Only...four days later!
So. Anime Boston.


THURSDAY:

Packing. Refill cats' food and water, change litter, the usual. Assure cats that I won't be gone that long.

Get on the bus. Bus driver is amused, as this is my usual bus. Get into town, head straight to the BPL. There will inevitably be waiting around: such in the nature of cons. Therefore I need books. But first I need to pay off my overdue fines.

Nice librarian allows me to pay off most of my fines, and explains how I should probably get a replacement for the one book I apparently lost. Eeep. But if I bring my books to her specifically, she'll allow me to check them out anyway. Thank you, nice librarian!

Meet up with thesilentpoet, sylverice2, jonayla85, Kathleen-who-does-not-have-an-LJ. Drop bags, have dinner. Begin sewing and modeling.


Hakuryuu drying off in time-out. Naughty dragon! (This is why he doesn't have wings. Right. You can see Goku's tiara limiter, and part of one of Sanzo's arm-pieces.)


Kathleen getting into character as Goku: having lost three straight rounds of rock-paper-scissors, she insisted as on carrying all our bags back from a Walgreens run. We had to lose three more rounds in order to claim them back from her.

FRIDAY:

Day of Panels! But first, I must tack 003 properly onto my lab coat, as otherwise he lists drunkenly. Cue the first of many, many jokes about what I've been giving my owl. Sadly, I do not have any pictures. Perhaps later when I nick them from other people.

(Number of times Watari is recognized: 12. Number of times I just hear "owl!": 5.)

Panels: -- on fanfiction (sadly, nothing new: more for solidarity than anything else)
-- on making AMVs (now I know some of the kick-ass vid editors by sight, hooray! and also the basics that might yet let me translate the vague 'hey, you know, that song would make a great vid' impulse into an actual product)
-- Japanese tea ceremony (done straight through the first time, then with explanations of symbolism, etc., the second. Lovely, even if the ceremonial tea does taste awful -- and one of the panelists was dressed as Vampire Princess Miyu (see below), which made Stef and Katie happy)
-- on yaoi (same room, immediately after the 18+ Anime Dating Game -- we'd originally intended to go to that first, and just stay in the room, but the place was full up just as we got there. We just shrugged and got into line for the yaoi panel, but quite a few people were ticked.)


In the dealer's room, flipping through the doujins, when sylverice2 taps me on the (non-owled) shoulder. "Thia? Turn around." I do so -- and, "OMG! Sai! And Hikaru!"

"OMG! Watari!"

So pictures were taken, and my day was made. These are the joys of small fandoms: even one cosplayer is a thing of happiness.


...although I did find another Sai in the Artists' Alley. At this rate, I might become greedy. :-D


Vampire Princess Miyu. Or so Katie and Stef tell me: this is one of the anime they haven't shown me yet.


Yay, new fandom love! Hiei and Youko Kurama from YU YU HAKUSHO. I'd caught a glimpse of them earlier in passing, and sworn to fling myself in their path if necessary to get a proper picture. This is the advantage of cosplaying as Watari: he can do things like that without breaking character. Sanzo, not so much. (This is why I have almost no photos from Saturday. Well, one of the reasons.)


...and the other Kurama, spotted waiting in line. Whee!


This poor woman -- it's a kickass costume, but when someone said something about how often her picture must be taken, she sighed and said, "Walk, walk, pose, walk, pose, walk, walk, pose..."


Of course Jack Sparrow has a harem going. (And this Jack was incredibly in character: boneless movements, slurred words, and all. Beautiful.)


"Hey, Thia! Isn't that Leon and D?"

"...holy shit, you're right!" :chases them down:


I had been feeling almost smug about my Watari: people were recognizing me, people were asking for my picture, all was well. But these people had never even heard of Yami no Matsuei. Pride, etcetera. At least I've heard of Kingdom Hearts. Pfft.

Most commonly cosplayed fandom: Naruto. As usual. Lots and lots of Naruto on display, sometimes to good effect (see Gaara below) and sometimes...well, when you have people dressed as (one of) the bad guy groups, they should not be running around offering "free hugs!" I don't care if you're young and female, you just shouldn't. Kingdom Hearts also seemed to have had a surge. Ditto Death Note. Lots and lots of Lights and Ls, with the occasional Misa.


The Gaara in question. Gaara is apparently quite a popular character to cosplay, which means that maybe people could be persuaded to start paying more attention to detail, maybe please kthx? (For those who know the character: PLUSHY GOURD.)

...right. Sorry. Silly me.

Friday night: back to the hotel room. More sewing. And sewing. And dear-God-what-were-we-thinking sewing. Katie, who was our sewing machine goddess, didn't bother going to bed: neither did Kathleen, who was taking care of the non-sewing details. Stef and I, who were on pinning and hand-sewing detail, crashed out around 5 AM.

SATURDAY:

Costumes? Well, partially. I put on the shirt, jeans, arm-guards, and wig, because I'm stubborn like that, and Katie pulled on her Goyjo clothes, since she didn't need to worry about a wig. But otherwise, we went as we were to check out the AMVs. (The Final Fantasy: Advent Children to Ghostbusters? Hilarious. And the eventual winner for the fun/upbeat/etc category included Hikaru no Go clips. I am easily made happy, especially on two hours of sleep.) Then back to the room, for last-minute adjustments and some much-needed nappage, before heading back into the fray.


Clockwise from left: Kami-sama (Ayla), Hakkai (Stef), Goyjo (Katie), yours truly (Sanzo), and Goku (Kathleen). I swear, Kathleen and I weren't trying to upstage anyone.... Probably just as well that this picture was taken out in the mall, where I was forbidden to pull Sanzo's gun, on the quite reasonable grounds that it looked a little too realistic.

(For next time: the lining of the sutra is going to be something other than satin, or it's going to be tacked down like my owl, dammit. Even if it does make it harder for Kami-sama to nick. The wind blew it right off my shoulders at least twice while crossing the street from hotel to convention center, or vice-versa, not counting the times it just fell off on its own.)

Went to Greg Ayres' panel, but left before the second half, both because it would be discussing Why Bootlegging Is Bad For The Industry, and because getting food and caffeine was pressing. Then we hit up the Hentai AMVs (which were amusing, but sadly not as good as they thought they were -- yes, yes, terribly shocking images you're using there, now get your movements properly on the music's beat and not half a second off!), and waiting briefly in line for Hentai Dubbing before deciding that sleep was not for the weak, and heading back to the hotel room again.


"Sanzo: a still life." Except no fan. Um. Moving right along!

Number of photos: not as many as Watari, but we weren't out as long, either. I do think we were the best of the Sanzo-ikkou at the con: I saw at least two others.

Most bemusing moment: girl who saw Hakuryuu, and wanted to pet him. Then hug Hakkai. Then hug Goyjo. Then hug Goku (who flat-out refused). Then hug Sanzo (who tried to refuse: she snuck up behind me and stole the hug, then ran off). ...WTF, people. WTF.

SUNDAY

No costume. Although, to support a theory I had, we brought along Hakuryuu, just to see if people still wanted photos. (They did.)


Sample photo. By this point, our poor Hakuryuu is literally in pieces, as his tail broke off and is being manually held on. But he's still cute!


Photos from waiting in line for closing ceremonies, #1: un-named Chinese goddess (?). I asked where she (i.e. the character) was from, and she said, "Hong Kong." Which...was not entirely helpful. But it's still lovely.


#2: un-named Indian goddess. I didn't even ask this time, just snapped and thanked her.


#3: mullenkamp, this Maya's for you!


Technically taken after closing ceremonies, but hey, I take my obscure side characters from old-school anime (YYH in this case) where I can find them.


...or my slightly less obscure main characters, either! (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle's Kurogane. No Fai, alas.)

Walking out, someone started a chant/counter chant of "PIRATES!" "NINJA!" "PIRATES!" "NINJA!" which very rapidly loses its charm when you don't care, you're tired and you just want to go home, thankyouverymuch. Screw you both, I'm running off with the Goblin King!


Last-minute photo-taking, outside the convention center. We first spotted the Huni, then the rest of them. Ha, random other Ouran cosplayers. Take that.

We didn't go straight home. We packed, and then went out to see 10,000 B.C., which is cheesy B-movie fun with very very pretty mammoths and not-dinosaurs-because-they-didn't-exist-but-close-enough. And then I was dropped off at my apartment, and I came upstairs, and the cats informed me that I had neglected them exceedingly and what did I propose to do about that?