Northern Lights Anime Party 2024 - I got asked to compete!

Hello folks!

It's time for a con summary; I really thought Gingacon would have been my last con for this year but that sure wasn't the case. About 2,5 weeks ago I stumbled upon Matsucon's story in Instagram where they promoted this new-to-me event - Northern Lights Anime Party - which would be held 14th of December at Rovaniemi, more precisely at Monitoritalo Monde. After quickly checking out the event's website and Instagram profile I messaged Shiro Samurai if he would be interested in going - and got a green light since Rovaniemi really isn't that far away.
I was about to go there anyway since one of my friends, Hant, happened to be working at Rovaniemi - he usually lives in the south and we hadn't seen each other in literal years so I wasn't going to let this opportunity to meet him slip out of hands. He happens to be into cosplay and alt fashion too so I informed him about the event too and he was willing to join us, yay!

The entrance to the con building. Notice the NLAP banner on the wall.

I picked Shiro Samurai up on Friday the 13th which kind of ended up living up to its name lol. You see, we both had a feeling that we were forgetting something very, very obvious but just couldn't figure out what. We drove to Kemi, more specifically to Sallukka and Dongrieg's place since Shiro Samurai would stay the night there (I couldn't exactly let him stay at my place since one of us would have had to sleep on the floor in that case lol). We were watching Dongrieg play and I don't exactly remember which one of us four made a comment about a dead camera...
And then it hit me.
The camera. 
I looked at Shiro Samurai who looked like it was dawning upon him too. The conversation went pretty much like this...

Me: "Did you, by any chance, take your camera with you?"
Shiro Samurai: "No I did not, that's the thing we fucking forgot!"

I mean... All these years and neither of us had paid any thought to it. I still feel a bit embarrassed for not noticing this since it's pretty obvious that we would need a camera if we wanted to take some pictures for our con summaries. 
Luck was at least a bit on our side though; I still hadn't gotten rid of my Canon I bought all those years ago. I mean, it still works - there's just some dirt on the mirror that I would need to get rid of since it leaves black dots to the pics. We decided to roll with it this time. It might not be as good as Shiro Samurai's Nikon but definitely better than no camera at all lol.

The Saturday morning came.
And I slept in because I didn't wake up to the alarms.
Luckily not too much, only for about 20 minutes, so I still had time to take a shower and do my make-up. I had planned to change into costume - I had decided to wear Alicia from Moominvalley - at my place but quickly scrapped the idea because I was already running late. So I just grabbed my belongings, texted Shiro Samurai that I was on my way to the railway station and took a taxi there. No way I was walking with that amount of stuff in a hurry when it was slippery af outside. It didn't take too long for the train to arrive at the station and when it did we hopped in and begun our short trip to Rovaniemi. I messaged Hant that we were on our way and we agreed to meet at the event venue - it would have made no sense if he first walked to Rovaniemi railway station to meet us and then with us back to the con lol. 

No jumping under the train! (This is also the only pic I took for this summary, others are taken by Shiro Samurai.)

Except that we didn't walk either.

If it was cold in Kemi, it sure was that in Rovaniemi too - literally twice as cold! We decided to take a taxi again... And ended up paying way too much for that short trip. You see, when I asked the taxi drivers around they all told me that the minimum price was 25 euros. I turned down quite many offers until an older man approached us. He told me the same price but was willing to give us some sort of a discount. Since it was getting cold and we were freezing I agreed to that; still way too expensive considering that he didn't have to drive for long (and I kind of had to help him with my Google Maps lol) but at least a bit more reasonable. I think that the company behind these drivers had given them the same instructions and the discount amount they could give to people - and no, it isn't even illegal to ask that much for a short trip. A few years ago the Finnish taxi law enabled this kind of bullshit so of course some of the companies make the most of it. I'm not exactly blaming the drivers here, they are just doing their job (and this seriously is a first world problem, I know that) but I sure do hope they get their share of the money, after all they are the ones doing all that work! 

Okay, rant over.

We arrived at Monitoritalo Monde and immediately started to look for a dressing room. Shiro Samurai asked a con volunteer (or, well, it later turned out that they were one of the main organizers but we didn't know it at that point) where we could change into our costumes and we were instructed to make use of the bathrooms. After a very short thinking process we decided to invade one of the bathrooms for a moment - but before we did that I spotted Hant sitting on a sofa and informed him that I'd just put my costume on quickly and then give him the wig I had promised he could borrow for the day. Eventually the wig ended up becoming his lol.

An overview of the lobby...

...and more specifically the very comfy sofas!

I changed from a tired librarian to a young curious witch in no time and left the bathroom so Shiro Samurai could do his make-up and change into costume in peace. I went to sit on the sofa with Hant and we begun chatting; it had been so long since we had last seen so there was a lot to talk about! At some point I noticed a con volunteer approaching us; they were clearly about to come to talk to us so we turned our attention to them.
And they... Actually asked me to compete in the cosplay competition!
My mind went blank for a moment there; it was said in the rules that at least 80 % of the costume should be self-made and Alicia DEFINITELY doesn't fill that criteria. I mean I have made and modified parts for her but 80 %? Uh-oh, nope. I explained this to them and the answer was "It's okay, if there's anything you have made yourself it's fine". At that point I caught the drift of what was going on; they had extended the application time for the cosplay competition the day before the con so I assumed that The Curse Of Being A Small Event had hit them too. Also known as: there were not enough contestants. At that point I decided to give it a go; I sure hadn't planned to compete but I wasn't about to say no to the chance either! I was given the instructions to meet up with other contestants in approximately 30 minutes; before that I was free to do whatever I wanted so I continued chatting with Hant and waiting for Shiro Samurai to get ready.

I guess this was some sort of the "Who is the best husbando of them all?" kind of 'contest' where you could vote for your favorite by drawing a heart next to their pic. Still no idea who won though. I voted for Wriothesley after this pic was taken.

About five minutes before the competition he emerged from the bathroom, now in costume, and we had a very short time to plan our next steps. I left my things with Hant since Shiro Samurai would start taking the convention pictures and it wouldn't have been very practical to have one heavy extra bag with him lol. Hant on the other hand told me that he would watch the competition so yeah, totally a better solution.

I met up with the other contestants by the stage and felt like a frickin' dinosaur. I mean the youngest contestant sure was about 20 years younger than me! D: Nothing wrong with that, of course - I just felt pretty old lol.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

At this point I would like to take a moment to explain how this competition was planned. The first part of it was the catwalk I'm speaking about right now. The catwalk itself consisted of going to the stage when the contestant heard their number (mine was 4) and name, do about two or three quick poses and then exit the stage. A very, very traditional catwalk which works in most cases - and especially in smaller conventions. This type of contest doesn't require that much performing skills since they are mostly about the costume; however these days the stage performance in these matters more than it did about 10 years ago so it's not a good idea to neglect that part either. Good poses can make a huge difference in the final result! Saying this as someone who has been a contestant for many times and also a judge for a few times. 

The next part was judging the costumes. Normally the costumes are judged before the catwalk part but this time the judging was after it. Personally I prefer the more known way but, to be honest, does the order in this really matter that much, especially in smaller competitions? I believe that the result would have been the same even if the judging was held before the catwalk.

The final part was the award ceremony which was held several hours after the competition. This may sound like a weird decision but I'm throwing in a wild guess: it might be because the con itself was pretty small and there weren't too many programs otherwise either. If the award ceremony was held earlier at least some people would have left many hours before the con closed its doors for the day - and since it was a small event there weren't like thousands of visitors to begin with. I myself have used this tactic when I planned Mericon's cosplay competition; there has been (and will be) a 45 min time gap between the competition itself and the award ceremony unless I come up with an even better idea. 

So yes, NLAP's cosplay competition was pretty traditional - it just had its own twists to the traditions. This was also their first cosplay competition (this was a second time the convention was held) so yes, it's more than understandable that there were a few hiccups along the way - but more of those later in the summary.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

We were briefly explained what was going to happen and given our stage numbers - as mentioned, mine was 4 this time. There were six contestants in total so yeah, definitely not a big competition. We formed up a queue, waited for hearing our names and walked to the stage when we heard it. The whole competition was over in just a few minutes but that didn't surprise me - especially considering that there weren't too many contestants to begin with. However, I think that the catwalk part went well and the host was great - so supportive towards us contestants! 💓
After the catwalk it was a bit unclear when the judging would happen but eventually we were given instructions to follow one of the con workers to the back. I told Hant where I was going and that I'd catch up with him and Shiro Samurai a bit later. After that I walked to the corridor in the back where we were told to wait for a minute so the judges could get ready to do their job. Fair enough. We didn't have to wait long either; in just a few minutes the judging begun.

I must say that this must have been the fastest costume judging I have ever attended to. Normally it takes approximately about 10 minutes to judge a costume and even that might not be enough. This time, however, it took just a couple of minutes per costume. From what I heard from the other contestants, many of them had a bought cosplay on them or such so there likely wasn't that much to tell about the costumes anyway; I didn't have that much to tell about Alicia either. The questions I was asked were pretty basic, such as which parts I had made myself and so on. I also got feedback about my stage presentation looking natural and good. I must say that it made me quite happy; as someone who suffers from anxiety/panic disorder it took me years to get myself to this point with stage presentation. And the strive to become even better is definitely still there.

I would like to mention something that could be called 'constructive criticism' though. I know that this was the first cosplay competition ever hosted at NLAP and if you take that into consideration I'd say that everything went pretty well. But next year a separate room for judging the costumes would be an improvement; this time there were people picking up their jackets etc. from the room during the judging. It didn't really bother me that much since I'm used to the judging situations but from what I heard many of the contestants were first-timers and thus quite nervous. Getting interrupted in the middle of telling about your costume might result in "mind going blank", also known as forgetting a lot you were about to say - and telling those things to judges is extremely important. However, I'm not being too harsh about this; there likely weren't too many spare rooms to begin with so I do understand the solution. Just... If possible next year, a separate room for the judging would work in favor of both, contestants and judges.

After the judging I was free to go to explore the con. I picked up my bag from Hant who was about to make a pin at a pin... Uh, workshop, hosted by the library of Rovaniemi. It's always nice to see libraries getting involved with these kind of events; there even was a pop-up library in the middle of the lobby! 💓 It really warmed my heart to see people take interest in it. 

Said pop-up library.

Hant also mentioned that he wasn't sure where Shiro Samurai had gone. I had a feeling I would find him at the Artists' Alley and so I climbed upstairs where it was located... And I was right, I almost walked into him when I had taken the last few steps lol. He was almost done taking the venue pics - and we both were more than ready to go to eat. Hant also appeared upstairs after making that pin and after the short discussion we decided to check the Artists' Alley first and then go eat at the nearby Kotipizza. It was literally in the same building, just in the other end of it, and none of us was really up to walking any greater distance to fetch some food since it was pretty damn cold outside. 

The cloakroom/info desk and the stairs leading upstairs.

A guardian of the stairs? :'D

A part of the Artists' Alley ft. Hant's back and my phone screen.

The corridor/upstairs lobby where the Artists' Alley was located was a bit narrow but still okay; I didn't bump into everything and everyone when I moved around. There were quite many sellers; I think seven or eight plus the info/promotion table of Seta. It was nice to see that there were both new (at least to me) and old artists selling their stuff; it seems like it's not too easy to get a table from the Artists' Alley in the first place so I was happy to see that so many had applied and got accepted to sell their stuff at NLAP! On the first round I don't remember really buying anything aside from one envelope that contained mystery products which later turned out to be LGBTQIA+ related stickers, to name one group of products.

After the pretty quick tour around the Artists' Alley we went to get something to eat. First I checked when the award ceremony of the cosplay competition would be held; I wasn't really expecting to win anything but wanted to still be there to see who would be announced as the winner. We had multiple hours of time so yeah, pizza o'clock it was! 
We dragged our arses to Kotipizza, ordered our pizzas and, while waiting for our food, took a few silly group selfies with a snowman family - which got dubbed as "This could have been us: snowman version" xD 

A group selfie ❤

AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE'S A PAPARAZZI AMONG YOUR GROUP GOD DAMN IT x"DDD There's a reason why I pose for pictures when I want to look presentable :'D

During our time at the restaurant we also did a few raids in Pokémon Go. I'm not too active player these days but Hant wanted to do a few raids and needed people to raid with him so me and Shiro Samurai joined the fun. I think we did two or three raids until we checked the clock and noticed that it was time to back to the convention place. Shiro Samurai and I had been looking forward to the hurt/comfort themed panel but when I checked the program I realized that we had missed it. Tbh I was a bit sour about it back then since, well, the topic seemed interesting enough but it was kind of a no can do situation; we wouldn't have had time to grab anything to eat any earlier or any later so yeah, we chose survival over our interests. *sniff*

Once back at the con my body was already screaming for caffeine and thus I ordered a cup of coffee from the small café that was located near the building's entrance. The venue overall was quite small too - minus the hall where the cosplay competition and some of the other programs were held, I swear to to god it was about 75 % of the whole venue! However, the venue was surprisingly functional and I really don't have anything bad to say about it; an event this small wouldn't have needed any bigger venue. Maybe in the future they will need one though but this year this was just fine.

Mascot donuts! 🍩 I found this idea pretty cute tbh.

Pretty soon Hant and Shiro Samurai went upstairs to play some D'n'D; the dungeon master had prepared a short-ish campaign to play at the con. I was supposed to go to check it out too but I realized that the award ceremony would be soon so I decided to stick downstairs to speak with the librarians. At this point I noticed from the corner of my eye that something was going on at the stage. I looked up and saw some other contestants standing there. It didn't take long to count 1 + 1: the award ceremony had begun a bit early and I had missed it completely! 

I saw some of the con workers approaching me and asked them about the results (and I had guessed the winner right, congrats to them! 💓). Apparently they had assumed that I had already left - I'm not sure had they been specifically looking for me or anything but anyway - and decided to have the ceremony with the contestants they could find. I got apologized over this but I told them that it was fine; I can totally understand the stress related to organizing a convention so yeah, a few hiccups can occur, no matter how carefully you plan everything. I chatted with them for a while and then decided to change out of cosplay; after all I had had it on for six hours already and lenses even longer so yeah, definitely wanted something more comfortable to wear (even though, I must note, Alicia is one of my most comfortable costumes to wear).

After changing out of costume I did a second round at the Artists' Alley and this time bought some stuff from a few sellers. When my small shopping spree was over I checked the clock and realized that it wouldn't take too long for a taxi to arrive (this time I booked one via Menevä Taksi, I sure wasn't ready to pay overprice for a ride second time that day) and texted Shiro Samurai about it. After a while I got the reply; they still weren't ready with the campaign. When the minutes passed by I texted him that I would go to the taxi beforehand; they had just finished playing and were about to come downstairs. I decided to go to look for the taxi though - you see, the app showed me a weird-ish place where the car was parked at but eventually I found it near Kotipizza. The app didn't really point there but I guess that's the app's problem. Not too long after that Shiro Samurai caught up with me, we boarded the taxi and it took us to the railway station where our train was already waiting on the tracks.
To our horror there was someone coughing and sneezing right next to our seats (literally on the other side of the very narrow corridor) but it really couldn't be helped - and I strongly believe that that person is to blame about the flu we both managed to catch -.-" What an ending to a con journey. Yay. Been on a sick leave for almost a week now and even though I'm starting to feel quite fine this still gets on my nerves...

But what do I think of Northern Lights Anime Party?
My feelings towards the event, despite the minor hiccups with the schedule and such, are very positive. A small, low-threshold event for the beginners, for the seasoned congoers and for everyone in between! It was clear that everything that had been done was done with love and passion for this hobby. It was so nice to see a convention here in northern Finland; even the smallest ones have the power to get people with same interests gather together and get some new friends and experiences. If I understood correctly they plan to host NLAP next year too and I can say for sure that I will attend it - in one way or another! 💓

I think that events like this are really what the Finnish con scene need right now. Don't get me wrong, we also need the big events, R18 events etc., but also these ones to make it as easy as possible for people to start cosplaying and going to conventions. After the biggest pandemic years the con culture has started to wake up from its slumber and with this awakening many new conventions have come to exist, this one among them. I really look forward to attending Northern Lights Anime Party in the future too - and as long as something is done with a mixture of love, passion and skill I believe that that 'something' truly does have a bright future ahead of it.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering what's with the flashy name: NLAP 2023 was pretty much what the name says, a 3-hour event with some programs, music and snacks (I may have checked their IG posts from last year too and got this explanation). They just hadn't changed it and to be honest I don't really see a reason for it, it sure does stand out. Some name-themed decorations would be a nice add next year to make this convention even more distinctive! ✨

This was, for real, my last convention for this year. I considered attending Nordsken too but eventually decided to not to go; I will be visiting my family in the south during that time so yeah, it's a bit of a no can do. 

Back to the circle lens reviews it is then - at least for a while.

Until next time.

-Firith