[note: According to Google Docs, this was written on 7/31/09, but our website wasn't quite up, and I am a lazy procrastinator.  So just pretend it's still summer and you haven't quite gotten that post-con depression yet, cool?  Cool. --Casey]

My first anime con was Shoujocon in 2001.  It was a small affair, and I was all pink and shiny and new to this anime thing, and I think I spent under $200 total for the entire trip.^[1] I followed that up the next year with another smallish con, Animazement, before going to my first Otakon.

It was huge!  The Baltimore Convention Center is somewhere you can actually get lost in for days, doing nothing but watching anime and checking out crazy costumes and meeting people you thought only existed on the internet and perhaps people you wanted to continue to exist only on the internet! ^[3] It was huge and amazing and I wanted to come again and again.^[4] And – dare I imagine it – maybe one day I would be cool enough to actually have a panel or draw a crowd and actually WORK Otakon.

Seven years later, I was privileged to be a part of Disorganization XIII’s magical Otakon presentation of Spoiler: the Panel: the Sequel: the Panel.  Whoot.

We left Thursday night, stopping only once at the Clara Barton^[5] rest stop on the drive down to our Ota-lodgings.  At said lodgings, NGLO and Baalesh invented the newest sleeping sensation, TeeterBed.  It’s an air mattress precariously balanced on top of a smaller air mattress.^[6] This was effective in not only keeping cats from scratching and deflating the air mattresses, but also making for exciting fun anytime someone had to roll over.  If you buy an official DO XIII TeeterBed now for the low, low price of $19.95, you get 3 free Sham-Wows!

Friday was the first day of attacking the con.  It’s been a few years since the last time I went to Otakon, and I had forgotten how massive it gets.  The lines!  YOU CAN’T BEGIN TO IMAGINE THE LINES.  They’re inside the building and around the building and I think wormholes are involved.  We were performing Spoiler: the Panel: the Sequel: the Panel that night, so our first course of action was to find our panel room, before it got too late and we were cold and hungry and lost and eaten by bears.  Otakon has expanded into the attached hotel, and our panel room was there.  We were worried – were we so far from the con that no one would come?  Would anyone be able to find us?  Part of our audience draw is that passerby hear laughter and pop in to see our show.  We were in Panel 6, which was the room farthest from the main convention area – you had to be determined to go to Panel 6, there was nothing else out there.  We worried that we had been relegated to a crap room, and then we looked inside.  Panel 6 was one of the largest panel rooms they had.

Oh.

The rest of the day went by in a blur.  We took pics of cosplayers, went to the Dealer’s Room, and ate at a Quiznos.  Felt a little let down that we were scheduled opposite of the “Philosophy of Bleach” panel, as I had hoped we could crash their party, since we’ve watched Bleach and have philosophers among us.  Felt better after hearing how the “Philosophy of Bleach” panel went down.  We saw Whose Line Is It Anime and what we could hear sounded funny.  We survived on granola bars and spite until 8:15pm EST.  We got on stage, I plugged my laptop into the projector and fired it up, and everything worked perfectly!  The audience who had already collected booed my RPattz desktop wallpaper when it came up on the screen. ^[7] But we were ahead of schedule!  And things worked!  HUZZAH!!!

Show went well and everyone who came out to see us was awesome.  Thank you, everyone!  Without you, we are just four nerds saying funny things to ourselves,^[8] and hell, we do that in the living room every week already.^[9] And thank you to everyone who came up and said hello after the show!^[10] We had one woman who came up and complained about a joke we had made.  She started by saying, “I thought you were funny, but the one joke of yours that I thought crossed the line was…” No, I won’t tell you what joke it was.  Try to figure it out!  Make a game!  Here’s a hint: it was definitely something I in no way expected anyone to ever complain about.

Saturday we woke up early, but not earlier than NGLO, for Anime Parlaiment, which was fabulous and just as good as caffeine at 8am.  We wandered about the con more, and ventured into the Artists Alley, where I unexpectedly spent a lot of money.  I couldn’t help it – people had cute magnets of kitties and jewelry made of dice and posters of the bands from Nana!  Eeee!  Sometimes I think about hunkering down with my crafting and creating a bunch of stuff and selling it in the Artists’ Alley at a con.  But then I get distracted by tin foil or vikings and my own personal laziness kicks in.  Maybe someday y’all will be lucky enough to have your own personal arts and crafts by me.  SOMEDAY.

Saturday afternoon featured Anime Press Your Luck led by Brian and Koshi, which went awesomely.  Had some lunchdinner at the Nest, and then back to the con for Video Games that Push Our Buttons. Video Rooms: Diebuster, Fan Parodies, then OMG WTF it’s 2am and we’ve been here since 8am time for go to bed.

Sunday we didn’t even go to the con.  We stayed in and slept in our own filth and played games with the friends who were gracious enough to let us crash at their apartment for the weekend.  On the way home, we stopped at almost every rest stop so that we could mark our territory along the Eastern Seaboard. Or because we drank a lot of soda, whichever.

In the end, Otakon is like Otaku Mecca and it is glorious.  For three days, I got to be around some of my favorite people and got to forget that sometimes in the world, I have to describe my fandom as, “*sigh* Anime.  You know.  …Pokemon,” and if I had ever gone through with getting that Trigun tattoo, I would not be judged here.  I definitely had a religious experience. ^[12]

———–

^[1] To be honest, the only anime I was really into were Sailor Moon and Tenchi.  I did say I was pink and shiny and new.  Also, at the time, I didn’t know much about the items that would eventually become my main money-suck, doujinshi.  What I did think about doujinshi was that they were *gasp!* ...dirty books. Why would I want to buy those?^[2]

^[2] So remind me to tell you sometime about the doujinshi I have where Wolfwood is a prostitute and Vash, Meryl, and Milly all have sex with him for money.

^[3] And find a shower!

^[4] That’s what she said.

^[5] I think Clara Barton is the woman who marries Doc Brown in Back to the Future 3.  Surely some sort of awesome time-travel-related adventure must’ve taken place here for New Jersey to name a rest stop after her.

^[6] And then you put a pea under the smaller mattress.  Also learned on this trip: NGLO and Baalesh are not secretly princesses, and pea is just terrible to clean out of carpet.

^[7] Really? REALLY? And I don’t like to break this one out for just anything, but if you remain unconvinced, HERE.

^[8] Please come see us do Spoiler 3: [insert title here] at NYAF 2009 and Anime USA 2009!

^[9] You are not invited to come see Spoiler 3: [insert title here] in Kirk and Casey’s Living Room 2009.

^[10] Like the girl who came up and thanked me for doing Lupin III!  Thank you for liking the show!  I’m sorry I didn’t get to say much else, but I was trying to get my stuff together and my friend and I were gonna grab a drink and I had 15 things I was trying to process in addition to my natural inability to talk to new people and personal shynesss, ^[11] but you rocked!

^[11] It’s hard for shy people to do Spoiler in front of a massive audience.  Know that I stay calm by picturing all of you naked.

^[12] If you, like me, define “religious experience” as, “They took all my money and now I feel ashamed and a little dirty,” that is.