So my Otakon experience was pretty straight forward. Like I mentioned before, my friend helped me out and paid for my expenses to work at her booth in the Dealer's Room. When I knew I was definitely going and I was telling my ~my gurlz~, some people were going "it's gonna be the hugest con you've ever went to", while others were going "lol don't make any high expectations"

I pretty much felt like the latter. LOL


So I was working at my friend's booth, Alik's Cosplay, basically on the lolita side of the booth LOL. Barely touched the furry side. Thank God.

I found out the perks of being a dealer; early access to the area, being able to just cut through the back/loading dock to go wherever you need to, and unlike the Artist Alley, where it's very easy to just jack your shit and not get in trouble, the Dealer's Room part has basically everyone's information in case someone tried to do something skeezy, like steal merchandise. Oh, and priority access to panels. Badass shet

The con was pretty big, but maybe I didn't get to -fully- experience it since I was working most of the time. In any case, last year's NYAF/CC had MUCH more people than Otakon, regardless of the Baltimore Convention Center technically being bigger (in my opinion, never actually checked). At NYAF/CC people were sandwiched like sardines and they actually halted ticket sales because the con center was getting to be over capacity.


Anywho.


Since I was working mostly the whole day, I didn't bother trying to go to any panels or moving around too much. I missed a couple of lulzy panels, but I got to see the lolita ones: The Ultimate Lolita Fashion Show, by my friends, and the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright fashion show, and screening of Gothic & Lolita Psycho. Otherwise my days consisted of me working, or chilling at some of the lolis' booths in the Artist Alley.


Since I was a Dealer and we were able to get early access to everything, I took every opportunity to visit the BtSSB booth. If you hadn't known, Baby, the Stars Shine Bright is my favorite brand, and back in 2008 they visited New York City and I had the opportunity to model for them in their fashion show (though imo my runway skills were absolute shit-- plus at the time I was battling a serious flu so I was half high on meds). One of the designers who visited that time, Masumi Kano, was visiting again at Otakon so I -had- to say hi. Despite me having been decked out in AP most of the weekend, they didn't give me any stink faces like I expected xD

The most rewarding part was that Miss Kano actually -remembered- me from 2008, and whenever a new translator was nearby she would tell them "I remember her, she modeled for us back in NY in 2008~" and it made me feel really good about myself, despite my bad job last time. Ever since then I was basically stalking their booth the whole weekend, saying hi when I was able to and stuff~ The booth was pretty bare, I'm guessing since it was more of a last minute decision for BtSSB to have one, and they only stocked extra stuff from the San Fransisco store, but they had some dresses I personally haven't seen (have been avoiding auctions and brand sites lately), and Masumi also wore this long dress that I REALLY wanted, I'm glad she wore it so I could see how gorgeous it was irl @_@



Mitsuba was a new face since she joined the BtSSB crew 3 years ago (guessing that Miho quit?) either way it was definitely lovely to see them one.. two.. three... 20 times during the weekend LOL, I've had so many run-ins with them it was ridiculous, including Sunday morning~ I was in the Hyatt's public bathroom after staying a night chilling at David and them's hotel room-- and as I was leaving I saw this beautiful print (Melty Mermaid print), and I went "nice dress~"-- girl turns around and I found it was Mitsuba and she nodded and smiled and I was like FFFFshocked xD and then we quietly rode the elevator to the lobby. My awkward moment for this weekend~


I didn't take many pics during this whole con, since a lot of my memory was taken up from the fashion shows~ YUP, TOOK VIDEO LOL. I was going to compile all of it later on and post it up on my Youtube, but never got to it yet lol. Friday was the Ultimate Lolita Fashion Show though, that was ran by my local friends and featured about 7 or 8 American designers/seamstresses, and for the most part it was good~ some outfits were 'meh' and some didn't look right or suit the model wearing it, but overall it was good and the girls did a really good job.

Masumi and Mitsuba also managed to attend, where they commented that they felt it was really awesome that all the designers had their own inspiration and their signature feel [compared to Japan where some styles might be inspired by different things, but they mainly look the same or don't take off their inspiration as heavily or uniquely as the U.S. girls did with their work]"

Friday was really exhausting, so when the con closed for the night we just went for Subway's for dinner and headed to sleep LOL