If it's one thing Yaoi-Con provides for a person like me who has no interest in Yaoi, it's a great venue to show off one's ball-jointed dolls (BJDs) to fellow BJD owners. I was looking forward to taking the opportunity to meet with fans and haters of Traveling Valentine's Cosette and Eponine and Yo-Joe's Bizarre Adventure BJD webisodes. But I made prior plans that took greater precedence than Yaoi-Con. At least it was doll-related.
Earlier this year during Fanime, I bid on and won a 60cm Obitsu female body vinyl doll. Later during Dollectable, Victoria picked up a Haruka head for the doll. Now it was time to get the doll a face-up before attaching the head to the body, making her complete. A friend of mine (have you met my friend, Claudine?) recommended an excellent face-up artist (DoA member para_chan214) who just happened to be local. So instead of mailing the head off and waiting who knows how long, I spent the morning of Yaoi-Con Sunday at Ann's house. The house held a lot of dolls for Yo-Joe to meet while we waited for Ann to complete the face-up.
Ann did a wonderful job with Mi-DORI's face and I thanked her for the bargain price. It'll be fun showing her off and using her in future doll webisodes.
Thanks to Facebook, I learned about a Fanime kick off event held at Ed R Levin Park in Milpitas. It was close to Ann's house so I made a quick stop over there to get familiar with some of the Fanime faces. Most of the Fanime staff faces who I knew were currently at Yaoi-Con, so I was introducing Traveling Valentine to new people. I learned this event was more of a staff recruiting drive. I identified key staff members for potential collaborations.
The food was excellent, the people were entertaining, and the desire to make Fanime a wonderful was rising. The only bugger about the event was when the bait for the yellow jacket traps spilt and attracted even more of those flying insects. had I the weaponry, I would have reenacted the scene of Ocelot twirling his revolvers to fend off The Pain's wasps during "Snake Eater." Mi-DORI made a limited appearance but remained in the box.
With some more daylight to spare, I drove back to Yaoi-Con for one last visit. I was hoping to find a BJD gathering and provide a sneak peek of Mi-DORI. The con looked quite dead as people packed up, checked out, and bailed out. I spotted Andy wearing trousers that the hotel ordered him to wear. I see that I'm not the one ticked that society wears us to wear pants. On a whim I bought his red M-40. It's not an anime convention unless there's a gun in my hands.
I could not find a single BJD owner around the convention. I guess all the owners packed them up and headed home. But I showed off Mi-DORI and Yo-Joe at the lobby briefly for anyone interested in seeing the dolls. I think Eurobeat King was afraid to approach me.
I ran into Ally Union, who played me the audio for his bishounen auction sketch. That, I would have wanted to see onstage. The Triple-Changers and other people from last night wandered in for some last minute mingling. They were all tired and so was I. It was my cue to go home.
