A-kon

A-kon 15 was a learning experience for me. See, it's a convention of anime geeks held usually in Dallas, TX I think. It was at a huge hotel this year, a hotel that had not been expecting the 11,000 costumed nerds that walked through it's doors over the course of 3 days. It was, in retrospect, probably the oddest thing I've ever been a part of, and therefore one of the best weekends of my life.
For my part, I did attempt to cosplay, in that I borrowed black kitty ears and tail from Jen and a homemade Hidden Leaf head protector (the most popular accessory at A-kon) from Shelby. I wore them with my Hard Rock Café t-shirt and orange and white hawaiian shorts. And I called myself: Neko Ninja! Though my pass said "The One". Nicole was "The Other One."
The sheer number of costumed geeks packed into that hotel+convention center was aweinspireing. The energy was palpable...as was the smell. And the elevator situation for the center tower where most people were staying (32 floors and 6 elevators) was interesting. So was the ride up in the goat bus; which is a short school bus with a goat on a beer keg on the side. Just getting there was half the battle, and so was 10 people sharing 2 hotel rooms (like we haven't stuffed more than that in Meredith's living room before). And I got to see Do As Infinity live! I have no idea who they are, but it's j-pop, and it was live, and I didn't understand a word of it! And I like Psycho Le Cemu, no matter what anyone else says.
We lost Stewart for an entire day to some LARP thing. And I got the cardkey back from him right before he went in, which was pure luck, and meant that if I got lost, eventually someone would need back in the room and come find me.
And we lost Stevie to the artists, as she is one. She paid for her trip in commission pieces. Go Stevie and her amazing art!
Shelby, Dan, Paul and I also spent several hours one night in the Skywalk of Shame, where all the sign-whores where hanging out. We were sign-whores. It was fun. Someone gave us pocky, we don't know who they were, but hey, free pocky! Shelby really enjoyed the sign-whoreing. And I got a picture of a pierced penis. And beads, for the same reason you get beads at Mardi Gras. My first beads, I'm so proud.
Also, Dan kissed a guy for pocky or something, or to see two women kiss. It was the other guy's first kiss, and it was with some random guy at a convention, poor kid.
There was also a 24 hour anime music video channel at the hotel, and one for the convention itself. I watched the cosplay contest from the room since I couldn't get in.
And there was cake.

So they were late arriving in Wichita again, but at least they were several hours earlier than last year. I got to ride in the outcast car with Lauren and her boy toy Thomas cause there was no room for me in the bus (which now has a couch in the back) or the van (which belongs to Josh, who hasn’t been in anime in several years, but is in the SCA with Charity, who blackmailed him into coming along so they could use his van). I got to drive through Oklahoma City! It was…scary as hell. I broke into a cold sweat every time Charity turned on her blinker. I was following the bus, but at least I wasn’t in it, cause Charity+driving=death! Or almost.
But we all got their safely, surprisingly, except then we had to find parking. So we got lost and drove around for quite a bit. Dallas is all one-way streets. But it was all OK cause we were still in there before official check-in time. At which point I got separated from Lauren and Thomas in the interest of finding where I was sleeping.
Then came the primping. Everyone was putting on their coolest shirts or school-boy clothing (cause 4 of them were going as male Bleach characters), so I put on my shiny, disco shirt and spiked my hair up with that green hair gel stuff. Green hair is neat! And gives my boyfriend a boner. I also put on the cat ears and tail. I was a little neko punk.
So we went browsing, I discovered a room where there was nothing but TVs and videogames, and had to summon all my willpower not to join a game of Halo, least I not be seen for the rest of the con.
At some point there was eating. A few people brought a ton of ramen, so we pretty much had ramen and Stewart’s bread the entire time. Stewart thinks he’s that kid with solar hands from that bread-making anime. But he makes damn good bread, lots of new and exciting kinds too…and he looks good in that pink hairband. And they were charging a whole dollar for a can of pop from the vending machines in that hotel! We said we wouldn’t pay that much, that we didn’t need it that badly, but we did, and we caved.
Eventually Stewart convinced us (“us” being all the girls, who were staying in one room) to come to the concert. The opening ceremonies were lame (we watched them on TV from our room) but the concerts were awesome! Well, two out of three. The girl between the two good bands kinda sucked, but she was trying. It was ZZ and Dream. I had never heard of ZZ, but they’re an awesome rock band. I love that bass that makes your chest reverberate. And Dream is an awesome group who does a lot of themes for anime, they were the main show. I think they have 7 members, but only 2 were there (plus 3 backup dancers; loved the dancing). The lame host shooting t-shirts into the audience between the bands, was not so cool. Which resulted in much boredom-induced poking. I’m happy to report no serious injuries.
Ran into some members of anime who I didn’t know were going at the concert.
Saturday was cosplay day. Lindsey had said at the beginning of the year that she was going as Franz from Gankutsuou, because she had a jacked that would be perfect, so I decided to be Albert. I found an equally pimp jacket and together we were the pimpest characters nobody could identify. I’m have no clue what Shelby was supposed to be.
We went to a couple panels in the morning, one for Limit Break Cosplay and another for GONZO (makers of Gankutsuou, as well as Kiddy Grade). Limit Break Cosplay was not only informative, but ADD. They were easily distracted by cell phones and light sabers but their costumes rocked! Which brings me to the point that Naruto has now officially been overdone and I’m not going to do that next year.
Someone we met outside of the GONZO panel actually recognized who me and Lindsey were supposed to be, and took our picture. I had my picture taken! And two more times too! Though we didn’t get nearly as much love as our Bleach friends.
And a little after that I lost them. I turn around to turn my cell phone back on, and when I turn back around they were gone. Oh well. It just meant I was now free to wander aimlessly.
Which I did. Mostly around Artist Alley, because the dealer’s room was closed for some fire safety reason. I ended up spending most of my time (and most of my money) at Fireball’s booth. Fireball is the creator of the awesome web comic Kagerou. I ended up buying this adorable print of Kid and Heyoka curled up in bed after reading bedtime stories. And apparently, I’m the first to buy one, in all the years she’s been trying to sell that one. So she signed it! And let me pick from her stash of special stickers! Feel the love.
I also bought some of her chibi key chains, I have one of Edward that says “Genius. (No, really.)” and I got one for Jen with Excel that says “I ate the damn dog!”. Tom got a pimp mage from FF9 that says “Owned.” and I gave Ryan a pimp chocobo that says “Bitch please!”. And I got many stickers, my favorite of which says “Yiff everything!”
Then I saw a pink Link (cosplayer). It’s as cute as it sounds. Also, teddy bears with chain mail jackets that were too much for my tiny budget.
Someone was walking around as a living A-kon badge, which is genius!
They were really strict on the weapons this year, I don’t know how Shelby got his wooden sword passed (except it was a really soft wood). And suddenly I wonder if they ever found a male Ichigo that would make out with Rachel (who went as Ichigo). And who has the picture if they did.
It was unfortunate that they did away with the sign-whores this year because of some no soliciting law. The skywalk seemed so empty.
Somewhere in the afternoon I found Lauren and Thomas, and we had supper at Sumo Sam’s in the mall. That place has the best teriyaki sauce. Then I showed them Fireball’s booth, and they bought stuff.
It turns out Thomas is a furry (a scaley to be exact, because he’s a dragon), so we had a few things to talk about. I love Thomas (in a platonic “eww, he’s a guy…but that won’t stop me from pretending to hit on him” sort of way). He showed me some furry comics while we were in their room. We also ate a box of fortune cookies. And at some point there was late-night wandering to the hentai fest (which was well underway). They chickened out and bailed when they saw the condom on the ground outside the room.
The hentai fest wasn’t too crowded when I got there sometime in the early hours of the morning, but I still had to wait in line for about 10 minutes until enough other people left. I got in sorta near the beginning of Blood Royalty. A lot of it was pretty hot, except for a few parts revolving around bodily functions that should not be happening during sex. And it had tentacles. And pirates! ARRG! And at one point a very drunk guy wandered in and started yelling things very loudly at the screen. I left after the end of that, cause it was really really frickin’ late.
I really wanted to go back to the dealer’s room one last time before we left, but I didn’t wake up until about 10, and everything was pretty hectic. A group of us tried to go down to the convention center, but the elevator situation was not working. We eventually gave up and just packed our stuff cause it was time to check out. We had to go up the stairs 4 stories to get to the express elevators to get a better chance of actually getting down though. And I have gotten way too out of shape, cause 4 stories nearly killed me. But some of my stuff was still in Lauren and Thomas’ room, and I somehow miraculously made it up there within half an hour, but we didn’t make it down for another hour. At which point we found out the bus needed a jumpstart. When we got to the car to get the jumper cables though we found out the car needed a jump start. So the van jumped us both, and by that time there was no longer any time to go to the dealer’s room one last time. So I didn’t get chopsticks, but oh well.
On the way home, there was talk of stopping in Oklahoma City to eat dinner with Charity’s parents. Which is when we decided we could find our way home ourselves and sped past the van and bus. Eventually we had to stop so I could take over driving, and somehow while we were stopped the bus passed us (I guess death threats by 10 people changed Charity’s mind). So we passed the bus again. They were all asleep, but everyone in the van was awake, and they stared at us. Lauren has a ninja car!
We got home before sundown, spent half an hour in the parking lot talking, and still got out of there before the bus caught up with us again. The outcast car rocks!
All-in-all it was a cool trip and I had fun. I’m starting to really like Dallas. And now I have to figure out who I’m going as to the next A-kon.