AnimeNEXT 2010 Puncon The things to truly remember from the con are all my snappy puns and in-character events. First I attended Alicia's improv event but I mustn't have been warmed up yet because nothing was coming out. It was all mostly embarrassing. But I was in fine form the next day for the Cosplay Dating Game. I can't remember enough about the game to quote some of my comebacks and lines (and sadly I can't find any YouTube videos of it) but I do remember that I ran out of my pre-written questions halfway through the event. From then on I had to improvise questions on the spot but I think I did pretty dang well. I know I somehow ended up asking about David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. I log that into my 'weird' phase of the event. I was also a good boy and didn't ask my risque question of, 'My staff has a shiny knob on top: any comments?' It was actually hard to gauge exactly how well I was doing because they'd filled the room in a really weird manner: with the audience piled up in the back and the front half completely empty. Therefore I could barely hear their reactions, if any. Only the bigger laughs actually reached me. But I've received comments from people and I know they liked it. Then came Chris' Mad-Libs event that same evening. A very interesting take on the Mad-Lib concept where the sentence was given *before* the participants provided words to fill the blanks, and then earned points if their answers matched. My number was never picked to be a participant, and that's probably for the better! Here are some of the answers I remember coming up with. Sentence: 'To defend Tokyo from monster attacks, they should cover it with a [BLANK].' My answer: 'Chinese city' Sentence: 'Instead of a Pokémon, Ash Ketchum caught a [BLANK].' My answer: 'Gonorrhea' Sentence: 'The best part about a con in New Jersey is the smell of [BLANK] in the air.' My answer #1: 'teen spirit' My answer #2: 'New Jersey' Sentence: 'I wish I had a daemon butler, then I'd have him do my [BLANK] for me.' My answer: 'sister' Sentence: 'Whenever I play video games, I always pick the characters that use [BLANK] as weapon.' My answer: 'blanks' I was SO proud of that last one that I just had to go up to the front and share it. There were many others though, and there DEFINITELY was one for which I had 'your mom' as answer, but I can't remember it. And then there was the cosplay chess, also organized by Chris. It went very well and all the pieces had such great camaraderie together. I still can't believe I ended up in the New School side, me, who's always fighting to get people to pay more attenting to Old School stuff! Still, it was great. And for the first time ever I wasn't a pawn! Jeremiah NEEDS to be a knight! Well, I did die almost straight off the bat, but it was pretty cool, and at the hands of Lupin. Because of pieces that didn't show up some of the special move pieces got to be in as pieces of their own. That's how I ended up with my own dear Zero in the game itself (he was previously supposed to be only Suzaku's special attack)! It was kinda weird though to have Suzaku and Jeremiah both as knights and Zero as a mere pawn. But I guess that's Zero's for you: use your expectations to screw with your minds. I also went to hug him for comfort when the commentators referred to me as 'That guy--whatever his name is.' The Old School king and queen were Pacman and Ms. Pacman, which was genius. Since I died early and had plenty of time to plot with the increasing pool of other defeated pieces, I had the idea that all the dead pieces should swarm the board as 'ghosts' to drag Ms. Pacman away when she died. It actually happened and that was a big laugh. Our side technically won the game, but as with any good anime event it came down to a dance contest with four bishies humping each other. The two dancers on my side were myself and poor stiff-as-a-board Suzaku. What can I say, he was acting in character! The other side had Duo so we had no chance! I should know. Another total success was the Code Geass gathering. FINALLY a great CG event!!! Great online planning made this happen. And of course this being a Pizza Hut picnic made it that much more perfect. These guys are so incredibly sweet: they prepared custom bottles of soda with funny labels just for me, Orenji-kun. They humbled me so much. We also played the hat game from the show (which was quite a challenge for those of us with wigs and headpieces). I couldn't stay too long though because I had to change into Xellos for the dating game right away. I then changed into Thendy right after that. That morning/afternoon really featured what is perhaps the quickest costume turn-around in my career. Well I can't talk about in-character improv events without the main feature of AnimeNEXT: the LARP of course! My character of Yaden Quent was a lot of fun, but a bit challenging. The plot was completely Earthbound-tailored, and nothing really that dealt with me (no wolves ever showed up, despite warnings that they might). And since I happened to need a bit of friendly comfort that weekend, it was hard playing a grouch who effetively went about alienating everyone. Still fun though, and I might do another one like him again. So AnimeNEXT's satellite events are getting so much fun that they're starting to compete with the LARP itself. Balancing my time between the two will get harder and harder in the future. More than ever now Nekocon is becoming my main LARPing con. Not because the LARP there is that much better. But because the con itself sucks tons more. Therefore there's nothing to distract me from precious LARP time! Oh, and I can't pass under silence the fact that this AnimeNEXT was my first anime con where I sold Felsic Current. With all the activities going on I really didn't have much time to actively sell, and not having an artist's alley table didn't help, but I did sell a few to my fellow LARPers, as well as two total strangers. And from one of those stems my worse pun of the whole weekend. Forget improv games, forget in-character events... This was IT. The girl was dressed like Tsukasa from .//Hack, so I signed her book: 'Come see me some time. Mi casa es Tsukasa.' - J-F Bibeau