Miko Does Bakacon, day 2, Saturday

        My roommate said he was going to get up early and visit
the Japanese gardens while the cherry blossoms were still in
bloom.  Then he stayed up until midnight watching television.
Typical -- he didn't get up to take a shower until after me, and I
pretty much knew I wouldn't be up until about 9:00 am.
        I drove up to Sky's place in Everett and picked him up.  I
arrived at 10:00 am, which was about what I said I'd do the
night before.  Sky was just finishing breakfast.  I popped in the
latest Garmarna CD and we headed on down the freeway.
        The first thing we did when we arrived was hit the dealer's
room.  It's kind of sad -- the are fewer dealers than last year,
with four or five empty tables.  Most of what was offered was
domestic anime products, but one dealer (Anime Kingdom)
had a lot of import stuff.  Well, technically Masaki's Majindo
had a lot of import stuff as well, but Masaki is local, so we
know what he has already.
        Anime Kingdom had art books.  Sky started snapping
them up -- one for Nadesico, one of Galaxy Frauline Yuna, and
two Slayers books.  Also a Cowboy Bebop poster and Cowboy
Bebop CD.
        I picked up an art book that I've known about for a long
time -- Phantasien.  Sky's owned it for a couple of years, at
least, and it's very good, containing artwork from Lodoss Wars,
Five Star Stories, and Weathering Continent.
        We checked out the art show, and discovered that Sky's
four art pieces were already sold.  And no wonder -- he's a
good artist, and he'd marked everything with a direct sale price
of $5.00 each.  "They're only laser prints," he said, but I kept
insisting he should have at least marked them for $10.00 or
more.  The guy running the art show even said two people
nearly got into a fight over one of the pieces.
        Sky hung up some flyers so that people interested in his
work could contact him.
        After we stashed our stash in my car, we linked up with
my roommate Tom and went to a panel on costuming.  It was a
very good panel; the lady who was running it was very
knowledgeable and animated, and obviously loves to costume.
At least two people in the audience were wearing costumes
created by her.
        There were a lot of hall costumes, and some really good
ones.  I saw a Silent Mobius costume, a Patlabor costume, and
a host of Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 costumes.  There was an
Ukyo with a decent-looking battle spatula, and a Kuno
complete with a bouquet of roses.  I think that, in general, you
get more costumes at an anime convention than at other types
of conventions.
        We ate lunch in the hotel, which was surprising on two
counts -- one, it was good, and two, it was not overpriced.  Not
only that, but the waiters were very friendly, and had no
problem with separate checks.  Our friend Jeff showed up and
ordered a coke, but it was heavy on the syrup and he didn't
drink very much of it.  When he mentioned it, they didn't
charge him for it.
        After that, we'd planned to go to the advanced costuming
panel, hosted by the same woman who did the first costuming
panel, but because my roommate and I bought desert, and then
Jeff showed up and we sat around talking, the panel was
already half over.  We headed upstairs anyway, but the room
was full, with people standing in the hallway.  We got trapped
at the end of the hallway between people coming and leaving
and people in costume taking pictures of each other.  After a
few minutes we made out escape, and headed to the taiko
demonstration.
        We went into the room where the demonstration was, but
they chased us out of the room while they set up.  I sat down
next to a wall, plugged in my laptop, and started writing.
        William Morse, fellow FFML author, came by.  I'd met
him at Norwescon three weeks ago.  He didn't have a long time
to talk, since he was the con's official photographer and had to
go around snapping pictures, but he asked if I was still stuck on
Muyami Academy (mostly -- worked a little on it yesterday)
and told me a bit about what he was working on.
        By then they were letting people into the taiko
demonstration.  They had three large drums set up, and a
woman named Masato who was a member of a local Japanese
American drum troupe explained a bit about how to stand and
how to hit the drum -- there's quite a bit more to it than you
might think.  She had two members of the audience come up,
and she worked with them until they got three patterns down
and could do all of it in order.  Then she worked with a second
pair.  The third pair included convention guest Stan Sakai,
which was fun.  Stan was about as good or incompetent as any
of the others.  I think his hair is longer than the last time I saw
him, almost to mid shoulder.
        After the taiko demonstration we went out into the
hallway, then figured out that the Studio Gibli panel was in the
room we'd just left.  We went back in, and for the next hour
watched a presentation set up by the Nausicaa.net people.
They did a pretty good job -- I hadn't realized that non-
Miyazaki films were included in the deal with Disney.  Pretty
much everything is included except Grave Of The Fireflies,
which isn't owned by Tokuma.
        By this point Jeff had to leave the con.  Sky, Tom and I
checked out the art show again.  Then we headed over to the
food court at the mall.  Sky had bought a "Cool Mocha" at
Orange Julius the day before, and was craving another one.
Tom bought a "Cool Cappuccino" while I got a Tripleberry
Smoothie (which gave me quite the ice cream headache!).
        Back at the convention, we talked to Masaki, the guy that
owns the Majindo anime shop.  He was standing out in front of
the hotel, ready to go to dinner now that the dealer's room had
closed.  He said he was doing really good business, which is
good, because we want to keep him around.  He's one of
Seattle's best sources of anime stuff.
        We headed up to the artist's jam.  The room was full of
people who were sitting around, as if waiting for something to
happen.  After a while people began to pull out their
sketchbooks, and eventually everyone was drawing and talking
and showing their work to each other.  I plugged my laptop
into the wall to recharge, and sat down to do some writing,
while Sky joined the other artists.  Then I fired up Adobe
Photoshop, created a crude stick figure, and altered and filtered
my way to a modern art masterpiece.  ^_^
        We tried to get in to the cosplay, but it was already full
and they wouldn't let us in.  Instead, we sat down in the lobby.
Tom had hooked up with us again, and then Phil and his aunt
(a neat lady who is actually my age, only ten years older than
Phil) showed up.  We sat around talking, with Tom playing
around with photoshop on my laptop, creating his own
modern art masterpiece.  After an hour, William joined
us.
        We read each other's stories and William learned the true
horror of listening to my roommate Tom come up with weird
story idea after weird story idea.  We're talking about a man
who once tried to create a music video using Grave Of The
Fireflies and the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy".  I think he
gave William a few ideas, but after a while his ideas were too
scary for even me or William to seriously consider writing.
Two examples:  Little House Of The Overfiend, and Tenchi
crossed over with The Last Temptation of Christ.  He also
wants to do Speed using the Totoro cat bus -- that's one that I
think could actually work!  That was just the tip of the iceberg,
but I was talking to William most of the time so I missed a lot
of it (and a good thing, too -- Sky cried in anguish, "He just
wouldn't stop!").
        Someone saw us with my laptop out and asked if any of us
were fanfic writers.  She was looking for submissions for the
fanfic contest, which I thought was already over but, as usual,
the con messed up and didn't communicate things clearly.
William handed over one of his short stories -- the one
involving the Brady Bunch -- and I'm going to print a few of
mine up tonight to give her.  The only rule seems to be that
they're not more than 15 pages, and that she has time to read
them before 4:00 pm.
        We sat in the lobby for several hours, just the six of us,
talking and trading stories.  William became the only person
other than me to see what I've written for Muyami Academy
chapter 5 and beyond.  We had fun, talking until midnight,
when I could tell Sky was fading and wanted to leave.  For me,
these are some of the things that really make a convention fun
-- just hanging out with friends.  And that was what a lot of
other people were doing, too.  ^_^


Miko!

On the field, Kasumi and Akane were sitting up. Their father hovered
over them, tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping from his chin.
"Kasumi!" He exclaimed. "My poor Kasumi! Tell them you'll forfeit!
Please!"
"Dad?" Akane asked. She glanced over at Kasumi, and froze.
The person next to her wasn't Kasumi. It was a young girl with short,
dark hair in a page cut. She wore a light yellow dress, and she was
looking very confused.
Akane glanced down at herself. She was wearing a red silk Chinese-style
top, and black pants. Her chest was flat and muscular. She reached
behind her head, and found the pigtail that she knew was there.
She glanced back at the girl next to her... at herself... at Kasumi, in
her body.
With Akane's voice, Kasumi said, "Oh, my!"
(Ranma 1/2:  Monkey Head Butting)

Nausicaa@sprynet.com  Belldandy@angelic.com
Anime RPG at http://come.to/akane/
Fan Fiction at http://listen.to/bell/