Friday, May 27, 2016 "I Don't Fanimind."

Friday, May 27, 2016
Week: 41
Songs to Remember: When the Moon's Reaching Out Stars - Persona 3 OST, Drip Drop - Taemin (RapheM Instrumental)

        I'm thankful for two things today. One for the Fanime experience, the other, I am 90% sure that I passed Honors English.

        So let's start from the beginning shall we. Alrighty, well, first things first, I slept at 3;50 AM last night. I would'e slept at like 3:10 AM, but, I played a round of Isaac. Not one of my best decisions, but I had to get that Isaac addiction settled. Fortunately, it didn't affect me too much in the morning because 1st period was Psych.

        And that was basically just me attempting to get some last-minute studying in. There was loud music, due to somebody's speakers, there was food in the middle, I didn't really pay too much attention. Others were signing yearbooks, etc, etc. I just studied, which was fine by me because I had a very good reason too. Uhh, yeah, a whole 2 hours of studying. Then, it was break time. I do what I usually do and go to that one spot again.

        Just stood there for a while, the usual, and finally the bell rang, it was go time. The seats were changed around so that the teacher could see all our screens. We first went to the bookroom to return our books, then uhhh, testing time. The teacher one final remark to tease us, saying "Don't worry guys, it's only 15% of your final grade." Bitch, get the fuck outta here. So, the test boots up, I see that it's 62 questions, only 2 free-response, okay.

        I started going through each, I went with a method of if I don't know the exact answer, I skip it so I can total up the estimated amount I'm gonna get wrong. It just builds insurance confidence. Anyways, there were a lot of fluctuation in the test. There were questions that were repeated, some didn't have the right answer, some the teacher put in the wrong answer as the right answer. Soo, I don't know my exact, exact score.

        Also the free-response was, not that difficult, rather straight-forward. Umm, both fortunately and unfortunately, the teacher let us see our multiple choice score (before any changes such as fixes for the bad questions and shit). I was scared, but I looked anyways. "73%." "Ohhhhh, shit." Now that, was cutting it closer than I would've liked. I actually thought I did better, around an 80 maybe. I went on this site to calculate how much I needed to score on the final exam to pass.

        So to pass with a 68% bare minimum, I calculated it and got: "66.7%" WOOOOO. I was like "I fucking paaaassed." We also had to add an extra 2% freelo to our score so, in total I got an estimated 75%, give or take 2. With my 1% grade wiggle room (a 69.01% right now), and how I only need at least a 66.7%, plus with some of the assignments I turned in late, aka today, the teacher still needs to grade our quotation explications, and he said he might not have time to grade the constructed responses and/or might not put them in since it was more of a district thing than what we focused on.

        I'm crossing my fingers. It's pretty messy, cutting it very, very close, heh, but I think I did it. I escaped. The teacher probably won't announce the results until like, the final, final day of finals. Until then, I'm praying. And that there was the climb. Now, the rewards. I went home, talked to my buddies on Discord. got ready, headed on over to Fanime con.

        Now I've been to Anime Expo in Los Angelese twice now. I have never been to Fanime, uhh, mostly because it ain't the same level as Anime Expo. Umm, I'd still say it definitely ain't, but it still has its pros. For one, it's much more quiet than Anime Expo. Second, less crowded, which is nice. However, in my opinion, the line was much worse. I arrived at 2:40 PM. I'd expect more people to be in line during the morning, but apparently not. When I got there, I knew exactly where the line was because there was what seemed to be a huge line of fucking people, and it was outside the thing, heh.

        It stretched like, around the corner of the hotel, which is right next to the place. I was like "Holy, fuck, IT'S LAYERED." This one dude said that the line actually stretched into the place, up some stairs to the 2nd floor, then there was another line there. Yeah, he wasn't kidding. It did actually go up to the 2nd floor. It took about an hour, I'd say an hour and 15 minutes, because by the time I got my pass, it was already around 4:00 PM.

        Ek was at the con, but I didn't know where she was. Jk was apparently there too, but I didn't know where he was. My phone, poor fella, I was not able to charge him back up to 100% when I got home. It was at 40%, then died down to 10%. I charged it back up to 15% with my tablet, thank the lord for my tablet. I use it as like a portable battery, heh. Anyways, I had nothing in line except the occasional "go on messenger and see what people are typing." That and the dude in front of me who said some things occasionally.

        I was hoping to find KDT after I got my badge/pass. I was like "I gotta get back to the front of the whole place." Ended up in like, the main hall I guess, and uh, I walked for a bit to see where I could get back to the front. Instead, I kept walking and eventually found what looked to be the stage that performers perform at, "Stage Zero." There, I was greeted by hugs from the members of KDT, heh. Man, I can hardly remember what it looked like because the height of moment. That was nice.

        Apparently I got there just in time for them to perform next. I sat down, umm, in the front, front row since those were like, the only seats left. I hear my name being called and I turn around to see Jk and Jv and Jb's boyfriend sitting near the back. There was already a different performance going on, a couple doing a sort of ballet dance, I don't know, I don't know dances very well, heh. Suddenly St (ya'll know St, she's a KDT alumni, sister of the president of KDT, met her at that one dance back in March of 2015) appeared with her friends and we sat in the front row together. I was ready to get really hyphy for KDT's performance, which was actually pretty long. I was like "Oh, there's even another song."

        It was good, I liked it. I actually cheered for once in my life, heh. What I wanted to say was "KDT, Number one fan!" And I did. Twice. Their performance was 6 minutes long apparently, and uh, they actually left after the performance. Around 97% of them did not have the actual Fanime passes, they were just there to perform. It wasn't what I expected. However. what happens next was really unexpected. So, Jk's cosplaying, he was cosplaying as Luffy apparently. He came over after watching KDT, Jv, everybody was all in one big gathering.

         Jk was like "Woah, I didn't know you were going to Fanime" and takes a closer look at my pass, for which he saw that for my "fan name," I put "i_identify_as_nigerian." He got a good laugh outta that. Everybody left, they couldn't stay, had to be escorted outside. Fortunately (really fortunately), Cc and El stayed. You might be saying "Uh, Drew? Do you realize what you just said?" Yeah, I do. It was fortunate, because without El, all the shit that happened next wouldn't have happened.

        Mn (I think that's my name for her), Es (vice-president of KDT), and Jb were the only ones in KDT with an actual Fanime weekend pass. We all decided to go together, including Cc and El who did not have passes, but didn't matter anyways because there was no security, or, nobody cared, heh. So it was just me, Jk, El, Cc, Es, Jb, Jv, and Jb's boyfriend. Jv was cosplaying as uh, I'm not sure what but it showed a bit too much skin, more than what more parents would approve of of course. And uh, Jb's boyfriend was cosplaying as Guy-Manuel from Daft Punk.

        We went into the buyer's hall, exhibit, whatever. Marketplace. It went pretty well. It wasn't until we separated, with just me, Jk, El, and Cc, that shit started to get real. Real connected. We went to the art gallery, back to the hall, and then to the gaming hall where we played "Settlers of Catan" (crazy bootleg by the way, and apparently a lot of people requested to play it, I guess due to the rarity of it or whatever, popularity, I don't know). That lasted for a while, I'm not even sure. My phone was on its dying breath, it kept alive for phone calls, but I could not take pictures of it, or even check the time.

        I thought it had become night-time at around 7:00 PM. We went to the art gallery after playing (Jk won, of course, heh) and whadya know, it was still fucking bright outside, heh. We were basically in a time warp, where time apparently freezes while at Fanime. We all thought it got dark outside for some reason. It's just like the movie theaters, how you go into the light after being in the dark for so long. Except, it wasn't dark in the gaming hall, it was, *sigh*, "lit." Also people were playing giant Jenga, which resulted in a heart-attack every time it falls.

        It all went well, the 4 of us together. We even decided that we'd all cosplay tomorrow, we'd meet up again and even include in some more people. And you know what was the most convincing thing for which I knew we got really connected? El replied back. She conversed with my comments the whole way. With El coming along, I was just whatever with it. I'm not sure if she's over it yet or whatever, but after today, sure seemed like it. She didn't mind. And guess what? I didn't mind either.

        And goddamn was it a good... 4 hours. 5 if you count the time I had to wait in line, which apparently people refer to as "Linecon." In line I was like "Minecon?" No, it's, it's Linecon. That's what people say nowadays. Anyways, we finished off the day with some Takoyaki, very expensive Takoyaki to be exact. 8 American dollar shillings, to be exact, and that was for 6 balls. Still, I couldn't resist, like, it's still one of my lifelong dreams to eat an authentic Japanese Takoyaki, in Japan, straight from the source. This compensated in the mean time, and goddammit, it was one of the best eight dollars I ever spent to be honest, heh.

        And yeah, that was the whole day. Got back home at 8:30 PM unfortunately. Also unfortunately, was that my parents had to witness people in furry cosplays, scantily-clad cosplays, half-naked dude cosplays, all of the above, and cosplayers in general. Luckilly though, I passed it off as a cultural festival event thing, and uh, my class went here today for a celebration thing for the end of the year. And also luckily my dad thought everybody was dressed as Pokemon.

        And yes it did feel weird to be there, standing in line. That was, uh, you find out how normal you actually are, compared to others who like to express their hobbies and interests either publicly, or more extreme than you or others. And no, I won't be saying the cosplays I saw, there's literally any and every cosplay of anything, so no need to describe that shit. My phone was limping the whole time so no pictures or Snapchats either.

        So, plan for tomorrow. Well, with all this newly acquired hype, I'll hopefully be cosplaying as Yu Narukami from Persona 4. It's pretty simple, except for the silver hair. I'll just be wearing my tuxedo jacket, along with a dress shirt and black jeans. I'll also be printing out and making a little Tarot card, to make my shit be more identifiable. Otherwise I'll just be "guy in tuxedo jacket with dress shirt and black jeans. And glasses."

        Oh and one last thing I wanted to share: my buddies and I experienced this dude who bought a perfect-grade gundam (difficult/tedious to assemble, time-consuming, also very high quality and expensive model). Not sure how we got him to start a conversation with us, but, he went on about how the perfect-grade he bought had an LED for the beam sabre instead of just a clear plastic thingy. He also went on about how it'll take him a couple days to build, might even stream on Twitch with a bootleg camera.

         Ah yes, people expressing a bit too much to those who, in my opinion, do not have much knowledge as them in a certain field of interests. An anime convention wouldn't be the same without it. You could tell Cc didn't really know what the hell he was talking about. Luckily I assembled a gundam model before with the help of my cousin, and learned quite a bit about the process and rankings. The dude's model was like, a Unicorn, perfect-grade Gundam Unicorn. Cc replies "Hey, I like Unicorns."

        And one more thing, shit there was a bunch of shit. As I was waiting for KDT to go on to perform, I was reading the book they give you which includes a map of the place, the list of panels, etc. There was apparently one that was 18+, which consisted of 2 amateur voice actors attempting to dub over a live video of Bible Black. Yeah, I'm not even kidding this time, that's actually in there. Unique? Or what? And how are they gonna do the moaning noises? No shame? I give props to them, because that shit requires a lot of shit in order to not sound, weird. Well it's already fucking weird, so, can't get any worse.

        Alrighty, enough for today. Gonna head on over at 1:00 PM tomorrow. Right now, I gotta print me a Tarot card to flip around in my hands tomorrow. Also play a round of Isaac. Oh and uh, it's 11:47 PM. See ya. Oh, almost, almost forgot to mention, my old partner who I played table tennis with, I saw him there, dude. He was with St's group and uh, yeah. He did remember me, heh, after I remembered him. Still the same cool dude. Anyways, fun cameo.