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First off, let me just say that that was FUCKING AWESOME. This probably reveals me as both an utter geek and a total noob, but fuck. This was probably the highlight of my entire fucking year. I know I'm saying fuck a lot, but non-swear words cannot convey the awesomeness that was Yaoi-Con. Even with the utter travel failure.
A Less Than Brief Summary of the Epic Travel Failure and The Yaoi of Total Win
So, I left my dorm at 8.30. For some strange reason, I was under the impression that the B-line bus ran on the weekends, but of course it doesn't, so I sat at the bus-stop for THREE HOURS. I probably could have walked to the train station, except for the tiny detail of me not knowing where it is in relation to my dorm. So yeah. And then, when the bus /finally/ came, it was about ten minutes late. Which, you know, not such a big deal, except that it got the train exactly two seconds before the 11.30 train left. So I had to spend another hour sitting in the train station, listening to Jingo on my mp3 player and starving to death (didn't eat breakfast, since they don't feed us on the weekends). Got on the train, and all was well, until we got to Millbrae - once again, got there just as the BART was pulling out. There's another twenty minutes of waiting.
Fiiiiiiinally got to the airport where I was going to catch the shuttle to the hotel. Much to my amusement, just as I got there Numa Numa started playing on my mp3 player, which is interesting only in that that was the song used in the first yaoi amv I ever watched. Heh. Anyway, the shuttle took forever to get there, too - I think I waited at least 45 minutes, even if the boredom was alleviated by a long pointless conversation with Envy involving heavy criticism of the abuse of side characters in HP interspersed with me swearing at the shuttle and her swearing at the worms she was trying to suck into a pipette. But, eventually, the bus did get there, and I rode it, and then I was at Yaoi-Con and ALL WAS RIGHT IN THE WORLD!
It was - wow, every time I try to think about it I go all incoherent and want to start babbling. I saw the best Axel cosplayer EVER. I saw people from fandoms I have never heard of, mostly video games, who nonetheless looked /incredible/ in their costumes. I saw several guys being led around by collars and chains. I saw an Advent Children Cloud and a Leon holding hands. I saw SO MANY GW cosplayers and wtf? I thought we were a fairly small fandom...I attended a workshop on writing fanfiction that was amazing and fun and one of the instructors was incredibly British and both of them were hysterically funny and many dirty jokes were told and horrible fanfics quoted. I spent more than 150 dollars - I bought Only Our Ring Fingers Know, Shout Out Loud, two Death Note doujin, 3 Gundam doujin, and 3 FFVII doujin, with varying degrees of porn (one FF doujin I bought almost entirely because the cover said "Go! Nude! Go! even though it was only supposedly shonen-ai), a Gaara keychain, a Death Note L (the letter, not the character) keychain, and Kakashi and Iruka pins. I went into the video room and watched anime whose titles I cannot remember and whose plots I couldn't follow because I wasn't close enough to read the subtitles. I saw so many Roys and Eds!!! And a Reno!!!
In short, it was FANTASTIC, even though I was only there for about 4 hours and even though it was insanely hard to get there. But really, this was just an experiment - to see if I could get there, to see if I would like it or if it would be really weird, etc. And yes, I liked it!! So next year, I'm going to have a lot more of a plan (instead of deciding to go at the last minute). Really really I'd like to save up my money - starting, say, tomorrow - and get a hotel room with someone, either Envy or a random roommate, to split the cost, and do the whole weekend - take the Caltrain up on Friday afternoon and come back on Sunday afternoon/evening. It would be exhausting and expensive, but I really want to do the whole thing. I'll keep my fingers crossed(and try to find a job)!
Getting back also proved to be a trial. I got back to the airport and decided that I was fucking starving (because of the time problems, I hadn't eaten since yesterday), so I went to look for a place to eat. While doing this, I managed to get horribly lost, and it took me almost twenty minutes to find the restaurant I was looking for. I got dinner, then left to catch the BART back to the Caltrain. Minor problem? I thought I was on one side of the airport, and I, um, wasn't. Which I realized when I walked to the part of the terminal where I thought the BART was and ended up in a totally empty construction-ish area. Not cool. So I went back to where I was, actually checked a map, realized I had to take the Airtrain to the BART, tried to find the Airtrain and got lost again, this time by going to the wrong floor. And then I got to the right floor, except that it was the wrong parking garage. Wandered around in what was probably a stupid and dangerous way, but finally found the train, took the BART etc, and once again, I arrived at the Caltrain on the second to when the train did, but with no time to get my ticket and get on. So I spent another hour sitting in semi-darkness in a rather sketchy train station. But I caught the bus back in Palo Alto okay, and managed to get off at my stop, and thus all ended well.
It's hard to be unsatisfied with anything that happened today when my entire bed is covered in gay porn.
A Less Than Brief Summary of the Epic Travel Failure and The Yaoi of Total Win
So, I left my dorm at 8.30. For some strange reason, I was under the impression that the B-line bus ran on the weekends, but of course it doesn't, so I sat at the bus-stop for THREE HOURS. I probably could have walked to the train station, except for the tiny detail of me not knowing where it is in relation to my dorm. So yeah. And then, when the bus /finally/ came, it was about ten minutes late. Which, you know, not such a big deal, except that it got the train exactly two seconds before the 11.30 train left. So I had to spend another hour sitting in the train station, listening to Jingo on my mp3 player and starving to death (didn't eat breakfast, since they don't feed us on the weekends). Got on the train, and all was well, until we got to Millbrae - once again, got there just as the BART was pulling out. There's another twenty minutes of waiting.
Fiiiiiiinally got to the airport where I was going to catch the shuttle to the hotel. Much to my amusement, just as I got there Numa Numa started playing on my mp3 player, which is interesting only in that that was the song used in the first yaoi amv I ever watched. Heh. Anyway, the shuttle took forever to get there, too - I think I waited at least 45 minutes, even if the boredom was alleviated by a long pointless conversation with Envy involving heavy criticism of the abuse of side characters in HP interspersed with me swearing at the shuttle and her swearing at the worms she was trying to suck into a pipette. But, eventually, the bus did get there, and I rode it, and then I was at Yaoi-Con and ALL WAS RIGHT IN THE WORLD!
It was - wow, every time I try to think about it I go all incoherent and want to start babbling. I saw the best Axel cosplayer EVER. I saw people from fandoms I have never heard of, mostly video games, who nonetheless looked /incredible/ in their costumes. I saw several guys being led around by collars and chains. I saw an Advent Children Cloud and a Leon holding hands. I saw SO MANY GW cosplayers and wtf? I thought we were a fairly small fandom...I attended a workshop on writing fanfiction that was amazing and fun and one of the instructors was incredibly British and both of them were hysterically funny and many dirty jokes were told and horrible fanfics quoted. I spent more than 150 dollars - I bought Only Our Ring Fingers Know, Shout Out Loud, two Death Note doujin, 3 Gundam doujin, and 3 FFVII doujin, with varying degrees of porn (one FF doujin I bought almost entirely because the cover said "Go! Nude! Go! even though it was only supposedly shonen-ai), a Gaara keychain, a Death Note L (the letter, not the character) keychain, and Kakashi and Iruka pins. I went into the video room and watched anime whose titles I cannot remember and whose plots I couldn't follow because I wasn't close enough to read the subtitles. I saw so many Roys and Eds!!! And a Reno!!!
In short, it was FANTASTIC, even though I was only there for about 4 hours and even though it was insanely hard to get there. But really, this was just an experiment - to see if I could get there, to see if I would like it or if it would be really weird, etc. And yes, I liked it!! So next year, I'm going to have a lot more of a plan (instead of deciding to go at the last minute). Really really I'd like to save up my money - starting, say, tomorrow - and get a hotel room with someone, either Envy or a random roommate, to split the cost, and do the whole weekend - take the Caltrain up on Friday afternoon and come back on Sunday afternoon/evening. It would be exhausting and expensive, but I really want to do the whole thing. I'll keep my fingers crossed(and try to find a job)!
Getting back also proved to be a trial. I got back to the airport and decided that I was fucking starving (because of the time problems, I hadn't eaten since yesterday), so I went to look for a place to eat. While doing this, I managed to get horribly lost, and it took me almost twenty minutes to find the restaurant I was looking for. I got dinner, then left to catch the BART back to the Caltrain. Minor problem? I thought I was on one side of the airport, and I, um, wasn't. Which I realized when I walked to the part of the terminal where I thought the BART was and ended up in a totally empty construction-ish area. Not cool. So I went back to where I was, actually checked a map, realized I had to take the Airtrain to the BART, tried to find the Airtrain and got lost again, this time by going to the wrong floor. And then I got to the right floor, except that it was the wrong parking garage. Wandered around in what was probably a stupid and dangerous way, but finally found the train, took the BART etc, and once again, I arrived at the Caltrain on the second to when the train did, but with no time to get my ticket and get on. So I spent another hour sitting in semi-darkness in a rather sketchy train station. But I caught the bus back in Palo Alto okay, and managed to get off at my stop, and thus all ended well.
It's hard to be unsatisfied with anything that happened today when my entire bed is covered in gay porn.
