Phoenix Comicon 2010: CON REPORT
Wooooo~ This past weekend was the 2010 Phoenix Comicon, and despite a lot of stress, chaos, and animosity towards Matt the con director, I did have a lot of fun spending time with my friends. :3
Thursday:
I woke up early and got right to work finishing my cosplays and packing up for the weekend. I was done with all of that around 3:30pm and then was kidnapped my Emma and headed to her place around 4:00pm. I got to meet her and Terri's friends from back east; Maria, Ray, and Jeff. We all derped around for a little while, working on costumes a bit, and then changed to go to the convention. Emma and Jeff drove to Chandler to drop Maria and Ray off at another person's house and Terri, Lori, and I went to the convention. At least I think this is what happened... I'm not sure anymore. Derp. D:
Once at the convention, I started seeing people I knew. I was informed by Cheryl and Mei that there had been online registration for the masquerade, even though I had searched through the forums and could never find any, and since I we didn't fill submit that then we were going to have to sign up right before day off the event. This irritated me so much I was about to break my foot off in someone's ass, but then I was told that "Oh-em-gee-zee, Kyle and Kroos are here" and so I had to follow a group of people to the Hyatt down the street to meet them and help unload rave decorations. We sat in the lobby for like an hour waiting for Kyle to get off the phone and tell us what to do. Eventually we unloaded the car, and moved all of the decorations to the ballroom. I then when back to the convention center to get my volunteer badge. I feel bad taking it now though, because I really didn't help that much. :/ Oh well. We got back to Emma and Terri's house pretty late, I ate a bagel (LIKE A BOSS) and then I went to sleep to prepare for the massive amounts of AWESOME that were in store for the next day.
Friday:
Woke up around 8-9am, ate another bagel (LIKE A BOSS), put my cosplay on, played hairdresser with Maria's Fran wig, and then left for the convention with Emma and Jeff. We were all cosplaying characters from Katekyo Hitman Reborn in orange prison jumpsuits splattered with white paint. After a short detour, because we had started walking in the wrong direction, and hen we had to drop off stuff in a hotel room, we arrived at the convention center and began to block up the hallway. Seriously.. we had 14 people in orange jumpsuits, looking awesome, and boy did we direct a lot of attention from people with cameras. We had to go outside to take pictures because there were so many of us:
Tsuna: Cheryl
Gokudera: Me
Yamamoto: Kyle
Ryohei: Mei
Hibari: Amber
Lambo: Tiffany
Mukuro: Emma
Chrome: Allyson
Squalo: Jeff
Fran: Maria
Gamma: Ray
Byakuran: Meghann
Spanner: Tori
Shoichi: Terri
Dino: Kyuu (She was late, but eventually made it!)
I was so so SO happy that we got this group together. It started with a random thought last February at Matsuri when Amber, Tiffany, Cheryl, and I were cosplaying Reborn characters for the first time together. I'm amazed that we got as many people as we did involved, and I really hope to do a group like this again. MORE PICTURES!!
After loitering on the stairs and posing with some famous cars, we headed over to the Hyatt since it looked nice in there:
I ate half of a bagel sandwich (LIKE A BOSS) for lunch, and then a bunch of us headed back over to the con center to check out their dealers hall. It was HUGE this year... there was a lot of stuff but not really anything that interested me much or was within my price range. I ended up only getting a little bell cellphone charm from a gatcha machine in there. A whole dolla! 8O
I mostly just hung out with people all afternoon. A bunch of us went to go see Spence and Allyson in the maid cafe. A few people (including myself) didn't want to have to pay the $10 to actually enjoy the cafe, so we just sat there and took up space and watched people dance around for like, an hour. Allyson was a bawwwdorable ganguro maid and Spence was a butler version of England. They danced to "Mune Mune Kyun" for us.. but something was wrong with the speakers and instead of a chorus of lolis singing, a deep man voice somewhat like that of what I imagine Timcampy's to sound like was all that we could hear. Hilarious. XD
Around 5pm I headed back to the hotel room that Cheryl, Mei, Tsubame, Allyson, and her mom where all staying in. Lars and I needed to change for the JFashion show. We ran into Cheryl and Mei while exiting the elevator, and I nearly didn't recognize them because they were all dressed up for the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball:
There were a lot of people in the hotel room when we got there, so it was like a little party. XD; I gave Lars a bunch of crap to go change into, and he left. Allyson, Spence, and I were all changing into our JFashion show outfits, and were trying to do it fast because the three of us plus Tori and Brandon were supposed to be running a cosplay panel shortly afterward. I had to go over to the Hyatt and make sure Lars knew how to put on everything I had given him (lol, it was like having a life-size barbie... err.. ken? idk.. I made him wear my clothes for the show). We headed over to the convention center together, and I ended up being a bit late for the panel I was supposed to be helping run.. which was rather awkward. I answered a few questions about wigs and crossplay, but left most of the talking to everyone else.
At 7pm Lars and I headed back over to the Hyatt for the fashion show. I was shocked to see that it was in a TINY room (compared to the other shows at past PCCs and Sabotens) and that the runway was really short with only three rows of seating on either side. Only 60 people were able to watch the show.. which kind of sucked because I think that only like.. two people I know actually got to get in there and see us. Oh well. We derped around backstage with Spence, Allyson, and Nyunyu and talked about old toys we had as kids and 90's cartoons. I'm guessing that they were short on time, because the end of the show was really rushed. Lars and I ended up getting a judges award for our outfits. I ended up keeping all of the prizes because not only were they really girly.. I came up with the idea for both outfits. :/
After the JFashion show we met up with Tori in the hallway. She and I, along with a lot of other people, were supposed to be helping with the setup for the circus rave that night at 9pm. The room the rave was supposed to be in was still being occupied by the "Labyrinth Masquerade Ball" at the time though. I talked to the volunteer girl at the door about rave setup and she said, "oh, that's not until 9:30" ... lolwhut. I told this to Kroostin and her mom when the two of them showed up and someone said something like, "oohh... Kyle is gonna be PISSED". We all headed to the hallways behind the ballrooms and found s a few of the other rave volunteers blowing up balloons. We got right to work helping out with that, and eventually Kyle and a bunch of other volunteers showed up. The "masquerade ball" people finally got their asses out of the room and rave setup started at about 9:45-9:50. D: Setup was mostly just a lot of people standing around not knowing what to do, and looking confused. Because of the time, not all of the decorations were able to be set up, which really sucked because a lot of time and money had been put into them. I also felt really bad for Kyle at this time because he was running around the room like a chicken with his head cut off. D: Just seeing that made me never ever want to be a staff member for a convention. The decorations that did get set up looked pretty cool though.. and so it wasn't all that bad. I loved some of the costumes that people had changed into for this as well! I wanted to change into a mime outfit but I didn't think that I would have had enough time between the JFashion show and the rave, so I didn't. Oh well.. I got pictures of some of my friends in their outfits:
I think the doors for the rave opened at about 10:30, and about bajillion people came streaming in. Stupid me was at the back of the room when this happened too, so I couldn't get to the front. Song from Cakeshop had a bunch of girls dressed up in cool circus outfits, and I love circus stuff and cool clothes, so I wanted pictures (especially of Song because holycrap her costume was beautiful). I couldn't get any though because where were so many people in the way. I gave up and retreated back to the back of the room. Then I head a bunch of balloons popping and I just about screamed at the people, "Knock it off you assholes! Do you know how long those things took to blow up?!" I didn't though. It was about this time that I realized that I was too tired and hungry and impatient and pissed off to be dealing with morons any more. I just left after that and Lars followed me (he had been being a duck all day long). I met up with Terri after this and we went back to the house. I ate some cereal, and she and I practiced our masquerade skit a few more times, then I went to sleep.
Saturday:
I woke up around 8-9am and made some apple-cinnamon toast, styled Terri's Nunally wig, sewed some buttons on my Road shirt, changed into Haruko Haruhara from FLCL, and possibly did some other things that I can't remember now. Terri was Nunally, Emma was Tyki, Jeff was himself, and Maria and Ray were the Venture Brothers. lol, I don't even watch that show, but I thought that their costumes were awesome. Terri and I left together and arrived at the convention a lot later than I had hoped to. We had to make a pit stop in the hotel room to drop off our masquerade costumes, but then headed to the convention after that. A large section of downtown was blocked off due to a rally of angry immigration bill protesters that morning. It was kind of interesting to see so many people.. I think about 30,000 or something showed up according to the news. They were shouting stuff I couldn't understand, and sounded really angry, so I wanted to avoid them. While making my way back to the convention center I saw another cosplayer guy who was also trying to avoid the rally. His reason: he had a very realistic looking sword and knife with him and there were a lot of cops standing around and he didn't want them asking any questions. I ended up walking with him to the con, and we took a huge detour to get around the rally, but he didn't seem like a creeper so I didn't care. I did care that I was wearing tight pleather pants though, and that it was in the high nineties that day. It was kinda funny though.. at some point a guy that was with a group of his friends yelled at me, "Hey, are you supposed to be Lady Gaga?!" and I just laughed at him and kept walking.
I got to the con and almost immediately I was stopped for pictures. Quite a few people told me that I was "the best Haruko cosplayer they had ever seen" or that they loved the show and were really happy to see someone cosplaying from it, which was flattering. I met up with Nicole and Lindsay, who was cosplaying Naota, and so even more people were like "OMGZ FLCL COSPLAYERS". Here are pictures of the two of us:
I was only able to stay dressed as Haruko for about two hours because I needed to change into Road Kamelot for the D.Gray-Man gathering at 3pm. It was a bit sad, because I really wanted to wear the costume more, but at the same time I was totally okay with changing because GOD DAMN, it was HOT. It's a bit gross to say, but when I was changing in the hotel room I had to literally peel those pants off because of how much I was sweating. Shockingly enough, I didn't dehydrate. D: Since Lindsay was cosplaying Naota, and Nicole (her girlfriend) had no cosplay to where that day, she changed into my Haruko cosplay when I changed into Road. She didn't wear the pleather pants though, because that would have been gross. It took me a while to iron my clothes, put them on, fix my wig, and have Tori do my makeup. I also helped Terri pin the zippers to her boots, and put the scar on her face. We ended up being a bit late to the D.Gray-Man gathering because we were running a bit slow. Oh well though.. we eventually made it. We took pictures in the Hyatt first, and then took the group down the street to a cool looking church for more photos:
HRBLOCK! HRBLOCK! HRBLOCK!
I wasn't in very many of the pictures because I was SUPER hungry.. and I forget that I complain outloud more than I should. I really ought to stop doing it, because I feel kind of bad when I'm like, "HOLY CRAAAAP I'M SO HUNGRY!!" and then someone gives me half of a sandwich. D: That's what Jeff did though.. gave me half of his bagel sandwich ('cause I gave him half of mine the day before XD). Oh, and Lori gave me some really tasty thing.. I don't know what it was, but it was tasty. I still felt bad taking their food though. I should be more aware of how much I complain. D:
Around 5 or so we ended the D.Gray-Man gathering, and headed back to the hotel room to make some last-minute adjustments to costumes before masquerade pre-judging. There was a mishap with Emma's costume that left her with a huge whole in her crotch. She had to safety-pin it shut or else risk letting the world know that Tkyi Mykk wears pink undies. (lol, sorry.. I just thought that incident was hilarious!)
We went to the Green Room with Cheryl, Mei, and Allyson for craftsmanship judging in the masquerade after that. We were in there for a few hours due to the staff being disorganized and because we the last few entries. It sucked for the people in the room because we had to sit in there for close to three hours in costume and we weren't supposed to leave to get food or anything. Horrible planning! D:
While we were in there being bored, we talked to people, made inappropriate jokes, played poker with ten cards, and took a lot of bad photos of each other:
Finally it was out turn to be judged. I thought it was funny that of the five judges, I knew two from CosplayZone and one from the Arizona Broadway Theatre (also, my boss from my internship at the theatre was in there). I was a bit shocked that the COSPLAY GUESTS were not the ones doing the judging though. More bad planning. DX
We finally got all lined up and walked from the Green Room to the area behind the stage of the masquerade around 8:30-8:45, even though the masquerade was supposed to have started at 8pm. :/
We had to line up in a hallway backstage, go on the stage and perform, and then go sit in the audience. This meant that the people in the end of the line (like us) didn't get to watch the other masquerade performances. EVEN MOAR BAD PLANNING. D<
Emma, Terri, and I performed our choreographed dance with DGM characters to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" with only a few accidental screw ups. Thankfully, most of the audience that I spoke to didn't even notice the places where we messed up, and the over reaction to our skit was very positive.
After about another 30-45minutes of waiting, the judges were ready to announce the winners. I really disliked the way that the contestants were judged during this event. It was unlike any other costume contest that I have ever been a part of. This time they had four craftsmanship judges and four performance judges, instead of having the same set of judges do both. The craftsmanship and performance judges were apparently not allowed to communicate with each other, so neither knew who the others had chosen to receive awards. Because of this, there were people winning two or three awards while other equally-deserving people were not rewarded for their efforts at all. There where supposed to be eight judges awards, the best of each division, and then the best in show. There ended up being NINE judges awards, as the group I was in was given the made-up award of "best performance". Anyone who's ever been to a convention masquerade before knows that the "best in show" award goes to the individual/group with the best craftsmanship and best performance, so that basically means that we won best in show. LOL. We won a green lightsaber, which Emma and I agreed belonged to Terri. She was the one that really made the skit, we were just the backup dancers.
Allen Walker-Gaga poses with his new disco stick.
Victory photobomb! >D
Now don't get me wrong there. I'm no no way angry because my group didn't technically win the "best in show" award. I'm not being a sore loser. I'm angry because in every other masquerade and costume contest I've been watched, competed in, and been a part of the judges are sure not to award a single person or group more than once so that way more people can be awarded for their efforts. It's not fair to see one person take three main awards home while other people who were equally eligible for one of those awards go home empty-handed. It just creates hard-feelings and makes the judges seem biased. There were a lot of great costumes entered in the contest this year, and I'm really sad to see that only a few of them were recognized for the hard work that they did.
FUCK YOU COMICON MASQUERADE. FUCK YOU AND YOUR BAD JUDGMENT AND POOR ORGANIZATION.
Oh, and for the record: I'm entering as a master division from now on. Err.. for Arizona contests that is.
After the masquerade there were a lot of people left going "wtf" and I assume a lot of disappointed entrants. There is nothing that can be done now though because it's all in the past. The most I can do is leave an angry post in the feedback section of the forums. :/
We went back to Emma and Terri's after the masquerade was over, watched some of the skits that had been recorded, complained about what had happened, and thought of creative ways to kill people. Maria was so sick of eating bagels (LIKE A BOSS) all weekend that she made some delicious egg-tomato-bacon-cheese with rice meal for everyone to eat. I went to sleep shortly after because I was really tired, but I some people stayed up longer working on costumes and stuff. Or maybe it was just her? Idk... D:
Sunday:
The last day of the convention! O:
I ate some toast and a luna bar for breakfast, got dressed in all of Mio except for the wig, packed up my stuff, styled Emma's TYL-Belphegor wig. She, Maria, and Jeff were doing TYL- Bel, Fran, and Squalo, while Ray was Spanner, and Terri was Allen Walkter-Gaga again. I drove with Terri first to my house (to drop off my belongings) and then to the convention, because they would all be going to the Grand Canyon that afternoon. I was hoping that Mari, Melissa, Spence, and I could do K-ON cosplays in the morning and then whatever else in the afternoon... but apparently the Axis Powers Hetalia meetup was that morning and so Mari and I ended up waiting all day for Melissa and Spence to change. Melissa joined us as Ritsu for the K-ON cosplays around 3pm, but it took Spence until after 5pm to get Tsumugi ready because she couldn't find her gloves and her wig was not behaving well.
Me and Mari as Mio and Yui
I really didn't do much this day. I learned that when you cosplay from a moe series, a lot of creepy fanboys want to take pictures not only OF you, but WITH you too. D: Umm.. I mostly sat in the "dining hall" area on the floor with a bunch of my friends all afternoon and talked about silly things and took a lot of stupid pictures of eachother:
Fran: "What the fuck is this?"
Allen: "HRBLOCK'D!"
Captain Kidd-Gaga!! D:
Amber and Tiffany got a hold of my camera and graced it's lens with some on their sexiest faces:
PHOTOBOMBED. >D (lol, we didn't know that guy)
GROUP PHOTO TIEMS!!
So yeah.. after a long while of waiting, the K-ON group was finally together. Spence was unhappy with her wig and couldn't style it correctly without putting it on something... so we volunteered Lars to be a wig head:
Then he did this:
After the wig was styled, Tsubame took some pictures of our group.
It was about time to leave after this, so Cheryl, Lars, and I went with Tsubmae to get some dinner. Cheryl wasn't hungry though, and she was just tired and wanted to go home.. then there was some issues with her bag of toiletries being put into the wrong car (it was put into Allyson's and she was already on her way home to Sierra Vista). Se stopped at a CVS, Cheryl bought a new toothpaste and toothbrush, and then Tsubame took her home. We still wanted food though, and Lars had to go back to the hotel that night, so we went back to downtown Phoenix. We talked about weird stuff for a while. Lars fell asleep. Tsubame wanted to twitter that she had a sleeping Hibari in her car, and so we took a picture:
We went to this Chinese place for dinner called Sing High Chop Suey House or something.. which looked kind of sketchy to me, but HOLYCRAP did they have good food! 8D After dinner we dropped Lars of at the Hyatt, and then went to Tasu and Ivy's house to check on their kitties (since they went to Fanime). Then I went home and dumped all my stuff on the ground and slept for like, twelve hours. XD
It was weird waking up and not having any kind of cosplay stuff to do. I was like, "Oh hey, I have all afternoon to work on.... wait.. no, it's all done. I don't have anything to do now".
Overall, it was a really fun weekend. I wish I had gone to more events, like the BJD Bazaar, Steampunk Fashion Show, Cosplay Chess, and a few panels though. It was nice just being able to hang out with my friends all weekend and wear new costumes though. :3
And I'm going to do this again next weekend at Anime Kaigi!!! 8D
I'll be posting more photos in this journal when I find them. I really didn't take a whole lot myself, so I'm relying on other people for photos. XD;;
Thursday:
I woke up early and got right to work finishing my cosplays and packing up for the weekend. I was done with all of that around 3:30pm and then was kidnapped my Emma and headed to her place around 4:00pm. I got to meet her and Terri's friends from back east; Maria, Ray, and Jeff. We all derped around for a little while, working on costumes a bit, and then changed to go to the convention. Emma and Jeff drove to Chandler to drop Maria and Ray off at another person's house and Terri, Lori, and I went to the convention. At least I think this is what happened... I'm not sure anymore. Derp. D:
Once at the convention, I started seeing people I knew. I was informed by Cheryl and Mei that there had been online registration for the masquerade, even though I had searched through the forums and could never find any, and since I we didn't fill submit that then we were going to have to sign up right before day off the event. This irritated me so much I was about to break my foot off in someone's ass, but then I was told that "Oh-em-gee-zee, Kyle and Kroos are here" and so I had to follow a group of people to the Hyatt down the street to meet them and help unload rave decorations. We sat in the lobby for like an hour waiting for Kyle to get off the phone and tell us what to do. Eventually we unloaded the car, and moved all of the decorations to the ballroom. I then when back to the convention center to get my volunteer badge. I feel bad taking it now though, because I really didn't help that much. :/ Oh well. We got back to Emma and Terri's house pretty late, I ate a bagel (LIKE A BOSS) and then I went to sleep to prepare for the massive amounts of AWESOME that were in store for the next day.
Friday:
Woke up around 8-9am, ate another bagel (LIKE A BOSS), put my cosplay on, played hairdresser with Maria's Fran wig, and then left for the convention with Emma and Jeff. We were all cosplaying characters from Katekyo Hitman Reborn in orange prison jumpsuits splattered with white paint. After a short detour, because we had started walking in the wrong direction, and hen we had to drop off stuff in a hotel room, we arrived at the convention center and began to block up the hallway. Seriously.. we had 14 people in orange jumpsuits, looking awesome, and boy did we direct a lot of attention from people with cameras. We had to go outside to take pictures because there were so many of us:
Tsuna: Cheryl
Gokudera: Me
Yamamoto: Kyle
Ryohei: Mei
Hibari: Amber
Lambo: Tiffany
Mukuro: Emma
Chrome: Allyson
Squalo: Jeff
Fran: Maria
Gamma: Ray
Byakuran: Meghann
Spanner: Tori
Shoichi: Terri
Dino: Kyuu (She was late, but eventually made it!)
I was so so SO happy that we got this group together. It started with a random thought last February at Matsuri when Amber, Tiffany, Cheryl, and I were cosplaying Reborn characters for the first time together. I'm amazed that we got as many people as we did involved, and I really hope to do a group like this again. MORE PICTURES!!
After loitering on the stairs and posing with some famous cars, we headed over to the Hyatt since it looked nice in there:
I ate half of a bagel sandwich (LIKE A BOSS) for lunch, and then a bunch of us headed back over to the con center to check out their dealers hall. It was HUGE this year... there was a lot of stuff but not really anything that interested me much or was within my price range. I ended up only getting a little bell cellphone charm from a gatcha machine in there. A whole dolla! 8O
I mostly just hung out with people all afternoon. A bunch of us went to go see Spence and Allyson in the maid cafe. A few people (including myself) didn't want to have to pay the $10 to actually enjoy the cafe, so we just sat there and took up space and watched people dance around for like, an hour. Allyson was a bawwwdorable ganguro maid and Spence was a butler version of England. They danced to "Mune Mune Kyun" for us.. but something was wrong with the speakers and instead of a chorus of lolis singing, a deep man voice somewhat like that of what I imagine Timcampy's to sound like was all that we could hear. Hilarious. XD
Around 5pm I headed back to the hotel room that Cheryl, Mei, Tsubame, Allyson, and her mom where all staying in. Lars and I needed to change for the JFashion show. We ran into Cheryl and Mei while exiting the elevator, and I nearly didn't recognize them because they were all dressed up for the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball:
There were a lot of people in the hotel room when we got there, so it was like a little party. XD; I gave Lars a bunch of crap to go change into, and he left. Allyson, Spence, and I were all changing into our JFashion show outfits, and were trying to do it fast because the three of us plus Tori and Brandon were supposed to be running a cosplay panel shortly afterward. I had to go over to the Hyatt and make sure Lars knew how to put on everything I had given him (lol, it was like having a life-size barbie... err.. ken? idk.. I made him wear my clothes for the show). We headed over to the convention center together, and I ended up being a bit late for the panel I was supposed to be helping run.. which was rather awkward. I answered a few questions about wigs and crossplay, but left most of the talking to everyone else.
At 7pm Lars and I headed back over to the Hyatt for the fashion show. I was shocked to see that it was in a TINY room (compared to the other shows at past PCCs and Sabotens) and that the runway was really short with only three rows of seating on either side. Only 60 people were able to watch the show.. which kind of sucked because I think that only like.. two people I know actually got to get in there and see us. Oh well. We derped around backstage with Spence, Allyson, and Nyunyu and talked about old toys we had as kids and 90's cartoons. I'm guessing that they were short on time, because the end of the show was really rushed. Lars and I ended up getting a judges award for our outfits. I ended up keeping all of the prizes because not only were they really girly.. I came up with the idea for both outfits. :/
After the JFashion show we met up with Tori in the hallway. She and I, along with a lot of other people, were supposed to be helping with the setup for the circus rave that night at 9pm. The room the rave was supposed to be in was still being occupied by the "Labyrinth Masquerade Ball" at the time though. I talked to the volunteer girl at the door about rave setup and she said, "oh, that's not until 9:30" ... lolwhut. I told this to Kroostin and her mom when the two of them showed up and someone said something like, "oohh... Kyle is gonna be PISSED". We all headed to the hallways behind the ballrooms and found s a few of the other rave volunteers blowing up balloons. We got right to work helping out with that, and eventually Kyle and a bunch of other volunteers showed up. The "masquerade ball" people finally got their asses out of the room and rave setup started at about 9:45-9:50. D: Setup was mostly just a lot of people standing around not knowing what to do, and looking confused. Because of the time, not all of the decorations were able to be set up, which really sucked because a lot of time and money had been put into them. I also felt really bad for Kyle at this time because he was running around the room like a chicken with his head cut off. D: Just seeing that made me never ever want to be a staff member for a convention. The decorations that did get set up looked pretty cool though.. and so it wasn't all that bad. I loved some of the costumes that people had changed into for this as well! I wanted to change into a mime outfit but I didn't think that I would have had enough time between the JFashion show and the rave, so I didn't. Oh well.. I got pictures of some of my friends in their outfits:
I think the doors for the rave opened at about 10:30, and about bajillion people came streaming in. Stupid me was at the back of the room when this happened too, so I couldn't get to the front. Song from Cakeshop had a bunch of girls dressed up in cool circus outfits, and I love circus stuff and cool clothes, so I wanted pictures (especially of Song because holycrap her costume was beautiful). I couldn't get any though because where were so many people in the way. I gave up and retreated back to the back of the room. Then I head a bunch of balloons popping and I just about screamed at the people, "Knock it off you assholes! Do you know how long those things took to blow up?!" I didn't though. It was about this time that I realized that I was too tired and hungry and impatient and pissed off to be dealing with morons any more. I just left after that and Lars followed me (he had been being a duck all day long). I met up with Terri after this and we went back to the house. I ate some cereal, and she and I practiced our masquerade skit a few more times, then I went to sleep.
Saturday:
I woke up around 8-9am and made some apple-cinnamon toast, styled Terri's Nunally wig, sewed some buttons on my Road shirt, changed into Haruko Haruhara from FLCL, and possibly did some other things that I can't remember now. Terri was Nunally, Emma was Tyki, Jeff was himself, and Maria and Ray were the Venture Brothers. lol, I don't even watch that show, but I thought that their costumes were awesome. Terri and I left together and arrived at the convention a lot later than I had hoped to. We had to make a pit stop in the hotel room to drop off our masquerade costumes, but then headed to the convention after that. A large section of downtown was blocked off due to a rally of angry immigration bill protesters that morning. It was kind of interesting to see so many people.. I think about 30,000 or something showed up according to the news. They were shouting stuff I couldn't understand, and sounded really angry, so I wanted to avoid them. While making my way back to the convention center I saw another cosplayer guy who was also trying to avoid the rally. His reason: he had a very realistic looking sword and knife with him and there were a lot of cops standing around and he didn't want them asking any questions. I ended up walking with him to the con, and we took a huge detour to get around the rally, but he didn't seem like a creeper so I didn't care. I did care that I was wearing tight pleather pants though, and that it was in the high nineties that day. It was kinda funny though.. at some point a guy that was with a group of his friends yelled at me, "Hey, are you supposed to be Lady Gaga?!" and I just laughed at him and kept walking.
I got to the con and almost immediately I was stopped for pictures. Quite a few people told me that I was "the best Haruko cosplayer they had ever seen" or that they loved the show and were really happy to see someone cosplaying from it, which was flattering. I met up with Nicole and Lindsay, who was cosplaying Naota, and so even more people were like "OMGZ FLCL COSPLAYERS". Here are pictures of the two of us:
I was only able to stay dressed as Haruko for about two hours because I needed to change into Road Kamelot for the D.Gray-Man gathering at 3pm. It was a bit sad, because I really wanted to wear the costume more, but at the same time I was totally okay with changing because GOD DAMN, it was HOT. It's a bit gross to say, but when I was changing in the hotel room I had to literally peel those pants off because of how much I was sweating. Shockingly enough, I didn't dehydrate. D: Since Lindsay was cosplaying Naota, and Nicole (her girlfriend) had no cosplay to where that day, she changed into my Haruko cosplay when I changed into Road. She didn't wear the pleather pants though, because that would have been gross. It took me a while to iron my clothes, put them on, fix my wig, and have Tori do my makeup. I also helped Terri pin the zippers to her boots, and put the scar on her face. We ended up being a bit late to the D.Gray-Man gathering because we were running a bit slow. Oh well though.. we eventually made it. We took pictures in the Hyatt first, and then took the group down the street to a cool looking church for more photos:
HRBLOCK! HRBLOCK! HRBLOCK!
I wasn't in very many of the pictures because I was SUPER hungry.. and I forget that I complain outloud more than I should. I really ought to stop doing it, because I feel kind of bad when I'm like, "HOLY CRAAAAP I'M SO HUNGRY!!" and then someone gives me half of a sandwich. D: That's what Jeff did though.. gave me half of his bagel sandwich ('cause I gave him half of mine the day before XD). Oh, and Lori gave me some really tasty thing.. I don't know what it was, but it was tasty. I still felt bad taking their food though. I should be more aware of how much I complain. D:
Around 5 or so we ended the D.Gray-Man gathering, and headed back to the hotel room to make some last-minute adjustments to costumes before masquerade pre-judging. There was a mishap with Emma's costume that left her with a huge whole in her crotch. She had to safety-pin it shut or else risk letting the world know that Tkyi Mykk wears pink undies. (lol, sorry.. I just thought that incident was hilarious!)
We went to the Green Room with Cheryl, Mei, and Allyson for craftsmanship judging in the masquerade after that. We were in there for a few hours due to the staff being disorganized and because we the last few entries. It sucked for the people in the room because we had to sit in there for close to three hours in costume and we weren't supposed to leave to get food or anything. Horrible planning! D:
While we were in there being bored, we talked to people, made inappropriate jokes, played poker with ten cards, and took a lot of bad photos of each other:
Finally it was out turn to be judged. I thought it was funny that of the five judges, I knew two from CosplayZone and one from the Arizona Broadway Theatre (also, my boss from my internship at the theatre was in there). I was a bit shocked that the COSPLAY GUESTS were not the ones doing the judging though. More bad planning. DX
We finally got all lined up and walked from the Green Room to the area behind the stage of the masquerade around 8:30-8:45, even though the masquerade was supposed to have started at 8pm. :/
We had to line up in a hallway backstage, go on the stage and perform, and then go sit in the audience. This meant that the people in the end of the line (like us) didn't get to watch the other masquerade performances. EVEN MOAR BAD PLANNING. D<
Emma, Terri, and I performed our choreographed dance with DGM characters to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" with only a few accidental screw ups. Thankfully, most of the audience that I spoke to didn't even notice the places where we messed up, and the over reaction to our skit was very positive.
After about another 30-45minutes of waiting, the judges were ready to announce the winners. I really disliked the way that the contestants were judged during this event. It was unlike any other costume contest that I have ever been a part of. This time they had four craftsmanship judges and four performance judges, instead of having the same set of judges do both. The craftsmanship and performance judges were apparently not allowed to communicate with each other, so neither knew who the others had chosen to receive awards. Because of this, there were people winning two or three awards while other equally-deserving people were not rewarded for their efforts at all. There where supposed to be eight judges awards, the best of each division, and then the best in show. There ended up being NINE judges awards, as the group I was in was given the made-up award of "best performance". Anyone who's ever been to a convention masquerade before knows that the "best in show" award goes to the individual/group with the best craftsmanship and best performance, so that basically means that we won best in show. LOL. We won a green lightsaber, which Emma and I agreed belonged to Terri. She was the one that really made the skit, we were just the backup dancers.
Allen Walker-Gaga poses with his new disco stick.
Victory photobomb! >D
Now don't get me wrong there. I'm no no way angry because my group didn't technically win the "best in show" award. I'm not being a sore loser. I'm angry because in every other masquerade and costume contest I've been watched, competed in, and been a part of the judges are sure not to award a single person or group more than once so that way more people can be awarded for their efforts. It's not fair to see one person take three main awards home while other people who were equally eligible for one of those awards go home empty-handed. It just creates hard-feelings and makes the judges seem biased. There were a lot of great costumes entered in the contest this year, and I'm really sad to see that only a few of them were recognized for the hard work that they did.
FUCK YOU COMICON MASQUERADE. FUCK YOU AND YOUR BAD JUDGMENT AND POOR ORGANIZATION.
Oh, and for the record: I'm entering as a master division from now on. Err.. for Arizona contests that is.
After the masquerade there were a lot of people left going "wtf" and I assume a lot of disappointed entrants. There is nothing that can be done now though because it's all in the past. The most I can do is leave an angry post in the feedback section of the forums. :/
We went back to Emma and Terri's after the masquerade was over, watched some of the skits that had been recorded, complained about what had happened, and thought of creative ways to kill people. Maria was so sick of eating bagels (LIKE A BOSS) all weekend that she made some delicious egg-tomato-bacon-cheese with rice meal for everyone to eat. I went to sleep shortly after because I was really tired, but I some people stayed up longer working on costumes and stuff. Or maybe it was just her? Idk... D:
Sunday:
The last day of the convention! O:
I ate some toast and a luna bar for breakfast, got dressed in all of Mio except for the wig, packed up my stuff, styled Emma's TYL-Belphegor wig. She, Maria, and Jeff were doing TYL- Bel, Fran, and Squalo, while Ray was Spanner, and Terri was Allen Walkter-Gaga again. I drove with Terri first to my house (to drop off my belongings) and then to the convention, because they would all be going to the Grand Canyon that afternoon. I was hoping that Mari, Melissa, Spence, and I could do K-ON cosplays in the morning and then whatever else in the afternoon... but apparently the Axis Powers Hetalia meetup was that morning and so Mari and I ended up waiting all day for Melissa and Spence to change. Melissa joined us as Ritsu for the K-ON cosplays around 3pm, but it took Spence until after 5pm to get Tsumugi ready because she couldn't find her gloves and her wig was not behaving well.
Me and Mari as Mio and Yui
I really didn't do much this day. I learned that when you cosplay from a moe series, a lot of creepy fanboys want to take pictures not only OF you, but WITH you too. D: Umm.. I mostly sat in the "dining hall" area on the floor with a bunch of my friends all afternoon and talked about silly things and took a lot of stupid pictures of eachother:
Fran: "What the fuck is this?"
Allen: "HRBLOCK'D!"
Captain Kidd-Gaga!! D:
Amber and Tiffany got a hold of my camera and graced it's lens with some on their sexiest faces:
PHOTOBOMBED. >D (lol, we didn't know that guy)
GROUP PHOTO TIEMS!!
So yeah.. after a long while of waiting, the K-ON group was finally together. Spence was unhappy with her wig and couldn't style it correctly without putting it on something... so we volunteered Lars to be a wig head:
Then he did this:
After the wig was styled, Tsubame took some pictures of our group.
It was about time to leave after this, so Cheryl, Lars, and I went with Tsubmae to get some dinner. Cheryl wasn't hungry though, and she was just tired and wanted to go home.. then there was some issues with her bag of toiletries being put into the wrong car (it was put into Allyson's and she was already on her way home to Sierra Vista). Se stopped at a CVS, Cheryl bought a new toothpaste and toothbrush, and then Tsubame took her home. We still wanted food though, and Lars had to go back to the hotel that night, so we went back to downtown Phoenix. We talked about weird stuff for a while. Lars fell asleep. Tsubame wanted to twitter that she had a sleeping Hibari in her car, and so we took a picture:
We went to this Chinese place for dinner called Sing High Chop Suey House or something.. which looked kind of sketchy to me, but HOLYCRAP did they have good food! 8D After dinner we dropped Lars of at the Hyatt, and then went to Tasu and Ivy's house to check on their kitties (since they went to Fanime). Then I went home and dumped all my stuff on the ground and slept for like, twelve hours. XD
It was weird waking up and not having any kind of cosplay stuff to do. I was like, "Oh hey, I have all afternoon to work on.... wait.. no, it's all done. I don't have anything to do now".
Overall, it was a really fun weekend. I wish I had gone to more events, like the BJD Bazaar, Steampunk Fashion Show, Cosplay Chess, and a few panels though. It was nice just being able to hang out with my friends all weekend and wear new costumes though. :3
And I'm going to do this again next weekend at Anime Kaigi!!! 8D
I'll be posting more photos in this journal when I find them. I really didn't take a whole lot myself, so I'm relying on other people for photos. XD;;