Nekocon 2023

Well... *khm* I know I'm super late with this summary too but better late than never, I guess. So yeah, here comes my Nekocon 2023 summary!

Nekocon was held 15th-16th of July at Kuopion musiikkikeskus (Kuopio Music Centre). I was supposed to leave for Kuopio on 14th of July, which I indeed did - just more than two hours late since my (now former since I´ve moved to another city) neighbor's cat decided to cause a scene - or rather, disappear into thin air :)) 

You see, I had promised to be a, err, cat-sitter when my neighbor and roommate were on a holiday/fishing trip. The cat in question had decided to take a little adventure on his own - likely in a nearby forest - and didn't come home when I called for him. The clock was ticking, I was supposed to be on my way towards Kuopio at that point and there I was, panicking and fuming at the same time. In the end I called the cat's owner and explained the situation - and turned out that they were about to leave the cottage they had been staying at since the weather in the north had taken a turn for worse and fishing would have been basically impossible. He told me that he would look for the cat himself and I could leave - two hours behind my schedule.
That meowing disaster came back home next day so had I stayed there I would have had to skip the whole con.

The drive to Kuopio went well, except for experiencing some anxiety at the freeway near Tampere but luckily it was nothing too bad. I arrived at Kuopio after six o'clock in the evening and drove straight to Rauhalahti Spa where I and Shiro Samurai would be staying for the weekend. You see, I happened a spot a good price for the hotel room, informed him about it and since I happen to have a driving license and a car (also known as it didn't really matter if there was some distance between the hotel and con venue)... Well... Why wouldn't I take the offer and have a relaxing weekend?
Anyway, like I stated I was a few hours late. Shiro Samurai had arrived at Kuopio a couple of hours before me and I had contacted the hotel if he could have the other key to the room already. That was okay with the hotel staff and when I got to the room he was already chilling there - I just dumped my stuff in the corner and proceeded to do the same. 

Our hotel room ft. cosplay chaos.

 

(Pics © Shiro Samurai if not mentioned otherwise.)

I think that during the evening we didn't do much; visited the nearby store and spent an hour or so in the spa. After that it was time to go to sleep - we were supposed to wake up pretty early because we didn't want to miss the hotel breakfast.

The morning came way too quickly in my opinion; someone's child had been crying for half of the night and even though I understand that there are babies that can't sleep because of pains etc., I wasn't too amused waking up after, like, three hours of sleep or so. Well, that's life. *shrugs*
We went to the hotel breakfast, had an apple juice that was going through identity crisis (it was literally just water lol) and then... It was time to do our make-ups and put on our cosplays. My cosplay for the weekend was Luka Megurine's Just Be Friends version (own design) and Shiro Samurai cosplayed Kisuke Urahara from Bleach. This year's Nekocon's theme was nostalgy and I think these characters fit it pretty well.
After a fight with trolling false eyelashes and eyeliner that didn't want to obey me I was ready to put on my - way too wrinkled - cosplay. I wasn't too happy with the dress; I mean, it could've been a lot better IF I had found a better fabric for it. I mean, I made some great mistakes with the patterns too (I have to make them myself since I can't find patterns as big as I would need thanks to being plus-sized and having a pear-modeled body) but still to this day I think a lot could've been saved had I used better materials. However, I had to work with what I could get and what was within my budget - which wasn't too great either at that point.
However, despite the wrinkles and errors in pattern-making the dress was surprisingly okay to wear and I made the decision to keep it on at least for a photoshoot.

I texted Sallukka and asked where they and their boyfriend were. I got a reply pretty soon; they informed that they were already at the event venue and there was a looooooong queue to the ticket exchange booth. This proved to be very true when we got to Musiikkikeskus; the queue was at least 150 meters long!
We decided to get a few photos taken while we waited for the queue to get shorter; first Shiro Samurai photoshooted my costume and then we switched roles since he wanted to get some pics taken of his Urahara cosplay too. I will publish my photoshoot pics in a separate post, otherwise this one will become unbearably long.

The wrist band. Gotta love the colors!

The con venue entrance.

 

Entrance hall overview pics.

Pohjois-Savon Seta ry's table.

To be honest, I don't remember much what we did on Saturday after photoshoots and fetching the wrist bands. You see, it was very warm both outside and inside the building, and I get nauseous and light-headed very easily when it's too warm so my memories are, unfortunately, pretty blurry. I remember checking out the Artisans´ Alley though - I even bought a few prints from si3art! A few years ago I barely checked out Artisans´Alley/Artists´ Alley, nowadays it's the first thing I check when I go to a con. 

Artisans' Alley and Merchants' Hall were pretty crowded at times.

Artisans' Alley overview.

On Saturday there were no panels or lectures we would have wanted to attend to; doesn't mean that their quality would've been bad, there was just nothing within our interests. We ran into Sallukka at one point and discussed about having some dinner together but eventually didn't happen this time. Hope we can fix that at some point - and btw, Sallukka, your costume was awesome! <3 

Head Hunter Store´s table.

On the front you can see a corner of Bard & Jester´s table, the one with manga books is Fantasiapelit's booth.

Hey there, friend!

Me and Shiro Samurai left the con building after a few hours; we were more interested in taking a dip in the spa and hanging out in the hotel room than staying at a con and sweating like there's no tomorrow. First we wanted to have something to eat though - and oh boy, that... Kind of became a derp show.
At first we googled some places and found a sushi restaurant near the center of Kuopio. We decided to drive there - and at this point I must mention that I'm not too familiar with the town in question so we placed our trust in Google Maps to guide us to the right place. And it... Kind of did... I just didn't see a parking lot anywhere when we got there! We quickly decided to search for one - and ended up driving all around Kuopio without a clear destination. Eventually we typed "Kuopion musiikkikeskus" to our Maps and drove to the familiar parking lot of the con venue.
We walked back to the center - or, well, Kuopio plaza - and finally got to the sushi place. And saw the price list. Which was waaaay beyond our budget so we quickly abandoned the idea. There really were no other restaurants we would have wanted to dine in (well, there was Hesburger and its nuggets are delicious but that wasn't an option at the time) so we just fetched a few energy drinks from a nearby shop and made our way back to the car, hungry and defeated.

We did some more brainstorming but couldn't come up with any solutions... Until we remembered there was a Scan Burger restaurant in the same floor than the spa. So yeah, we totally went there - the customer service was top-tier and the food was delicious!
After eating our meals we took a dip in the spa and just hanged out for the rest of the evening before going to sleep. And I slept poorly again.

Sunday morning came and after breakfast it was time to pack our stuff and leave the hotel. We were also in a bit of a hurry; Shiro Samurai wanted to see "Tolkuton plays Muumimetallia" show and I wanted to see the interview of the other guest of honor, Seppo Pääkkönen (the other one was the Finnish youtuber Namikolinx). He is a famous voice actor here in Finland and his voice has been a big part of my childhood <3 He has voiced for example Buster in Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp´s Adventure, Rothbart in The Swan Princess 1 and Hades in Hercules - obviously in the Finnish versions of the movies. Of course it would have been interesting to see Tolkuton's show too but I hope I get the chance to check it in another con! 

One could also play some video games right next to the Artists' Alley!

 

 

Artists' Alley. Yes, it was also crowded.

Before attending these shows we + Sallukka and their boyfriend Dongrieg visited Artists' Alley where I ran into Nana and Momo, also known as bunicorn_design. I chatted with them for a while, checked out the other artists (and made a couple of purchases) and then it was literally time to run to check out the shows. Sallukka and Dongrieg accompanied me to Pääkkönen's interview since they had already seen Tolkuton in Tracon.

(Pics from now on taken by yours truly w/ mobile phone so yeah, there is a quality drop, sorry about that - I really should buy a new camera at some point since my old one kind of called it quits.)

Ain't Hades such a mood sometimes though? :'D

 

The interview was one rollercoaster of emotions and I had hard time holding back my tears; seeing a man whom I have idolized since I was a child felt so unreal! He spoke about his career, its highs and downs and why he eventually quit voice acting.
I didn't have time to queue up and wait for his autograph but even seeing him made me pretty emotional; thank you Seppo for making my childhood so awesome! 

After that we had a small break and then it was time for the next programs we wanted to attend to. This time the other three went to see Bardic Inspiration concert while I made my way to a panel about Asian horror stories.
The panel was very interesting and it was so nice to see that it was not all about the Japanese horror stories; of course there were couple of them too but there were stories for example from Thailand and Vietnam too. I think my favorite ones were the stories about Mae Nak and the Krasue (don't google if you don´t like horror). The program was 45 minutes long (I think?) but if it ever gets a part 2 I will surely go and check that out too - it feels like a few stories had to be dropped from this panel because of the time limit. However, it was still very entertaining and sure gave me the chills!

 

 

And after the panel it was time to leave - needless to say how bad it felt to start driving to the other direction than the others but oh well, couldn't really be helped...
I will surely attend Nekocon in the future too; I enjoyed the con and got some of the con hype back too (along with some flashbacks to the past Animecons which were also in July and it was always pretty hot both outside and inside lol, some things don't change). It was a comfy and nice con from which I have many happy memories now <3

My con loot looks like this! ^__^

Tighnari, lady Alcina Dimitrescu and Grell by si3art, Klee by iaia.

Earrings by bunicorn_design, skull key chain by Niramuchu Art & Design and the Undertaker pin and Genshin Impact charms by si3art.

Also bought some lovely skull stickers from aroaava and decorated my calendar with them <3

That´s all for now folks!
I have multiple con summaries and circle lens reviews to write ( + Luka's photoshoot pics to publish) so at least there will be a lot of content after I get my thesis done :'D I won't make a WIP post about Luka's dress since I don't really find it worth it; so many people have done the same costume way better and written WIPs about it so... Yeah, not really worth the effort ^^" However, the said dress will be mentioned in the near future again...

Until next time... Which is hopefully soon since I'm pretty damn late with most of my posts.

- Firith