stillvisions is basically the best person ever, so he posted the pics he took of us at ACen. Because Harl asked him to. And omg. They are so cute I plotzed. ;___;





( Moar behind the cut. )

Thank you so much, Kevin! :D

lionboogy did two shoots with us at AX. He hasn't posted them yet, but he did post a few hall-type shots he included with his con coverage, and harl posted them here.





This is the best shot I've had in the past few cons of my remade costume. The wig was restyled before Colossal, my coat was remade entirely, and of course the new chakrams. The coat, unfortunately, has to be remade again after Otakon. I used a new type of paint on the new beads and it didn't turn out so hot so... yeah. Oh well. At least remaking the coat only takes a day.

I don't think I looked this feminine in person at AX. But in this picture... well. Whatevs.

At this point I really wish I didn't have to go to Otakon. There's too much to do there and it's too stressful, and I'm missing most of my family vacation to be there. Cons aren't always fun, and they're certainly not exciting anymore, but this is the first point at which I've really just not wanted to go to one. But we have a spot (exhibition only) in the masquerade if we decide to use it, so maybe it'll turn out okay.

I think I just saw the ghost of Harry Caray trying to buy gas in West Hollywood.

There is a doofy photo of my Independence Day costume here. A doofy one with Harl as well is here. We worked really hard to get them to the point of wearability in time for the Fourth, and they're still not really done at all. But I wanted them very badly for the holiday and we had a photoshoot with lionboogy in them last night. Harl is basically the only reason the costumes happened; she worked her ass off to get them done.

The costumes went over really well. I believe that we were the only ones here in them, which was strange because I kind of expected that at the biggest con in the country, with how crazy popular Hetalia currently is, and on the 4th, there would be more than one Rev War America and England pair. But I guess not. It was cool.

A lot of people on the street assumed I was just wearing the costume because I was some kind of uberpatriot, though. Which they liked, but I'm very much not an uberpatriot. I hesitate to apply the term "patriot" to myself at all, and I despise nationalists. I'm a historian, so I have some mixed feelings about the Revolution (though overall I definitely come out in favor) and very negative feelings about colonial America. In reality, I have very mixed and mostly negative feelings about America as a whole. I think America is extraordinary and unique, but that's frequently not in a good way. So yeah, I felt a little out of place when I was away from the con center yesterday, especially since I was always away without Harl, like I was being taken out of context in a way I didn't like.

Though one little Hispanic woman who asked me for a hug was so moved by my costume she started crying and emphatically encouraging me to "go out and promote peace", which I assured her I would do. It was even stranger than the fangirl at Metrocon who had tears literally streaming down her face when I gave her a hug as Axel.

This con was a little surreal. We were near some booth where Kel Mitchell (as in Goodburger) was MCing something and annoyed me by singing "I'm a Dude" repeatedly all day today, and Team Osaka from last year's WCS was one aisle away at some other random booth looking extremely lost the whole weekend (as they do not speak much English and didn't have much given to them to do). In true Japanese fashion, they politely refused all of Harl's offers to do nice things to cheer them up. We also ended up going to dinner with the guy who does Yu-Gi-Oh: the Abridged Series, and the weird part of that is that I resisted the temptation to make him do any voices.

One of the highlights of my weekend was meeting a girl who goes by the name of Pouikee on dA who came up to the booth on Friday and asked what I went by online, and she knew me and my fanfic and we chatted for a while, and the next day she came back and brought me a fanart sketch she drew for Light Underneath, and it just made my day. I was at the booth alone most of the day and whenever I got slammed I'd look at it and it'd cheer me up. Later another girl came by and saw the picture and recognized what it was from immediately, and I was just flabbergasted. Sometimes such little things can make you feel so good, it's quite amazing.

Disney on Tuesday. Yaaaay!

I bought a 358/2 Days DSi case. I guess this means now I have to trade in my DS Lite to get something I can put in it.

Did you ever worry when you were sewing that you'd accidentally let your hand slip and the needle would sew straight through your finger?

I did that tonight. I was sewing on the floor and leaned on the pedal with my knee on accident and next thing I knew I couldn't move my hand because my index finger had been in the way. I was a little in shock, so I just sat there staring at it, and then I realized that I had to get it out. So I put my other hand on the manual wheel and couldn't remember which way to turn it to make the needle go back instead of putting a whole stitch through my finger. (I think at this point harl and kecleon were beginning to realize that something was wrong, since I hadn't wanted to actually inform them that my hand had been impaled.) Fortunately I eventually guessed and was correct, and for a moment I thought that I'd actually only stabbed myself rather deeply and not actually stuck the needle all the way through, but no, when I turned my finger over a hole appeared as I started bleeding.

I bled kind of a lot. But fortunately not for too long. It went through very near where I know a nasty blood vessel happens to be, but I guess it narrowly missed. Thankfully.

It hurts, but I guess now I've lived through it and thus don't have to worry about sewing through my hand anymore. Since, you know. It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

We're on our way to AX. According to cymbal_monkey, my day was spent "driving through Arizona listening to Foreigner with [my] hotass girlfriend". That's basically accurate. We left yesterday afternoon and have heard "Urgent" on the radio four times already. We suspect it has been topping the charts west of the Mississippi for 25 years straight.

Billy Mays now?

Really, world?

This news story from the Trib broke my heart. I knew as soon as I read it that I had to try to do something to help, so I'm writing the gentleman in it a letter, and hopefully when I get back to Chicago after Otakon I can go visit him, drive him places, whatever I can to help. According to the man who wrote the article (also named Rex, hah), he's gotten scads of emails from people who want to call and visit, but I don't think that's a reason for me not to as well.

What Mr. Engandela said at the end of the article about wanting to share his memories and the fact that he's a WWII veteran really got me thinking. I'm about to spend my senior year preparing for grad school, and I don't know what to focus on yet - all I know is that I will probably be concentrating on WWII for the rest of my school career. The Center on Halsted has a program for people to spend time with elderly GLBT people, and now I'm thinking about maybe seeing if I can meet some who served in WWII and try to record something of their experiences. Not necessarily for my thesis, but because I think they probably have something important to say that no one is hearing, and I would really love to be the person to hear it.

Hopefully I'll have some luck with it, and hopefully this article will be a good thing for all the people in the area living like that.

Chakrams were finished. Harl was using kecleon's keyblades, which are awesome. Though I think she's still hoping to find time between commissions to injection cast Two Across soon.

Metrocon was pretty lame, and I never really want to go to another Florida con again if that was the biggest and best or whatever. The demographic breakdown seemed way younger than usual and people were fucking rude. Not just to other attendees, but to the dealers especially. Not everyone of course, not by a long shot. But way more people than usual. That and the staff was super helpful and nice, but the volunteers were frequently jerks.

Not to mention it was a living hell wearing and/or selling Kingdom Hearts there. Not because of the heat, humidity, and vinyl combination (though that sucked too), but because there was a pair of Axel and Demyx cosplayers visiting from England who decided to do panels there. They do some show on YouTube that we've never seen (I vaguely heard of it... via 4chan, so you can guess whether or not the reviews were positive) called "Demyx Time", which was also the name of their panel.

A while back, I received a note on dA from the Demyx asking where I lived, because they were coming to the States and they wanted to meet me. I was a little weirded out because I didn't know either of them at all. Then Harl received a similar note from the Axel. More weirded out. I told this to /cgl/ in a discussion about them, because apparently I was in danger of being stalked or glomped and I hate getting glomped in my wig. This led to the longstanding supposition that because of an off-color suggestion from the peanut gallery, Harl and I and these two people we were largely unaware of were going to have a foursome at Metrocon. Oh boy, let me tell you I could not wait.

They never came by the booth, thankfully. I guess sometime between the creepy notes and the con, they decided that they were either too cool for school or that we were too snobby to talk to... or else they got mad at me for asking 4chan how not to get glomped. It's not my fault I'm wary of fangirls who ask to meet me in person (outside a con originally, no less) when we've never spoken before. (Also ones who frequently don't wear clothes.)

Anyway, so we didn't meet them, and that was fine, but what pissed me off was that all we heard about all weekend was their panel from every weeaboo Kingdom Hearts fangirl at the con. Were we going to Demyx Time? Didn't we love Demyx Time? What, we'd never SEEN it? How could we NOT watch Demyx Time? Didn't we want to see all the pictures and autographs people got from the Demyx Time girls? We got this over and over again, because apparently as Kingdom Hearts fans we were required to shit our pants over Demyx Time.

I was telling Harl on the way home how grateful it made me for the people who follow me online and enjoy what I do and send me feedback. Everyone who reads this journal is so lovely and mature and, just... not a squealing fourteen-year old. I get the most wonderful, restrained feedback and constructive criticism on my writing and cosplay and whatnot, and I'm so fucking glad that what I do appeals to people who don't turn into junior stalkers. Maybe it's a silly sentiment, but this weekend made me really realize that Kingdom Hearts fandom isn't just a group of people that largely hate my stinking guts. Sometimes it's my own personal hell on earth populated by the most irritating, mindlessly gushing nutjobs on the planet who would be perfectly fine if they could just keep their squeeing to themselves and not get mortally offended that I don't join in when they repeatedly come back to do it at me for three days straight.

I love meeting people at cons, and I love taking pictures and having conversations (I get in trouble with Harl all the time for talking with the customers too much) and just getting to know folks, but this weekend was the first time people were really pushing my patience on any sort of large scale. There's usually a few really awkward people who take up too much of my working time telling me stories or just talking about nothing when I have other customers, but I don't generally mind. Some people just want someone to talk to. This weekend, though... it's all that I remember happening. It's just a blur punctuated by preteen Demyx Time fans who latched onto us as some kind of Demyx-less substitute between panels.

So yeah. Conclusion:

a) I fucking love you all and I appreciate you even more now. I mean it. I was almost in tears telling Harl how much I love my LJ friends and how glad I am that I don't have fans like the Demyx Time ones because they were just. that. crazy.
b) Metrocon was lame, but Demyx Time really ruined my fucking weekend.

The weekend wasn't a total bust, though. We went out to dinner on Saturday and Sunday night with another t-shirt designer and a webcomic artist and had a really awesome time, so that was nice. Also, I bought a little akuroku doujin from a very sweet girl at the AA and that made me happy. Oh, and Hibbary invited us to go blackberry picking sometime soon, so that gives me something nice and relaxing to look forward to in what's otherwise an endless sea of sewing.

I'm looking forward to AX. We're doing Hetalia for a couple days and Hetalia fans are just the sweetest, friendliest fucking people on the planet, and wearing Axel at AX last year was one of the best times I've had in that costume. AX is not my type of con (too big for an anime con), but the people there are really awesome. And hopefully the people at Otakon (I've never been before) will be just as friendly and wonderful as the ones at Boston were. I loved Boston.