For real. Wow. I swear I didn't die--just been mad busy. I actually do have a couple of drawings to put up at some point (one's getting to be so old at this point that I might just not even bother), but they were all too big for my scanner, needed to be scanned in 4 pieces, and now require stitching back together in Photoshop (bah--I hate doing that because the colors are never the same across the 4 pieces and it takes forever to correct 'em). All of that, however, is not the real reason I'm updating.

The real reason I'm updating is...wait for it....

KAKKOI CON 2008
Yes, it was epic enough to merit both bolding AND caps. I'll be doing a full report on LJ and will link that here, but in the meantime, I bring you the Sparknotes version.

Thursday night: crashlands on my doorstep (read: she was dropped off at my place). I was still scrambling to finish up some costumes because I procrastinate like a beast...oh, and my cat decided to tear the frog closures off my "Myaku" Kaoru (Dir en grey) tunic. -Awesome-. Keito excels at handsewing and put them back on for me while I was fighting a losing battle with some new pink extensions for the back of my "Myaku" and "Osaka Jo Hall" hair style. I gave up on 'em after I tried using a hairdryer to make the product in them dry faster and the caulk wefts (I gave that caulk wefting technique a shot) melted. Great. After much cursing and swearing, I gave up and decided to actually pack...at 1 am. Go me. Packing was a bit of bitch since all of my costumes have a lot of accessories, I need many a hair product for them, between Keito and I a lot makeup is necessary, and I needed my sewing box, machine, and a bag of supplies because I had yet to actually make my feather neckpiece and rose hairpiece for "Tsumi to Batsu" Kaoru (Dir en grey)costume....that I planned to compete in on Saturday. DID I MENTION THAT I PROCRASTINATE YET?! ...moving on...

Friday: Woke up at 8:30 am, finished packing, rinsed my hair to prep it for styling, printed my references for my competition costume, obtained CD-Rs for my music (yeah, I hadn't burned it yet...luckily I brought my laptop along), ate a banana while Keito inhaled the rest of the Rice Crispies cereal that was god-knows-how-old, and loaded up the car (between the two of us we had: a large suitcase, a small suitcase, a guitar, two purses, a backpack, a laptop case, sewing box, sewing machine, large plastic bag-o-fabric and notions, a garment bag with all 4 of my costumes...hopefully that was all. True story: Jrock cosplayers don't travel light). We left my place at a little after 10 am because I'd read that Kakkoi Con didn't want us lining up before 11 am. We got to the con at 11:30 am...and there was already a massive line for pre-reg/normal reg. "Balls!" I thought. We found Keito's friend (the person who would carry my stuff, make sure my hair wasn't squashed in my feathers, and take photos all weekend) already in line and he let us cut in. I tried to go check into our hotel room, but upon doing so was told that the Sheraton had "no rooms until twelve-thrity-ONE pm" even though I reserved back in March. Great.

Keito's friend (Brawner) had checked in the day before, so he decided to be nice and let us at least do out makeup in his hotel room (read: let me do my makeup and put makeup on Keito). Quite some time later, we actual got to pick up our badges, I got our room, and I managed find convention staff that actually knew where I had to go to register for the cosplay competition (not gonna lie: I had no CLUE what I was doing when I filled out that form...I've never competed...and never even SEEN a competition before...GO ME!). Up in our room, Keito put on her "Gauze-era" Shinya costume and I proceeded to spend in an inordinate amount of time spiking/grassblading all my hair after changing into my "Myaku" Kaoru outfit. Credit where credit's due: Keito braids and installs my ponyfall for me. Give her a round of applause because I barely have enough real hair in the back to keep that thing on.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around in our costumes, having our photos taken...oh, and Keito bought cute things, per normal. Went to dinner fairly late, fooled around a bit more in costume, and then retired back up to the room around 9:30 because I had a SHITLOAD of things to get done in preparation for the cosplay competition the next day:
- make my entire feather neckband
- make my rose/feather hairpiece
- turn a pair of tights into a lace shirt (this was the easy bit)
- attach the chains to my skirt
- cut up the song "Tsumi to Batsu" into a short, walk-on-friendly clip
- figure out what I was gonna do on stage
...I did everything but the last 3 things before 6 am (yes, I stayed up until then), at which point I slept until 10 am. I got up, did my makeup, did Keito's makeup, fixed the closures on the neckband, put the chains on, had Keito help me cut up and burn the song...and never figured out what I was going to do on stage because I RAN OUT OF TIME BEFORE 2PM COSPLAY ORIENTATION. Seriously, I was SCRAMBLING to get laced into my costume (I did not notice until later but I DIDN'T LACE THE CORSET TIGHT ENOUGH! ALL DAY IT WAS KIND OF LOOSE, SO IN PICTURES YOU SEE MY TINY LITTLE SHOULDERS, ARMS, AND LEGS...AND THEN SOME WEIRD BULKINESS AROUND THE RIBCAGE...the side eyelets should be right under my arm pits and they weren't in photos, so I guess the front was too loose. Bah. I knew I could breath too well ), had Keito put my feathers on and pin my falls in, and then had Brawner get my hair unsquished by the feathers and help me into the gauze coat that I wore briefly.

This is the part where I spend 1/2 hour epically lost on the way to orientation and acquire an entourage of equally lost orientation-goers. Eventually, we got there safely, I handed off my CD, had my status as a novice called into question (hey--I've never competed before and don't sew for a living, so I'm a novice, yes? ...confused? Me? Possible.), and got to talk with some awesome cosplayers. Afterward, I wandered the con a little with Keito before heading upstairs to make sure my hair was still staying up (I should have noticed my corset then, but somehow didn't). After that I went to rehearsal, which ran quite long, but at least the MC helped me come up with poses that didn't suck for my walk-on. Afterward, I had 10 free minutes to be bombarded by photographers in the hall before it was time to go hangout in the greenroom for workmanship judging. There, I got to talk with many an awesome cosplayer (Alucard, Amaterase, Sora, Fai, some KH2 cosplayers, and many others). Workmanship judging wasn't as scary as I had imagined--in fact, it was rather flattering because I received many compliments from the judges on my work with vinyl, straightness of all th hardware (rivets, eyelets, boning, etc), and feather neckband (especially for handsewing each feather into a channel...I didn't tell 'em I did it just the night before). I had been SO FREAKED OUT about having someone judge my sewing (I'm a perfectionist so I waited to compete until I had something really well done), so I was ready to keel over with relief (or maybe that was hunger or thirst since I hadn't eaten more than two bites of muffin or drank more than half a Coke Zero all day -_____-") when they said they were impressed.

My stage performance went pretty well, I think. I had a lot of fun just acting like Kaoru (the silly badass that he is) up there and people actually cheered (I expected it to be kind of awkward along the lines of "What the fuck is SHE supposed to be?!" since it was a jrock cosplay, not an anime or game one). When I got off stage, I realized just how TIRED I actually was. Honestly, I just wanted a nice nap more than anything, but I tried to be a good sport while I sat and waited for the judging.

The judging:
The cosplay staff read off all the awards back in the greenroom before the announcement on stage so that we could be ready in the hall to go on stage. They started of with a bunch of judge's choice (mainly performance) awards. Lots of people I'd been talking to (such as Amaterase and the KH2 duo) won some of these. After that, they moved on to the major workmanship awards: Sora won best novice, a really nice guy whose character's name I have forgotten won best journeyman, Alucard won best masters--at this point I thought I hadn't made the cut, which actually just made me feel more tired than disappointed --I WON BEST OVERALL WORKMANSHIP!, and the Berserk armor won best in show! I couldn't believe it! Me? Win something?! Never in a million years would have imagined that! I got up on stage, accepted my medal and $50 JoAnn Fabrics giftcard, threw up the rockhorns and a few cheesy poses, exited the stage, gathered up my stuff, and made to FINALLY get out of the greenroom (I was there from 6-8:30 pm...and my friends had dinner for me...back at 5pm. They called me a bunch of times, but couldn't answer my phone because it's touch-sensitive and I had vinyl opera-length gloves on! I had to borrow Sora's finger at one point to retrieve my messages -____-'. On my way out, Out of Time Productions did a video interview of me and then I was once again attacked for photos before and after Brawner and Keito found me. Eventually, I got back upstairs and ate my sandwich (it was mad cold by then, but it was damn satisfying because 100 lbs little 'ol me was about to keel over). OH! And Keito found me a new Vash keychain while I was tied up in competition-related business all day! My old keychain broke off and was lost a couple of years ago, so I was PSYCHED to get a new one (especially since all the dealers seemed to be out of them the last time I looked). THANK YOU, !!!

We went to most of Vaidos' (the Jrock band that played at Kakkoi Con) set, but it was in the garden court, which has a glass ceiling, so the acoustics were terrible to the point of being painful. Personally, I think the band is pretty good, but the acoustics really wrecked it and we ended up leaving. Brawner went to the band's signing and Keito and I went back to the room. I FINALLY got out of my damn costume (true story: I have no peripheral vision when wearing that thing and CANNOT turn my head. Looking to my side involves turning my whole body...needless to say, my neck was sore) and started to clean up the EPIC mess that was out hotel room thanks to my all-nighter sewing adventure, throwing stuff all over in my frantic hurry to get dressed, and just the fact that we had a lot of stuff. Keito and Brawner watched MORE Trigun (they watched that and over 10 episodes of Trinity Blade the night before) on Keito's laptop while I cleaned, packed, put Keito's hair in curlers, and nearly fell asleep sitting up constantly. I crashed for the night at 2 am and slept soundly until my alarm rudely awakened my at 9 am.

Sunday:
Got up at 9 am, did my own make up, got all but my tunic on, and then woke Keito up at 10 am. I did her hair and makeup, got the rest of my "Osaka Jo Hall Live" Kaoru costume on (she wore "Cage Shinya...I never got around to wearing "Cage" Kaoru at K Con T___T). While I grassbladed/spiked out my hair, she and Brawner loaded all of our junk in my car so that we could check out by 12 pm, which we did. After that, we did some final con wanderings, had more photos taken of us, bought a few more things, took some more photos of our own...and then we FINALLY went to Dairy Queen (Keito had been wanting to since Saturday at 6 am when she half woke up and asked if we could eat breakfast there XD). It was after 2 pm when we got done eating, so we decided to head out since I had to drive Keito partway home.

ANYHOO...
Photos shall be uploaded soon. I will put them ALL on cosplay.com and will only put up the ones to represent the costumes as textiles deviations on DA. I'll link y'all to cosplay.com when I get 'em up (haven't really started editing them yet...seriously, I'M STILL TIRED). Also, I think once I get a couple of new laces for the corset, I'm going to put on "Tsumi to Batsu" again so that I can take a few photos of the corset laced properly (you can actually see it laced nicely in my "Gauze Cosplay" deviation...but that was skirt version 1.0, so ignore my bottom half--haha!).


...that was actually REALLY long. Probably TL;DR caliber and hardly the Sparknotes version. Bah--I don't even like Sparknotes anyway (that shit had never helped me at all).