Thursday | Friday | Sat (1) | Sat/Sun
At the hotel room in Rosemont, I woke up with a terribly sore throat and a bit of a headache. Normally, this is the reason I keep assorted medicines and healing potions with my toiletries, but I used the cold medicine Thursday night and gave Nick K. my only dose of Advil Friday night. And you can only guess how much gil the hotel item shop was charging. So I was on my own, with no chemist, healer, or MST-approved crafter in the party.
My first stop was a water cooler. I'd make several more visits throughout the day.
Cold Spell
When Idling In Line Becomes Fun
On Thursday's page, I mentioned that I was actually planning to attend the masquerade. Regular recap devotees may note that except for No Brand Con, I have not attended a cosplay contest since Otakon 2003. I even skipped the one at Anime Milwaukee in favor of dinner with friends. Besides the plan to meet up with Megan and a few other Otaku No Yen forum dwellers, there was one big reason for the change of heart:
Yep, Taeliac and Kellin have brought out their incredible xxx.Holic cosplay for the big leagues. With the tough competition they were certain to face, they wanted all the support they could muster. They also weren't getting very far through the halls wearing those all day.
Even with the companion cube, this Yoko doesn't quite compete with the Yoko from Ohayocon, but it's Yoko so she gets in the recap. Why does she have a weighted companion cube... well, that's part of the tough competition I was alluding to.
I led Kellin to the masquerade office, thankfully running into Scott, who left his camera at Midnight Madness Friday night. With that unloaded from my bag, it was off to the dealer's room.
The bald cap makes the whole thing. Inspired by his raw manly magnetism, I claimed a copy of the FMA movie as a reward for my work at the Fast Food booth.
The Q&J panel- Quentin Flynn and Jeff Nimoy take on all questions, whether or not they have anything to do with anime (boxers or briefs came up more than once). As Jeff (left) voiced Wolfwood and Quentin did Reno in Advent Children and a couple Kingdom Hearts characters, they were popular with the fangirls, leading them do write and perform a song about yaoi... or lack thereof in their case. Plenty of Digimon discussion, particularly with season five (Quentin voices Marcus and yes, Jeff gave us all his Tentomon voice), but thankfully none of it was near the frequent yaoi discussion.
I did not see Megan at the panel, but I did see Nick doing some tech setup after the panel. While talking to him, this gave me the opportunity to at least shake hands with Jeff and say hi, bypassing the long autograph line that formed.
With his duties temporarily over, he got a chance to check out the dealer's room for the first time. We didn't see much of anything interesting, and my newly-acquired cold was depleting my energy levels. A hot dog from concessions didn't help, so it was off to find a place to sit down and relax before the fanfic panel. He was off to get ready for the fansub panel, hoping Greg Ayres wouldn't come in with other guests and arrange a formal protest. Apparently, Ayres noticed the panel this year (strange as there's been one for as long as I remember) and raised a big stink with the ACen staff. That must have been a fun day for the Guest Relations department.
Looks like that Pikachu from before got herself into a fix.
Returning to the Hyatt, I found the perfect place to unwind- at a table in front of the Spoony Bards.
They played some really good stuff, including songs from Tetris, Dr. Mario, Evangelion, and nailing Still Alive from Portal. Their soothing tones were a huge success and at least gave me the strength to survive the fanfic panel.
They're good people, and it was informative as always, but sure enough- pretty much the same thing as prior years. Although Gendo invited me to his Anime Jeopardy room party that night. You know I was game for that.
Now this was new! Spot-on Dragon Half cosplay results in full revival!
Sadly... no, that wasn't the case. Mink's not that capable. Rather than risk further exhaustion before the cosplay, I returned to the hotel room to relax and watch whatever baseball was on. The Cubs game was over, but I caught a few innings of Milwaukee being thrashed by the Red Sox. Honestly, the hour or so of nothing was far preferable to draining the battery unnecessarily. There was still a big, loud masquerade upcoming and whatever wild after-party ensued.
And it was in this mindset that I left almost two hours before the start of the masquerade. Because it's never too early to start a line at ACen and in my condition, waiting in line sounded like a jolly good time!
At least it didn't involve walking. I could sit down, read some manga and possibly chat with my line neighbors with no strain.
The plan to meet Megan, however, was derailed by ACen's new A-B-C twist, in which everyone's ticket has one of three letters corresponding to the time they can be let in. This way, the whole convention isn't lined up outside the doors an hour before the event. Which almost happened anyway, as nobody actually read the program detailing this twist. Oh, the IRT guys had to put in some overtime getting the B and C folk out of the A line.
As they did, I settled down to volume one of Flipside, a webnovel I got talked into buying at Ohayocon. Neat story, lots of raw sexuality without being pandering. Good stuff, and one of my line buddies also happened to be a fan.
Towards the front of the line, I spotted KORfan- the first "A" I had recognized in two hours. I know the IRT disapproves of jumping the ropes, but I did so in order to move backwards in line so it was okay. Now I had a trusty friend to attend the event, and he introduced me to TongoJeff from the Anime Iowa forums. And after just a few moments of catching up, the doors opened and we were into the big room!