queza7

This weekend was Naka-Kon 2008 at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Kansas City. It was three days of fun, excitement, and exhaustion, and it was absolutely awesome!


Friday

After waking up at an obnoxiously early 5:00 a.m., I bounced out of bed at 6:00 and started stuffing my iPod with anime music to play via iCat at the information desk. While it was synching I put on my first cosplay of the weekend: a Lilim school uniform from Strawberry Panic.



When I was putting on my trouser socks, however, one of them caught on my thumbnail and got shredded! I didn’t have another pair, so after eating breakfast, loading up the car, and picking up Matt, I went in search of more socks.

After fruitless searches at Dillons (after cashing my paycheck) and Target, Wal-Mart finally yielded something wonderful. They weren’t trouser socks, but they were more perfect than I could have ever imagined: light pink argyle socks with dark pink and burgundy diamonds. They matched my outfit exactly – the Sock Gods were smiling on me!

Matt and I drove to pick up graydown at her apartment, and set out on the road to con. Since it was late enough in the morning to be thinking about lunch, we stopped in at the IHOP at the Legends and confused people: me with my pink school uniform, and Sarah who found a way to incorporate her Teto ears into a hat. (Pictures of Teto are further down.) A very nice woman who happened to be leaving just after we ordered stopped by our table with a 20% off total order coupon which expired that day, and needless to say we accepted with great thanks!

After checking into the hotel room that I would share with graydown, solan_t, and affreca, we decided to hijack the concierge from his post and have him bring our luggage to our rooms for us. Among the three of us we nearly overloaded his cart, so it was definitely worth it for the time saved from making extra trips!

We all went to registration and picked up our badges, after which I immediately started my volunteer shift of being Miss Know-It-All at the information desk. I handed out schedules, programs, and maps of food in the area to everyone who came through registration, and helped lots of congoers find out whatever they need to know, from contest questions to where the dealers’ room was. It was awesome to be Important! During my first shift someone dropped a Naka dog tag on the floor which they never claimed, so I even got a little freebie bonus for volunteering. It would be nice if I could give it back to the person, but unfortunately there was no way to track them down.

Matt was wonderful enough to man the info desk while I ran to the dealers’ room to drop the majority of my money in somewhere around 15 minutes. I actually found an Ayanami Rei figurine, where she was dressed in her plug suit and uninjured! I’ve never actually seen one before due to the prominence of figurines like "Aphrodite Rei" and "Extra Nurse Rei" (no kidding). I also scored a fox hat, an awesome jeweled collar (which they made Just For Me), an Aeris pin, and a Mai HiME poster. I won’t say how much I spent, but I was kind of a lot. Good thing Naka only comes once a year!



I think the thing that shocked me the very most, out of the whole convention, happened on Friday afternoon. Erik, who was downstairs near the info desk to talk to Matt (they were rooming together), actually said hello to me. In a genuinely nice voice. And we actually talked about stuff over the rest of the weekend. I think I’m still in shock from it, but I’m so glad that he’s finally come to his senses! It’s good to have another friend again.

I also helped graydown into her Teto costume and was her seeing-eye-schoolgirl for the evening. We mostly hung out at the info desk (where she was my Info Desk Guest of Honor, tee hee), but I was cunning and was able to help her escape a fate worse than death when a cosplayer covered in green paint wanted to glomp her. By keeping him distracted, she was able to make a stealthy getaway!



When my shift at the info desk was over at 8 p.m., Sarah and I sent to a panel called “Sci-Fi Fandom: Do Otaku Belong?” which was an interesting sociological discussion about the differences between the two subcultures. I then opted to make an early bedtime of 10:30, since Saturday would be a very long day.


Saturday

After waking up at a very early 7:30, after tossing and turning all night due to having either a VERY warm down comforter or a VERY thin bed sheet over me, I munched on a huge Perkins muffin and made a crockpot full of chicken and rice soup for dinner. solan_t was up around the same time I was, and was kind enough to help me put on my Rei wig and zipped up my plug suit in exchange for some help with her hair. I was dressed and downstairs at my info desk by 9:00 even though my shift didn’t start until 10:00, but nothing started till 10 anyway so there wasn’t any point in not sitting down.

Lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which was kind of fun to eat in the plug suit. I had a pair of yellow rubber gloves to put on over my plug suit gloves, which made for an interesting sight!



My info desk shifts were officially over at 2:00, so after saying goodbye to my desk I went shopping in the dealer room with graydown and verminiusrex. Will also joined up with us for a little bit, and in addition to my scoring some awesome goggles we spotted a pair of Hello Kitty polka-dotted strawberry mittens. Now, if you know Black Mage, who was the A/V coordinator for Naka, you’ll know about his love for mittens. We all chipped in and bought them for him, and he was overjoyed! He even attempted to set up the main programming room wearing them on Sunday. I was tempted to follow and watch, but I had other things to do.



At this point seven hours had gone by since I put in my red contacts, which, in addition to the discomfort from not being used to wearing contacts, cut off my peripheral vision and made me nearsighted. I peeled myself out of the plug suit and got the contacts out of my eyes for a glorious 45 minutes of pajama-lounging and soup-eating before going in to cosplay judging. verminiusrex stopped by our room in the afternoon as well, and decided to try on my kitty ears!



I wowed the judges with my "work-in-progress" booklet of photos depicting my struggle to complete the plug suit, which also included my Photoshopped pictures that were in my previous post, and headed almost straight into the green room. The cosplay contest went MUCH smoother than last year. After letting us all strut around the stage once to get the feel of it, we were led backstage to find out our runway order. They let us get our own chairs so that we had as much space as we needed, and there were water stations which the hotel staff came to refill when they got low. Even though we started the runway show at 7:15 (green room call was 5:00, and seating started around 6:30), it flowed extremely well.

You can check out my Photobucket site for cosplay runway photos courtesy of graydown. There are only a few pictures on there now, I’ll let you know when they’re all up.

During the intermission when the judges deliberated prize-winners, the stage was free for anyone to be silly on. There was a great little impromptu show by the main female character from FLCL (the one with the guitar) attacking a Cloud cosplayer, and I couldn’t resist the urge to jump into the hole in the stage. It was just too fun!



I also decided to primp right before the judges announced winners, at which point graydown just had to take another picture.



When all was said and done, I didn’t win Best Overall. I did, however, win Best Workmanship, for which I got a Golden Wrench that I can brandish at anyone I don’t like! The award also included a $40 gift certificate to cosworx.com (which I have yet to check out) and a $40 gift certificate to JoAnn (which I’ll use to make Weighted Companion Cube footrests!).



Slightly crushed at not winning the top prize, I went back to my room and made glow stick chain mail with the help of graydown to wear to the rave. The rave itself was ridiculously fun, especially with as much light as I was putting out. I danced with a complete stranger who was a foot shorter than me, became a camera whore for someone who was up on stage taking pictures of ravers, and even got groped by a random passerby. (I would be upset if he actually got anything, but I was covered by so many glowsticks there wasn’t actually a problem.) It was so much fun!!! I only remembered to save my voice for karaoke the next morning after I had screamed my lungs out for fifteen minutes, but fortunately I was only a tiny bit hoarse in the morning.



I packed up the majority of my stuff after taking a nice hot shower, and went to bed around 1:30. I actually slept really well because of a combination of being totally exhausted and from stealing the bed scarves and sleeping under them instead of the comforter!


Sunday

Another huge muffin was demolished for breakfast, and I also drained a can of Livewire before I could count myself as actually "awake". I packed up all of my lovely belongings, trekked them out to the car, and put on my lovely fuzzy ears, tail, and gloves!



After getting my badge reimbursement (woot, another $25 to sock into savings!) and getting tea with Amanda, I sang my little heart out at the karaoke contest. I sang Idea by Eufonius, the Noein theme song. It was tons of fun, and I only flubbed once, but it was covered up by me singing words that belonged in another verse, so no one noticed. Woot!

The Naka-Kon forum meetup came right after the karaoke contest, and it was really neat to finally meet some of the members in person. Everyone knew who I was as soon as I said my forum name (Aeris), as well they should, as I have over 2000 posts on the forums! It was a really great little gathering, I just hope they give us a larger room next year. We barely fit!

Tracking down Kendra to get a picture of her in the PenPen suit I made her last fall was the next order of business. She just makes the *cutest* little penguin! Unfortunately, Matt forgot to bring her Pen^2 collar, but it was great nonetheless.



I ran through the dealers’ room one last time to pick up a few last-minute souvenirs, and found a couple of really great stickers: one vendor had a 6" tall FFVII:AC wolf knocker sticker (it’s one of the designs I carved into a pumpkin last fall, if you recall) and I also got a NERV logo. Both of them will grace my laptop as soon as I can find a few more stickers to cover the back of it.

I also stalked the Balloon Guy for about 20 minutes until he got back to the area where his stuff was at, and had him make me a balloon kitty. It was so cute!!

For the last bit of Sunday afternoon, graydown and I went to part of the "Your Favorite Anime Sucks" panel and a panel on webcomics. The webcomics one was very interesting, and I think I’ll have a few new things to read once I track them down online.

Unfortunately, right after the webcomics panel came closing ceremonies. They announced the karaoke contest winners, and I was lucky enough to get the Best Lyrical Knowledge prize, which came with an anime karaoke CD. I probably won’t use it, but it’s neat anyway!



Overall, it was a wonderful weekend. Huge thanks to graydown who stuck with me during the weekend even though she had the PLAGUE, and helped into and out of my costumes many a time. You rock, graydown.


See you all at Naka-Kon 2009!