Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade

2002-11-04 - 10:40 a.m.

Right. Not a full and proper report as there are things I really don't want to talk about, so I'll just write about the important things.

Nothing much really happens on Fridays at cons, beyond the opening ceremony and people seeing other people and going "hey! I haven't seen you since =insert name of last con=! GLOMP!!" This wasn't a whole lot different. As soon as Neko and I got into the lobby of the Moathouse, we saw a huge crowd of UKA people. And there was much glomping.

I ended up chatting to this Welsh bloke that I've never met before. He was intrigued at my promises of a Felicia costume but was rather disappointed that I was doing the white fur/blue hair version, as he preferred the black fur/purple hair version. I said he should just wait till I was in the costume, take a photo and then change the colours in photoshop. After a while I decided to go get my con pack and badge, and once I'd gotten those, I went to get changed into my Friday costume. Which was my kimono.

Went into the bathroom and began to change. I'd just gotten my main kimono on and tied the obi-age when the hotel fire alarm went off. Since I had no idea what it was at the time and I didn't want to go out till I was fully dressed, I stayed in the cubicle and decided to wait it out. Until a member of staff knocked on the door and said everyone had to leave. I had my geta on, fortunately, I just had to make sure I held the kimono up so it wouldn't get dirty and/or wet. It was raining outside, see. Fortunately, a random girl offered to share her umbrella with me until we were allowed back in. She and I chatted for a bit and I established that her name was Christina, this was her first convention and she was American. Her accent sounded very similar to that of another friend of mine who comes from Virginia, so that may have been where Christina came from. Not sure though, there aren't many American accents I can distinguish between ^_^

Anyway, once the alarms stopped and the fire brigade had established it was a false alarm, she offered to help me tie my obi. Once that was sorted she headed somewhere else and I went in search of people I knew. Much of the rest of the day consisted of me sitting in the bar and babysitting other people's property. This was largely because I had lots of stuff to carry and Neko had to help set up one of the dealer's tables so he couldn't take care of my stuff while I had a look around. I still got quite a few people asking for photos while I was in the bar though, so that was OK. Apparently a couple of people didn't even recognise me, X included. He reckoned it was because I had my hair in a bun and he wasn't used to that.

I also established rather early on that there was something very, very wrong with the pump in the bar. Whenever I ordered lemonade it had this weird taste, which I could only describe as being black. Yes, the colour black has a flavour and that lemonade was it. Don't ask me why "black", although it's possible I subconsciously associated the flavour with carbon. I evidently wasn't the only one who complained because when I went to the bar, the guy took one look at me and said "you want a replacement lemonade, right?"

I eventually decided I wanted to be a bit more mobile so I changed out of the kimono and wandered about. Caught up with Ashe (the guy I'm producing a manga for), and he asked me if I wanted to go to the yaoi program that evening. Various UKA people were also going, and we were all intrigued by the item on the program that was called "Boku no Sucky". Unfortunately, the con staff had decided to play a little trick on us all.

See, there was Video Room 1, Video Room 2, and Video Room 1+2. The yaoi was happening in 1+2, but most of us misread the list and went to VR 1. Doh.

This wasn't, however, such a bad thing, as I got to watch the first two episodes of .hack//sign (just said as "Hack Sign"), which is not only blessed with one of the most gorgeous soundtracks I have ever heard, it's also an excellent series. It's set within an Ultima Online-type RPG, and the characters fight monsters but talk about gaining experience points and meeting up IRL and resetting the game. I talked about it with Chrispy and he said he didn't really understand it so I guess you have to have played some kind of UO-style game in order to fully appreciate it.

They showed four episodes of that over the weekend and I'm absolutely dying to see more. I was also lamenting the lack of an OST in the dealer's room, and a chat with one of the Sheffield Space Centre dealers indicated that I wasn't the only one who adored the soundtrack. Apparently they were expecting to get a bunch of the OSTs in before the con but they never showed. He's told me to try again in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, after that was over I pretty much gave up on the yaoi program as I had no idea where it was, so when Neko came out of the hentai program (he didn't want to watch La Blue Girl any more than I did), we just went back to our room in the Ibis and went to bed. Neko needed to be up early in order to get to the dealer's room so an early night was a good thing.

The next day consisted of more sitting-in-the-bar activity. I didn't want to queue for the dealer's room so I basically hung around and chatted to people who came by. I registered Neko and myself for the masquerade and around 2.30 I went back to the Ibis to get our costumes. I had to pack them in my suitcase and bring that over to the Moathouse. We had several parts to our costumes.

A friend of ours and fellow cosplayer, Will, had agreed to let us change in his room, so I brought the stuff up there. I got changed fairly soon after I got there and did some last-minute fixes to the costume. In the process I did find a way to keep the leg warmers from slipping down - toupee tape. Great stuff. It didn't actually manage to hold the front bits up too well but it worked rather nicely on the backs, so I was happy. Neko got out of the dealer's room around 4.30 and he was getting into his costume right up until the apparent deadline for masquerade entrants. Not that it really seemed to matter that much, as when we got there they were doing a role call and we both heard our names being read out, so it was no problem.

Neko's biggest problem was his wig. It was a bit tangled, which was a problem, but we also had the problem that as soon as we put it into pigtails, you could see the netting at the back of the wig. We eventually solved that by putting the pigtails closer together than the character he was playing wears them, and no-one seemed to mind too much.

The cosplay this year was huge. There were 60-odd entrants, which amounts to about a tenth of the total attendees. We were each assigned a number and that was our place in the queue. Neko was number 15. I was number 56. I had all that time to panic, and panic I did. I was singing a song for my performance, and furthermore I was singing without the aid of background music. I was so terrifed about forgetting my words that I was reciting them to myself as I walked up the aisle. When I actually got up there, however, it all went beautifully. I not only remembered the words, but my voice didn't tremble in the way it has been known to do. I'd been practising that song for three weeks and noting every little problem with the changes in pitch and tone, so I'm so glad it all went smoothly in the end. And the audience loved it. Go me!

Neko also told me later on that I was the only one singing, everyone else had been going for skits. A couple of friends from UKA that went out before me were dressed as Card Captor Sakura and Utena, and they did this bizarre sketch. It involved the following amusing exchange:

Utena: I know who you are, I watch Cardcaptors!
Sakura: DON'T YOU DARE CALL IT CARDCAPTORS!! =violent shove=

Hee :D

Once it was all over they read out the prizewinners. Neko won something but I didn't. Oh well. After nearly six years I'm used to it by now ^_^

We stayed around for the photo call but after that my costume was beginning to hurt and Neko was getting foot pain from his high heels, so we went back to Will's room and changed. We brought our costumes back to the Ibis and when we got back to the Moathouse I was met with numerous people telling me that my singing was amazing, and a few people telling me I got robbed. Awww :)

At midnight I went to see something called Cosplay Complex, which was really, really weird and extremely funny. It was billed as "slightly H" but I think that's putting it mildly. "Moderately H" might have been a touch more accurate. Didn't stop it from being hilarious, of course, and that's another series I'd really like to see more of. After that finished they showed the anime version of One Piece, a manga that Neko has been reading recently. We went to see that together. I liked it and I think Neko did too, but he did say that it was quite different in terms of story from the manga, and that it had some really weird animation.

We went to bed around 4.30, which was a kinda bad idea as Neko had to be in the dealer's room at 10.00 on Sunday, and I had to be checked out by 12.00. We managed it but we were both absolutely knackered. I left our main suitcase in the left luggage in the Ibis and brought Neko's backpack to him in the dealer's room. They showed parts 3 and 4 of .hack//sign that afternoon, so I watched that and then just hung around in the bar and chatted to people. Neko got out of the dealer's room at 4.00 as it closed at 3.00. We went to the closing ceremony and watched the Anime Music Video competition. Apparently they had 20-odd entries and didn't have time to show them all, so the committee had picked their four favourites and we picked the winner from those. My personal favourite was called "Ed's Day" and was a collection of clips from Cowboy Bebop, set to a Spike Milligan song. It was hilarious. It ended in a tie between that one and one that appeared to be a crossover between Evangelion and KareKano, but I could be wrong on that one. They both won prizes anyway.

There was assorted other prize-giving, and with that the con was officially over. Neko and I hung around until around 8.00 and got back into London around 9.45. We came home, ate pizza and went to bed at an hour that's alarmingly early for either of us. Neko's still asleep right now.

So, not a bad con all things considered. I didn't buy much in the dealer's room as I'd promised myself I wouldn't. I got a tare panda lapel pin, a DVD of Perfect Blue (you know there's a scene in that which is identical to a scene in Requiem for a Dream, right down to the framing? No? Well you do now), a Christmas present for Lily, and the obligatory bad hentai tape from the Bring and Buy table, which Neko asked me to get so I got reimbursed for that. It's called Can-Can Bunny, although from the looks of things there are no bunnies and no can-cans. The guy at the table assured me that the trailer was pretty bloody awful so we're expecting this to be bad too. And if it isn't as bad as expected, it was only a fiver ^_^

So, now that's out of the way I can concentrate on other things. Like my uni assignments and NaNoWriMo.

Kept that one quiet, didn't I? I didn't want to go hexing myself, see, so I resolutely refused to mention it on here until it officially started. Which was at midnight on Friday. Not to worry, I already know how I'm going to write the story and missing the first three days of the month isn't as much of a setback as you might believe, as I need to be in London in order to write it.

Come the end of this month, I will be a novelist :D

Right, I have been writing this for exactly 100 minutes, so I shall be off. I need to unpack things and find places to put them, plus I'd like to have access to my toothbrush and shower things again. I've promised myself a looooong bath after that weekend.

Well, at least my final con for a while ended on a positive note :)

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