsly! If I ever need to paint anything for costumes again I know who to call.

( Kingdom Hearts II: Space Paranoids (Tron) cosplay )

I didn't get to hang out with sharona1x2 or dc_logan like last year, but at least we bumped into them, so I got to chat for a few minutes. <3 And I know that jana1x2x1 was there, but I didn't get to see her at all. =(

Also, Friday hijinks were fun. We left a little... present in the boys' bathroom. (We had ajoining rooms in our hotel, and it was basically split into the boys' room and the girls' room.) ^^ Don't worry, btw, it's strawberry syrup. Really. ^_~

( viewer discretion advised )

I'm skipping over lots here, but on the bus ride home we got to watch Yoshi's Sailor Moon DVD! The perfect ending to an awesome con.



Selected pics uploaded here. You can also look at Judy's set here.

We got somewhat split up on buses to Baltimore this year, due to being early, being late, being on time.... yes, I suppose that's somewhat vague, but I won't go into specifics.

The first people we ran into when we got to the hotel were Sharon, DC, and Jay! How lucky! It was really nice to see them then, especially since we didn't end up seeing them until late on Saturday, and only for a short time.

We got a slightly smaller room at the Radisson this year than previous years, which was unfortunate. Thursday was sunny and hot and since we waited for a couple of hours on the pre-reg line in the blazing sun, I got a bit of a tan. (Not that you could tell under my white facepaint cosplay...)

I don't think we did a whole lot of con stuff. I know I missed a couple of panels I had wanted to go to. Friday we got to the BCC kind of late, spent a while having our pictures taken... walked across the BCC, spent some more time having our pictures taken... wanted to go eat, but we had to go back to the fountain area to make the KH photo shoot. Which actually kind of sucked, so we left to go to the Hall Costume contest... waited for hours, finally ate, waited for another hour, went to have our pictures taken at the Photo Suite, waited another half an hour, and finally got judged. Which was *squee* (see previous post).

Also at some point on Friday we bumped into that cool Riku and Anti-Sora whom I'd met at AnimeNEXT (the Riku was cosplaying Namine) and took a few photos together. I actually spoke up and said that I'd met them at AN, and recalled to the Anti-Sora that I'd asked him about where to get the zentai suits he used (and which we actually ended up using too), and they actually remembered me, LOL.

Saturday was much the same except we actually made it to the cosplay panel we wanted to go to. Maryann took very helpful notes, and I hope we can actually use them to make something awesome for next year. Liz went into the wig panel briefly, but it seems they were going reeeeallly slowly, so she didn't stay for long. We went over to the other KH photo shoot (which sucked more), but we got to see Chris, Carrie and Cloud (Greg, whom I'd also met at AN and said hi again). We went to eat, then touch up our makeup, then... I can't quite remember. Oh yes! Dealer's Room! We FINALLY got to the dealer's room. Amazingly enough, I bought one $4 manga on my first trip to the dealer's room when I usually spend like $60 in that first shot. There were a few things that I was considering, but nothing really caught my eye except those $30 Nana wallets (which I didn't end up getting anyway).

We changed out of our KH2 outfits and into our FMA outfits for a few hours on Saturday night, which is when I bumped into sharona1x2, dc_logan, devilkitty0, klingonpoo, yaoichick, and a few others as well. It was nice seeing everyone again!

Sunday we took another turn around the dealer's room and I ended up spending about $80... a mild year for me. Not the least I've spent at a con, but certainly not much more than that. I got a cute moogle shirt, Mezzoforte, KITE, and Alien Nine DVDs. (I sooo can't wait to see A9 -- I really loved it!) I finally picked up the only volume of the SDK manga I was missing, so I am now completely caught up, and a random volume of the Kare Kano manga which I have a couple of volumes of, but am trying to collect and complete. I also got a laptop bag from Myth -- it's one of those sling-shoulder backpack deals, which I hope will work better for me than a one-shoulder messenger bag 'cause my laptop is too heavy to carry on just one shoulder for more than an hour. I also got a small FMA poster for free, signed by two of the American voice actors (whom I'll never actually hear, but whatever -- the poster was really smallish and cute, which is what I wanted).

Oh! Maryann was so sweet -- she bought me a Brom calendar for 2007! She got me one for 2006, which is up on my wall and which I love to look at! She says it's also to make up for the "lame pen gift" she got me for my birthday, and it definitely does that. <3

Overall, this was a weird con experience. I didn't get to hang out with old friends so much, which was unfortunate. But I got to say hi to some new friends I made earlier this year at AnimeNEXT and that really made me really happy.

A day and a half to go and we have a lot of little things left to do for our costumes. Most are things that really have to be done to make the costumes complete, so I'm really nervous about this. I keep going between extreme excitement because our costumes are almost finished and dread because our costumes are almost finished.

I always say we should start working on the costumes earlier, but we never do.

Arrrghlasjdflasj!

I have a feeling we're going to be up all night tomorrow finishing up all the details (which isn't exactly unusual for our con-going experience). I really wish I could just take tomorrow off, but I can't.

OMG, wish us luck.

*is scared*

(1) NIN is playing the Friday night of AnimeNEXT at the PNC Bank Arts Center. Oh, what shall I do? Go? Can I afford it? Err, money/planning/decisions.

(2a) OMG, MUCC is playing Otakon.
(2b) We should probably buy bus tickets sometime soon, right?
(2c) Looks like our cosplay group is narrowed down to me, Maryann, Liz, and Juliet cosplaying the grey-scale versions of Sora, Donald & Goofy from the Timeless River world, with Juliet cosplaying Hayner to match up with Angelica's Roxas (except that I think Angelica isn't cosplaying the casual version of Roxas, so it may not quite match) and possibly Lene as Axel. The four of us will also be cosplaying 4 of the homunculi from FMA: Liz and I will be Lust and Gluttony, Maryann will be either Envy or Sloth, and Juliet will be Greed. ♥

(3) For anyone who is going to Ycon, the $40 pre-reg ends May 31st, so you should send in your registration payment by that date. The next tier is $50 until Sept 20th, and $60 at-door.

Angelica, I'd appreciate it if you could find out from your mom if she can get me those opaque, white contact lenses, and how much a pair would be. Sankyuu~

So far, we have 8 definites: koyasunomiko, koyappi, metallicapixie, fiinedeiopeia, louiex, inbredchocobo, yoshiinjapan, mailliwkuraido.

If you're on this list and you are NOT definitely sure you're going to Otakon 2006, please comment and let me know.
If you're on this list and you ARE definitely going, please comment and let me know.
If you're on this list and you are NOT pre-registered, go give them your money NOW.

The possibles: mikomishiranai, Jerry, Joshypoo, and Indira.

Right now I have a reservation at the Radisson and another at the Wyndham.

If you are the friend of one of these possibles, you MUST get in contact with them and find out if they're definitely going or not. Especially since 3 out of 4 are not on LJ. And please let me know. If there aren't enough people for the 2nd room reservation, I WILL cancel it IN JULY, because I will NOT chance getting charged a $475 late cancellation fee!

Also, as much as I'd like to have the cost of the room go down to $50 per person, I do NOT want to chance being thrown out of the hotel because we have too many people in the room, and they find out because we're too loud/rowdy/etc.! I'm not comfortable with the idea of more than 8 in the room, and the more I think about it, the more willing I am to be a BITCH to make sure that there AREN'T more than 8 people in the room.

If all 12 people actually go (it's too bad Otakon doesn't have group registration rates anymore, dammit) then we can split up into the guys' and girls' respective hotel rooms. The guys can have the cheaper Wyndham room as it has just one Queen-size bed. Luckily, the Wyndham has good-sized rooms anyway. If this works out and you need additional roomies to lower the cost of the room, let me know and Angelica or I would be happy to help you find additional roommates.

If anyone reading this would like to claim a spot for the 2nd room, please let me know!

[/psa]