Well it's been a week, this is my Katsucon 2013 con-report! Katsucon is where I've gotten a lot of my favourite photos taken and it did not disappoint this time. I kind of overdid it by bringing 4 cosplays (3 on friday, 1 on saturday) to wear ^^;;;;. I should really just stick to 2 per con, cause we ended up rushing around for cosplay changes there was barely a spare minute to just hang out with our friends and talk with people from online. Anyway it was still a FABULOUS con & trip!
Thursday
glayish and I met up with Alex B. and Mike (EleventhPhotograph) - our roomies & roadtrip buddies from Katsucon 2012!! We had had such a great time in the car and room with them the previous year that we decided to do it again. We left Toronto around 9:30am and then started the long trip down to Maryland. The weather was really ideal for the drive!! We got into Maryland around 7pm and promptly got lost in the DC area. We ended up on an unintentional scenic nighttime tour by car of the white house, Lincoln memorial, and other monuments. I have to say we were all kind of OK with the getting-lost bit, because the area is really impressive at night.
On our way to the Gaylord hotel, since it was Valentine's Day, we all played an amusing game of spotting men-walking-with-flowers, CVS pharmacies, and Starbucks', to rack up points. There were multiples on every corner, lololol.
We got into the hotel around 8pm and glayish and I immediately went to get our badges from pre-reg. Ran into izunadrop247 right away lol XD. And so began a long night of ironing and preparing cosplays! ....I tried to buy coke for energy and of course the Gaylord switched to carrying pepsi products instead of coca-cola, so I was severely disappointed by that =_=. (they do taste different.)
Friday
Friday morning was Nyotalia~
I cosplayed as the official female (nyotalia) version of Austria.
My friend Lettelle who I know from a few Otakon and Katsucon's ago made Mangary (male!Hungary)!! She looked so good! I'm sooo happy she finished it!! I was so excited to actually meet up with somebody for couple cosplay. That literally never happens to me lol XD. People usually fail and bail out. She was wonderful though, so glad!!
We also later on got a Nyotalia Prussia!!
I had seen Thornprick as fem!Prussia at Katsucon 2012 last year, and since I was wearing fem!Austria this year I bugged her to bring it again ^^. Unfortunately we couldn't do a longer shoot because of timing....I wish we had had longer to wear it together but we did get pics and vids!!
Many thanks to glayish for the photography and videos!
With finishing fem!Spain and fem!Austria I've pretty much completed all the Hetalia cosplays I was interested in.... Am I really Hetalia'd out o_o;;;!?! Well I still did want to do the rest of the versions of Italy 2P.............
I still love and am currently watching the show. But it seems like the cosplay scene is phasing out and Homestuck is taking over lol. (I still don't know what Homestuck is). Anyway, if the opportunity comes up I will re-wear something I have already made (Military!Italy, Gakuen!Italy, Military!Hungary, Nyotalia 1P Italy, Nyotalia Spain, Nyotalia Austria). I WAS planning to sell Military!Hungary a while ago but I never did. I'm not sure how eager somebody would be to buy that now, but I might put it up for sale, who knows fwahhh.
Anyway, after the Nyotalia Frying Pangle parted ways, around 3pm glayish and I ran back up to the hotel room and started changing into Star Trek~*~*~*!
Our Star Trek group was so cute!!! The tribbles totally made it less lame XD.
hentaigirl82 as Lt. Uhuraizunadrop247 as Lt. Suluglayish as Captain Kirktechnoranma (me!) as Doctor McCoy "Bones"
We were missing a Spock, Chekov, and Scotty!!! (Mostly a Spock).
TO BE HONEST all the photos I've seen of myself as Doctor McCoy from Katsucon make me cringe cause I pretty much just slapped some man-make-up on top of my fem!Austria make-up, then stuffed the wig on my head. Lol;; looked so wrecked. I should have spent the time to just redo and prepare it all -_-. Also halfway through I realised my eyebrows had been shaved off the last con I wore McCoy to, so this time I had to do some weird cover-up on my thick black eyebrows -_-;;;..........Oh and I got called Spock. That is seriously the part that ignites my ire. At LEAST 3 people got it right though, so I'm happy about that.
We hung out and went to dinner (thanks for getting the bill, Captain Kirk!!). Richard (hentaigirl82's bro who did the full group pics and vids for us) bought me and glayish some rose bouquets since it was Valentine's Day weekend and they were selling them at the restaurant!! <3 <3 <3
We headed back into the convention centre and met up with a few people from past conventions we hadn't seen in forever. SOMEHOW glayish managed to talk to a Frolo cosplayer who said she would be wearing Spock on Saturday Night o_o;...!!! Space Husbands confirmed for Saturday night! Uhura had to go get ready for clubbing, so we all parted ways and got ready for the 18+ programming.
I got into fem!Spain and the group of us from the room went down to the registration area to get the 18+ wristbands. We wandered around looking in the doors at the panels going on, but they all seemed weird and uh... yeah, so we hung out in the lobby while I tried to meet up with darth_teca. It was getting boring in the lobby so we ended up going back to the hotel room and tried to stay awake for the Friday night Hetalia: Ask a Nation 18+ panel.darth_teca came around in her Indiana Jones America cosplay! We went together to go line up for the Ask a Nation panel. Ughhh 1:30am was not a good time to decide to attend something. Just felt real tired all around, and then we got kinda shitty seats (couldn't really see the panelists). The questions people were asking sucked lol. glayish's question was good though because it had to do with a Japan/Germany/Italy threesome XD. The only nations that were present for the panel were Prussia, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, England, Austria.. I'm not sure if there was another, I couldn't see >_<! Kind of a weird mix of nations, I always prefer it more when they have the main cast. Anyway, we decided to duck out a bit early and get to sleep because glayish would need to be getting her Zelgadis make-up and prosthetics on in the morning.
Saturday
Despite having gone to sleep after 2am, I was awake and showered at 7:30am -_-... why? Because glayish decided her side of the bed was cold and kept migrating over to my side until I was having to sleep on the bedside table!!!1.. >_<. I just got up and angrily inched the block-out curtains open a little bit more in 5 minute intervals so everyone else would wake up.glayish started to get into her Zelgadis around 9:30am. It's a long process so I started getting into Amelia AFTER her and finished long before she was. My make-up was looking WAYYYYY better for Amelia than it was for my 3 cosplays the day before -_-;;.. See this is why I should only do 1 cosplay a day at most. Also, the vintage boots from Star Trek the night before had squeezed my feet and I had blisters forming, so I wrapped bandaids around all of my toes to prevent more pain -_-;
Anyway, since glayish has trouble eating with the prosthetics on her face, I decided to go downstairs to the atrium cafe to get some food for us to eat before she had to put it on.
I went up to hentaigirl82's room to borrow eye drops (thank you!!), then took the elevator down.
And so began the day where the Jewish Youth Convention (which Katsucon 2013 was double-booked with) started to be annoying.
The elevator I chose stops on floor 2, and while I had no problems using that elevator the day before, this time a Jewish Youth staffer immediately rushed me and told me I wasn't allowed there and had to go back up and take another set of elevators. OK............... I just gave her a disgruntled look and then stared at the SHARED convention space that was literally less than 5m away from the elevator door.
Staff/Security: "Sorry, I know it's retarded"
SO, I had to go back up in the elevator then make my way around the labyrinth of the Gaylord to find the right stairwell and walk down. The line for the cafe was packed, and the whole time there were some guys just behind me complaining OVER AND OVER how Katsucon turned into a cosplay convention and all the panels suck now. Bah.
There were actually people at the con who knew who I was cosplaying as!!! I got a lot of pleasant "Amelia!" shouts ^^. Slayers is a 90s anime and was never televised in the U.S. or Canada so when glayish and I wore Zelgadis and Amelia to Anime North, nobody really recognized us OTL;.
Got us some food and then immediately bee-lined for an elevator. Any journey in the elevators was inevitably filled with stupid comments from either katsucon attendees or the jewish youth attendees. Really just annoying. That was the extent to how personally bothered I got by the double-booking though. So it didn't ruin anything horribly for me. There was one tense moment where some bitter woman (katsucon attendee) started laying in on some little girl (maybe 15 at most) from the jewish convention for using one of 'our elevators', ranting about how 'we' weren't allowed to use 'theirs' so why was she here, etc etc.
We ate our food in the room and then headed down to the autograph area to line up for Crispin Freeman's autograph session (the voice of Zelgadis). glayish had paid for a VIP badge so we got to the head of the line. While in the line I met someone who worked with Funimation/industry who offered to do a quick shoot with us if we wanted!! That was great because we wouldn't be wearing it for long, and I think photos turn out better when the photographer is also familiar with the series. glayish got her sword (that I bought from aerialdown) signed by Crispin Freeman AND he took our photo!!
We walked around the con and found Sam Lau (Baron Karza)! Chatted with him for a while, which was hilarious XD. We met up with the photographer from the Crispin Freeman line and ventured outside to take a few pics (even though that wind chill was not fun OTL!!!!)
After that we hung out and meet up with SmileJade Photography whom I had booked a quick shoot with before the con. I'm excited to see what she manage to get of us, since I've admired her photography skills for a long time now!!
The sun started to go down, so we went back to the room where glayish changed out of Zelgadis and we ordered pizza & wings room service. Mmm Gaylord room service.
I tried to watch TV but ours got stuck on this one image. LOL;;;
I just hung out taking videos of myself while my make-up still held up. And with my glow orbbbbb.
The Spock we had met the night before was supposed to show up soon, so glayish got back into her Captain Kirk cosplay. I didn't bother to get into McCoy because I was worried our science blues would not match (they didn't), and we didn't really have anyone to take OT3 shots anyway. So Space Husbands!
I was the photographer/video for them!
WE TOTALLY GOT SPACE HUSBANDS ALL OVER OUR ROOMMATES' BED;;;; XDDD
ANyway I don't have an external flash or half the set up that it seems EVERY other photographer at Katsucon had... so I just switched to video in order to get the HD night shots. Very bold and spacey.
After that we parted ways from the Spock. glayish and I tried to hit up the AMV playing at 10pm, but apparently they didn't have the right HDMI cable to play ANYTHING so the entire panel sat in darkness. We stayed for 30min before leaving because there was no video IN ALL THAT TIME. LAME!!!!!
On our way to other programming we ran into grayhour and Kate, and I spotted Thornprick (the fem!Prussia I got photos with before) in her Military!Hungary outfit. We all followed her to her 10:30pm Hetalia: Ask a Nation panel. This panel was WAAAAY better than the other uncensored Ask a Nation panel, though there was a lot of USA/Canada and Germancest fanservice stuff and I don't ship those pairings AT ALL, so that ruined my happiness.
After it was over Thornprick gave me a rose! *o* So nice and princely XD!!
We sat in for a bit of the 'Dramatic Fanfic Readings' panel, but soon my contact lenses (over almost 18hrs) started to really bother me, so we left the panel and went back to the room to sleep.
Sunday
Alex B.'s artist alley booth closed at 3pm, so we ended up staying until around 4:30pm to pack up the car and have food before the drive back. The amount of people checking out meant the wait for a bus & dolley service was LOONG. So we ended up packing the several exorbitantly heavy bags onto our own backs and carrying them down OTL. The Jewish convention space did not allow anyone to use the hallway close to the parking garage (R@GE!) so we had to carry our stuff ALL THE WAY AROUND from the front entrance to the back. After carrying all that weight (TORTURE ARGHH) I swear I need to learn to pack lighter to a convention. Holy shit.
We went around and bought a few things from the dealers room. Including some more Star Trek merchandise XD
One merchant tried to sell me a Hetalia notebook by saying "It's cute and your can write your homework down in it." ... OTL;.. I just said that I don't have homework anymore because I work. Fail at looking 10 years younger than my age. Oh well really;;
The drive back was fun because of roadtrip buddies, but at the end of it, it was really tiring. We got back home at exactly 3am.
GREAT con. Had a wonderful time. The only thing I wish is that we had been able to use the Gazebo during the morning to get photos, and that I had been able to spend longer with people/friends. The food in the National Habour was delicious as usual, and the rooming situation was ideal. Great time. \O/!