Hidely-ho, fanficarinos! It's me, everybodies favorite Tybalt-baiter and
wacky boy here to regal you with the wild and crazy trip that was my journey
to Otakon.
 
 Passed out in the back of a Honda:
 The ONLY way to travel.
 
 Me and my roomates (you don't know them, I just chivvied some friends to come
along becasue I needed people to help defray costs) left around six thirty
A.M, with an eight hour drive ahead of us and a busted A/C unit. UGH!!!! If
you ever have to choose between sweltering heat and blistering pollution-
filled wind, choose the wind.
 
 I missed the first three hours of the con (damn traffic) but got there in
plenty of time for most of the cool stuff.
 
 Welcome to Otakon. 
 Beware of falling fanboys.
 
 First off, I have to say that the Hyatt absolutely ROCKS as a hotel. Opulent
rooms, lots of elevators, a HUGE convention space..... if anybody out there is
planning a con or a trip to D.C, I HIGHLY reccomend it.
 
 I caught a few videos before the Fic Panel. For any of you Lodoss fans out
there, Legend of Crystania is a HUGE letdown. The only charachter transplanted
from the original series is Pirotess, and the rest of the cast isn't all that
memorable. Plus, they never explain how Ashram managed to survive his
encounter with Wagnard and Kardiss.
 
 And now, for our feature presentation.....
 The Fanfic Panel.
 
 Now THIS was interesting. It was nice being able to put faces with names. I
staked out a good seat in the front row, with one other guy and White Wolf,
and proceeded to mercilessly heckle (that's how _I_ remember it) the panel
members the entire time.
 
 I was a little daunted at first when everybody started to show up. I was at
LEAST seven or eight years younger than everybody in the panel and most of
those in the room. It's weird when you've built up an image in your mind of
these people as your contemporaries, and then finding that some of them are
old enough to have been coming to these cons when I was still in grade school.
 
 The dialogue was prety interesting actually. Gaffney did most of the talking,
followed closely by Hosmer. Lara and Zen and Stefan kept quiet most of the
time, which surprised the heck out of me, really. Gary, who sat a couple rows
behind me, was also kept pretty quiet. Me and Keener (I think that was
Keener.... not sure...) did practically all of the talking from the audience
side.
 
 The moderator picked some good topics, (dark lemon debate, baby!!!) and had
the forsight to ban discussion of script vs prose and of "The Bitter End"
right from the outset.
 
 Some interesting quotes:
 
 Lara: "I really wouldn't know anything about dark lemons."
 Zen: "I have no ego."
 Unidentified person: "Don't make us hurt you, Gaffney."
 
 That last one was spoken right before Jeff and Zen threatened to physically
restrain Sean, with Zen pulling out his battle spat in the process.
 
 The REALLY interesting stuff, for me personally, came with the post-panel
talks. I finally got to talk to Stefan Gagne in person, which was pretty
kickass.
 
 An excerpt of that conversation:
 
 "Well, as long as you're here, care for some ReBirth spoilers?"
 
 "Oh, cool! Umm.... Third Mazoku War. Are Lina and Co. going to pull one 
 their last-minute saves, or is everyone gonna die?" 
 
 "That is a secret."
 
"......" 

He's a funny man, Gagne.
 
 I met up with Lara and Zen and a couple others outside the panel, introduced
myself. Made a minor fool of myself in the first part of my conversation with
Lara, but I did manage to correct some misinformation about her that I'd
received.
 
 Mike, I'm going to get you.
 
 Anyway, after dubbing Lara "Queen of the Incestfic" (and having her take me
down a peg or two by bugging me with when I was finally going to get the rest
of my OWN incestfic out) somebody made a pro-Tybalt comment. I said
"Blasphemer! Now you shall pay!!!" at which point Zen handed me the BFS-1000
and guestured toward said malefactor.
 
 I was a little disappointed that Lawson wasn't there. I was looking forward
to meeting him.
 
 Anyhow, that was pretty much all the interesting things up until midnight,
when Mystery Anime Theatre 3000 got going. 
 
 Some witty audience banter from before the show started:
 
 Con Official Guy: "So, what've we all come here for tonight!!!"
 Audience Hecklers: "Anime!"
                              "Food!"
                               "Booze!"
                               "More anime!"
                               "Sex!"
 Con Official Guy: "I'm sorry, you guys are going to have to PAY for sex."
 
 And of course, Amanda Winn-Lee was there:
 
 "I knew, when I woke up on the bathroom floor this morning, drunk, with a
black eye, that this was going to be the BEST FUCKING CON EVER!!!!!!!!"
 
 After that, I headed for the room and collapsed into a stupor. 
 
 Day Two:
 The Funkiness Commences.
 
 Saturday got off to a rip-roaring start with a viewing of the music videos.
They were HILARIOUS, even the serious ones. There were FAR too many FFVII
videos (I can only watch the Omnislash so many times) and Celine Dion ones,
but otherwise cool. 
 
 There was this one Sailor Moon one though, that had come through the copying
process all warped and faded and bad. A guy behind me put it best:
 
 "Evil Queen Beryls Video-Destructor Ray is working! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
 
 Yeah. Sure.
 
 I checked out the dealers room. It was fairly disappointing. This isn't to
say I didn't go nuts and blow a huge wad, but still, I was counting on a
higher slection and lower prices. FOUR HUNDRED FREAKIN' DOLLARS for the BGC B-
Club special! I almost plotzed!
 
 I kicked it until evening, when the line for the cosplay started forming up.
I was lucky enough to slide into line right next to Gary Kleppe and Co. We
bantered about fics for awhile, and the girl with Gary, Cindy, actually
penciled out a spamfic right then and there. 
 
 Oh, and Gary does an EXCELLENT Colonel Klink impression. "I see nothing.... I
see nothing...." 

The cosplay was entertaining, even though the sound system wasn't working and
we had horrible seats. Still, the costuming was excellent and some of the
skits were very well prepared.

Anybody rememeber Anime Central, when a dancing Genma started a bump&grind to
"I'm too Sexy," and Amanda Winn-Lee jumped up onstage and stuffed singles down
his fur? Well, the EXACT SAME THING happened here. I almost fell out of chair
laughing.

Some quotes from the FFVII cosplayers:

"I'm Vincent Valentine, and ladies..... I'm available."

"You killed Erith!! How could you?! She was the prettiest girl in the game!!"

The coolest part was at the end, though, when some guy dressed in a Priss
hardsuit drove a working motorslave into the presentation area. It didn't
transform, but still cool.

On my way back to the room, I passed what I dubbed as "The Degenerate Sailor
Scouts;" a group of girls in senshi costumes drunk, smoking, and having a
conversation where the word "fuck" was being used like a comma. I laughed.

Went out for chinese with Gary and friends. The conversation, as it is wont to
do, turned to the list:

"I don't really fear Tybalt banning me, y'see, because I have a number of
alternate identities I can use to get back on."

"Really? And what might these be?"

"Well, there's...... WAAAAAIIIIIIIIIT a minute.... nice try, Kleppe."

After that, I staggered back to the video rooms to watch fan parodies. I had
the singular honor of watching the first public viewing of "Dangerous Toys,"
in the company of it's author, Stefan Gagne. That will forever remain in my
mind as one of the milestones in my career as a fanboy.

Next, came the room parties!!!! Woo-hoo!!!!! There were these guys up on the
fifth floor with a bathtub full of drinks and a fully stocked makeshift wet
bar on the dresser. I got SO smashed it wasn't even funny, even though
margarita mix and rum don't taste very good.

I can't speak for the authenticity of this next one, because I might have been
haluccinating....

"Hey, is Neal Nadelman in here?"
"Passed out on the bed, with the blond."

Make of THAT what you will.

Anywho, security started shutting down the wilder partes around two A.M. I
grabbed the Gatorade/Bacardi mixture and started to stagger back to the room,
when I heard there was still a party up in 1530. Turns out it wasn't really a
party, just a group of fansubbers with video screens hooked up. They kicked
most of the rowdies out, but I was quiet and drunk, so they let me stay.
Watched "Card Captor Sakura," which for a magical girl knockoff/parody was
pretty damn good.

Had an interesting conversation with the guy on the couch. I think he was.....
Anime Master? Anime Inverse? I don't remember, I was blasted, but he said he
was the guy who wrote Slayers Idiotic, and we talked about fansubs for awhile.
If  you're out there man, I STILL think you need to watch the first few
episodes of Slayers Next, even if you haven't finished the first season yet,
to understand how brutallly cool Xelloss really is.

Made it back to my own room around five and collapsed on my cot.

Day Three:
McDonalds will actually cure a hangover.

It's true, it will, even though I had WAY less of a hangover than I thought I
would. My roomies were kind enough to get me fast food and caffein, and I
actually made it downstairs in time for Slayers: The Motion Picture and the
second showing of End of Evangelion.

ADV needs to do some serious work on their Slayers subtitling. They did an
excellent job, when compared to all other commercial subtitlers, but they made
many more mistranslations, overtranslations (it's possible, when dealing with
magic incantations) and misconstruings than I expect from ADV's high
standards. What they did to Lina's Dragon Slave chant..... uggh. Absolutely
uggh.

The End of Evangelion BITES!!!!!!! It stinks, it blows, it is absolutely
HORRIBLE!!!!!!! "This feeling sucks," my ASS, Shinji!!!! We invest
considerable time and effort into watching the entire Evangelion series, and
for WHAT!? A bunch of abstract imagery that NOBODY understood and an ending
that left more questions than answers. If there isn't some kind of sequel
made, I will be VERY upset!!!!!

After I calmed down a little, I hit the art auction before we left for home.
Carl Macek was there; I couldn't believe he actually showed his face in public
at a con. I tried to trip him on his way out, but he moved too fast.

For anybody who was at A-kon, there was a nice little feeling of deja vu when
the fire alarm hit around three in the afternoon. As we congregated outside
the building (boy, did WE scare the passing motorists) everybody was talking
about either how they were pissed that now they couldn't get to the con
feedback session, or about how the EXACT same thing happened at A-kon. We were
all very upset, even more so when we found out that for once a fanboy WASN'T
to blame.

After this, I climbed into the back of the car, closed my eyes for just a
second, and the next thing I remember, it's midnight and Steph is shaking me
and telling me to get the HELL out of her car because I'm home. ^_^;;

There it is, Mercutio's trip to Otakon. I hope you enjoyed this romp through
my twisted sense of recall.

-Mercutio
"A plague 'a both your houses!"