KumoriCon 2013

It has been approximately a week since KumoriCon has finished up and, honestly, I want to say it sucked. I know that cons are only as good as you make them and it takes effort to get together with people to hang out. But something about KumoriCon has been so very stagnant for a few years now; it honestly has felt like the same exact con as years passed. Despite attendance growing for the con what new guests have they brought? Do they ever have a big headliner or someone that will draw people in? ... that, ya' know, hasn't gone for years on end as it is?

That's not to say these frequent guests are bad per-say, but the content starts to get stale. KumoriCon is -heavily- dependent on attendees running panels and still is a con where the dance and cosplay contest are the biggest events (other than late night 18+ panels.)

Mind you I've been going to this con since it first started and only missed one year for being in the hospital.

~~~

All that aside my experiences at con are far from stellar when it comes to staff. It took less than five minutes after leaving my hotel room on the first day for some staff member to yell at me. I was chatting with someone while waiting for the elevator and wasn't much paying attention to things going on so we got on the elevator. Well, if anyone has gone to Kumoricon you'd know that the staff are horrid monster Nazis about NOT riding the elevator up if you mean to go down. I guess I got on an up elevator and a staff member (whom I've had previous issues with through the years and even has argued/bitched at me on Twitter) decided that yelling at me was the most effective way of getting the point across that I did something so horrible it's to be equated to clubbing a baby seal.

Mind you, the person I was chatting with and myself were the only people in the elevator... and crazy staff member and one quiet staff member were the only people that got on the elevator. We were able to ride the thing to the lobby without stopping at any other floor as well.
*sigh*

Whatever- time to con it up. I mostly spent the day trying to find friends and finding the girl who was holding my badge. This year I helped out the host cosplay group by being in their halftime skit show. I was to play a pretty small part as Fionna from Adventure Time! The costume was a loaner and everything ^^;; so all I had to do was show up and do my bit. (which went off splendid if I do say so myself...)

After some trolling about I was able to get my badge and... never have to show it to anyone ever because KumoriCon greatly lacks badge enforcers. No wonder so many people ghost at this con! Yeesh.

I didn't get into cosplay until late at night- in which I ended up wearing Erio! It was a lot of fun to derp around in :) but pretty much no one knew who I was haha. I expect these kinds of things though as I tend to cosplay really random and weird things.. ya' know... characters I like as opposed to popular ones ;P
I tried meeting up with a cosplay friend I met through Twitter but he actually didn't recognize me in cosplay *laugh* It was kind of a silly thing but we later connected anyway so no worries there! :D


Later that night I met up with everyone to rehears the skit. I think I hung around for nearly 6 hours @_@ good lord... I really didn't need to and totally missed some panels my friends were running. In the end I had all of 3 or so lines towards the END of the skit. So I really didn't need to do/remember much. It later did help that I stuck around though as I would hand props off to the stage ninjas as they needed them~ I wanted to help in any way I could since Kayla got me a badge because of it, ya' know?

Next day I hung out with Vince a bunch. We talked about cosplay happenings and things going on in our lives. I'm really happy we've actually been able to become friends lately :D good to find people with similar mindsets that go to con- they keep me sane. I got into Fionna pretty much straight out and ran from my room, to stage, to the room a few times to get things that were either forgotten or were needed to fix some prop problems. I would comment on Kumo's skit show but seeing as how I was not in the greenn room and just hanging around backstage I didn't get to see much. I mean, we could see the screens (well.. the back of them) but the audio was too difficult to hear since the speakers were outwards facing. It's cool though ^_^

OMG there were SO MANY CUTE KIDS IN COSPLAY THIS YEAR. Like, little little kids! Under 10! They were so adorable that I just wanted to hug them all! *squee*

Skit went off pretty much without a hitch :) There were some problems of  Ice King's cookie tray disapperaing somewhere but it was found in time. Kay;a only had 1 backpack so while we were switching we pretty much had to quick pass it back stage- I was worried about this initially but we were so pro at it LOL. I did struggle or anything and had it on at least 7 seconds before I had to go on stage XD of course it's been so so so long since I've been on stage that I was all shakey and nervous... but things were fine :) the skit was fun and I'm glad I didn't fuck up my tiny part ^^;;
Actually TomTheFanboy was awesome and recorded the whole deal!! I'll inbed it at the end of the post or just follow THIS LINK to watch- it's actually pretty long (nearly 20mins!) but that's because it needed to give the judges time to choose winners for the cosplay contests :)

Backstage isn't exciting

Afterwards I only hung out for a short while but went back up to my room to pass out... I'm not sure why I was so tired but it was nap time since nothing was really going on.


I woke up randomly and had a message from Eric that he'd stop by on his way south from PAX! I was super excited! :D I was trying to convince him since KumoriCon was right off the I-5 freeway and I wouldn't be seeing him for a week or so when we meet up in Vegas. He asked me to grab him some energy drinks so I ran to the convenience store real quick and grabbed some snacks as well :) of course he tells me his ETA was 20min but it was more around 30 or 40 *laugh* At this point I was chilling in my lobby chatting with friends when he showed up~ which he got a crazy hug from me for. I might have beena  bit too excited haha. I met his brother as well (who is super adorable!) A local friend who I suspected liked me was acting a bit jealous... so I was an asshole and danced around him a bit just saying "you jelly? you jelly? you jelly?"... to which he admitted to. Don't get me wrong, I feel somewhat like a jerk... but nothing is going to happen.
I showed them around the con a bit. The dance was going on and despite them wanting to go in I couldn't get in touch with friends to let me use their badges ;/ so we hung out in the main area outside of it since people were still dancing there and you could still hear the music. Ironically Gangnam Style was playing LOL and tons of people were dancing! Eric's brother recorded some of it and a cute little Jack Frost kid was dancing too!! I guess his brother really enjoyed his first impression of KumoriCon and said it seemed more fun despite having attended PAX that weekend. I explained to Eric that PAX is more professional and industry while Kumoricon is a lot more of a "hangout and party" convention. It's pretty low key but because of that can be a lot less stressful and much more chill (or incredibly boring lol.)

In they end they only stuck around for about an hour. We walked around the park a bit and Eric played some Final Fantasy songs on one of the pianos they had places randomly throughout the park :) We also played on the swing set a bit too. I hadn't done so in ages and was still twirling around like I used to! I also scared Eric by doing that thing where when you get to the high point you pull up real quick and drop down to shake the other swing haha. At this point I had also found a phone lying on the ground... it started to ring so I answered it and the person was actually the owner looking for it. So I told her where I was and that I'd wait there with her phone :)
Afterwards I walked them back to their rental car and said bye... Eric and I got into a little bickering fight over something small and silly and it resulted in him apologizing up and down to me since he knew I was upset... I find it very difficult to stay upset with him though so I said everything was fine as I knew I'd get over things eventually (I knew I was being silly being so upset anyway.) So I said my goodbyes and sent them on their way.

To which Vince and I met up and decided to be emo kids by buying junky food from the convenience store and lamenting about our feelings while sitting in the park eating the garbage food LOL. Danny (PDXMoogle) grabbed some subway and joined us as well :) I dances around to some of the songs he had on his stereo as I've been learning the dances to some (such as Renai Circulation) and just kinda... chilled. It was nice :) It started to get a bit chilly though so we wandered off to find people. Finally came across Ryan (the guy I was supposed to meet earlier) and THIS TIME he realized who I was lol!! I also finally met Marika :D we sat around and chilled and had more bro-out times. But seeing as it was nearing 4 am we all decided it was time for bed. Funny enough Ryan and I were on the same floor XD I quickly conked out after hitting the pillow.

Next morning I worked on Ranka a bit but wasn't really hard pressed to finish her as I knew I wasn't going to wear her.So I packed my shit up and wore my Ranka wig with some cute clothes I own that still look like Ranka's style... kinda. Took my stuff to Jerry's van and hung around more. Said farewells to Tom and other people I ran into. I giggled that some local lolita girls I was in the NewCon fashion show with didn't recognize me. I guess I look that different in cosplay vs lolita vs normal clothes? I recognized them despite the different wigs and such but I dunno- maybe I'm forgettable ^^;;

A few friends and I tried to head down to the dealers hall as none of us had been there yet... but we got there to discover they closed it AN HOUR EARLY for whatever the reason >:/ WAT!? And to add to it as we were standing around and trying to trade info we had even more staffers yelling at us that we needed to mvoe out of the way because they're cleaning up. I looked around and people were pulling tape off the carpet that was down... nothing more. No moving of guard rails or tables or anything. And this same staffer kept just circling us and yelling at us over and over again; it was annoying. I get it, we need to leave, but you closed down the dealers hall an hour early? And now, despite seeing us writing things down to trade some info she keeps yelling... lady, it's not going to make me move any faster! Ugh!

I also took pictures of Alli in her Dion Roger's Rinoa and of Kayla and Mandy in their Hetalia cosplays. I just kind of took a bunch of random pictures as I had just gotten a new camera and was learning how to use it. Lets just say I took a lot of butt pictures- but they were consensual lol

And then I headed home. Jerry stayed over and slept and I crashed out like a mofo as I had to head to work the next day.

Jared always finds me to take a picture! :D

Long con full of friends. I'm glad all I had to pay for was my room.

NewCon PDX

Wow. I'm surprised. Honestly I am! This con was a lot of fun :) I expected it to feel so very small but the con had a ton of people attending and so much to do! Though earlier in the days was a little dead... but that's understandable considering the con advertised as being more-so later at night. Which I think was a smart move! A lot of people stay up late at conventions so it's always a shame when there is a panel or something awesome going on in the morning and you have to make the choice of either missing out on the night fun or missing out on the morning event.

Fruits Parlour in mint!
I'll post more pictures when I find them.

Of course considering this con was in it's first year it didn't have a whole lot of gusts. But I think this one will grow really quickly with the way it's being ran :) I know the guy whom started the con and after talking to him a bit about interesting things that happened I really want to support this convention more! I already helped with the webpage this year >_>;; so why not help out a bit more in other ways if I can?

I want to see this con spank KumoriCon's ass!!


To start off I agreed to be in the lolita fashion show! In a previous post I mentioned the outfits I'd be wearing. I found out after getting there that I'd have to quick change with only 5 people between my first and 2nd outfit O_O NOT. ENOUGH. TIME. I even mentioned to the girl coordinating it that I might need time since Sugary Carnival has a stubborn invisible zipper in it >_<

After the fashion show.
Feeling ultra KAWAII!

Sadly to say I did NOT make it on stage in time. I was able to go up with only one skip though. I had to cover the side of myself with my arm though because the dress's zipper was caught D: UGH. I even zipped and unzipped it a ton at home to make sure I'd have no issues. Maybe it has something to do with the urgency of the event. Ugh. But other than that the fashion event went off without a hitch. I was also really happy as I was the only one wearing a mint colored dress! And even then most girls were wearing pink, black, or brown. Which kind of saddens me... where's the purples?! The blues!? Need more colors! Seriously if I get into it next year I'm forcing some of my friends to let me dress them >:/ that fashion show was somewhat lacking in variety of colors! Though the styles and silhouettes were all lovely :)

After that I was STARVING hungry as all I had to eat was a bao Liz brought for me to the fashion show. Even then I only ate like... half :(  So we went with Tessa, Kitty, Julia, and Shelby to Taco Bell. Got a -ton- of looks from people as we were walking down the street. People are interesting, let me tell you! But I suppose they had something exciting in their day seeing us in cosplay and lolita so whatever ^^;;

At Taco Bell we ate like queens and chatted about all sorts of cosplay drama and happenings. I had a really good time :) had an older gentlemen compliment my lolita dress and a few younger patrons try to mock us. But again... whatevs!!

Afterwards I headed to the maid cafe run by Beast Of Hentai and it was extra crazy! I stepped in only for a short time since I know how crazy they can be. My friend Jon insisted he had to mark my hand because I wasn't paying to eat. I got kind of huffy since I know he was supposed to just draw an X on my hand! NO! I can't do that! I wanted something cute :< my lolita outfit would look silly with a giant weird purple X on my hand. So he drew me a dinosaur with a "pimp hat" and a cane LOL!!
Unfortunately it took a while to wash off... At least it wasn't marked with a super dark black pen. That would have really been lame.

I left sometime around 2am or so. I was just... done. Very tired. The con was coming to a close and people were just too drunk for me to tolerate. I needed some rest as well though as I planned on commuting back. Wasn't sure what to wear, though I had a few ideas: Christmas cosplay thrown together from my closet, Hanbok SeeU, more lolita, or a random "idol" outfit from my closet. Needless to say my friends voted for the Christmas cosplay- so I threw something together.

Vince (aka Darkain) had taken a bunch of photos earlier in the day of me in lolita! And he asked me if I'd like more photos of Ranka this time. I was so excited! I've never really had a photographer at a con do a whole light set-up with me. We derped about, got some awesome and some silly photos, and built a good relationship off it. I'm also extra excited as he offered to take pictures whenever he could :) even if I travel up to Seattle or here comes down to Portland... so this could be fun. Actually... A LOT OF FUN. I have so many ideas now! SO MANY!!

I didn't choose the Kira life,
The Kira life chose me!

Then again I also want to do photos with Peter. I always feel so super camera shy around him though :( but I know I would be able to be more... open(?) with him. Or at least I should be. But maybe because he's my boyfriend it's more awkward as opposed to the normal cosplayer x cosplay photographer relationship that goes on. *sigh* My brain is dumb.

Anywhos!
Second day I talked a LOT with Tom Good (a local photog). I've always admired his photos but never really had a chance to make it to the Portland meet ups (they're usually before noon on Saturdays- I work until 2:30am on Saturday... :< ugh). I'm really glad we got along as much as we did! He also took a bunch of pictures of my Ranka for me :3 so I should be expecting a lot of photos. Like I said earlier I'll make a huge photo post when I can!!

Liz let me dress her up in lolita for the day. She looked really cute! But at the same time her boobs were too big for the shirt I loaned her LOL; so one of the buttons kept popping open. I closed her a ton for her. Ugh. Yeah. Oh well I guess ^^;;

Uhmmm... we didn't stay too late on the 2nd day. I started feeling really run down and she was just not in "con mood" so we ended up leaving kinda early. Maybe around 9pm?

After getting home I promptly passed out. I heard many stories about the later happenings and while I'm sad I missed them I'm also OK with it. Because I know with as tired as I was I would not have had all that much fun.

Overall though I did enjoy the con a lot and am looking forward to it next year. I hope to have my fingers in it a bit more and help out though :) We'll see what's needed though- I can only do what I'm allowed to after all!

Last Minute Change!

Well. I'm not sure exactly WHY they decided to do so but now I don't have to work New Years Eve!! :D I'm so excited!! I don't have to worry about crazy drunks on the road and I can be somewhat rested after NewCon! ^-^

So that's a huge relief!

That also means, though, that I'll have two 4-day weekends in a row. Which honestly after having... I'm not really sure if I'll want to go back to work >_>;; Seriously. It's going to be really hard to do so.


In other news, speaking of NewCon. I picked out my outfits to wear in the lolita fashion show. I'm thinking that Fruits Parlour (mint) will be a good choice as most girls on the page are showing outfits that will be black and brown based. I know others will do pink as well since that's a very popular lolita color. But so much black? Come on :( there are so many cute dresses in OTHER colors!

Here are the ones I picked out. Not 100% sure about how Sugary Carnival is put together though...

I'm probably going to try out some cream colored socks in my stash to wear with Sugary. For fruits I'll wear light pink tights. I just don't want Sugary to be PINK PINK PINK.

Actually wait... Here we go. I like the cream color!! Now I can't choose what shoes though... light pink or black :(