Fanime 2010
7/16/2010
I've been working on this report on-and-off on my downtime at work - things have been nuts lately. So last year did something I swore I wouldn’t do again: the Sakuracon -> Acen -> Fanime triple combo. All 3 cons are fun in their own way but by the time Fanime was over last year, I was completely exhausted. This year, instead of eliminating one of the cons, I attended all 3 AND added another one. That on top of WCS nearly killed me. Why do I do this?? Anyone? Anyway, even as a zombie, I had a LOT of fun. My time was pretty evenly split between hanging out with the NOTN people and practicing for WCS. Wednesday I flew into San Francisco at about 11PM on Wednesday night, which was cool/creepy since my plane flew over the pitch black water for about 5 minutes before finally landing in the airport. Chris, Kayla and Mandy picked me up (THANK YOU!) and we drove to our shady motel in San Jose. Stephanie and Jack were waiting at the motel for us and, right when we got there, Kayla gave me a gift. (For those not aware, Kayla is THE gift giver. She could have 10 costumes to make and would still pump out gifts for everyone.) To my huge surprise, she made me a Ran Fan costume from FMA!! I hadn’t spoken about wanting to cosplay Ran Fan for YEARS so I was completely shocked. I LOVE YOU KAYLA! Thursday We stayed the night and wrestled with some issues in the morning when the management claimed that they had us on surveillance camera bringing “10 people into the room at 3AM” – which was just wrong. After that, we headed over to the con hotel in our pajamas and, although we were all hoping for a speedy check-in, that didn’t happen. Instead, we gave Jack and Stephanie a tour of the convention center while we craved showers and prayed we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew. When we finally checked in, we cleaned up, put on our swimsuits and went down to the hot tub. We all promised Tim we would go swimming but it was cold and raining so we met up with him at the hot tub instead and we got to chat for a while. Afterward, we went back to the room to change and picked Krystal up from the airport. We drove around for a while looking for a Quiznos but eventually gave up and stumbled across a really good/cheap Italian restaurant instead. We all ate a ton (Kayla ate more parmesan cheese than actual food) and we went back to the hotel to freshen up and pick up Jack and Stephanie so we could go to get our pictures taken! Even though it’s a little weird, we decided to go to Picture People to get some pictures taken out of costume. We’ve been friends for 4 years and, although we have some horrible, late-night out of costume photos, we thought it was time for some nice ones. (Plus Kayla works at the Picture People and was able to get a 50% off discount.) After taking photos and “daaaw”ing at how cute and stupid we are, we went back to the hotel so Krystal and I could get to work on WCS stuff. Krystal and I had planned on trying out for WCS for a while and had a very specific idea of what we wanted to accomplish in our performance. However, we only had about half of the routine choreographed when we came together on Thursday night. We would spend the next 3 nights choreographing and practicing and nearly tearing our hair out along the way. Thursday night went relatively smoothly (except for minor scroll issues) but we were both tired out quickly and went to bed around 1:30AM. Friday Friday got off to a late start because we spent the morning at Walmart buying tons of food. When we got back to the hotel, we changed into Pokémon because we all become energetic morons when we wear those costumes and we thought it’d help pump us up for the rest of the weekend. This time, my Jessie wig was actually FINISHED and looked a million times better although the rest costume must be lined with drugs because every time I wear it I laugh until I cry for NO reason. Pokémon wins the award for “most fun costumes” for sure. Anyway, after taking a bunch of pictures and wandering around for a while, we went back to the hotel to change. Instead of changing into Street Fighter though (like I promised Tim I would do!) but I took a quick nap and changed into Lucky Star instead. Kayla, Mandy, Krystal and I have been trying to cosplay from LS for a couple of years now – we didn’t necessarily like the costumes but the characters were so similar to us (height and personality-wise) that we really wanted to do it. Mandy was very self-conscious but looked amazing and we actually got a lot more attention than I was expecting. We also bought chocolate cornets from an Asian supermarket but they ended up tasting awful! We took some photos and changed out of costume for the night. We went to Peggy Sue’s for dinner and afterward, Krystal and I changed and gathered our stuff and headed back down to the convention center to practice. We had only gotten a small amount of work done on Thursday night so we knew right off the bat that it would be a long and frustrating night. We worked late, finalizing as much choreography as we could before passing out around 3-4AM. Saturday Saturday we started the day in our FMA: Brotherhood costumes. For some reason, everyone was really on-edge and getting into costume was a mess. I was feeling a little groggy myself but had no reason to complain, since I was wearing a costume with sweatpants, comfortable shoes and a mask. After a couple of meltdowns, we all made it outside where we immediately ran into EBK. (This was nothing surprising, as we ran into Al about a million times that weekend.) He grabbed some quick photos of us and we spent some time walking around and getting some photos of our own. We are all such freaking FMA nerds that we took some reenactment and “shippy” photos which made me squeal like a 10 year old. Also, at one point we spotted Stendex taking some Prince of Persia photos up on a ledge so Mandy and I decided it would be a good idea to try to do it too. Now, (I say this in the most lovinginly way possible) Mandy is the clumsiest person I know and I have a fear of falling. Why we thought it would be a good idea for the two of us to stand on a thin, 25 foot tall ledge I have no idea. Probably the same reason why we thought the two blue/green eyed white people in the group would make the best “Asians.” But hey, we got some cool photos...which I don't have because my FRIENDS don't send me things!! Here's one of Kayla on the ledge though, looking much cooler than we did: Anyway, we walked around for a while then eventually went to grab some food at Jack in the Box. Afterward, we took a walk through the artist alley, at which point we decided to get out of costume for a while. I basically jumped out of my sweaty costume and into some casual clothes and hopped into bed to take a 20 minute nap, one of my favorite con activities. Well, we ended up hanging out in the room for 2 hours looking at photos and being anti-social before Krystal and I changed into Yuri and White Rose respectively and went outside to get some photos. However, the minute I stepped outside in the wind, my 4 heavy-duty snaps all popped and my cape fell off. I was bummed because I had just remade the cape and didn’t have any problems with it at home! Thankfully, Chris came to my rescue and helped me safety pin it in place. I met up with Vince for some photos and reunited with Kayla, who took some as well.
White Rose is a strange costume because, while I’m very happy with the construction, I don’t like the way it looks on me and don’t particularly like wearing it. Something about it just doesn’t look right on me and makes me look really boxy. Also, cosplaying alone is no fun for me, even if I’m wearing my favorite costume. But hey, I got the photos I wanted and changed out of costume after that. At that point, we all went back to the hotel room and Chris cooked everyone dinner! He made pot stickers and rice and things I didn’t think could be made in a hotel room without a kitchen. Kayla’s friend Shana came to visit and we all hung out for a while, while Krystal and I added some finishing touches to our FY costumes. After dinner, we got into ¾ costume (wigs, main dresses with sleeves, earwings, shoes) and headed back down to the convention center to our usual practice spot. This time, however, we ran into Melissa, Vanessa, Juan and CJ who it turns out were practicing in the same area as well! (Apparently that corner had an aura of WCS) So we wouldn’t be in the way, we jumped into an empty panel room to practice instead. It was our first time practicing with our sleeves and, although we weren’t as inhibited as we expected, we were still challenged by our headpieces and grew frustrated very quickly. Early in to the rehearsal, my umbrella broke, which just threw the practice out of whack completely. We asked our friends to give us a few minutes alone and Krystal and I sat on the floor and talked out our frustrations. It was clear that our sleepless nights were catching up to us and we just needed to stay focused and try not to be irritated with our mistakes. We regained our focus but just as we were getting back to work, we were kicked out of the panel room by con staff. We set up our things in our old practice area and were kept company by CJ and Juan, who were still practicing too. We ran through the routine about a million times, only doing it “perfect” 2-3 of those times. We were visited by our caffeine-powered friends a couple of times then around 5AM, we hit a wall and sat down with CJ and Juan, who were also getting tired. After chatting for a while, Krystal and I practiced a couple more times and finally headed to bed around 6:30AM. When we got back to the room, Krystal and I still had a couple of minor things to repair on our costumes (hems, etc) but passed out very quickly. Sunday/WCS Day We woke up reluctantly at 9AM. I crawled out of bed and went to the nearest Dollar Tree with Chris, Kayla and Mandy because that was where I bought my original umbrella back in Chicago. After our 2nd Dollar Tree, we finally found an umbrella and went back to the hotel to find Krystal sobbing. The stress had gotten to Krystal and I in different ways – she broke down into tears and I was silently very angry. With Kayla and Mandy’s help, we pulled it together and got into costume in time. We had 2 last practice runs downstairs in our rehearsal spot before heading to the room. The audition process was very strange and reminded me of American Idol. We walked to the panel room, where Laura was waiting for us outside. Although we were early, they were ready for us and were expected to perform immediately. I was a little thrown off as we entered the room, which was littered with cosplayers but otherwise dead silent. We stood before the long table full of judges and did our performance. I was not particularly nervous, mostly because everything went so quickly, I didn’t have a build-up or TIME to be nervous. When we were finished, were mostly happy with our performance – we didn’t hit ourselves in the heads anyway. Afterward, we walked up to the judges where we talked about our costumes, our reason for making them, and any challenges we encountered. When we were done, we sat down and looked around the room, feeling humbled but thankful that we were done. There were only 2 performances after ours so we had no idea how we would stand against the other teams. Because there were several teams that we really admired (SP & Miaka, WOTS & Nessa, PL and Sai) we decided that we would be very happy to place in the top 5. When they began to announce the awards, they started with 11th place and worked their way up. Once they announced the top 6 and we discovered we had made it past our cut, we were both really excited! However, as they announced 5th, 4th, and 3rd place, our excitement began to mix with shock. They called us up to the front with Sparkle Pipsi & Miaka, two cosplayers I admire and members of my favorite performance group ever. I felt completely sure that we would get 2nd place – I didn’t need to see their performance to know it was good (and watching it online later, that was 100% confirmed). Krystal and I held hands as the judges made their announcement and all I can remember thinking is “We are going to have so much free money for Cosworx!” But when they called our name, I felt SO many things all at once that I just burst into tears. I hugged Krystal and just felt a million different emotions – joy, shock, accomplishment, uncertainty and complete and total disbelief. In addition to that came the horrible weight of the situation at hand – we would have to prepare a new set of costumes and performance in 6 weeks. We had just survived weeks of endless preparation and sleepless nights and it was about to start all over again. Being the zombie that I was at the time, this seemed impossible and the responsibility terrified me. As the excitement died down and the teams filed out of the room, Krystal and I called our friends and family with the news and waited for Ed, Laura, and members of TV Aichi to gather so we could discuss paperwork. We filled out some forms, one of which being the form I recognized as the Team Profile from the WCS website – it was so surreal! As we discussed details of the competition and time constraints, my apprehension grew and I was literally ready to run from the room. However, as they brought in the novelty “sign” for us to take photos with, the fear subsided and I wanted to cry again. The task ahead of me was so daunting but being part of the WCS is something I didn’t think I could ever achieve and, as cheesy as that is, I knew it was something I would have to work for either way and I was going to make it work. After filling out paperwork, Krystal and I lumbered outside where it appeared that everyone already knew we had won. We grabbed some very quick photos with Leonard and EBK but were eager to go back to the hotel room and rest. (Especially since we still had the big sign and didn’t want to prance around with it like gloating morons.) We got back to the room and showered and changed into regular clothes. Although we still had quite a few hours until dusk, we were both done cosplaying for the day and ready to relax. When we reunited with the rest of our roommates, we all went to the Olive Garden. This resulted in the most hilarious dinner I’ve ever had. Because none of us had eaten all day, the food hit us like bricks of caffeine and we were bouncing off the walls. We played around with our waitress and were much louder than we needed to be and used the word “device” way too often and I laughed until it hurt. After dinner, we went back to the con and we were all exhausted and Kayla, Mandy, Krystal and I fell asleep on the bed. We all could have slept the rest of the night (and we probably should have) but we still hadn’t gone to the game room/hentai/viewing rooms and all the things that had been so much fun the year before. I had a very hard time waking up so I took a caffeine pill and headed down to the game room. I still wasn’t sure what to make of the WCS situation and was feeling a little contemplative. However, after playing some games, I felt a lot better - Mandy and I rocked Dance Freaks like you wouldn’t believe and looked like uncoordinated white slobs playing Para Para. After that, we went to hentai, which was disgusting of course but nowhere near the level of Night Shift Nurse. My memory gets a bit fuzzy here but I know we made it back to the hotel sometime in the early morning. We were all exhausted and totally ready for bed. Monday Despite being tired, we had to wake up early because Krystal and I had a flight to catch that afternoon and we still had to cosplay from FMA: Conqueror Shamballa. It had been a couple of years since we had worn the costumes together and, since we had a crummy time the last time we wore them, thought they deserved a reprise. We walked around for a while and weirdly, ran into Hoho-Papa. We also stopped by the dealer’s room where, like the year before, we all bought matching fat animal shirts. (This year’s was pandas.) We took some photos and went back to the room to shower and pack up. Afterward, we all went to Peggy Sue’s for milkshakes (because I said if we placed in the top 5 for WCS, we’d get milkshakes) then made a mad dash for the airport. Krystal and I had flights about 30 minutes apart so we both got dropped off together. I hate saying goodbye to everyone, especially after Fanime because I know it will be a long time before I see them again! Overall, Fanime was an exhausting blur. Really, wow.
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