Cons and Colds

So perhaps going to Con-G this weekend with a cold was not the best idea. Ah well, live (hopefully) and learn.

Con-G is Guelph's annual anime convention. It sounds a bit like "kanji". There mascot is also a dragon named Kon.  It feels very right to me, and a lot like a scaled down version of Anime North, with a good distribution of vendors in the Dealers' Rooms, panels, anime showings, and special events.  It's also quite a bit of fun because a good proportion of the attendees dress up in cosplay.

Homestuck

Ouran High School Host Club

Due to my oft-mentioned good friend the plague, I only attended each day for half the day, usually missing the mornings. I did still get to see a lot though.  My favourite thing was meeting people, old and new.  I know a lot of the people who go to Con-G and it's a fun place to hang out and do something together.  There were also some surprising faces, like Dr. Who (friend of a friend), a fellow kendoka, some OCUSites, someone from my undergrad, and someone I met at Anime North. It's also a very friendly atmosphere making it possible to meet new people.  I was happy to meet a fellow nerdfighter, a not-a-cosplayer, a musical-dancer, a master chess player, and a few others.

The dealers' room this year became the dealers' rooms, and included a greater variety of stuff.  I always wait until the last possible moment to make purchases to minimise the amount of money I'm spending.  This year that was aided by having the ATM machine on site run out of cash.  Whoops!  Luckily, technology came to the rescue, as the vendor I was most interested in had a credit card processing application on her iPhone, replete with beloved e-receipts, enabling me to get a shirt I coveted last year.  Hehe.

chlorophyll, the veggie molecule

Besides the Dealers' Rooms, there's also an Artists' Alley where you can purchase or commission art. Amusingly, last year I asked an artist if they could do Cyber Six (a character from an old cartoon) and it wasn't feasible in the time left, but this year there were a bunch of pre-done Cyber Six pieces.  I think there were fewer artist vendors this year all together, though, which at least meant saving me more money.

I helped my friend Ira win the murder mystery by being his Watson.  There was an "actual" Sherlock there, but he wasn't Sherlock enough to affect an accent, so I didn't help him.  They hid clues all over, and it turns out I'm great at finding things, especially in the strangest of places.

A favourite part of Con-G is the Masquerade.  It's when cosplayers are paraded around the stage in a competition for best costume, best presentation (they can do a small performance) and stuff, and they're judged at different levels.  I think this year's masquerade was a bit shorter than last years, with fewer group performances, but it was still delightfully hilarious.

At the masquerade: Piranha Plant!

The J-Pop dance is supposed to be a dance to J-pop music in name, but in practise it's just typical dance music, because previous years found J-pop too difficult to dance to.  I don't really mind, as long as I get to dance with cool people in a fun environment.  Dancing with a Pikachu and Sherlock Holmes is pretty fun.  I didn't stay until the very end this year because I wanted to catch a bus back to avoid walking in the cold with a cold.  Coughing over the past week had also beaten up my abdomen a good deal, making dancing incredibly painful.  However, I don't run into that many opportunities to dance anymore, so I made sure to stay a bit. :)

I like the anime showing room as a place to get introduced to new anime.  I discovered "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" in 2007 at Anime North in that fashion, and much to my delight, they were showing "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" this year.  I also caught an episode of Dr. Who which was riveting.  I'm soon going to solicit friends with the series for cowatching it.

Someone attended in a Dalek.  He rolled into the Dr. Who
showing and threatened us with annihilation.

There was a panel instructing attendees how to sew their own plushies with a simple rice ball design.  I tried to capture the emotion of a freshly served rice ball.

My lovely though incomplete rice ball plushy

There was also a great live-action Mario level that saw me jumping from mushroom to mushroom, over piranha plants, over goombas, navigate a castle maze, fire blast Bowser, and leap for a flag poll.  It was lovingly effected using hula hoops, cardboard cut outs of enemies, and volunteers.  I don't think anyone got a photo of me doing it, but at least I have my memories.

There are other highlights, like spending the second day with my friend L, playing Pokémon while there, watching cosplay chess (which was hilarious and not always for the nicest reasons), meeting a convincing Darth Vader (I fled from his sight), meeting the Ninja Turtles (cowabunga!), the games room, eating fries, Thai, and Squirrel Tooth Alice's (including the server who never let my tea run out of hot water) with friends, random cougar statues outside, and more, that I can't really write about because of the aforementioned plague!  So here are some pictures,

Darth Vader, after a confrontation with
Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney

A cougar defends someones automobile

I went in my typical last-minute lab coat, but this
year with my Newfoundland vest and black dress shirt.

So, in summary, hooray for Con-G!  Too bad that afterwards I felt a dozen times sicker.  Hehe?