I attended Yaoi-Con 2010 on Saturday, October 30th with my boyfriend. I cosplayed as 13-year-old Franziska von Karma from Ace Attorney: Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.We arrived to the convention, surprisingly enough, at about the time we planned to. Yet we still missed the first event we wanted to go to. It was just a panel though, so.. I keep telling myself that we didn't miss much. We perused the Dealers' Room and Artists' Alley. In the Artists' Alley, I bought three Eeveelution buttons (Flareon, Leafeon, and Espeon) and an Eeveelution cell phone charm (Umbreon). The cell phone charm is on my DS now, haha, and the buttons are on my convention backpack.
Afterward, we went to check out what we thought was a Maid and Butler Cafe. Unfortunately, it was a panel about how to behave in a Maid and Butler Cafe. Which sort of baffles me still. Everyone at the convention was 18 or older, and if they didn't know how to behave themselves.. Well.. All hope is lost for humanity really. So instead we got food from the stand in the lobby, broccoli beef and steamed rice. It was a little chewy, but otherwise good.We then returned to the same panel room that the Maid and Butler Cafe thing was in to attend the Ace Attorney panel. In all honesty, I wasn't overly impressed. There were technical difficulties, which I know isn't the panelists fault, but still put a damper on things. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but it looked like their PowerPoint presentation wasn't compatible with the laptop it was on (or at least the photos on it weren't). So there were blank white slides with titles, but no pictures. Occasionally, were a picture was supposed to be, there would be a notice about updating Adobe Flash Player, so I guess that's what went wrong there. There was one picture, but I didn't even understand what it was supposed to be.
Also, the panelists insisted on using the Japanese names for all the characters, which made me zone out a little bit. I guess I'm more of a "casual" fan, because I have no idea what the Japanese names in Ace Attorney are. It would have bothered me less if they had at least explained what the English counterparts to the Japanese names were. You know, so-and-so's Japanese name was such-and-such, etc. It also wouldn't have bothered me so much if they had stuck to one language. They switched back and forth a couple of times, from English names to Japanese names and back, which led me to believe that they were actually just talking about characters that I didn't know.
I think the biggest disappointment though was the fact that they didn't have a lot of content, and attendees were expected to already know almost everything about all of the games. I don't think a little general info would have hurt them at all. Sure, some people may have been a little bored, but I feel like it would have been better to spend 5 minutes on overview than let some audience members be completely lost. I was probably the most lost, but my boyfriend said he got confused at some parts too, so there's no way it could have only been us. And a few people left in the middle.Content-wise, I think they filled about half an hour (the panel slot was the usual hour). It seemed like they relied a lot on audience participation, but the audience was small and didn't say much, save for maybe three people. They said that they've been running the Ace Attorney panel for a few years, and usually they talk about new releases, but mostly they just said "there hasn't been much news", and the only thing that they mentioned about the upcoming game was "I assume you've all heard about [insert Japanese game title here]." Which of course, I hadn't. Or maybe I had and didn't recognize the name. They did give a brief summary of the game, but I didn't understand it because they used Japanese names, and, again, I was uninformed about the content. it almost seemed as though they didn't want to talk about it. In fact, the whole panel felt that way, as if they were tired of talking about Ace Attorney and just wanted to rush through their information as quickly as possible.
At the end of the panel, there was a quiz, which was a good idea in theory, but you had to have extensive knowledge from sources outside of the games to get their questions. The prizes were cool though, little Mia Fey and Maya Fey figurines. Winner got to choose which one they wanted and second place got the other one. My boyfriend participated in the quiz thing. There were four participants, and each got ten questions. Not the way I would have done it, but it worked well.They said that at the end, they usually have a photoshoot, because there's usually more cosplayers, but there "weren't enough" apparently, because I guess three of us isn't enough. I would have liked to get a few pictures with one of the panelists, as she was dressed as 18-year-old Miles Edgeworth, but it didn't happen.
What irked me the most was one of the panelists singling me out and putting me on the spotlight because "You haven't said anything at all." Excuse me, I didn't know that I was supposed to fill time in your panel. Just because I'm cosplaying a character from the series that your panel is about, it doesn't mean that I know everything about the series, or would even have anything to say if I did. I just looked at her and shrugged. Furthering her point of having not said anything the whole time. xD
After the panel, a new friend dressed as Phoenix Wright and I tried to kidnap the Miles Edgeworth for a photoshoot, but she said that she had only worn the costume for the panel and was changing for.. You know, I don't remember why she wanted to change to badly. Anyway, Phoenix and I went for a photoshoot, which lasted about two hours. We got a lot of good pictures by a fountain/waterfall, but it was so crowded. Everybody wanted pictures by that waterfall. Which made sense because it was so pretty.We did all of the obligatory photos of "Objection!" and general court room scenes. I'm not entirely sure how it came about, but we ended up taking some photos with a pirate-version of France (Hetalia) and a Vocaloid. Those were pretty good. My favorite though, were definitely the shots with the Pedobear. I wanted more pictures with Pedobear, cosplaying as a 13-year-old and all, I'm sure we could have come up with some hilarious pictures. But, alas, the con was setting up for a wedding and kicked us out of the area that we were in. We relocated and got some more photos. Then relocated again. Haha.
After the photoshoot, my boyfriend and I wanted food, so we walked down the street to where we thought there was a gas station. There wasn't one. We walked back to the hotel, only to discover that the gas station was in the opposite direction. So we walked there and bought a bunch of snacks.
Back at the convention center, we sat down near the room where the masquerade was to be held. We didn't think that we were in line for the masquerade, it just seemed like a good place to sit. We were told that the masquerade line wasn't going to be there, which was fine, because, again, we didn't think we were in line. About two minutes later, we were told to move. I was a little more than miffed, as there was really nowhere else to sit and eat.
After eating, we browsed the Dealer's Hall again, as it was closing soon, and my boyfriend bough my an Ampharos (Pokemon) plushie. Ever since playing Pokemon Gold, where my main electric Pokemon was an Ampharos, I've always had a soft spot for it, and this little chibi-ized plushie of it was just way too cute to pass up.From there, we tried to find the line for the masquerade. The area directly in front of the ballroom where the masquerade was to be held was completely blocked. We were told it was because of the wedding ceremony mentioned earlier, but that made no sense, it was the middle of the hotel lobby. We were then told that the opposite side of the closed area was open for people to walk through. The people on that side then told us that the first side was open to walk through. Bad communication for everyone! Eventually, we found the line, which was really only a waiting place until the "line" was split into several parts to form other lines in the middle of the "closed" lobby area. We sat there for a while, buying candy from the booth behind us (formerly the registration booth).
Eventually we were lead into the ballroom for the masquerade. the masquerade itself was very entertaining, yet disappointing at the same time. It was very similar to Fanime's masquerade, which is brilliant, but I think I expected more from Yaoi-Con, since it's an older crowd. Meh. Not much to say there.
When the masquerade was over, we were all forced to leave the room. Those of us who wanted to see the Bishounen Auction had to first locate the line for it (it was upstairs O.o) and then find the end of it. It would around the balcony surrounding the balcony and doubled back in itself. Definitely one of the longest lines I've ever been in, rivaling Fanime's masquerade line. Once inside and seated, number paddles were handed out to those who wanted to bid. Surprisingly, it seems that most people were only there to watch.In any case, it was certainly entertaining (I did not bid). I was really disappointed though, I didn't get to see many pretty boys. Don't get me wrong, the men were attractive, but when I think of "bishounen" I think of "pretty boy", and there were almost no bishies! *fangirl rage* The one bishounen that I did see though, was really, really pretty. I mean, I was jealous of how pretty this boy was. It just wasn't fair, and I loved him for it. T_T (lol)
The performances were definitely entertaining though, and it was fun to watch the so-called bishies play up to the audience's crude demands. I still expected better from 18+ year-olds, but, well... I gave in and started screaming like a 13-year-old at a Backstreet Boys concert. (Old reference makes me feel old.)
My boyfriend and I had to leave about an hour and a half into the Bishounen Auction for the hour-long drive home at 11:00 at night.
All in all, it was a good day, I just wished that staff had handled the line-up situation a little better. The double (or triple, as I was told) booking was more the hotel's doing than the convention, but I feel like the convention should have moved after finding out. Or something. Overall, good con, but I won't be attending next year due to budgetary limits (read: I'M BROKE!).