Katsucon 2015

Katsucon 2015 was a great experience. I've learned so much since my first time five years ago, and it's amazing to see how far I've come and how many awesome experiences I've had. 

This year was actually the first time I didn't have pre-con jitters to the point that it made me anxious. I'm usually pretty wound up the week or so before a convention, which sometimes took a toll on how I felt, and I never experienced that this year. I felt completely prepared and relaxed! I mentioned this in my vlogs, but when I walked into Katsucon this year, I just got this feeling of "home" -- it's become so familiar to me that I just felt so content to be there, even if I wasn't specifically doing anything. 

I actually only cosplayed once this year! Friday, we left right after school, so I asked my parents to bring my Free! Iwatobi jacket for me to change into. I brought my black wig so I could be Haru once I got my badge, but I decided against putting it on. Saturday I got to wear my Tsukino Usagi / sailor hoodie cosplay, which I really loved. Sunday I just wore my Iwatobi jacket again. 

The line situation seemed to be kind of a mess this year, because they grouped both at-door and pre-reg into the same line out in the main hallway, so I thought the line was super long. However, occasionally staff would walk down the line and ask if anyone was pre-reg, and then they would let us go into Hall E. The line inside the reg room got a little messed up right around the front, so Cindy and I probably jumped ahead by accident;; We were only in line for an hour though! I was amazed. Poor Emily had to wait with Charlotte and her bae because they hadn't pre-regged in time and she was nice enough to keep them company. 

I did almost everything I wanted to do this year! The biggest disappointment was not being able to meet Sachie, since I missed meeting her at Otakon like two years ago. But I did get to meet Josie and Liz from twitter, and I got to see a bunch of people in the DTP circles again ♥ I got to stay at the kigu party on Friday for a while, and that was super fun. 

My grandparents came down for the day on Saturday since they seemed curious about conventions, and it actually went a lot smoother than I anticipated. I was a little scared to see how it would go, just because they're unfamiliar with a lot of the anime / congoing culture, but I never got the feeling that they were like "ew your hobby is kind of weird", and I really appreciate that. I had a lot of fun sitting in the atrium with my family and people-watching. They asked me lots of questions, and a lot of times I couldn't answer them because they would ask about series I'm unfamiliar with, but I was really glad that they were engaged and interested. 

We did finally get to experience a Katsnowcon, which was a little bit of a mess. It started snowing Saturday evening, right around the time we were about to leave, and for a few minutes it was basically a white-out. We managed to get home safely, and I think we were really lucky that nothing catastrophic happened at all. Mom and I took the Metro down on Sunday because the roads still looked kind of bad and Dad had to deal with a frozen water pipe (and then got called into work). I'm really hoping that next year we can finally stay down at National Harbor so we don't have to worry about commuting back and forth.  

I actually came home with a relatively small loot this year! I only used ~2/3 of the Christmas money I had saved for the weekend. I only got one "full size" print; the rest are about normal paper size. I think what I'm most excited about is the Ladies of Literature zine, since I saw andythelemon mention it on her tumblr, but I didn't expect I'd ever have a chance to buy it. I also got a commission from kristinkemper, which I am sooooo happy about because she's one of my favorite artists. 

I didn't get to vlog as much as I wanted to, but I got enough footage that I'll have five videos. A good portion of the footage is actually stuff I took at home as a sort of "catch up" for the lack of video at the con itself, so I'm glad I at least have that. I'm getting a little better at talking to the camera when I'm at home ♥ You can find my teaser video here! The videos should go up every Thursday, and this will be the first year that I'm captioning my vlogs. 

TL;DR this year's Katsu was actually pretty chill, and I didn't do all that much, but I still had fun.