I was a little tired on Saturday morning, since we ended up staying at the Dallas BBQ until pretty late the night before, and then I have an hour long trip to get home from midtown Manhattan, but at least I was going to get to wear a pretty comfortable costume. So I got dressed in Brenna at home (screw the subways, if a chick with bright orange hair is going to shock anybody, they're not native New Yorkers) and headed in to the con.

I called Louis as soon as I got to the con, and helped him put on his Tycho wig (as he was already wearing the clothing.) Of course, no one knew who I was dressed as, not even when we were standing side by side, but at least three people were able to recognize Lou even before we met up with CHris and Carrie.

Louis and Rob (dressed as usual as Mario--and let me tell you, that is ONE popular costume, Rob kept getting stopped for photos and videos and interviews every five feet!) had been there for an hour already, at least, so when I caught up with them we basically just took a small tour through the dealer's room, more to see if we could find friends of ours than anything else. I almost didn't recognize B-chan in his lovely Sith costume. Luckily Rob had warned me that our friend Jailbait was dressed as the original Vigilante, or else I might not have recognized him either.

Much of this time was spent playing phone tag with CHris and Carrie, the other half of our Penny Arcade foursome. In searching for them, I got to see my friend Holly, who was there with her boyfriend for reasons I believe relating to their individual comic and manga--would you believe they're both signed by TokyoPop?

The mixture of costumes seen at the con was really interesting to me. At an anime con, for the most part, you have anime, manga, video game characters, people dressed in Elegant Gothic Lolita wear, and then random pop culture references, ranging from 80s cartoons to the latest internet meme, pretty much in that order, though I'd be hesitant to assign percentages there. At a comic con, comic book characters do seem to be the slight majority, but there's almost an equal amount of anime, sci fi (especially Star Wars), anime and manga, and then "other". It's a wonderful hodgepodge and it's wonderful to see.

Pretty soon we were able to find CHris and Carrie, and it speaks wonders for the power of wigs and costumes that Carrie didn't recognize me at first, even though she knew we were suppoesd to be meeting up for Penny Arcade cosplay. (Finally! Usually I'm the one who can't recognize anybody.) As soon as we had Gabe and Tycho together, people really started noticing the boys' costumes and asking to take pictures--I'm afraid we held up traffic quite a few times. But we decided to finish shopping the floor before going to a better area for pictures.

There was quite a bit there that was drool worthy, of course, but I think Carrie's and my favorite booth was the Squarenix display, which had some things for sale, and many more just for display. For the record, tiny chocobos, plush or otherwise, are just about the cutest thing ever. And I will own Cloud on his motorcycle at some point before I die.

After shopping for a bit, we decided to get out of the main crush of people and find a place where we could take some decent photos to send to the real Gabe and Tycho, the creators of Penny Arcade. Quite a few people took photos, but I only seem to have "duos" on my camera--either the two boys, or the two girls, or the couples, but none of all four of us together--little help? We even snagged Anna on her way out of the dealer's room to take a few photos, and then I took one of her in return because she looked absolutely lovely. We've kind of been waiting to see if any "all four" photos of us surface before we e-mail Gabe and Tycho, but I'm thinking we're just going to have to send them what we've got.

As luck would have it, while we were taking pictures, Jess and Dennis came out from whatever they were doing right by where we were. Jess looked absolutely adorable as Kaylee from Firefly (and yes, I had to look that up, as I've never seen any of Serenity or Firefly, and I keep getting them mixed up with Battlestar Galactica for some reason), and it was totally worth making the trip to the Army/Navy store to pick up her jumpsuit for her. We decided to stick together and take another trip through the dealer's room--I know I'm making it sound like there was nothing else to do there, but the truth is I'm always way more interested in finding my friends at conventions than I am in panels and screenings.

As we headed out of the toy section and more into the comic book section (the dealer's room really was wonderfully arranged), I saw a flash of silver, and recognized my friend Rhi dressed as Silver Sable! I had known she was dressing up, and I knew Silver Sable was one of her all time favorite comic book characters (well, female comic book characters anyway), but I hadn't expected her to look quite so amazing. My goodness. She was in a throng of photographers about three rows deep, and it was hard to get to her to even hug her! But I pushed my way (politely) through until I got to her.

After greetings and hugs were exchanged, she turned to introduce me to her lovely friend in EGL wear, Anna--and then told me WHICH Anna she was--the very first Sailor Saturn cosplayer to ever join my Sailor Moon Avatars site! We're talking at least eight years ago, here! I have to admit, I was stunned--while I didn't know Anna well, I have a fond place in my heart for ALL of the "early adopters" of SMA, and have always wanted to meet all of them. And she was so sweet and nice in person! I'm really glad I got to meet her and spend some time with her.

We continued on our walk through the dealer's room, and after another round of phone tag, managed to meet up with Tony and his wife Gigi. Tony looked really great in his steampunk wear, but he keeps teasing me that I'm going to have to go to SalonCon if I want to see the finished version. We'll see, we'll see! I have too many cons to go to as it is! Seeing as how it was now early afternoon, we all agreed that we were hungry and that foraging for food was in order. I didn't know the area that well, but I think it was either Jess or Dennis who suggested that we go to the Tick Tock Diner. That was a bit too far for poor Tony's and Gigi's feet, so we said goodbye to them for a while and, after Rob finished his ten thousandth interview for the day, headed on down to the diner.

Well, s0ni has some negative experiences at the diner to relate, if you're interested, but when we went on Saturday (and it was quite a trek! I don't blame Tony and Gigi for not joining us) it was just fine. I love diners where you can get breakfast at any time of the day, that's still such a novelty to me. Louis chucked his Tycho wig almost immediately, and watched me make scrunchy faces (I wear a wig so rarely, that I'm still not really used to it, and I think my facial muscles do their best to help keep the wig on) for a good ten minutes or more before he finally convinced me to remove mine as well.

Lunch over, Jess and Dennis left to find a WaMu while Louis and I headed back to the con to try to accomplish my main mission (other than Penny Arcade cosplay, of course) for the day: trying to meet Terry Brooks. Terry Brooks is most famous for his Sword of Shannara series, and in fact that's why he was a guest of the con, to promote the new graphic novel that will be coming out that ties into the Shannara series. But I knew him from elsewhere.

Many years ago--I'm thinking it might have been 1987--my dad came up during the summer to visit my mom and I on a weekend while we were staying with my grandparents for a month-long vacation. He had brought me a present for no reason--which was pretty rare, my dad could be pretty indulgent, but he rarely bought me things for no reason, certainly not things I hadn't asked for. But he had passed a book that had a unicorn on the cover. Being a 7 year old girl, I loved unicorns, and being a 7 year old girl, I loved reading. I read The Black Unicorn over and over again for the next, oh, twenty years, mostly outgrowing my obsession with unicorns, but never getting over my love of reading.

For many years I assumed The Black Unicorn was a stand-alone book, until I read the advertisements in the back for Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold! Even then, I didn't see how I'd get my hands on a copy; I had never heard anyone else mention Terry Brooks, and I naively assumed that he had only written those two books, and would therefore not really be sold in stores. (This was backed up by the fact that my father didn't buy my copy in a store, he had seen it on one of the tables belonging to the "street guys" that line New York City streets and had bought it off of them.)

It wasn't until the magic of the internet came along, and then, the magic of Amazon, which provides you with ways to purchase every book you ever dreamed of in your childhood (and I'd hate to have to tell you how many lost books I repurchased, and how many sequels and followups that are well beneath my "age range" that I finally found and still enjoyed), that I was able to get all five of the books in the "Magic Kingdom" series. And a sixth book has been announced for 2009! I can't even imagine.

So when I heard Terry Brooks was going to be one of the guests at the New York Comic Con, I really wanted to meet him. Don't get me wrong, he's not on my "Must Meet Or I'll Diiieee!!!" list like James O'Barr is, but I really wanted to tell him the story I just told you. (That, and if I hadn't already made cosplay plans, I might've dyed my hair and skin green to go as Willow. I've always loved her character.)

Now, here comes my only gripe of the con. We had, of course, checked the program and the schedule to see when Terry Brooks would be in the autograph booths they had set up in the very back of the dealer's room, which is why we high-tailed it back right after lunch. We found the line for the booth he would be in...only to see a hand-written notice on the sign saying, "Ticket Required."

What? What ticket were they talking about? Where do you get it? When were we supposed to get it? It was obviously a last minute addition if they needed to hand-write it rather than have something printed up. A few people showed up and got in line, and we asked them where to get tickets, and they said, "Sorry, they're all gone."

Well, that stinks. Like I said, I wasn't going to die if I didn't get to meet him or anything, but it was my main goal for the day, and I had carried around a hard-coverered book all day for nothing. I'm more upset at this one instance of the con's lack of organization...or whatever it was, you can't tell me that all of a sudden Terry Brooks was as popular as Stan Lee or Grant Morrison and they needed to limit the number of autographs he'd be signing. (Or is he? I admit I don't know.)

At any rate, at that point we found my friend Pete with his friends, the cast and crew of Pete's Basement, and did a quick interview with them as part of their coverage of the New York Comic Con. For the most part, we explained why we were dorks in costume--if such a thing can ever really be explained.

Soon after, we called our friend Doc the Stampede to see what he was up to. He was in the AnimeNEXT Manga Library Room, so we decided to go see him there for a bit and rest our feet while he brought us up to date with what was happening in the world of Otakon Planning.

Doc hadn't gotten to do much shopping yet, so you guessed it--back to the Dealer's Room! He had one of his trusty cameras with him, and was having a lot of fun trying out the fish eye lens.

With Doc in tow, we went to visit DJ Ranma S at the Indie Strike Productions booth (they have both ninja AND pirate T-shirts!) We couldn't really hang out too long, as their booth was blessedly doing quite a bit of business, but we at least got to say hi and snap a few pictures. And I even helped him make a sale!

We found Jess and Dennis again, and decided to grab a table in the food area in the back of the dealer's room (I don't recommend buying food there, though, unless you absolutely have to--everything was ridiculously expensive!) Somehow it sort of turned into the "cool kids" section of the high school cafeteria; we started out with Jess, Dennis, Doc, Louis, and myself; we saw Rhi and Anna in passing so we snagged them to come sit with us, and Doc and Anna got to catch up because I get the feeling they're old friends. At the very least I know they were both back on the COSP mailing list when I first joined up, back in the day. (Ah, mailing lists. The best way for geeks to communicate before the advent of LiveJournal and Facebook.)

After that, Doc called out to a drive-by Oshidori-ing--seriously, every time we saw that girl, she was on her way SOMEWHERE running at top speed. Doc had brought us little things back from Japan--a Hello Kitty capsule from a vending machine that contained a Hello Kitty purse inside for me, a pair of tights for Oshi, so we all squeed over that for a bit before Oshi had to take off again. We also spotted Linwood passing by, and yelled for him to join us as well.

We stopped at the Midtown Comic...I hestitate to call it a booth, because they really had quite a large section of the dealer's room roped off for their use--one of the largest single vendors in the room, I'd venture to say. We weren't shopping (why? when we go to Midtown Comics every single week?) but to stop in and see our friendly neighborhood drug comic book dealer, Hal, so we could say hi, and he could see our Penny Arcade costumes.

Hal seemed enthused, and then charged us with a quest--to find Robert, the business guy at Penny Arcade, who had a podcast booth in the very far corner of the dealer's room--he wanted to see if SOMEONE would recognize our costumes right off the bat. (In fact, we had been staking out the booth the creator of VG Cats, Scott Ramsoomair, was sharing, for the same reason, with no luck--we never did get to see Scott.) We found his booth tucked all the way in the back, but we must've just missed him, so we grabbed one of his business cards to prove to Hal that we had been there.

We would've loved to have stayed longer, but Saturday was host to another event, as well--a birthday celebration for JenyBean at a karaoke bar, clear across town! The magic of dressing as Brenna for the day was that I took off my wig, toned down my makeup the tinest bit, and I was out of costume! Same for Louis--sans the makeup, of course. Only Jess had to really change, and she had another whole outfit with her.

Being cheap bastards, and also having a little time on our hands (we didn't want to get there before the birthday girl!) we decided to hoof it, all the way from 34th Street and 11th Avenue, to 53rd Street and 2nd Avenue. We stopped at an Applebee's about halfway to fill up on some appetizers, for we knew there'd be drinking ahead, and then it was off to party! I mean, it's not like we had anything to get up early for the next day...oh wait...