Don't Hesitate and Just Go: Otakon 2013 & Every Photoshoot Ever

So I've been a bit busy lately, what with Otakon and other events going on. I also got extremely lazy and forgot I had a blog (and, occasionally, that I knew English and could communicate in anything except meows). Despite these (odd) setbacks, I still managed to get myself to a few photoshoots, a convention, a boat, and somewhere in Virginia that even my GPS couldn't make sense of.

The first of these events was a really fun photoshoot with Alexa Poletti Photography. I do quite a few shoots with her because not only is she an awesome photographer, but also because she encourages my no-English-just-meowing habit.

Still not totally certain that's a good thing, but it's fun, meow.

We had a few wigs from Gothic Lolita Wigs & RockStar Wigs to shoot, so I got in my outfit for the first wig, and we headed over to the park near Alexa's house to get as many photos as we needed - before it got too hot to exist.

I'll also take a minute to mention that my mother makes a lot of these shoots possible, as she makes many of my dresses! In the photos below, I'm wearing a Gloomy Bear JSK with the matching bear ears. She made all of that with a pattern for an apron (and most of the time I just draw shonen-tastic characters with dresses on and ask if she can make it). She has a Facebook page now, and she'll be opening commissions on a very limited basis - check out Linden Designs for more!
/end shameless plug

Photos!

So that was a thing, and then we both kind of got silly and shot more random things. I wear kigurumi basically all of the time I think I can get away with wearing a kigurumi, which is probably too often, but it also matched the Gloomy Bear JSK, so we dressed Alexa up and took MORE photos. There's a story to them, sort of, but there are a lot of photos, so I'll make a post specifically for them tomorrow so people can question our collective sanity further.

Question away until then though.

My face here sums my life up pretty well.

The other really neat part of this shoot was getting to model some cute lace collars my big sister made! She's teamed up with KawaiiGoods.com to offer the cutest collars ever! They come in three colours (pink, mint, and lavender), and they're absolutely perfect.

If you're into fairy-kei, decora, sweet lolita, or any other colourful fashion, buy these.

/shameless plug 2

Moving right along... I also shot a few wigs for RockStar Wigs and Gothic Lolita Wigs! Their Godiva collection is to DIE for, and I love crazy colours, so basically, these wigs and I were made for one another. I also shot in their Daily Doll Collection, which is always a perfect hairstyle, and a personal favourite, the Cool Kitten.

I'll refrain from any more details of this one particular shoot, but I am quite pleased with it, and I had a lot of fun derping around and eating pizza with Alexa.

It was even worth the 4 hours of rush hour traffic.

Our next adventure involved my girlfriend! This time, Kate and I were headed to Otakon! We make the pilgrimage to Baltimore to join veritable hordes of cosplayers, lolitas, and general anime enthusiasts every year, but this time we bypassed Baltimore and went straight to DC to bother Alexa again. At this point, I was starting to wonder if she would get tired of us, but no - it just gave us all an excuse to eat more pizza and chase her cat, Pipes. By now I'd been eating pizza every night for nearly a week. The logical individual would say, 'I suppose this isn't good for me' and stop eating it.

Nope.

Afterwards we got into cosplay, and took a few photos together before we discovered that none of us are actually capable of being serious for more than six seconds, collectively.

We got one serious looking photo together, and then decided that we should probably just do our cosplay photos before we died laughing. Kate is amazing and styled my hair into Sherlock-suitable curls, and then became John Watson.

Afterwards, we headed back to Baltimore. I'm beginning to suspect that traffic follows me, because a 45 minute drive somehow magically became a 3 hour drive. At least we had free entertainment - there was a party bus next to us and we were treated to some truly horrific dancing by the unsuspecting occupants. I would normally suggest dance lessons, or at least less alcohol for said participants, but this is one occasion where I truly believe nothing would have helped. And that's how our Otakon experience began.

Day 1 Cosplay: Sherlock & John Watson

This was probably my favourite cosplay of Otakon 2013. We got some awesome reactions, met some great people, and got to hang out with friends at the 'con. And then the h.NAOTO booth happened. Apparently we're regulars, and I think our wallets would very sadly agree. There's... not really much more to say about that. But Alexa was there, and we got to hang out fairly briefly - and after that, we pretty much died in our hotel room before changing to go to my birthday party! I ended up going as a nekomimi for some reason, and I regret a grand total of nothing.

Day two was of particular importance - T.M.Revolution and Home Made Kazoku were performing, so we pulled out our most confusingly complicated cosplays (YFCz somehow takes 4+ hours to get into) and got dressed just in time for Alexa to show up at our hotel room! Freshly inked with Sharpie, I found myself questioning my already-questionable sanity and followed everyone out for a photoshoot, attempting to keep my arm away from everything and everyone, lest they get stained black.

I think I failed on that end; my pillow ended up a bluish-grey somehow. I'm still not certain as to how that happened.

Regardless, Baltimore makes for some amazing photos, and Alexa is an awesome photographer, so she got dressed up and the three of us certainly made for an interesting sight.

Alexa was pretty much made of adorable, so I put a towel on her head. It's not supposed to make sense.

The faces of the people gawking at us were even more interesting.

Myself as Jon Underdown and Kate as GACKT from YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz

From there, we ended up in line for the T.M.Revolution/Home Made Kazoku concert and it. was. amazing. I've been waiting for this since I was 14, and I'm 22 now, so I guess I've been waiting a while, but I would do it again just to see him perform again. He's... just... no words. I'm a bit of a fangirl, but that concert was everything it was promised to be and more. Afterwards, we grabbed a bunch of friends and split up for dinner. Lots and lots of fun~

Photo stolen from L.E. Miller

The last day of Otakon is always sad, but the cosplaying wasn't over! If you've read any of my other blog posts, you might have seen the Star Trek lolita Kate and I wore at ColossalCon. We had a third friend join us this time, and the three of us were fabulous together.

Photo stolen from Kelly's Facebook

We ran into a couple more of my friends, and enjoyed the rest of the 'con together, spent more money, and then went home. And the valet at our hotel killed my car's battery.

That's all. Really. I'm done writing. Have more photos, since this blog post doesn't have enough already or anything.