OTAKON. Starring me, rktikfox, xel_ko, iorie, and Thomas, with special guest appearances by greatsg and umister.

Hi, my name is Emily and I make HUEG POSTS about every con I ever go to. DEAL WITH IT, FAGGOTS.

Thursday
I had to go to work. Avery was going to swing by and get me as soon as all her shit was ready to go. This seemed reasonable. We had to do some racial inventory thing on all the campers after chores/during the meeting, but I finished the ones on all of my attendance cards, and was just helping the (eight or so) other people finish off the big list. She drove up and I was like "Okay, peace." I then, however, proceeded to get legitimately cursed out by my boss, who is usually a relative hippie, and (for the second time this summer, wtf) my job was threatened. If I had known he would pull such a freakout, I would have genuinely asked to leave early, but as it was, that day was inconveniently the day we needed to stay the latest all summer. I know that I'm technically contracted until 4:30, and I did feel bad, but...still. Anyway, he finally gave me permission to leave, and in a fit of rage I hopped into Avery's car and we were off to get Thomas. On the way, we ate Wendy's food. We retrieved Thomas and kept going on up to Baltimore. We were making good time.

Then, we hit a wall of traffic from HELL about fifteen minutes from our destination, and ended up being literally five minutes too late to pick up our pre-reg before it closed on Thursday night. And I couldn't help but think that if my boss hadn't been so unnecessarily pissed at me we might have actually made it. Bawww. (May I add that I am still baffled as to why people cosplay on Thursday night? I'm sorry that Otakon's not a four-day con and you don't have a convenient chance to wear all four of your cosplays, just suck it up or else you look like a faggot.)

We then swung around to Kurt's hotel to retrieve our Californians! They looked a little dead. Avery had to pee reeeeeallly badly and had for like, hours, so she went up to Kurt's room to do so (since apparently the lobby bathroom was locked? wtf) and I started the game of luggage Tetris that was fitting five people + large suitcases into the tiny Gold Experience car. Eventually we ended up with me, Diana and Avery sitting in the back seat with a giant wheelie suitcase on our laps. We drove with only mild confusion back to the hotel and checked in and made sleeping arrangements and unloaded and...shit. AND THEN TRIED TO MAKE COSTUMES ON INTO THE NIGHT. We'd decided to do part 5 on Friday after all, for great group action, so we actually didn't have that much to do, but either way, I'm pretty sure Avery and I stayed up until 2:30 or 3:00 only to make plans to wake up at five. (Andy passed out like...right away, lol.) I rigged up Diana a pretty cool prop for her Doppio costume: five bloody razorblades strung together on some wire that she could fasten to her teeth. Y HALO THAR, METALLICA. Avery touched up her skirt and I just...dreaded making that hat.

We also made the terrifying discovery that both of my wigs were still in a box in Avery's house. D:

Friday
So we were supposed to get up at five, but I was the only person that managed this, and for some reason our alarm didn't go off. It took me till about six to drag other people out of bed. FRANTICALLY, we cranked out the last details of our Passione costumes, aka my hat. MY HAT. IT ACTUALLY DIDN'T LOOK THAT SHITTY, CONSIDERING IT WAS MADE OF E-6000 AND HOTEL ROOM AND AIDS. I think it was at this point that we initiated the meme "HANYAAN FAERY BUILT THIS IN A HOTEL ROOM. WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS." Avery and I just went to see Iron Man again like...half an hour ago and we were just loling oh god. We thought we were going to be ready to go pretty much as soon as the hat was done, but Andy ended up taking a really long time on his makeup, and then even when we did get there (after chatting to some lulzy guys on the lightrail) we had to wait for about an hour in the fail, sweaty-chan line. (Poor Thomas had to wait like, THREE hours. D:) Fortunately for us, we had the lulz-bucket, Diana's little iPod boombox. We played a lot of series-related faggotry (Queen, mostly) as well as some internet AIDS songs (Rickrolling, Soccer Practice, basically anything to entertain ourselves). We took a couple of pictures of each outfit, just to make sure we had some, but mostly we just stuck to the shade as much as we could and tried not to DIE. We made plans to meet up with Thomas over by the fountains when we finally got inside. We all got Kimba the White Lion badges. (I kind of wanted the D.Gray-Man badge more, but, well....it was badge #4. And that just made me anxious.)

We ran around for a little while doing a whole lot of nothing, familiarizing ourselves with the con, perusing the schedule to make sure we hadn't missed too much of things that we really wanted to do. On our way over to the fountains, there was suddenly umister! We were all overjoyed to see each other, and we took about a thousand faggoty Golden Wind pictures. I was amazed that my Mista was actually photographing pretty well! I think it's because I finally figured out a good facial expression for him. We fagged it up for a decent amount of time, and then Diana and Renee and Andy wanted to go off and do something in the dealers' room, but Avery and I were going to stick around and wait for Thomas. I think Avery was feeling a little crappy by this point, a cross between sickness and being overwhelmed and her binding being super-tight and painful. (Eventually over the weekend, we all developed con AIDS. Even Thomas got sunburnt in his line.) After she went to the bathroom and freed her boobs she started feeling better. We found some water, Thomas, and then the other JoJofags again, and we killed time loling until the Mike Sinterniklaas panel! Avery, Thomas and I went to that, and he is just so much lulz. I love voice actors. I don't always love their faggot fangirls; there was this stupid chick behind us that was loling at her own ~inside jokes~ and found it hilariously amusing to ask Mike if he wore boxers or briefs. MIKE TALKS SO FUCKING FAST, UGH. I kind of loved it because I know I talk that fast sometimes, too. ♥ TL;DR I am a a voice actor faggot and it was just kind of win, blargh.

After the panel we went and met up with the JoJofaggots again~ We had a while before greatsg's panel that we were all going to; Avery and Thomas fucked around in some video rooms, but me, Diana, Renee and the other Narancia (kasaiface) went outside on the upper patio deck thingie to take some photos! They were made of lulz, for the most part. One guy was having us all pose with this Pocky box, but I only had one idea for it, so I asked if I could open the box. I proceeded to tug out four sticks of pocky and hold them in front of me, making a terrified face, for the lulz. XD Soni showed up too, so we took a bunch that were just part 5 and then stuck her in there too for collecive JoJo faggotry. It was at this point that I started feeling really out of place because I was the least experienced and the least famous, and also the least skinny .___. I was just worried that I was going to look retarded in all of the photos next to these people that didn't suck. But I'm being optimistic! xel_ko assured me that I'm awesome and they were just really excited to have a Mista, so wtfever. IT WAS AT THIS POINT THAT I STARTED OWNING EVERYONE'S PROPS THOUGH, HOWEVER. Srsly, me/props OTP, fuck sewing. I made Diana's razorblade thing, I provided Avery with her fisherprice!Aerosmith, I bought Kurt his sexy girlfriend, and it was my idea for Renee to go grab a piece of plant off the shrubbery on the deck to use as a temporary Gold Experience for a couple of pics where me, Liz and Renee were attacking Diana. Just...epic win. I had so much fucking fun.

After that we reconnected with Avery and Thomas, and for a while we lost Andy (I think to the Touhou panel? Unless my timeline is fucked). We made plans to fuck around until Kurt's panel and then leave immediately afterward to de-costume and consume food, and then proceeded to do just that! We ran into a friend of nghtwalkershido's, who informed us that there was a cool JoJo guy down in the artists' alley, so we went down there to say hi. He was pretty impressed! He told us that part 4 was his favorite, so we promised to come back on Saturday. And then KURT'S PANEL WAS SO FUCKING FUNNY. We lol'd forever, except at the same time we kind of hated him because all of those awesome, terrible songs (and the accompanying I CAN'T UNSEE IT videos) were stuck in our heads for the REST OF THE FUCKING WEEKEND. But it was lulz forever nonetheless. Andy found us there about three videos in, so we all left together and hopped the lightrail back to the hotel. Thomas went on a grocery run while the rest of us went FUCK, DUWANG long into the night.

Seriously, I think this is the night when we slept the least. We just had so fucking much to do, and I don't think it ever would have happened had we not had a healthy dose of Mountain Dew and adrenaline. FORTUNATELY, the big fuckup was fixable: Mom managed to overnight me my wigs, and they got there Saturday morning. But we still had the entire top half of me, the entire top half of Andy, and a good bit of wig-styling and last minute touching-up to do. Friday night/early Saturday morning was just....COSPLAY HELL. But we decided to just say fuck it, and chalk all QUALITY up to this being DUWANG day. For the most part, it turned out pretty fucking awesome. It was just hard to tell until Saturday, when we had all of it on.

Saturday
We kept costuming on into the early afternoon, I'm afraid. This caused us to miss Kappei Yamaguchi entirely and to basically just say fuck the masquerade, we'll watch it on the internet. Andy had to go to some Higurashi gathering so he GTFO'd, leaving us to finish Yukako, Rohan, Okuyasu and parts of Josuke, BUT THAT WAS OKAY. We just met up with him at Kurt's room later. (There were so many fucking people in that room! How did you guys manage? Jesus.) This was the day that Diana and I started hiveminding, for the lulz.

Someone else in room: [Blah blah blah] one of your girlfriends, Kira.
Kurt: One of them?
Andy (I think): How many sexy girlfriends do you plan on having at once, Kurt?
Me and Diana at the exact same time: HOW MANY BREADS HAVE YOU EATEN IN YOUR LIFE?

Every-fucking-thing on Saturday was made of lulz and JoJoAIDS. FUCK. We got stopped for pictures in that way where you just...don't move. You just get trapped in one area of the convention and all the photographer people come to you. I'll admit, my costume was kind of QUALITY and the faces I was making weren't really helping. I think my favorite cosplayer Saturday AND SUNDAY HOLY SHIT but that's for laterz was Avery. She just makes the best faces of anyone, ever. We took some Beatles-style photos over this railing, we took some gay shit photos of Avery eating Kurt's head and stuff, we took individual shots, we took group shots, FUCK DUWANG EXPLODED ON EVERYTHING. Shido's friend was there again, and we went back to the artists' alley to see the cool JoJo guy (he gave us free shit! I got a cool Jotaro print he'd done). While we were down there, a chick walked by with a Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp T-shirt on, and I had a giant Schaferfag freakout. "OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR SHIRT." I think I scared her for a couple of seconds. XD She was like, "Head over there to our booth!" AND THERE WERE TWO OF THEM. PSYCHONAUTSFAGS. I ADORED THEM. They gave us like, instant faggotboners about our Sunday costumes. We were SO EXCITED. They told us they would also give us free stuff if we dropped by on Sunday as Sasha and Milla. THEY WERE SO AWESOME. GO CHECK THEM OUT.

Then we hiked over to the inner harbor food court place to eat something. I wasn't all that hungry so I just mooched fries and a couple pieces of Diana's chicken, as well as drank a big Sunkist and got MANGO SORBET FROM HAAGEN-DAZS, FUCK YES YOU ARE THE BEST EVER. mmmmm. I took some gay photo with Diana of us eating ice cream from each other's cones. WE SAW THIS AWESOME DYKEY BALTHIER, SHE WAS SO HOT. God, Saturday is just kind of a blur? Because every waking moment was DUWANG and faggotry. But we had to get back over to the con center for the Dub Actors After Dark panel, and to kill some time we napped in a video room that was screening GTO.

We got in line for the DAAD panel (me, Avery and Diana were going) and proceeded to RICKROLL EVERYONE WITH THE LULZ-BUCKET. I was just waving it over my head and we got the entire line singing along and it was SO MUCH LULZ. Basically, everything on Saturday was lulz. EVERYTHING. Especially this panel. Yuri Lowenthal was a big giant faggot, Derek Stephen Prince was a huge pervert horndog, Mike Sinterniklaas was apparently in a shitty horror porno by accident once, and it is NEVER NOT FUNNY to hear the moe Laura Bailey voice saying things like "what the hell kinda porno is that? shit." About half an hour in, Greg Ayres called her! We'd already been talking about dead baby jokes, and he proceeded to go that one step further, as is Greg Ayres's way of things. Laura was having to relay it to the room and that made it that much funnier.

Laura: Okay, okay, "How do you keep the neighborhood kids off your lawn?"
Audience: *lawling in anticipation*
Laura: *pause* ... s-say that again?
Audience: WHAT? WHAT!!??
Laura: ..."You fuck one of 'em."

LOL, Greg Ayres, LOL. Be seeing you at Nekocon.

After this panel we were all FUCKING DEAD so we just went back to the hotel room and died.

JUST KIDDING! We were getting lazy and the lightrail sounded like too much effort, so we just planned to walk to Kurt's and have them call us a taxi. DISTURBINGLY, on our way there, there was a trail of fresh blood just...on the sidewalk on Baltimore Street. WHAT THE FUCK. We were all completely freaked the fuck out, so we were glad to take solace at the Radisson. When we got there, however, we were informed that no taxi in the city would transport five people! Their maximum is four. So we thought we'd suck it up and check the lightrail, but it turns out that by then it wasn't running any more, and we were fucked. So we walked to the nearest hotel, the Holiday Inn, to see if they would get us two taxis. IN THE PROCESS WE SAW MORE BLOOD, AND ALSO HEARD A LOT OF SIRENS AND SPOTTED FROM A DISTANCE A GUY GETTING HANDCUFFED. FUCK, OTAKON, WHY ARE YOU IN THE BALTIMORE GHETTO. The guy at the Holiday Inn called us a couple of cabs but they didn't show up and didn't show up and we were just like FUCK, so Diana used wimpy girl-fu on him and a taxi finally showed up, AND THEN MANAGED TO SQUEEZE US ALL IN. It was just a flat rate of $40, which was only $8 per person so we were just like, "Fuck." And we got back to the lightrail station where our car was parked, and then drove back to the hotel. Conveniently, we had very little to do costume-wise for Sunday, as Milla and Sasha were mostly done! The biggest chore was going to be packing, because our stuff kind of exploded. And as far as cleanup goes, well, I feel really, really bad for the housekeeping staff that had to deal with our room. D: SORRY, HILTON GARDEN INN CLEANING LADIES. WE DIDN'T MEAN TO, IT JUST SORT OF HAPPENED.

Sunday
So we had more to do than we thought we did, but it didn't really matter, and we kind of just said fuck the gloves, we'll do it rite next time. Unfortunately, people also slept in really late, because we had gotten like NEGATIVE SLEEP for the past couple of nights, and try as Thomas and I might we just couldn't kick the others out of bed. We ended up having to plead for an extension on checkout and still barely making it out. We just wanted to get to the con center in time to let Kurt and the Schaferfags see our costumes, and to maaaybe peruse the dealers' room since I hadn't been there at all and the money was kind of burning a hole in my WNRN bag. Awesomely, that's what we ended up doing!

OH MY GOD AVERY IS THE BEST FUCKING SASHA EVER. Like, every time I looked at her I wanted to shit myself. I mean, my Milla was pretty good, but I had a few inaccurate details and my wig really needed some styling. BUT AVERY. SHE WAS GODLY. GODLY AND GREEN. The artist alley people LOVED us, and because we loved them too we ended up buying some things from them in addition to taking their free stuff they were giving us. In the dealers' room I was impressed with nothing save a fucking HIEROPHANT GREEN ANIMATION CEL THAT I TOTALLY BOUGHT, but I failed on my two quests, which were a new scrapbook notebook (no one had animu notebooks as far as I could tell, which was crappy) and a G Gundam box set (everyone that had any G Gundam at all only had the second half of the series, for the lose). We got out of there as quickly as possible, since it was about to close and since my feet were exploding and since we really wanted to get some omnom before we had to take Diana and Andy back to the airport. Sasha and Milla actually got stopped for a few photos, too; this one chick was like "I NEED TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE RIGHT NOW." And we took a few lulzy Psychonauts photos of our own. But then we left. FUCK, THOSE BOOTS. And my wig was really itchy. BUT AVERY WAS THE BEST FUCKING SASHA EVER.

Yeah, I definitely changed out of my costume IN THE LIGHTRAIL PARKING LOT. Fuck, everyone that was present saw me in my bra at least once over the course of the weekend. But I left my Milla earrings on because I basically love them. (Avery did the same with her Sasha glasses, lawl.) And then we drove Diana and Andy to the airport, and BAWWED, because really? Fuck living an entire country away. Despite the fact that there were a couple of moments over the weekend where I think we all just got pissed at each other, they were awesome faggots to hang out with and I hate the fact that a large portion of my BFFs live in different time zones. I was seriously like, "BYYYYEEE~! I'LL SEE YOU ON THE INTERNET!!!" T________T lamesauce forever.

Then we had to undergo the arduous task of driving back to Lynchburg without passing out. This was actually very hard. But by the time we got Thomas back to his house Avery and I were doing okay. We grabbed some late-night food at Sheetz, and then spent the rest of our trip already planning for our next con. Big giant faggots? You bet we are. And fuck yes, I am going to be Diddy Kong.

Statistics!

MEMES MOST USED:
-"DIANA BUILT THIS IN A HOTEL ROOM. WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS."
-"Fuck my life~!"
-"It's a trap!" (this was mostly in relation to Andy, predictably)
-"[adjective] [noun] is [adjective]" (a perennial favorite)
-"IT'S KIRA TIME" (the answer ANY TIME I EVER ASKED what time it was on Saturday, to the point that I kind of hated it XD)
-"Why so ______?"

SOURCES MOST FREQUENTLY QUOTED:
-JoJo (obviously)
-Every video Kurt made us watch at his lulz panel
-Dave Chappelle (especially since Saturday was made of GRAPE DRANK)

COSPLAYS MOST PHOTOGRAPHED:
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in that order. But even Sasha and Milla pulled some fags out of the woodwork, and that was just fucking awesome.

Am I going back to Otakon next year? Probably not. Partially because I'm getting a little sick of GIANT CON, and partially because it's once again scheduled in the asscrack of July instead of the beginning of August, but mostly because I just can't see how any future Otakons could top this one.

Pictures hopefully to come in a future entry!

And today, I slept pretty much all day. Fuck. XD