otakon, day 2

woke up around 9:30. Showered and changed and put on my Capture The Bear costume. Got to the con around 11am. I'd called Kevin, but he was doing costume stuff, so I pretty much went straight to Artists' Alley, figuring it was as good a time as any to wait for a Megatokyo autograph. (I think in the long run I was right. Earlier would have been better, but later would have just been awful). I waited in line mostly alone, though Christina stopped by to see me and so did Kevin at a point (with a Seung Mina cosplayer that I took a picture of). There were these guys behind me in line; one was a little younger than me and the other was like 14. He was there with his dad. He was wearing the Capture the Bear shirt. So I talked to them for a while and they asked for a picture with the shirt and all. That was my first one of the day. Then I finally, after like 30-45 minutes of waiting, got to the front of the line. Merekat (the person who drew the Pirogoeth poster) said "oh, I like your outfit!" and then Dom was like "cool, a Capture the Bear cosplayer." and he said something in general like "See, nobody loves us at all, except the Kimiko over there and Quake girl over here." So Dom signed my CTB poster AND wrote me an index card with a Shirt Guy Dom on it that said "i love cosplay!" in Japanese. Whee! And Piro signed my poster too, and he actually looked at my costume and was like "that's an interesting interpretation... I mean, here I go, I draw X's on the shoulders of a Quake person and then there it is on your costume! wow." Or something. It was neat. And afterwards, I was going back to get a picture of the Kimiko cosplayer, and someone said "Wow, a Capture the Bear costume, that is so cool, can I take your picture?" and I said sure, and then like five other people asked too! Wheeee! I also saw Nasri in the artist's alley... he was trying to sell some of his artwork. I don't think he was too successful.

After that I forget what I did. I wandered around a bit, like through the videogame room, and the dealer's room a little, and I took pictures of people and actually got asked by people to take my picture (There was this really funny one where it was like "hey, cool costume, can I take your picture?" and I was like "sure" and they said "so what are you dressed as, anyway?" and I said "Piroko, capture the bear" and they went "Oh, what is that from?" and I said "Megatokyo" and they said "Is that a good TV show?" and I was like "No, it's a webcomic" and they said "Oh. It must be a good webcomic! Your bear is really cute!") and stuff. Oh, right, so I went upstairs to get my picture taken at the professional photo place, and that was sort of neat. Although, they wanted $15 for a print of the pictures, so I didn't get one. They did ask if I'd shown my costume to Fred yet though. Going into the shoot I found Rebecca, who said to come visit her on the other side of the floor, so I did, and at that point found Jayen and Krispy and Neil. We took pictures of some people entering the masquerade, notably this one group of people who all were doing the Kodocha dance, and took pictures of each other (Krispy finished his costume, it looked cool, and Neil was Hojo from FF7). We saw some mutant ninja turtles, and then we went downstairs. I forget the order of stuff, but eventually around 2 we had been debating whether to get food or not, and instead we got in line for the Naze Nani Megatokyo Live panel at 3pm. The line was amazingly totally long, but it was fun to wait with Teki, Evan, Kon, mlahut, Krispy, and Neil... while waiting, some more people took my picture, and I also got pictures of some other MT cosplayers - several Piros, a largo or two, a Dom, and a Seraphim.

The MT panel was very entertaining. Richard Kim was stalling for time in the beginning, having us chant "PIRO! LARGO!" (and we kept chanting "DOM!" as well), and he was like "All the MT Cosplayers stand up... huh... I see a Piro... another Piro... a Largo... what the heck is that one, a Yuki with a gun?" and I was like "No, I'm CAPTURE THE BEAR!" Eventually it filled up and started, and Fred and Rodney really dressed up as the characters from the joking Naze Nani Megatokyo strip... Sarah apparently made them both the costumes, but she wasn't around (I don't think she likes cons). They looked really cool. There was a slide presentation, and some question and answer, with Kai adding in comments on the laptop, and Dom and Asmodeus and Ukyo and Natsuki all wreaking havoc on stage. Afterwards they asked all the Megatokyo cosplayers to get up on stage together and people took a thousand billion pictures of us all. That was also very exciting. :)

After that we were all very hungry, especially those of us who skipped lunch. So we ended up going to the inner harbor for dinner, ending up at Pizzeria Uno, where they seated our party of 8 immediately. Wow. It was me, Teki, Krispy, Jayen, Kon, Evan, Neil, and Vinnie Leeshue. That was cool because none of these are people I ever really dine with on a regular basis (infact I'm fairly sure this is the first time I met Vinnie in person such that we said more than two words to each other). It was fun.

We came back for Para Para lessons. They were interesting. I caught on pretty well and only once or twice nearly killed Teki or Krispy waving my arms around. They taught us two songs; one I don't know the name of, and one that is the Evangelion theme. Wheee! Afterwards we planned to just watch the Masquerade in the overflow room, but Krispy and Neil went up and got seats in there, and it turned out there was actually plenty of room! So I ended up there with Teki, James, Vinnie, Matt, Krispy, and Neil. Some of the masquerades were very entertaining, but many of them, especially the latter skits, were really boring, though the costumes in them were much better. They did have a DDR skit with an Astro, Charmy, and Akira, though! And those guys even won a prize! It was very cool. The funniest line of the night, IMO, though, was when they had a black guy dressed up as Mario (of SMB) hitting on that woman from Gundam, and she's like "But isn't Mario supposed to be italian?" and he replies "Baby, dontcha know why they call it Super Mario BRUTHAHS?" He also was like "My talents are.. well, when I eat mushrooms, I get three times as large!" and stuff. Oh, and we got to see Kevin do a walkon with his Jun costume! Yay! We all cheered for him. We stayed for pretty much all of the cosplay, but it got really boring towards the end, so we left. I found Kevin and took pictures of various people. I also saw Tania and went over and introduced myself to her. There was also a guy, Cedric, who I have a picture of on my DDR cosplay page, and he came over to talk to Tania, and I was like "wow, you did an Izam costume once, right?" and he said "yes. *puzzled look* how do you know that?" and I said "I have a DDR cosplay page and you're on it..." and he said "oh, that is cool! who are you?" and we introduced selves and I asked if it was ok to have the picture, and he said it was, and that was good! But weird. It is weird to see cosplayers that I recognize because of all the cosplay sites, but not to really want to freak them out by speaking to them. For example, I almost went to try to talk to Alisa, but figured it would just be too strange. Since she's really recognizable and I'm just a weirdo.

After a bit, we went to the Otakon Game Show, where I saw bunches of CMU people (Chaskiel was there with some girl dressed as Utena, and towards the end of it the whole Cam clan was there - Fred was dressed up as Dan, and Laura and Mike and all were there, and John Meier and stuff). I sat between Teki and Vinnie and they know a LOT of anime trivia and I know very little. There was ONE category that I totally knew, which was the music composers - they had anime themes originally composed by Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, and Benny Goodman, ALL OF WHICH I KNEW, but I never got called on to answer :( Most of the rest of the stuff was just way beyond me. In the end I think the audience actually got second place, which was fun.

After that I had to leave. I came back here. My brother was already asleep, so I had to wake him up to get in. Shrug. Wow, what an exciting day. I hope I wake up in time to see my mom and stepfather when they come up for brunch tomorrow. I also wish I could go to the Yoko Ishida concert at noon, but that looks iffy.

God, I can't wait to get my pictures developed or see all the pictures everyone else took. It was such a good weekend, such a great con, and I had such an amazing time... it was SO cool to finally get people asking me to take pictures of my costume... and to see so many cool people... and do so much fun stuff... and I mean, I even missed a few DDR cosplayers today, that I didn't get pictures of. Eh. I had a funny experience too, when I was in the bathroom washing my hands and a Chichiri (a male character) came out of one of the stalls and I had to do a triple take before I realized it was a female - she had her hair buzzcut and all - so I talked to her and she said she actually tended to use the men's bathrooms when in costume, if she could get away with it, and then I was wondering what all the crossdressing men did, and so on... it's just sort of weird :)

Okay, that's all the thoughts for the evening, hopefully I captured enough of the day, and wheeeeeeee!