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rinlinACen was super awesome this year! It was a definite improvement over the ball of stress that was this year's Ohayocon. The ACen plans worked out great and the whole thing was just a lot of fun.
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yaexrae , Nicole, and Greta) drove up from Indiana on Thursday. They stayed overnight at my house and we left early Friday morning for the con. I was already in my Izaya cosplay, Greta was in her Germany cosplay, and yaexrae was in her Franziska (from Phoenix Wright) cosplay. My mother was quite amused as we left the house.
Franziska drives us to the con.
An amusing truck we saw on the way there. "Spring & Fail Cleaning" anyone?
We had the best luck upon arriving at the con. We were able to get a parking spot on the same level as the hotel lobby, right near the doors. Then, when we got inside the hotel we had no problems finding Sarah. She led us to our room, which was only one floor up from the lobby and right near the stairs. So we didn't need to spend time waiting forever for the elevators during the weekend. The room was nice and was somehow comfortably able to fit all ten of us. People in our room this year included: me, yaexrae , Greta, Nicole, Payne, Sarah, Lovara, Lovara's mom, Jan, and Sasha.
After we threw our stuff in the room, it was time to head out and explore the con! Greta and Nicole went to go wait in line for Greta's badge. yaexrae and I already had our badges, so we decided to go to And Sewing is Half the Battle's cosplay panel. We learned some nice make-up tips from the panel. yaexrae then decided that she wanted to change into her Shizuo cosplay. Immediately afterwards we found a Celty in the lobby!
Shizuo, Celty, and Izaya
We would run into her quite a few times throughout the weekend. yaexrae and I then made our way to the artist's alley and dealer's room. We were pretty surprised at the number of people who recognized us and asked for our pictures. We weren't really sure what to expect since Durarara!! is a newer series, but I guess it's popular enough that more people than we expected knew about it. We also had some nice conversation with a few of the artists in the artist's alley. They were really nice and had some lovely art. Afterwards, yaexrae changed back into Franziska for the Phoenix Wright photoshoot and I agreed to be her photobitch for the shoot. I somehow managed to take all of the pictures from the shoot on her camera and not get any on my camera though. We then ran back to the dealer's room with Greta and Nicole because they had found the Sengoku Basara action figures we were looking for. I got Yukimura and yaexrae bought Date Masamune. We then had fun putting them in silly poses.
Yukimura & Date Masamune are srs business about cupcakes.yaexrae and I then went to wait in line for the concert. Upon arriving in line, we discovered that ACen was not allowing anyone to bring any sort of bags or purses into the concert. (That was a pain in the ass rule that many people complained about.) We quickly stashed our stuff upstairs and got back in line. The first part of the concert was the Spoony Bards. They were quite skillfull at their instruments, but the crowd wasn't too enthused by them. I did enjoy when they played the medley of songs from Kirby and the background music from Guilty Gear though. The second part of the concert, the part that I had really come to see, was Aural Vampire. They play some pretty awesome gothy techno/trance music. And their vocalist, Exo-Chika, is so pretty. I had a lot of fun dancing around to their set.
After dinner, Greta, yaexrae , and I went down to the hotel lobby. We had brought my Jenga game with us to play during down time. We set up by one of the couches. Before long people started noticing what we were doing and asked to join in. Our group kept getting larger and largerand our Jenga towers were getting insanely tall before they would topple. It was decided that Izaya was the Jenga master. It was a pretty good time.
Germany plays some Jenga.
Shizuo isn't patient enough for this shit.
We played with these guys for quite a while.
The group kept getting bigger. Alie wandered by at some point and joined us, too.
After Jenga, it was bedtime. I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. It was comfortable enough, except for the part when we were woken up in the middle of the night by an extremely large commotion outside our room. Apparently a guy in the room next to ours was resisting arrest and was doing so quite noisily. They must have arrested him though because it quieted down a few minutes later. We fell back to sleep, but got a rather early start on Saturday morning after Payne arrived. She dressed as Undertaker and yaexrae cosplayed Sebastian, complete with tray of cookies to offer to people.
Sebastian would like to offer you a cookie.
Undertaker and Sebastian were interviewed by Madame Red for a show on Youtube.
Waiting around with Nicole and Germany.
We went back into the dealer's room after some more exploring. While we were there, we wandered into Celty and her two friends, who were dressed as Ciel and a character I didn't recognize from a series called Yume Nikki (so she shall be refered to by her real name, Rachel). We wandered around the dealer's room with them and took some goofy pictures. We also learned that Rachel actually lives in the same town we go to school in, so we may see her in the fall!
Sebastian's love for cats includes Celty.
Celty feels that Izaya deserves a punch to the crotch. I'm sure Izaya actually deserves it, as well.
Photos with a small Kuroshitsuji group, including the Ciel we had been hanging out with and Rachel down in front, as a cute kitty.
Nicole with her cute octopus friend.
Then it was onto the Kuroshitsuji photoshoot! I'll post some of the better pictures from the shoot.
Dancing. Celty actually switched into her Lizzie costume for the photoshoot.
The adorable servants.
Undertakers
Sebastian & Ciel
Drocell & Ciel
We also found Cat, dressed as Grell, and got together a small group to take our own Kuroshitsuji photos.
Everyone looks awesome!
Meirin can't handle Sebastian's sexiness.
Do not want bad touch.
Then it was time to change and go to the Durarara!! photoshoot! Here's a bunch of photos from that. We had a pretty good turn out. I was sad that no one was dressed as Kida or Anri though.
Group shot
I was surprised and pleased that we had three Celtys.
Izaya
Shinra & Celty <3
Shizuo
Walker, Harima Mika, and Dotachin
Izaya & Shizuo
Shizuo & Celty: Bros for life.
Invisible motorcycle!
This Shizuo had an awesome newspaper stand. I love how it had The Daily Days inside!
After the photoshoot we took our own photos.
I love the sign that yaexrae made.
Cosplaying Izaya was a lot of fun.
Alie also dressed as Shinra for us.
True love...? Shinra approves.
"Marry me, Shizu-chan?"
Rejected.
Lol.
That's more like it.
Role reversal
Celty & Shinra being adorable.
So cute!
Later, it was time to get in line for the masquerade. This year's masquerade was the longest freaking masquerade ever, but it was so worth it. I was pleased to discover that Stripper Vash and Voltz were hosting this year! I love those guys. First up was the costume competition, with some pretty awesome outfits. I think my favorite was the old school, blocky, pixelated FFVII Cloud. Then it was time for intermission, where we'd been promised a special surprise by ACen. As promotion for X Japan's summer appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago, they premiered a 30-min. documentary about Yoshiki and X Japan. Afterwards there was going to be a video chat with Yoshiki, live from Japan! There were some technical difficulties however and they cut the connection. We were waiting for them to fix the issues and a couple minutes later Yoshiki walked in the room!!! The crowd went crazy! Those tricky bastards at ACen, surprising us like that! So, then we got to talk with Yoshiki for a bit, and he held a press release about the concert where the audience got to ask him questions. I enjoy X Japan, even though I'm not a die-hard fan, so I thought the whole thing was super cool! 
Yoshiki! <3
Then we got to watch the second half of the masquerade, the skits. This year was pretty good because most of the skits were at least decent, if not good. My favorites were the Cosplay Help Line and Kuroshitsuji Bollywood skits. Because of the surprise!Yoshiki the masquerade didn't get out until after 10. It was worth it though. By that time the line for the Soap Bubble was already super long and I didn't feel like changing and waiting in line forever, plus we hadn't had dinner yet. So I opted not to go to the Soap Bubble this year. I spent time hanging out with everyone instead. Greta and I were introduced to a bit of the newest Kamen Rider series while we ate, courtesy of Jan and Sasha.
Jan & Sasha as some Kamen Rider characters, whose names I've forgotten. yaexrae had found some caution tape laying around, so Payne took some cool Durarara!! photos for us. We also ran into an adorable guy who complimented our outfits, and we then spent the next five minutes squeeing about Durarara!! and Baccano! with him.
I'm totally creeping in this photo, as Izaya should.
Shizuo actually does bartend...sometimes.
The next day was fairly low-key. I thought about cosplaying Ed, but decided to keep wearing Izaya because it was slightly more comfy. I got autographs from Aural Vampire.
Raveman & Exo-Chika
We then spent the day making last minute buys in the dealer's room and taking some more Kuroshitsuji photos.
We found Spain & Romano in the dealer's room. This Romano was adorably in character, threatening to chop Germany's (Greta's) balls off if he didn't stop fucking his brother. XD
Germany, photo-bombed by Romano.
Sebastian & Kyouya would get along quite well.
We borrowed this awesome scythe.
Cat's friend Thalia was our Ciel for these photos.
Fencing lessons, with Greta's gravity sabre.
*pokes dead!Sebastian with a stick*
Attempted re-enactment of the manga, which we decided wasn't really accurate because Ciel was wearing pants.
Cat tackles a loli. "She's half my age!" This 13-year old girl, who was cosplaying Sebastian followed us around for a while. We were nice to her because she was young and it was her first con. She did get a bit annoyingly clingy when we needed to leave though.
Kitty Grell. Sebastian is conflicted.
Possibly the most badass you will ever see Sebastian being.
"Give me a kiss, Sebas-chan!"
"Yes, my lord."
On our way out we saw L and another violinist playing in the hotel lobby. They were quite good. It was a nice way to end the con.
Here's what I bought:
A Yukimura action figure, small prints of Axel and Sebastian, Tsubasa #26, Aural Vampire's newest CD (which I got autographed), and a glass with Izaya on it (it was one of the only pieces of DRRR merch I could find, so I had to buy it).
After getting home from the con, I slept for twelve hours straight. It was a tiring weekend, but it was well worth it. I think everyone in our group really enjoyed themselves. ACen is usually such a good time. I can't wait until the next one!
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 09:20 am (UTC)It looks like you had so much fun, I wish I could have gone too! We have to get together and do a convention as a group sometime, hopefully as soon as possible! (There must be a sizeable convention somewhere in America during January… you do have January off, right?)
There are so many Kuroshitsuji cosplayers, holy crap! The Undertaker must be such a fun costume~ and if you want to wear that Izaya costume again, I would so be up for Durarara!!, how awesome! That newspaper stand is quality; as cool as the guy here who has the fake vending machine, that newspaper stand just looks so much nicer!
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Date: 2010-05-20 02:03 pm (UTC)I would love to do a cosplay group! Something tells me that might be kind of hard to do right now though (especially since I don't forsee myself having a lot of extra cash to travel to cons outside of the Midwest anytime soon). The only con that I know of in January is Ohayocon (in Columbus, Ohio), which we've gone to for the past couple years and probably will go to again this year. It's usually the last weekend in January.
I think my group's goal is too eventually have a decent sized Kuroshitsuji group, as well. If I eventually take part in it, I'm going to do Joker. I'm also definitely planning on doing Izaya again. If you were to cosplay Durarara!! too that would be awesome! Who would you want to be?
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Date: 2010-05-22 02:02 am (UTC)I'd love to be in a Kutoshitsuji group~ I really want to cosplay sniper!Maylene. If I was gonna do Durarara!!, I think I'd want to be Shinra, he's my favorite~ ♥
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Date: 2010-05-22 02:12 pm (UTC)Both of those would be great cosplays. I think you could really pull off both of them.
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Date: 2010-05-20 09:27 am (UTC)Con looked like a lot of fun =]
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Date: 2010-05-20 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-20 05:24 pm (UTC)Man this is getting me all pumped for A-kon. YESSS.
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Date: 2010-05-20 06:16 pm (UTC)Is A-kon next week?
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Date: 2010-05-21 06:58 am (UTC)