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Phoenix Feathers is updated on Tuesday and Friday

Wildercon was great. The weather was perfect for the three days, starting to rain just as we drove away on Sunday afternoon. We enjoyed sitting around and chatting with many people, playing games and (in my case) inking and drawing Phoenix Feathers. When we weren't doing that, there was Anime Pictionary, Otaku Royale, DDR that ran for nearly 24 hours and a fantastic quiz for which an encyclopaedic knowledge of every anime ever made was not actually needed. There were also a couple of people there from the British Go Association, and many games were played. On the Friday we arrived and put up the tent (getting the poles the right way round straight away for the first time ever!). We spent the afternoon lazing about and occasionally asking after dinner, which was served pretty much on time. That evening there was a campfire by the lake, and after that we went to see the Evangelion fan parody, which was hysterically funny (it's Gendo!). That was actually the only anime I got to see for the whole weekend, since there wasn't very much on and what there was was in a hot room. Moonshadow did see a bit of a series called 'Monster' and was favourably impressed.
On Saturday we couldn't lie in because it was too hot. The dealers started pushing stuff around 10:00, but Otaku set their stuff up at about 10:45. We grabbed the Sweatdrop stock from them and spread out over two tables, including one rickety one that looked like it was on its last legs. We sold quite a few comics, and lots of the lovely shiny Sugardrops. I drew some more in the quiet period and spent quite a lot of time trying to swat thunderbugs which seemed to be constantly spawned from the trees >.< I had more success with the wasps - between us, the wasp death toll reached double digits. I feel I have to correct an urban myth here: if you hit wasps, they don't attack you (think about it - they have tiny eyes and smaller brains, how do they know which big pink blob hit them?). Instead if you actually make contact - which is easier than it looks because they're amazingly bad fliers - they go away because they're scared. Despite the overwhelming victory, we did have one casualty from an incautious finger poked into a dried fruit packet which a wasp had sneakily invaded ^^;;
We packed up the table just before the making manga panel, which was run by me, Fyredrake-Magick, Denji and Bex, being the members of Sweatdrop who were there and not running around frantically trying to get the con organised ;) It seemed to go pretty well - there were lots of people packed into a small hot room. That evening went much the same as the previous one, despite the disco. Oh yes, the cosplayers were amazing. It takes a lot of stamina and dedication to wear a full-length Zagato (CLAMP character, biiig shoulderpads, complicated headpiece and long black cloak) costume in the blistering heat. There were also some lovely original costumes around.
Sunday passed quickly, we judged the art competition (there were some impressively good entries) and I failed miserably at the DDR tournament. Our new AMV didn't get shown because there were so many entries - they only showed the winning one (which was funky and flashy). We're entering our new one at Amecon too, so it'll probably go up here after that. The closing ceremony happened around 4:00, cutting short the aforementioned wonderful quiz, and we found out that our house (House Miyu) came a very pathetic last.
This year there were some hiccups two weeks before the con. Details are not really needed but the upshot is that the name 'Wildercon' is now owned by an individual who is not and won't be part of next year's committee. Instead, in the summer of 2005, we'll be going back to 'Tokonatsu', which translates as 'everlasting summer'. May it be an appropriate name ^.^

- Sun Kitten, 10th Aug '04

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