Kasra's Yaoi-Con 2002 Report
My god, where do I start...
Yaoi-Con was, without a single doubt in my mind, the most awesome convention I have ever been to. Friendliness radiated off of everyone there, and by the end of the weekend I felt like I had become a part of a huge extended family - weird uncles and everything. ^_^
No matter how high my expectations were - and keep in mind I've been looking forward to this convention for over a year - Yaoi-Con managed to meet and exceed my expections in every way.
Throughout the con I was constantly taking pictures with my husband's digital camera. There was a bit of a learning curve at first, but I got better at it as the con went on. Follow the links to find pictures from each day of the con:
It's fairly heavy on Yami no Matsuei (YnM) cosplay pictures (since that's what our group went as), but there's a mix of costumes from the rest of the convention as well.
Starherd and I decided not long after seeing Yami no Matsuei that we simply had to do costumes from the show when we went to Yaoi-Con. Starherd immediately latched onto Muraki, and Watari was only logical for me, since I'm a chemical engineer in real life. Well, that, and my hair wouldn't need to have anything done to it for the costume. Watari's costume was the simplest of the bunch - a day of scouring Goodwills and Salvation Army Thrift Stores provided the proper mock turtleneck and blue shirt, and the labcoat was easily obtained from a costume shop. (The labcoats at work are the wrong cut, otherwise I just would have borrowed one for the weekend). Starherd managed to find most of Muraki's costume by running around thrift stores, but the trenchcoat had to be hand-made. Add on top of that the kimono for P.J.'s Oriya costume, and both of our busy schedules, and it becomes apparent why we were still finishing up P.J.'s costume about an hour before we left for the con. And that's after we stayed up all night (recruiting Caer's help, no less) the two previous nights working on nothing but costumes. Fortunately Caer came prepared with everything she needed for her Tsuzuki costume.
It may have been a crazy amount of effort, but I think we looked damn good in the end.
What's an anime convention without panels? I've always managed to make it to at least one panel at every convention I've gone to (anime or otherwise), and this time I made it to three of them: Writing Lemony, Gundam Wing Discussion, and Making the Music Video. Caer talked us into the Writing Lemony panel, since she knew two of the panelists from last year's con. It was actually a helpful panel, and I even got up the nerve to ask a question.
Immediately following the Writing Lemony panel in the same room was the Gundam Wing Discussion panel. The first thing we did was reorganize all of the chairs into a big circle (in many cases 2 or 3 chairs deep) going around the room. Then everyone gave a quick introduction - name and pairing preference - as we went around the room, starting with me. It was nice to finally get to put some faces with the names I've been reading for the past year and a half or so. Unfortunately, about three-quarters of the way through introductions, the order broke down and everyone started talking amongst themselves. Ro put everyone back in line (at least long enough to finish the introductions), and when Caer finally got sick of the lack of discussion, she took over and started posing questions. After this experience, both Caer and I decided that next year we need to run an alt. pairings panel. We've already made plans...
First thing after getting to the con Sunday morning was the 10am making the Music Video panel. Both Starherd and I felt compelled to sit in and see if the panelists had any good advice for making AMVs. In the end it was probably the most informative of all of the panels we went to. Plus we got CDRs with the panelists' AMVs on them. Now if only I could get the damn mpegs to play on my computer...
I would have liked to have gone to more panels at the con, but with some much going on, I'm not disappointed to have missed some of them.
Fortunately the AMVs were finished more than a month before the con itself, so they didn't eat into our crunch time in any way. Starherd did the majority of the work on the AMVs. I came over and helped capture and edit footage when possible, and offer feedback. ("Chickens drinking beer are funny!")
About one week before the con Starherd received a very desperate email from Larissa (the person running the AMV contest) asking for help capturing the AMVs to VHS. After about an hour of tinkering with my laptop and Starherd's VCR on Saturday night, we managed to get most of the videos to play through and record properly. A re-encoded AMV and an emergency session at my apartment Wednesday night got the last video onto tape and gave Larissa enough time to put together her master tape for the competition.
Anticipation of the Anime Music Video contest on Saturday night was very high for both Starherd and I. Videos were judged both technically by an AMV review panel (pre-con), and at the con by the audience (courtesy of ballots made by Larissa). Competition was fierce, but we were both thrilled with just hearing the audience cheer at the end of each of our videos.
Sunday afternoon found us at the Closing Ceremonies, where the results were announced. Starherd dragged me up on stage with her to accept the "Best Technical" award for "Sleep Now." Then we were told to stay up on the stage because there were more awards. "Possession" took the "Artistic Runner-Up" award, completely swept the "Best Drama" category, and tied with "Mystery Yaoi Theater 3000" for "Audience Favorite." We were floored, to say the least. The only AMV contest either of us had entered before this one was Fanime, and from what we learned later, apparently Starherd's videotape never even made it to the people running the contest.
In case anyone is interested, we've already got plans for new videos. We just need to survive Halloween first... in the meantime, if you liked our WTF Productions AMVs, you can download them from our website:
http://www.plutonianshore.net/wtf/
Since I had to drive P.J. home on Saturday night, I initially planned to skip the dance. But somehow I got conned into it, and once I was out on the dance floor, I wasn't leaving it. There's just something exhilarating about dancing while in costume. I learned this at DragonCon last year during the Cruxshadows concert (cosplaying Duo), and it remained true for the Yaoi-Con. Even better, though, was the live goth band Secret-Secret. It wasn't the best goth music I've ever heard (that distinction belongs to the Cruxshadows), but it was good enough to keep me up and dancing the entire time. Borrowing a page from Rogue, the leader singer also leapt off of the stage in the middle of his songs and danced with the audience members. (Is this just the norm for goth bands? It surprised the hell out of me when he came up behind me and started dancing with me...)
Good music, good band, great company, and a most awesome post-dance cosplay session.
I've already described the costumes. So what more is there to wearing a costume? Why, cosplay of course! And for cosplay we had a complete cast from Yami no Matsuei to work with - Tsuzuki, Hisoka, Tatsumi, Watari, Muraki, and even an Oriya. There were actually 4 Tsuzukis running around the con at one point Friday night. I also spotted a Watari twin Sunday morning, and on Saturday night Des was dressed in her Muraki costume for the costume contest. When Kat had originally told me at AnimeExpo that she and Des were going to be doing YnM costumes, I admit I was afraid the con would be over-run with them (much like the Duo costumes at Fanime and AnimeExpo), but there really weren't that many of us. The whole gang of us stuck together for the majority of the con, and every cosplay scenario that presented itself was shamelessly taken advantage of, including everything from the Love-O-Meter in the pizza place Friday night to the extended post-dance cosplay, and lots of random glomping and cuddling in between and afterwards. Who knew Watari could transform into 003 at exposure to extreme cuteness?
Make no mistake about it. We're entering the costume contest next year. Kat has already written a skit for it. ^_^
Btw, if anyone got pictures of the post-dance cosplay, I'd really like to see them. I was having too much fun to even think about dragging my bastard digital camera out to snap pictures of the insanity.
Hard to believe, but there was still more to the convention than even this humble little con report can hope to cover. I'd like to thank all of the organizers of Yaoi-Con 2002 for putting together such an awesome con. I'd also like to thank all of the wonderful people I met at the con, for making the con so much fun. How much you enjoy a con is all in the attitude of it, and I didn't meet a single rude or unfriendly person the entire time I was there. Everyone was very nice about letting me take pictures, and at no point in time did I ever feel upset or put out by any of the goings-on at the con. Big hugs to the husbands (Ben and Todd) for putting up with the fangirl invasion of their homes for the entire weekend. And lastly, major glomps to my cosplay group - Caer, P.J., Kat, Des, Tatsumi (I never did get your real name), Brook, Kitty, and of course Starherd, my partner-in-crime. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without you.
Well, that's everything. See you next year at Yaoi-Con 2003!
~Kasra/Watari
Questions? Comments? Email me at kasra_c@yahoo.com.