Sakura Con

Captain Hammer. The peace-bonding
is too clever to not share.

I spent this past weekend at Sakura Con, in Seattle, Washington. It's definitely one of the largest conventions I've ever been to. (The only one that even comes close would be Rose City Comic Con from last September.) Because of the size, it was overwhelming, but I had a great time. I went with five friends of mine, to diffuse the costs of gas and the hotel. It was fun, for the most part, but friction is almost inevitable with that many people in one room.

Our drive to Seattle would turn out to be very indicative of our trip as a whole: plans didn't quite go how we wanted them to, but we still made the best of it. We didn't leave until an hour and a half after we wanted to, and had to stop more times than we would have liked, but we made the trip fun. Karaoke in the car, meaningful discussions, silly discussions, and just being with good friends.

The convention itself was a mixed bag. On the one hand, we met a lot of cool people, had fun taking photos of costumes we liked, having our pictures taken by people who liked our costumes, dressing up in costumes, and doing things with my friends. On the other hand, however, their prop weapon policy kept us from using many of our props, we missed almost every panel that we wanted to go to, and it wreaked havoc on my schedule. What was good about the convention was very good, but the experience was marred by some unfortunate circumstances. I do think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had school weighing on my mind as well.

Guqin Sona. My favorite cosplayer from the convention.
This photo really doesn't do her justice.

The first day was my favorite day. My energy was the highest that day, and I was able to spend most of the just wandering the convention (primarily the dealer's room and artist's alley) with my friends. The second day was a close second, mostly due to our costumes. For that day, I went as Arcade Sona and my friend went as Jinx. It took us forever to get anywhere, because of everyone who wanted to take our photo. It literally took us an hour to get into the convention, most of the way to the dealer's room, turn around, and down to the League of Legends photoshoot. It took us 15 minutes just to get out of the foyer area. It was very flattering, but also exhausting. Even relatively light props get heavy after a while, and especially for my friend, whose character is very high-energy and requires a lot more active-looking poses.

Lisa Garland. I always love to see people
cosplay otherwise overlooked characters.

Unfortunately, the third day was not anywhere as good as the previous two. A large part of it was due to circumstances unrelated to the con. The other parts were due to missing several panels that I really wanted to go to, some due to my own lateness and some due to insanely long lines. In specific, I'm talking about the autograph lines. They really were ridiculous. For the Attack on Titan signing, we were there about 25 minutes before it started, five minutes after people were actually allowed to start queuing. Six minutes after that, the line was completely full. Overfull, actually. The line went longer than the time allotted. I had a friend with me, otherwise I probably would have given up. Fortunately, the other autograph line I wanted to get in to (Matt Mercer's line) wasn't as insane. By this point, my other friend had shown up, too (she wanted his signature as well, having previously been wandering the dealer's hall), so we had a good time together. Afterwards, the three of us and two other friends we went with, all went out to a nearby restaurant to get some desserts to finish off the convention on  a high note.

All in all, it was a pretty good convention. I am considering going again next year (although its prop weapon policy that excludes even no longer functioning Air Soft guns is stupid to the point of putting me off of wanting to go), only because I should be graduating this year. Going to a convention during the school year can be quite stressful, outside of the normal stress of an out-of-state convention. I know it sounds like I'm complaining a lot about Sakura Con, but I really did have fun. Good friends can make all the difference when it comes to how much you enjoy a convention, and mine most certainly made it one worth remembering.