Just got back from Katsucon 2012 (...literally JUST sat down on the couch) and I figured I'd share this while it's still fresh in my mind. In other words, so I don't ramble on forever about everything. XD
As many of you know, I got disastrously ill on Monday - Wednesday, and this kind of put a damper on the costumes I was able to wear / finish for this con. It also put a damper on my ability to get stuff together early, so Billy and I ended up doing last-minute shopping until dark on Thursday, and only got to the con on Friday morning, where by sheer coincidence we found ourselves in line with
excelladon. Talk about activating con mode early -- not even had time to process a serious thought, and already we're running into friends! I decided to stick with the Hikaru Hitachiin costume for most of the weekend because a) it was the most comfortable thing I had and required zero maintenance, and b) I could give the wig a test run and see how bad it hurt my head. It doesn't, at all.
For the record, the blue shirt I was wearing will not be the same shirt I'll wear at Otakon... similar, but no. This one sheds way too much and was scraped together from a REALLY old blue sweater my dad used to wear. In fact, all of my clothes for that costume belonged to the male people in my household at some point. XD And since I didn't have a Kaoru (because dammit, the world is so big and Chicago is SO FAR AWAY), I ended up walking around like this:
I ended up adding "Mr Uke Snippy-pants" and "he looks just like me, but different" to the poster at various points. And apparently there actually WAS a Kaoru cosplayer who heard about me and was looking for me. When I heard about this, I started actively seeking this person out, but to no avail. It was still funny. XD
Friday was the first YGO shoot, where Billy was David Rabb. We finally got to meet Malinda and Kyle, met up with
aerismog, and had a fun mini-shoot with Billy "dueling"
Mello-chick as Chazz, and got some nice VICTORY poses of her. Toward the end of the YGO shoot, I spotted
SetsuntaMew and pretty much attack glomped her, and we got to catch up because tumblr and facebook aren't suitable for actually communicating about personal stuff. I think it's the most we've ever gotten to talk at a con because we usually only run into each other toward the end, when we're all in run around everywhere mode. XD
After the YGO shoot, we got lunch at Nando's, then found my friend
Hagaren-Layer and her cosplay partner for the weekend, and they helped us lug all our crap up to the room. I got changed into Mad Hatter for the Pandora Hearts shoot, which was what I've come to understand is a very stereotypical PH shoot -- silly, unorganized, ridiculously fun derpiness, nothing really gets done and nobody stays still, everybody is really hyper, and we basically just LARP with shutters clicking for a few minutes... or hours.... or until we get bored (at Youmacon this lasted for literally a day and a half, to give you an idea; we only separated to get a few hours of sleep). And in the middle of it, I ran off to flag down a Hikaru & Kaoru who were actually twins... just another thing we do in the middle of PH shoots -- forget we're in them. XD After that, Billy and I got into our third costume of the day -- maskless scarface Arkana and girl Marik -- for the formal ball. Turns out my heels ARE NOT designed for dancing, and Billy doesn't know how to dance or hold a rhythm, so the ball was pretty much a huge flop. It was fun while it lasted, and at least I got a waltz! Afterward, I got back into the Hikaru costume, and we spent like 2 hours talking to
aerismog (and Katsuya for a few minutes), finally catching up and actually TALKING for once, instead of our usual Stealth Hi Bye.
Best cosplays we saw all weekend (besides our friends, who are always amazing):
King Bumi -- with horns and purple cloak, hunched over, chewing on rock candy. I DIED.
a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto…Prince Zuko -- the Earth Kingdom refugee version, with a tea kettle!
sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-a…Entei, Raikou, Suikune -- anthro warrior versions. SO EFFING AWESOME.
a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto…Mr T -- he wore a different outfit every day, and never broke character, calling everyone brotha and sista. He even answered to the name BA, with "I AIN'T GETTIN' ON NO PLANE!"
sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-s…Hades and Megara -- Meg is my favorite Disney girl (I hesitate to say "princess" with her because I'm technical like that... and honestly a big reason why I like her is she's NOT a princess, but she carries herself like one), and these costumes were just... freaking... I can't even.
a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto…Mr Snippy -- MR MOTHERFLIPPING SNIPPY.
alexiuss.deviantart.com/art/Ro… alexiuss.deviantart.com/art/Ro… ...yes. I kind of had a microgasm every time I saw this guy and my bodily functions stopped working momentarily. There was a large puddle of pee on the floor after I took this guy's picture.
a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto…aaaand even though these were extremely impressive, the best one we saw was Professor Oak.
sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-s… Why? Simple -- the guy not ONCE broke character. Not to buy shit in the dealer's room, not to talk to people, not to answer questions, NEVER broke down and acted like a person in a costume. He WAS Oak, through and through, beyond the point of acting. He would talk to people as if they were characters in Pokemon games, insisting on asking newcomers "are you a boy or a girl" before talking to them. He was hysterical to interact with, and we intentionally sought him out once or twice just to watch him and observe the hilarious things he did. He approached a fur suit cosplayer of Stitch, poked at the suit a little, tried to look him up in the Pokedex, and eventually settled for throwing a Pokeball at him, looking perplexed when it bounced off and hit the floor. He revealed to us the origin of napalm ("we cut up Magmars"), the fundamental difference between card games and Pokemon battles ("we have to deal with REAL shit"), what exactly a Zapdos is ("a giant hummingbird shooting electricity at people"), and why the Pokedex didn't help him understand the modern creatures at conventions ("this thing is so old, it's still running on dial-up").
Also, there was a lot of South Park cosplay. I found 3 different Craigs! And there was even a Token! There was also a Mysterion manning a table --
soltian, who I actually met outside cosplay at Tigercon -- though we didn't run into her this time because we didn't spend much time in the artist's alley, but I plan to accost her at Otakon. NO WORRIES. There was a Stan & Kyle too and I KNOW I've seen them on dA but I can't find them now. ;^; so I am a sad panda. But it made me happy to see people IRL that I've only ever heard of online! Speaking of... I must mention that we finally met
0nSilverWingsX in person! ...but I can't remember exactly when it happened initially. This con was very successful in being so much fun it all ran together into a huge blob of good times left and right.
Saturday, I was Hikaru again, and Billy was Arkana (with mask this time, thank God, because I was getting far too lazy to try to create the burn scar makeup again even though I'd only done it once). The YGO shoot was bigger because there were like five ancient Egyptians there, including
Kitty-Caesar as Mana. It was also organized a little better -- I've noticed people tend to pull out their game faces and behave when they know Katsuya is coming. XD Billy and I ended up spending a good portion of the day hanging with our friend Jason, including our second trip to Nando's, where I got what Jason called "Jew food." We also spent a while semi-stalking Kyle as Jack Skellington, laughing at his antics as he derped around the dealer's room. At some point I ran into a Tamaki and another legit set of twins cosplaying the Hitachiin twins... and they were guys. ACTUAL DUDES COSPLAYING SHOTA BOYS WTF THE WORLD HAS EXPLODED. A couple of my friends also exploded at their attractiveness when I twitpic'd them. It was very very amusing. XD Unfortunately I cut my day short on Saturday because I was getting a nasty migraine from switching contacts so much the day before and wearing wig caps forever (usually I at least get a LITTLE break where I can let my hair loose), so I holed up in the room at like 6:30 and only resurfaced once to make potty, because our toilet was broken.
I should add that this was by far one of the most interesting bathrooms we've had at a con. It comes into the top 3 for sure, its competitors being Alcon (where Martin's hangover was so violent it broke the toilet and the shower already didn't work), and AnimeNEXT (where Lauren decided to have me cut 24 inches of her hair off in Kirbopher and helixD's shower). This time, one of our roommates had a beach shoot that ended up getting some of her dyed fabric wet, so there was sand and pink runoff EVERYWHERE, and on top of it, the toilet clogged for no apparent reason. At least the shower still worked, even though the grout was rosy and the floor was gritty.
Sunday morning, Billy had a mini shoot with Katsuya and Malinda, which I slept through because me, wake up, what? u srs? I got dressed as Mad Hatter Break, got Billy's help shoveling all my crap in his car, and then had a half-hour shoot with Katsuya. I'm very very very excited to see the results of these pictures because she had me in some NICE poses. ^^ I did a speed-change in the parking garage, back to Hikaru once again, for the Ouran shoot. We ran into a different Kyle on the way out (...okay not a SP Kyle, the guy's ACTUAL name is Kyle), but only briefly because we were each running toward our destinations. Usually Billy spends a lot of time chilling with him at cons, especially MAGFest, but apparently there were wardrobe malfunctions that detained him from Katsu for most of the weekend, so we only saw him for like three seconds.
Back in the con, we kept crossing paths with Erin and her mom & roommates, and kind of shouted maybe-bye-maybe-I'll-see-you-later-but-if-not-have-fun farewell ish things at each other a few times. We've all come to accept that farewells at cons often turn into "oh hey hi again even though I just said bye to you." Just as we were looking for more Ouran people, we ran into Fayina again -- she and a friend were cosplaying Roxanne and Max from A Goofy Movie! I PEED ALL OVER THE PLACE. ...okay I did that a lot this weekend. BUT OMG THAT MOVIE DEFINED A MAJOR PART OF MY CHILDHOOD. "Stand Out" was my favorite song of all time for like 3 years. No lie.
Anyway, we found a ton of Ouran people, and uh, we had everybody but Takashi. It was kind of crazy awesome. The Tamaki & twins I saw earlier didn't find us, but the twins that WERE there were the ones I ran away from the PH shoot to attack. Small world! XD We had a group shoot for a couple frames, but I'm a person who can't stand duplicate characters in shoots, so since I was the only duplicate, I ducked out to the other side of a camera lens pretty quickly, and we focused on getting individual shots. There was so much derp and fun (I was mean and made Hikaru laugh even though it caused her pain), but we actually managed to keep ourselves organized, so we got a bunch of great shots. Jason ran into Billy as the shoot was reaching its end (...as the twins and Tamaki were throwing flowers off the balcony at people to try to get rid of their extras), and we had the chance to say bye to people before we took off in a mad attempt to acquire breakfast. I made sure all the Ouran people (and PH people) got my dA name and facebook, and most of us will be back for Otakon, so I'm sure we'll have superspecialfuntimes there. XD
And that was Katsucon SKIPPY DIPPY DOO. Billy commented that he hasn't gotten a high from a con like he did from this one in a long time. It was fun, everybody was chill with everybody, and it was exciting! The only thing we seriously severely missed this time around (besides my twin, who I always miss) was DESOLATE MEMOIR. It's just a;lkj;ldfhslkd okay you have to understand that most of the people I talk about in these con blogs, most of the cosplayers I get stupid excited to meet and catch up with, like Killian and Melissa and Katsuya, are people I met at Katsucon 2 years ago. Therefore seeing them and hanging with them is like the defining point of this convention for me. And one of the key things about that YGO shoot all the way back then was Memoir being cute and funny behind Killian's camera, and one of the major reasons I was looking forward to Katsucon so much this year is because MEMOIR was going to be there and ffffffffffff I was mad at life for screwing that up. But... as is my motto... there will always be more cons. AND MORE MEMOIR. XD So, to those I didn't see this time, I will catch you next time! ...or you'd better catch me. ;D
Also....
sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-a… relevant.