FanExpo 2011 & hetalia day

So it was that time of year again. FanExpo. I still remember my first FanExpo back in 2001. XD;

It's always been the con I've loved the most. Last year was a DISASTER. So much so that plenty of people decided to boycott the event this time around. Hate to say it but it really seemed like the the mass exodus of the Anime crowd made FanEx SUPREMELY better this year!! ALSO the fact that they put it back in the South Building, and had 5 extra dealers room entrances and the registration in the loading docks far away from normal re-entry.

Just so much better.

Anyway, because of all the craziness of ACEN, Anime North, Otakon and all this summer, DBTrio's (Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish, Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ and me) original cosplay plans didn't get finished. OTL

Originally we were going to do SLAYERS (Amelia/Zel/Lina/Gourry), Yu-Gi-Oh (Joey/Kaiba/Yugi), and some re-wear DBZ.

But.. lol.. uh yeah didn't happen.

Was really disappointed that it didn't work out, but we keep making new things and not getting enough photos or wear out of our other cosplays, so re-wearing cosplays is all we could throw together this year ^^;


Friday
Friday morning Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish and I packed madly to go over to Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_'s apartment for Lizcon (FanExpo) XD.

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Clik here to view._anatra_ wore 7 of 9 (Star Trek Voyager), since she had worn it for a short time at Polaris in July.

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Clik here to view.glayish and I decided to suck it in an wrench on our Sailor Moon & Sailor Mars costumes! We wore them at Anime North 2010 and didn't get very good photos plus I really didn't know how to do glam make-up at all then;;. It's been kind of crazy trying to get everybody back for a group shoot, so we thought we'd bum around in them.

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Wtf I actually look happy!!

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Another awesome one while in the Dealer's room

Holy crap we got so many photos!!! I forgot how popular Sailor Moon is, and since it's FanEx and not an anime-con we were some of the only anime girls there.

Ffffffff we've been going for 10 years, so most of the return volunteers know us. I like the older ones, but there was some dude who asked for a photo with us Senshi and >:\... well!!

Guy: So have you *finally* given up DBZ?
Glay: What? No.
Me: Wearing it tomorrow
Guy: ...That's kind of a buzz kill =(
Me: ......Muscles Gohan for u tomorrow.
Guy: Noooooo!

Why is it that when we cosplayed from Sailor Moon people started asking if we finally gave up DBZ?? I got the same question at Otakon last year. asklkasl

Ran into Mike (Rock nam Lee), Sam Lau (Baron Karza), and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.angathol in the dealers room! Seriously there were hardly any anime-based booths. Not that I ever find the stuff I like to buy (Piccolo figurines) but, it was kind of refreshing!

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Clik here to view._anatra_ got Star Trek Next Generation's Deanna Troy's autograph and photo. Later in the day Rae showed up in her Captain Janeway costume and those two got stopped by so many fanboys it was hilarious XD

Finally we went outside to take a few more shots.
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Clik here to view._anatra_ as 7 of 9
Rae as Captain Janeway


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:J meatball head. Me and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish. (Thanks Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_!)

While hanging around we met up with Sam Lau (Baron Karza) again! Lol we always see him everywhere. He invited us to go take some night time shots, so we walked over to Front Street and spent a couple hours! His friend Howard showed up to help and we all went for dinner at Jack Astor's afterwards. T_T Sam was nice enough to save us the taxi fare and drove us back to Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_'s apartment. <3

Can't wait to see what he shot, that man has no lack of talent!

Back at Lizcon, we all tried to recover a bit from the footwear (I have a blister that spans across the underneath of 3 toes, thanks red pumps fkdfskdsk), and iron our stuff for the next day!


Saturday
OK so Saturday Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish got up super early and put on her Narcissa cosplay she made for Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.reeljustine's HP party a couple weeks before. She was out the door and in a cab by 8:30am to get ahead of the massive fangirl lines for Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy's actor).

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Clik here to view._anatra_ and I weren't so fast bahahhahaha;;; OTL

Saturday was also Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_'s birthday!! She wanted to spend the day as the classic Vegeta ^^. I threw on Gohan to match and we packed a bunch of IKEA lights for ki-blast effect.

When we got to the con for re-entry, the line was HUGE and even though we reached at 9:30AM, we were in that line for an hour until we got down into the dealer's room and celebrity autograph lines to find Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish.

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Photo of us in line. That sun was not fun.

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Clik here to view.glayish managed to make a new friend named Yvonne while in their mutual mad rush for the Tom Felton line. We met up with both of them and hung out while they waited for their chances to join the queue for autographs and photo op tickets.

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From the dealer's room. Photo taken by Yvonne

It was PACKED with people on Saturday, but everyone could tell when Tom Felton got there because of the fangirl screams XD. Sooo many young girls and random Slytherin students everywhere.

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Clik here to view.glayish and Yvonne got their autographs and we searched for a spot to sit for lunch.

Yvonne and I braved the Pizza Pizza line-ups, where Tom Felton got to cut in line for pizza in front of us!!

LOL

Mid-way through eating our Pizza some girl remarked that Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ looked very familiar.

It was then we realised we ended up sitting at the one table where THAT RUSSIA was sitting with some other people who knew us as the Axis Powers group.

oh lawd DX

I'm not sure if I've blogged about her before, but That Russia is a 15-year-old who has continuous made our Hetalia cosplaying uncomfortable with her comments, choking people so they have bruises on their necks, showing bad artwork and getting overly sensitive over it, and thinking she's snubbed when we really didn't see her, etc....

OTL.

We did a bit of the voices/accents awkwardly then ate quickly to get to the DBZ Super Panel being hosted by Chris Sabat, Colleen Clinkenbeard, & Mike McFarland.

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Clik here to view.glayish had to go line up for her Tom Felton Photo Op, so Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ and I sat at the panel.

Fffffffk omgfg makes me remember why I don't like these sorts of panels!! SERIOUSLY doubting the intellect level of all DBZ fans. "OVER 9000" so much. GrshAH.

Also, LOADS of DBZ Abridged questions too, which was useless since the voice actors barely know the actual series, they sure as hell didn't know much about the internet jokes and memes!!

There was one funny one where some guy affected DBZAbridged Guru's voice and asked Chris Sabat "What do you think of Naaaaaaaaaiilll?"

But lol... other than that, the panel lost it's focus a lot and became more about voice acting in general than DBZ.

:\

Fan panels are likely the only way I'm going to get my DBZ universe fix, but I was excited to see a DBZ panel in CANADA (when does that ever happen), so had to check it out.

Left a few minutes before the panel ended and headed over to where Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish was lined up for the Tom Felton photo op! The crush of the people was a looot though, so went over to the LARPing booths/panels that Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_'s friends were running.

Lol gawdd LARP seemed so boring, but Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ assured me it was just the guy explaining everything that made the whole thing seem lame.

Lol

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Clik here to view.glayish got her Photo Op and we all reuinited to go get some fresh air outside.

Ran into Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.mekou in her Orihime outfit by the grass~! She looked great!


We decided to try and take some photos.

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...Most of which just looked bad

UGH lol; geezus..

Anyway, got back inside and hung around the dealer's room until it was time for the masquerade.

I think this was the first FanExpo masquerade that was predominantly comics/games & sci-fi compared to Anime. (which is interesting since it started out as Anime programming).

Kudrel and VickyAngelBunny were judges this year (well-deserved)! We actually sat through the whole 87 entrant show. It was a great masq even with the low amount of audio skits, and the multiple Joker entries. All the skits I enjoyed apparently won something, so that was satisfying all on its own XD

We were damn beat when the Masq finally let out.

Outside some barhoppers saw us and got all hilarious drunk excited over Super Saiyans and Witches XDD. One of the girls started planking randomly in front of us and the group asked us to act like we were attacking her ass with kamehameha/wands for some reason. LOL;

We taxi'd back up to Lizcon, where we generally felt like crap, then hastily got out of costume to find some quick Thai dinner.


Sunday

HARRY POTTER DAY. So I've had my Harry Potter costume for a year pretty much and always failed to get any photos since we were partying in them instead of photoshooting XD;

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Clik here to view.glayish and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ put on Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy.

First thing we lined up bright an early an hour before the doors officially opened. Con staff herded us all up into lines and then promptly at 10am people exploded in every direction (con staff gave up on the lines lmfao), and we RAN for the Tom Felton booth.

Tom arrived earlier than we though and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ got her autograph, while we all bought photo ops. (Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish bought ANOTHER one LOL)

Tom Felton as a celebrity guest totally meant FanExpo was a Slytherin con. (Seriously the amount of random Slytherins wandering around with jacked up ties, corsets and shiny chewed up robes ....) BUT all Gryffindors who attended looked MUCH better ;D

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(Ignore my t-rex arm.. shit how the hell did that happen lol)

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Me with a Ginny! (She also happened to be the Doctor from Dr. Who that we sat next to at the Masquerade the night before)

Strangely enough we managed to get the autographs out of the way around 11am, and since we were all craving REAL food and NOT pizza after 2 days straight of crappy con food, Malfoy parents + Potter ventured out to the AMC sports centre buildings in search of a nice place.

We ended up eating at an amazing sports bar. Filet mignon, baby back ribs, high class meatballs and spaghetti. FUCSKSKK it was delicious.

We were the only cosplayers in there, but I absolutely had to tell the chef that they were magical.

We wandered back to the con for our photo op and had so much fun meeting up with HP cosplayers.

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Me with (A Very Harry Potter Musical) Voldemort!! HnGhs YES XDD

Hilarious.


Our photo ops came up and T_T!! LOL. It really was a blur. Tom told me "Wow! Congratulations, you look awesome!" though I really must have looked like a confuddled ickle firstie. Barghhhgg

I'm CERTAIN the photo turned out with me looking like a dumbshit, but I'll have to wait for it in the mail until I see.

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Clik here to view.glayish and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ got their family photo with Tom! It was really a great opportunity, I'm so glad we did the celebrity events this time around. It was really fun, despite the wallet rape.

Took one last trip in the dealer's room for shopping, then headed to Tom Felton's Q & A.

I spotted a totally awesome Snape along with his wife who was dressed as a Syltherin student!

We got some Unbreakable Vow footage just before the panel was set to start and we invited to two of them to come take photos with us afterwards!

The panel itself was.... WONDERFUL. Damn I just remember most of high school reading Harry Potter and the Harry x Draco ship. More than a few other fans of that in the audience, and he even answered questions about it;



Loved it! Really great programming to end the convention and make me feel excited about the series even when it's over.

The con pretty much let out after that, and we headed over tho the grassy train area to take photos with our new friends Snape (Chris) and Nicole.

FOUND RAE. She didn't have her cellphone all day, but she joined us as Bellatrix to go take photos!

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woohooooo my cosplay that is all store bought, forever XDDD
(Rae is the one who hand-whittled my unique Gryffindor wand for me, <3!!)


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And because they were all Dark Wizards and Witches, some photos of them!

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The Unbreakable Bond by ~Glay on deviantART

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The Wrong Side by ~Glay on deviantART


We said our goodbyes and went back to Lizcon, since Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_'s apartment is right next to the very Hogwarts-esque U of T campus. Met up with Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.jiyoon (Cho we missed youuuu!) then took a few low-light shots

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Black Magic by ~Glay on deviantART

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By the end of it we all were exhausted, changed out of cosplay, watched some DBZ Abridged, then went to Jack Astors for dinner.

XD... >:[ apparently my patronus would be a Canadian Goose? bahhhh!!



All in all, it was a great con. FanExpo has definitely redeemed itself from last year. So glad I attended along with DBTrio and got to spend some more time with some of my favourite people!

Snape has also invited us to hang out at his HP parties in Hamilton XD~! He practises FILK, so that might be a hell of a time. Bahwahahah.



I kinda want to attend the Toronto Hetalia day. Or even if there is one in Richmond Hill. Cause I never got to go to the ones back in 2009 or 2010.... I'm still a fan damnit.. and I think Season 3 should be out on DVD by then.

..........Though I hate most of the awful dramatic children :\

Apparently it's on October 22nd, and that's the Saturday RIGHT after the Cirque du Solei Michael Jackson show I'm going to.

If I can't get Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.glayish and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view._anatra_ to come with me I might try to make Nyotalia North Italy

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Nyotalia ciao captain by *TechnoRanma on deviantART

As long as it's not freaking cold or snowing or something. Bah I dunno. I *still* don't have an Austria or Prussia for posing in Hungary with OTL