Cosplay year 2025

Hello everyone~!
I know, I know, I'm a bit late with this one since it's already 2026 buuut I'm not nearly as late with this as I am with my Maracon and Terucon summaries ^^' Well, I will write them as soon as possible too, just wanted to get this out of the way before it gets too... Irrelevant also known as before it's the mid April and it's pointless to write this anymore lol. 
But let's get to the year summary!

I'm not going to lie: 2025 was a year of big struggles both cosplay-wise and in personal life. Like I mentioned in the cosplay year 2024 summary I was likely to get a few severe diagnoses, which I eventually got. I have already mentioned that I have BPD (borderline personality disorder, diagnosed as impulsive but that's seriously not true, I'm the silent/discouraged type), but on top of that I got the diagnoses for anxiety disorder, recurrent depression (in remission) and PTSD, which I suspect to be more of the less known CPTSD sort. I got these diagnoses like two months into the year and even though I was able to guess practically all of them, now actually trying to learn to live with them is far more difficult than just navigating them. 
Has there been any development? Honestly, I don't really know at this point. Maybe some little things but those are so small I would need a microscope to see them so yeah, there sure is a long road ahead. At least I don't wake up 20 times a night anymore thanks to the medication so that's sort of a win...

Of course, these things have affected my personal life a lot and they haven't exactly helped with this hobby either. I mostly had fun, yes, and that's what I'd like to concentrate on, but at the same time I know that there was not a single convention without a big and colorful drama caused by me, except for probably Maracon. Oh the joys of being unstable af, 0/5 experience, I don't recommend 😒 Seriously working on getting a grip so making good memories and actually remembering them would be easier this year.

But yeah, the conventions I attended in 2025:

Konekocon - Kuopio, Finland
Kemin mangapäivä - Kemi, Finland
Kummacon - Oulu, Finland
Nekocon - Kuopio, Finland
Mericon - Rauma, Finland
Matsucon - Oulu, Finland
Maracon - Oulu, Finland
Terucon - Rovaniemi, Finland

Yeah. Didn't really leave the northern part of the country that much this year and mostly attended small conventions - to be honest, I highly doubt I could have even attended the bigger ones due to my health problems, both physical and mental - especially the latter.
I think my favorite event was probably Maracon for the reason mentioned above - and it was also nice to go to a new (to me) convention! I haven't published a summary yet so I'm not going into too much detail but yeah, it was nice, relaxed and totally different compared to any other convention I attended. 

STUFF I DID IN CONVENTIONS 

I took part in Matsucon's photoshoot competition with Sallukka as my model - and we won the third place! ❤
I was a volunteer worker at Kummacon.
I was part of the organizing team for Kemin mangapäivä and Mericon.
I hosted a book talk at Kummacon, a Star Stable Online panel at Matsucon and a Genshin Impact panel at Terucon.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

If last year was a year of witches, this year was a year of gijinkas! This year I debuted a couple of new costumes again: shiny Jigglypuff, Dragonair and Espeon from Pokémon and Tanemon from Digimon.

No compilation pic this time, but here are all the costumes I got pics taken of! All the pics were taken and edited by Shiro Samurai, thank you very much! ❤

Shiny Jigglypuff

Dragonair

Tanemon

Espeon

WHERE I COSPLAYED AND WHAT

To Konekocon I wore the shiny Jigglypuff.
At Kemin mangapäivä I cosplayed Alicia from Moominvalley series. No new pics.
For Kummacon I debuted Dragonair.
At Nekocon I cosplayed on both days, Tanemon on Saturday and Espeon on Sunday.
Wore an alt/casual outfit to Mericon.
Cosplayed an OC called Marigold at Matsucon. Didn't have a photoshoot since the character and design still have the "work in progress" status.

Wore a casual outfit to Maracon.

Wore an alt outfit to Terucon.

Yeah, that's also quite many new costumes but I still don't think that I would have broken the promise I made last year; I wore these dresses even outside of cosplay so yeah, still sticking to what I said ^^ 

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

So... Yeah.
It was a bit of a rough year, honestly. Didn't sew anything new, battled against those inner demons of mine and half ruined almost every convention for myself (and partially for people around me). Not exactly a year I could be proud of and seriously, I'm not.

So yeah, at the end of this post I would like to thank all the people who still put up with my shit in 2025 and actually wanted to take me with them to conventions and such, you're all gold.

Let's hope that 2026 will be at least a bit better. 

Until next time.

-Firith

Kemin Mangapäivä 2025 - Back in business!

Hello everyone and welcome to the second con summary of the year! ^^ 

Canva was strong with this one.

(All pictures of the post are taken by Shiro Samurai, thank you very much - I seriously wouldn't have had time.)

I think the title pretty much tells it all - Kemin Mangapäivä was held on 8th of March at Kemin kulttuurikeskus for the first time in 10 years! This event was quite popular back in the days but for several reasons it got buried under the sands of time until now. 

The story behind the resurrection pretty much goes like this: as I have mentioned several times, a bit over a year ago I moved to north because I applied for a vacancy (a librarian) here and actually got the job. Very soon I learnt that Outi, the person behind Kemin Mangapäivä AND Kitacon all those years ago, was still working at Kemi's children's cultural center. It took one phone call to arrange a meeting with her and Sanna (her colleague) - and in that very meeting we decided to host Kemin Mangapäivä once again and wake it from its slumber!

...and the decision was made in the beginning of January, literally two months before the con itself.

I would like to state that even though there were quite a few hiccups along the way - typos in the con program, problems with our social media account etc. - things went smoothly considering the time we had for organizing the event. In this summary I probably won't go into too much detail about things that need to be done for a convention when organizing one but I'm actually considering writing a post about those in the future. 

But yes, let's continue with the summary!

I woke up around 7.20 am. - Kulttuurikeskus is literally a two-minute drive or a ten-minute walk away from my apartment so yes, I wasn't really in any rush. I took a shower, grabbed the stuff I needed to take with me and drove to Kulttuurikeskus. I was there around 8.30, which meant I had plenty of time to put up to information signs. My colleagues Ilkka and Olli were already there and while they mostly didn't participate in the event stuff they also took care of the visitors and customer service! Ilkka had also promised to act as a second judge in the drawing competition that was held within the drawing workshop, hosted by Shiro Samurai. 

I was ready with the signs in about 30 minutes which in other words meant that I could enjoy my morning coffee in peace - and that turned out to be the last peaceful moment of the day lol. My third colleague Johanna - who was specifically there for the event and to help with the customer service - arrived at work during our morning break and I was able to give her the needed instructions. After this it was time to start putting on my costume of the day, namely Alicia. 

The entrance to the event venue.

I would also like to point out that even though there are not many people in the pictures below we had plenty of visitors. The lack of people is simply because Shiro Samurai took the pictures before he started hosting the drawing workshop/drawing contest which means it was in the very beginning of the event. 

When I was putting on my costume I got a message from said host who informed me that he had arrived at the library - literally when I was in the middle of doing my eyeliner lol :'D I told him to look for Outi to fetch the pens etc. he could use at the workshop and then Ilkka who would have the papers for drawing. I also told him I would check up with him soon and returned to doing my make-up which actually turned out okay-ish. When I checked the clock though I got a small heart attack; it was already almost 11 am! I felt the nausea hit me but tried to ignore it - I knew it was just my nerves acting up and I tried to soothe myself with some prep talk. Not sure how well I managed but because there was no time to have a meltdown of any sort I just... Kind of had to get my shit together and just roll with it lol. 

The children's and youth department of the library. At the end of the corridor is the gaming/hang out room where the drawing workshop was hosted - and yes, there are also gaming consoles!

The adult's section of the library. A sight like this - in a much smaller library but anyway - made me want to become a librarian. I was a kid back then so yes, profession-wise I am where I always wanted to be.

I practically ran downstairs to check up with Shiro Samurai. He had basically everything under control so I went to check up with Outi and Sanna who were hosting a non-stop pin workshop. In the same room with them was also Matsucon's promotion table and quite a few comic character statues lol. I chatted for a while with the people in the room and then walked to the lobby where the Artists' Alley was located - and ran into Sallukka, Dongrieg and Jefu. The latter one also hosted a program at Kemin Mangapäivä (he gave tips about 2020s anime series worth watching) and Sallukka acted as a second cosplay judge, me being the other. 

Speaking of the cosplay competition: we quickly agreed to scout for participants from the venue. You see, in the Saturday morning we had two contestants. TWO. It's a bit hard to have a competition with just two participants so yes, we needed to do something about this. To be honest: even though I'm quite known to be stubborn af I even considered cancelling the competition. However, some gut instinct told me not to and I'm pretty damn happy I didn't since we actually got four more contestants to participate! Being stubborn can be either a curse or a blessing and in this case, fortunately, it was the latter one. Two of the new contestants were actually familiar faces from Kummacon - we were all a bit surprised when we recognized each other :'D 

A part of the Artists' Alley, pictured from the front door.

A general hallway picture.

Same hallway, pictured from the library's door.

Around 12 pm me and Sallukka started the pre-judging of the contestants. Each one of them were given 10 minutes to tell about their cosplay; what techniques they had used, their favorite parts of the costume, which part was the most challenging to make etc. I must say that making the decision wasn't very easy; all of them had put so much effort to making their costumes, tried new techniques and everything! However, me and Sallukka had agreed that there would only be one winner, also known as other prizes weren't given. This may have had something to do with our budget which was a very lonely and round ZERO.

It took us about 50 minutes to judge everyone - not everybody had that much to tell about their cosplay - and after that we could finally sit down for a minute. And I could eat my lunch. We didn't have that much time though; I wanted to check up with Shiro Samurai AND I needed to give some new instructions to Johanna before we would start guiding people to the backstage... Or, well, to the upstairs corridor from which we could enter the big auditorium, also known as the venue of the cosplay competition. So yes, I ate pretty quickly and then we - also known as me and Sallukka - walked to the drawing workshop. Shiro Samurai told us that there were some entries to the drawing contest; all of them just happened to be from within the same age group so he and Ilkka would have to re-think a few things, namely who to reward and the criteria for that. For clarification: originally there were three different categories based on certain age groups but since all the entries were from within the same one... Yeah. 

After this it was time to gather the cosplay contestants and go upstairs with the elevator. There were eight people in the same elevator and someone commented "Considering how much Finnish people like their personal space we make horribly small elevators" and to be honest I couldn't agree more - it was so crammed! :'D Luckily the ride up didn't take more than a few seconds and we could exit our metallic cocoon. 

We checked the stage quickly, I gave the last instructions there, the contestants formed up a queue and soon it was time for the competition to begin! To be honest it wasn't a long one, about 15 minutes or so since we didn't have any entr'acte or anything of the sort. But we managed to host it, yay! <3 I'm so thankful to all of our brave contestants (and some of them even said that they would take part next year too which almost brought me to tears, no joke), thank you for taking a part to the competition! A special thanks goes to Sallukka: I wouldn't have managed without you and it truly was an honor to work with you 💚

Oh, we also had a photo booth, the photographer being a student from Lappia! <3 Too bad I didn't have time to get a group photo with my friends even though we talked about it.

When the cosplay competition was over I noticed that Shiro Samurai had messaged me. He and Ilkka were now judging the drawings and we figured we could tag along since we were already done with our duties. 

Eventually me and Sallukka became some sort of judges for the drawing contest too. Shiro Samurai and Ilkka had decided to reward two drawings, one as a winner and one with honorable mention. If judging the cosplay competition was hard, this was even more difficult since the entries were pretty much equal in skill! D: It took us quite a while to decide the two but eventually we came to an agreement and could host the small prize ceremony. 

After that it was time for me to host my program; I had decided to act as a filler and host a same panel about cosplay memories I had hosted in Mericon 2023... As a filler xD Yes, we had some hard time first to actually get people to host programs but in the end there were three panels, a drawing workshop/contest, a cosplay competition and the pin workshop (plus the Artists' Alley which was popular even with the library's regular customers)! The third one to host a panel was Hannele from Piiri.

I was checking the time since the clock on the wall definitely didn't show the right time lol.

And after my panel Mangapäivä was officially over! I felt so damn drained tbh; even lifting a finger felt like a mission impossible. The front door of the library was already locked at this point so my duty was to check there weren't any people inside anymore and turn off the lights. I hanged out with Shiro Samurai for a while since he was waiting for a ride back home and when his mother came to pick him up I also drove home. 

And slept until I went to have a glass of wine with Sallukka. We totally deserved it.

As you can see, it was one hell of a hectic day but we made it, yay!

The date for the next Mangapäivä hasn't been decided yet but I can say for sure that the event will be organized next year too! 💚 Even though Mangapäivä will (at least very likely) be a small event in the future too we will definitely take into consideration the feedback we have gotten and do some things even better next year~!

...I mean, now we literally have a year for preparations so yes, there is actually time to do things better next time. However, I'm still very pleased with how we pulled this year through; even though I'm a perfectionist by nature I do realize that we couldn't have done nothing more. And, at least sometimes, doing your best is more than enough. This time it definitely was.

My next blog post will very likely be a circle lens review 'cause the next con I will attend is in May so yeah, no summaries before that. Already looking forward to that though! 👀

Until next time.

-Firith

Cosplay year 2024 - Witchy time!

Hello everyone~!

It's been a while since I last made one of these posts; the last one seems to be from... Uh... 2017 (under the 2018 year tag)... Oops. In my defense I have quite recently started attending cons and making costumes again after many silent years so yeah, some mercy please :'D 
2024 sure was a blast, both my personal life and cosplay-wise! In December 2023 I graduated from school (Library and Information Services, Bachelor of Business Administration) and in January 2024 I moved to the north since I had been hired to work here as a librarian. So yes, finally I'm where I feel like I belong to. Unfortunately, the year wasn't all rainbows and sunshine; I'm very likely to get a few - quite severe - diagnoses in the near future and I must admit that there are months of which I really don't remember that much. However, I do believe that next year will be a lot better mental health wise too! ❤

Despite all the struggles and all I traveled all over Finland and attended multiple conventions. The con line-up of 2024 looks like this:

Kummacon - Oulu, Finland
Nekocon - Kuopio, Finland
Mericon - Rauma, Finland
Matsucon - Oulu, Finland
Gingacon - Tampere, Finland
Northern Lights Anime Party - Rovaniemi, Finland

My favorite event was Nekocon, there's literally no competition of the first place. This doesn't mean I wouldn't have enjoyed the other conventions too, I really did! It's just that at Nekocon I actually was able to relax properly - this may have had something to do with staying at a spa hotel but anyway. I also like Kuopio as a city a lot and even though it was hot af outside I can't really complain; the weather was beautiful and the convention was very well hosted. 
It's also probably because it was literally the only convention of the year where I didn't work or compete. Again, don't get me wrong. I enjoy competing and working at conventions - even as an organizer, like I did in Mericon. Sometimes it's just good to relax for the weekend, enjoy the hobby and get photos of your costume without having a rush. 

STUFF I DID IN CONVENTIONS

I competed at Matsucon, Gingacon and Northern Lights Anime Party.
I was a volunteer worker at Kummacon and Matsucon.
I was one of the organizers behind Mericon (and in 2025 I will be the person responsible for the cosplay competition and everything related to that so the mantle of the main organizer isn't on my shoulders anymore).
I hosted a book talk at Kummacon. 

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

I also debuted two new costumes; Alicia from the original Moominvalley series and Kiki from the Ghibli movie Kiki's Delivery Service. Seemingly I had some sort of a witchy theme in 2024; I assure you, it was not intended but it just happened lol. I also half-considered making Klee from Genshin Impact at some point of the year but never got around that, would have fit the theme though.

Thanks Shiro Samurai for the compilation pic! ^.^

I cosplayed Alicia at Kummacon and Northern Lights Anime Party.
I cosplayed Kiki at Nekocon (Saturday), Matsucon (Saturday) and Gingacon.
At Mericon I wore a pirate-y tavern keeper inspired outfit. I also wore an alternative fashion outfit on Nekocon's Sunday.  

I have also kind of made a promise to myself and to the environment. Looking back I have made so many costumes that I wore only once or twice. This, however, never really fit in my values and sure doesn't these days. Some of the old cosplays are still wearable once I lose some weight but some don't even exist anymore.
Wasting resources like that isn't really cool and thus I have decided to make costumes that can be worn multiple times - and which are easy to modify once I lose some of the weight (even the pictures don't really show how obese I really am so yes, this is from a health point of view since I don't want to get a damn cardiac arrest at this point of my life). Make it about quality, not quantity - that's my new motto for this hobby.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Overall I consider 2024 a good year. 
I already have plans for 2025 too so if you're interested in them then stay tuned - the first convention of the year is right behind the corner! And no, it's not Desucon Frostbite; even though I would like to attend that one too at some point I didn't really have a chance to fight for the tickets so yeah, that's a no for me. Instead I'm going to attend a lot smaller convention in a familiar place; Konekocon, here I come! ❤
A big thank you goes to everyone who has accompanied me to conventions in 2024 - you were a huge part of my con experiences! ❤ Also a special thanks goes to Shiro Samurai who was my trusted photographer and travel companion; seriously, can't thank you enough.

Already looking forward to the cosplay year 2025! ✨

Until next time (which, very likely, is a circle lens review in the near future).

- Firith

Alicia mini photoshoot

 Hello~!

I know I said in my last post that the next post would be my Nekocon 2024 summary. However, change of plans since I got my Alicia mini photoshoot pictures from my photographer (none other than Shiro Samurai, thank you once again <3) and decided to post these now! 

I plan on photoshooting Alicia in the near future again since we were pretty short on time when we took the pics - hence why mini photoshoot. I think we literally had like 10 mins to take these pics so yeah, considering that we got surprisingly many good photos!

And now: the pics.

Character: Alicia (or Aliisa in Finnish)
Series: Moominvalley (the original animation series)
Cosplayer: yours truly
Photographer: Shiro Samurai

 

Tbh I don't even recognize myself from this pic.

 

Fun detail fact: the pendant of the necklace is actually a rose quartz piece to bring some witchy vibes to the costume - after all Alicia studies to become a witch.

 
Aaaand the obligatory blooper pic in which I look like I wanna sue the taxi company for something xD

"I WANNA SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER!!"

So yeah, here are the pics of this shoot~!

The next post will surely be the Nekocon 2024 summary - that just might bring some more witchy vibes to this blog... 👀
And yes I'm trying to write that asap since I have way too much content just laying around 🆘

Until next time.

-Firith

Kummacon 2024 - "I identify as Canada"

And to the next summary we go! This time I'm actually writing this summary on the very same year the con was held - a huge improvement! ":D"

Okay, enough with the sarcasm and let's get to the point - namely Kummacon 2024 which was a bit different convention for me, mainly because I had actually applied and gotten approved to work as a cosplay competition judge! 

Con building, entrance view. It was nice and sunny for the whole weekend!

 

Kummacon 2024 was held on 18th-19th of May 2024 in Oulu, more specifically in Oulu's International School - just like in previous year. My companion - and photographer - for the con was Shiro Samurai. We both had volunteered to work at the con, he as a green room volunteer and I as cosplay competition judge.
We left for Oulu by train on Friday before the con. I like traveling by trains; it's one of the most easy ways to move from place A to place B and it's also ecological (and also economical). So yeah, me gusta.
...EXCEPT WHEN THERE'S A MOUNTAIN OF STUFF THAT IS HARD TO TRANSPORT.

You see, we had decided to sell some of our stuff on KummaKirppis; both of us have been into cosplay, reading manga etc. for 10+ years now (I'd like to say 15+ years now) and that means a lot of unnecessary stuff had gathered in our apartments - by unnecessary I mean for example manga we didn't read anymore, games we didn't play anymore etc. So we figured: why not to try to sell at least some of the stuff? Someone could find what they were looking for - and we could get rid of the stuff that seriously doesn't even fit anywhere in any logical way.
But transporting all that by train, not to mention our bags, PS5, a monitor etc.? 0/5, can't recommend this experience since it was pretty damn difficult.

Doesn't look like much but I can tell you, that amount of stuff weighed like an African savanna elephant. Not sure which one of the objects seen in the pics weights the most; PS5, our bags, a monitor or my leg.

Luckily the train trip to Oulu only takes like an hour or so. When we arrived at the train station there was a bit of confusion about the location of our taxi I had ordered via app but eventually things got sorted out, we got into the Tesla (that was driven by a very new taxi driver, I remember him telling us that it was actually the first customer ride he had given!) and soon we were at our hotel - the trusted Sokos Hotel Arina at the very center of Oulu.

This time our room was salmon-themed!

We relaxed for a while until one of us exclaimed feeling hungry. We begun to brainstorm where we wanted to eat; originally we had thought about the Itsudemo sushi buffet we had eaten at last Matsucon or the Chinese restaurant near the train station but faced a couple of problems (the former would have likely been pretty crowded at that time of the day and the latter was a bit of a walk away and neither of us had energy for that) so we did the only thing we could do at that very moment: opened Google Maps and begun scrolling restaurants.
After only a couple of minutes Shiro Samurai noticed that literally on the other side of the street was Cantina, a restaurant with Italian cuisine. Since pizza sounded good for both of us we decided to go there - and holy fuck the food was good the only minus was that I took ages eating it because of chewing and swallowing problems! I also had a glass of red wine; I don't usually drink it since it might trigger a migraine attack but this one was light and tasted very good. 

This was DELICIOUS.

After eating we walked back to the hotel, did our dailies and... I guess went to sleep pretty early since we would also have to wake up very early.

On Saturday morning the lag was bad. We were barely able to drag ourselves to have breakfast (but managed just because we had kind of paid for that when we paid for the hotel room) and after we came back to the room it felt almost like a mission impossible to start putting on my costume. I guess I'm seriously getting a bit too old for this or something - at least too old for getting up way too early... But, well, duty called and that was a reason good enough to take a shower and start dressing up as Alicia from Moomin! She has always been one of my favorite characters in the series and well, the costume is easy to wear and I hadn't debuted her earlier so yeah, now was definitely time for that!

A selfie! Non-edited since it would have eaten the little quality there is to begin with (hence why the huge file size).

We took a taxi to the convention place and walked in. Our first mission was to find the green room since Shiro Samurai would spend the majority of his weekend there - and when we asked about it, the directions were pretty much like this: "Go down the stairs, see that the door doesn't get locked, and walk down the dark corridor to find the green room - nobody has found a light switch in the corridor yet so feel free to look for one." :'D We navigated with those directions and found the smol green room pretty soon.
I decided to sit there for a while to keep Shiro Samurai company since I didn't have anything better to do at that point of the day; the cosplay competition judging would begin in the afternoon so I had hours only lonely of spare time and didn't really want to spend all of them alone.

A couple of pics from the Artisans' Alley. At the time it wasn't so crowded but most of the day it was hard to move around there.

 

I think I paid a few visits to both Artisans' Alley and Artists' Alley during the morning (and in the beginning of the day we had also dropped some stuff at the con's flea market) but it was very, very crowded and warm and I could feel my anxiety creeping up. I quickly decided to hang out in more calm places before seeing this year's guest of honor, Magdalena Hai. She is one of my favorite youngster/young adult literature writers and she didn't let us down with her wonderful speech about a writer's power and responsibility! <3

I also gathered up courage and talked to her - she was so nice! We even took a selfie together but I'm not going to post it here since the quality is... Hideous.

After Hai's speech I decided to walk around for a while before it was my time to start working. I decided to check the downstairs of the building, mainly the lobby area where there were a few merchants - including Niramuchu Art & Design from who I have bought a few pieces of jewellery and key chains - and the info desk.

Said info desk and some congoers.

Kummacon is a LGBTQ+ friendly con and it shows! <3

Kummacon is also a visibly LGBTQ+ friendly convention and it shows; they actually also host queer literacy themed panels and everything! It's so important that people under the rainbow - no matter where there they are - have a safe space and feel welcome I guess it goes without saying at this point that I'm also one of them since I've been pretty open about it since the very beginning. It saddens me a lot that it's literally year 2024 and safety still isn't granted without objections for people who belong in the minority, be it because of gender, sexual orientation, skin color or whatever the reason. If anything it seems that world is filling with hatred once again; all the wars, politics, everything indicates that way. This is apparently not a good time to be alive.
But yeah, let's continue before I get too stuck on Doomsday scenarios that aren't really relevant to this summary lol.

Anyway, soon it was time to start the judging. I was one of the three, the other ones being Reetta and Yuri who were both so nice to work with! We had 9 contestants in total (would have been more but a few didn't show up) and I must say that it wasn't an easy decision to make who would get a prize! Kummacon's cosplay competition is pretty low-threshold and a lot of the contestants were beginners, just as I expected - and in my opinion each one of those who go to the stage in front of the audience are winners, it's not that easy especially for the first time! <3
After the cosplay contest - that went quite smoothly - I begun to feel a bit worn out and tired. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the warmth and all but yeah, I just felt like I would like to go to the hotel already... But I couldn't. 

And why is that?
Well, one reason was that Shiro Samurai hadn't finished working for the day. The second reason was that I had my own program to host: a book talk called "Mitä tänään luettaisiin?" ("What should we read today?")! I do book talks as a part of my job as a librarian anyway so I figured that I could host one in Kummacon too - especially since the con also concentrates on literacy. For those who don't know, a book talk means someone giving book/reading suggestions to the audience. I had a few people listening to my suggestions; thank you for coming to listen to me and not caring about PowerPoint that decided to throw a tantrum and not work <3
After the book talk I went to the green room... And a weird conversation took place. I can't remember every detail of it but it started with discussing about Eurovision, different genders and identities (and I would like to point out that everyone who discussed the topic was open-minded and respectful even though our humor was pretty tired at that point of the day). Pretty soon the discussion... Escalated a bit and I think someone said something along the lines "But you must always remember that the right answer is Canada" - this has a lot to do with a Finnish humor show called Kummeli where one character always answered "Canada", no matter what the right answer was. I did a quick math in my mind and quickly participated in the conversation by saying "So nobody can fight me if I just say that I identify as Canada since it will always be the right answer!". That made a couple of people laugh :'D

At some point we could finally call ourselves a cab - but not before taking some proof pics of my Alicia cosplay! <3 I will post the pictures in a separate post.
When we got to the hotel I could feel screaming food and coffee needs... So we first walked to a nearby Hesburger, ate some nuggets I guess I would really need a rehab or something and then went to Coffee House, a café located in Kauppakeskus Valkea.

So delicious <3

I can't remember what we did after our coffee moment but I don't really think we did that much, likely packed some of our stuff and went to sleep since we were both pretty tired.

I don't have that much to say about Sunday - except that I got promoted to work as another green room volunteer so Shiro Samurai could have his scheduled breaks. If I have anything negative to say about Kummacon, it's the fact that there were not enough people working there. It's not Kummacon's fault really - it's hard to get people to work at conventions, especially at ones that have a free entrance to begin with. It's also a fact that life these days is a lot more stressful and hectic than it was for example 10 years ago so people are more tired and literally just want to have fun on their days off - and there is nothing wrong with that! However, conventions also need their volunteers so the events can be held and everything can be done as smoothly as possible. So if you ever want to try out working in a convention and are able to travel to Oulu, I could really suggest working at Kummacon; I'm very likely to volunteer next year too! <3
Sunday was a bit hectic and stressful and let's just say that I won't write everything that happened here (I'm, unfortunately, quite temperamental especially when I'm tired and Shiro Samurai had the not-so-wanted "privilege" to enjoy it - still sorry about that). However everything got sorted out eventually so yeah, a happy ending and so on.

I still had some time to walk around on Sunday too; you can see Onismi Apparel's booth in the picture.

When the con closed its doors we helped around a bit (namely with cleaning up the green room and hoarding food that would have otherwise gone to waste) and left since we had a train to catch.

...except that the train was late for at least an hour since someone had decided to end their life (or at least tried to do so) in Helsinki by jumping on the tracks and getting hit by a train - at least we assume that is what happened since the reason for the train being late was "personal injury" which is the nicer way to say someone has tried to do something like that. I know that right now it's very difficult to get any help for mental health problems, especially in Southern Finland so it's no wonder that people suffer... However, jumping on the tracks doesn't solve anything. Find someone who listens to you and helps you carry the burden of life until you get the help you need. Darkness isn't eternal - even if in that very moment it felt like it.
When we finally got to Kemi I drove Shiro Samurai home and spent a night at his place since I was too tired to drive back anymore. That was the end of our Kummacon journey this year - and yes, I'm definitely going to attend next year too, maybe even volunteer if I have time! <3 The journey this year definitely had its bumps yet it also had bright highlights; overall I enjoyed the con and the weekend overall.

I still have a couple of con summaries to write but I'm finally catching up with my posting schedule! Next one will be a Nekocon 2024 summary - stay tuned! <3 

Until next time.

-Firith