This had originally been my New Year post, but I ended up.. neglecting my blog again.. So I guess this will be my Katsucon report and rest of the year cosplay plan post instead.

Katsucon was fun. I only mild fear that it will turn into a rant post. My boyfriend, a friend, and I drove down Thursday night. We had planned to drive down to Katsucon at noon, but due to unforeseen circumstances and traffic, we didn’t leave the city until 4 pm. The whole day was a boatload of stress to begin with so I’ll just skip all that. We ended up getting there around.. 8-9ish? We finally got into the room. It turns out there had a been another convention booked that day, BBYO, a Jewish convention. Anyways I ended up not sleeping that night to finish some things and it had been the second night (or third?) in a row that I pulled an all-nighter, on top of being sick the week before and the week going into Katsucon. (Don’t ask me what I was sick with, I don’t even know and that is a story in itself.) I got into my costume Friday morning and it just hit me that I couldn’t handle any of it. It might have been the stress, being sick, the lack of sleep, or a combination of all of the above. I ended up crawling in bed and completely blacked out. By black out I mean I literally had several people come in to wake me up and I never woke up. I ended up waking up at 5 pm, borrowed Vickybunnyangel’s Homura since I never had a chance to finish mine and wandered around. Debated pulling another all nighter, ended up falling asleep.

Saturday was my busier day because I was judging the masquerade. My friend, Meri Sheep, lent me her Ren Kougyoku cosplay. Spent a good chunk of my day judging. It was fun though, congratulations to everyone who participated and won! I really enjoyed watching the skits. Afterwards I just meandered around in my kigurumi.

Sunday was okay. Just wore my kigurumi all day. Helped my friend fix his car because the steering wheel had locked. Afterwards I drove back to the city.

That was my Katsucon in a nutshell. Partially because I was pretty sleep deprived all week/weekend so I don’t really remember much of it to begin with. It was more of a wake up call for me. There were a few costumes I hadn’t finished, and some I had finished that I wasn’t feeling well enough to end up wearing (because some were for photoshoots with people). It sucks, but such is life. Hopefully I’ll be able to do a photoshoot with it soon or something.

However my personal thoughts about BBYO? I thought some of it got taken out of proportion. The biggest “hinderence” I guess you could say was that the portion of the convention BBYO rented was where the gazebo was, as many people know is the most popular location to do photoshoots at Katsucon. To make a long story short, there were a lot of accusations and rumors floating around, so it’s hard to say what really happened and what is exaggerated, because politically, both sides are going to say that they did everything they could in their power to run the convention smoothly and to disregard any rumors. Now BBYO didn’t affect me personally and I didn’t have any bad run-ins so I can’t really say anything about it. The only thing I can really say is that it ended up turning into a blame game. Cosplayers complaining about the Jewish kids, and I’m sure some of them were complaining about us too. The one thing I couldn’t stand is that, we are not entitled to the gazebo. The gazebo belongs to Gaylord. It is on Gaylord if they choose to book another event the same weekend as Katsucon because in the end it is them making money. It was nice of them or BBYO to let us have our gazebo. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to hate on them/say racial slurs, because at the end of the day we’re exactly like them. We’re human. Just because we wear costumes does not make us entitled. Now I’m not saying that they’re right either, but being completely unbiased, that is how I feel. I’m not saying we all need to love each other either, because most people don’t have that type of mentality, but I think it’s important to adapt and learn to co-exist with others. You can disagree with me if you want, but that’s just my opinion.

Now on a lighter note, my 2013 cosplay list! I probably won’t be going to as many events/conventions as I did last year because of school and life. I’m taking some courses for a certification at school on top of regular school so I’ll be a bit busier. My freelance job hasn’t really given me too much work for a while so I’ll probably try to find another job or internship on top of that. I’m doing a test run on my shop from Etsy to Storenvy. I personally prefer Etsy because it’s more well-known, but there were some functions of Storenvy that seemed nice. I also don’t want to run two shops at once because I’d rather keep my orders in one place and it might get confusing having two shops. So that’s that. So onto my cosplay list!

May 17th-19th: AnimeCentral
• Bridal Saber, Fate/Extra CCC.
• Hikaru Shidou, Magic Knight Rayearth.
• Kouha Ren, Magi.
• Rei Ayanami, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo.

June 7th-9th: AnimeNEXT
• Minaki Aino, Sailor Moon.
• Ayane, Dead or Alive 6.

At least those are the absolute definites. Might skip out on Otakon and do another convention instead. New York Comic Con is up in the air. If I go it’ll be to see friends. AnimeUSA is up in the air too. It’ll depend on what I’ll be doing around that time and if I’m staffing. In terms of SpringFest, Castle Point Anime Convention, Sakura Matsuri.. Springfest is highly debatable since I do have a badge for it, CPAC I’ll probably only go if I get into the Artist Alley, Sakura Matsuri.. I would only go on Sunday. But cosplays in terms of those cons is up in the air.

But as of now, AnimeCentral and AnimeNEXT are the definites. I’m hoping I can start doing WIP posts and tutorials and such. Moreso WIP posts because it forces me to do work, in a sense xD

But that’s all I have in terms of updates for now. See you next time!