Northern Lights Anime Party 2024 – Forgot my flippin' camera!

 Hello fellow north-dwellers!

I was in Rovaniemi last weekend and the reason for that was Northern Lights Anime Party, a tiny manga event held in Monitoritalo Monde on the 14th December. It felt quite crazy when it sunk in to me that probably the last time I was at Rovaniemi was way back in 2017 when I went to my first (and only?) Mushucon. Despite living in the northern half of the country for roughly half my life I can count the times I've been to the "northern capital" on the fingers of one hand... and still have fingers left over, lol. Yeah, I haven't been to Rovaniemi much. xD

But hey, let's get this con summary started!

Entrance to Monitoritalo Monde.

I actually left from home already on Friday. Yes, it was Friday the 13th lol. I constantly had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm forgetting to pack something important and I just couldn't figure out what it was. Many times I went over all the stuff I needed for my costumes etc (almost forgot Yuuto's arm wrap!) and still nothing seemed off. Like I couldn't place the feeling at all, it seemed irrational like all the other times I've ever packed and panicked over forgetting something imaginary.
Well, Firith came to pick me up and dropped me off at Sallukka's and Dongrieg's place in Kemi for the night. The reason for these logistics is because currently Firith's apartment is so crammed two people can't possibly fit in there and, secondly, I had some business with Sallukka anyway so it was a two birds with one stone thing – namely I was well overdue to create a new Dungeons & Dragons character for our next campaign!

We had a nice evening creating my eagle D&D character and watching Dongrieg play Fortnite and some other games; it's quite mindboggling to me how much said game has evolved since the days when I casually played it a few years ago – I mean now there's some Guitar Hero-esque game mode and whatnot! I might need to pick it back up some day and give good ol' Fortnite a spin now that there's more to it than just the Battle Royale format, which is a genre that I'm not very fond of in general lol. The rhythm game stuff looked fun, not gonna lie.
Eventually Dongrieg changed games and started grinding something that I can't recall the name of but it vaguely looked like Grand Theft Auto or some crime-based game like that. There was a screen about a dead camera or something and at this point Firith looked at me and I looked back and then it dawned on me what I had forgotten at home. Yes, the bloody camaro camera! I fucking can't believe it, all these years and now is the first time I somehow forget the camera?! :'D The weirdest thing about this is that it never even crossed my mind, I mean I didn't even charge the camera batteries the night before like I always do and somehow my brain hadn't even reacted to that deeply ingrained con-prep tradition missing. Worst part is that my camera bag is always hanging out on my kitchen table so it is quite literally at plain sight 24/7 and still I didn't register that hey, that's the very obvious thing that I'm missing?? I'm dum-dum, there's no other way to explain this massive brainfart because yeah, the "I'm forgetting something" feeling was so stupid strong (more than my normal forgettance paranoia) and the camera was in hindsight so obviously the thing that was missing. I just can't. xD
So yeah, it was late at night and we weren't thus very motivated to drive 40+ km just to fetch the camera, especially because it was cold and we would have to cold-start the car. I figured that, if nothing else, I could always take the necessary summary photos with my phone and just live with the crappier-than-usual quality. Good thing though that there existed a Plan B that was a slightly better option –Firith's old Canon, which was already in Kemi unlike mine. Sure that it wasn't the best camera there ever was (there is some persistent dirt in the mirrors and whatnot; it needs professional maintenance) but at least it's a SLR and thus it's better than your average cellphone. So me and Firith agreed on taking the camera with us to the event the following day and that concluded the pre-con panic episode.

Con morning arrived and as per always I haven't slept shit. :') I was so nervous I couldn't fall asleep, which isn't anything new and groundbreaking for me lol. My original plan had been to change into cosplay before taking the train but by the time the clock was like 4 AM and I still wasn't sleeping I had a feeling that I wouldn't exactly feel fresh and invigorated on the morning. Well, I wasn't.
I'm also an awkward potato when sleeping at someone else's place, no matter how close we are, and I just don't dare to be the first one up and making noise by showering etc if I can clearly hear that everyone else is still sleeping. ;_; So I just snoozed past my early alarms and tried to salvage some snippets of shuteye. At this point I had already done the math calculations in my head and realized that I simply wouldn't have time to dress up anyway and would have to bet on the random card that is changing into costume at the event. The reason this was a big question mark is because we didn't even know if they had changing rooms at all. You see, Firith had tried to message NLAP's social media and email to ask about changing room options already a few days before the event but no one ever responded. Not to mention that for some unknown reason you can't even message them directly on Instagram, like why make it difficult to reach out?? So yeah, this lowered our already low expectations of the event even further – my expectations were so low at this point that I could probably have tripped on them lol. But regardless of the lack of information I still took the risk of going into the con completely unaware of if I even could change into costume on-site. It was stressful, no cap.

Eventually Sallukka woke up and I got a ride to the train station, with some time to spare. Sallukka and Dongrieg weren't attending NLAP by the way, they had other plans. While waiting for the train (and Firith) to arrive we brainstormed the upcoming D&D campaign and my character's background and such – I gotta say I'm very excited to play now and this talk left me on a good note when I left for the train to Rovaniemi. Thank you for the hospitality fren. <3

The train trip went by without any hitches. I honestly have no memories of it? Train from Kemi to Rovaniemi takes about an hour and a half so it's not like it's a long trip for us anyway. Fun fact is that we probably wouldn't even have ended up attending if it wasn't for the random chance that Firith had planned to go see Hant on said weekend after not having met him for literal years; Hant currently works in Rovaniemi (tonttutouhui :'D) although he's originally from the south. I was completely unaware of NLAP's existence and Firith only found out by a promotion on Matsucon's instagram. I got the impression that NLAP's marketing game hasn't been very strong. Heck, there's shortcomings on a lot of other fields too than just marketing, like for example the official website being woefully neglected to the point that the program schedule still isn't even published and it just says on the tab something like "closer to the event more details about the activities will be found here so stay tuned!"... umm... the event was a week ago... *awkward cricket silence*

Yeah I know, I sound a bit negative but NLAP didn't exactly radiate quality based on first impressions. I mean poor marketing, no response when contacting through more than one channel (instagram comment, email), odd limitations (no instagram messaging) and a misleading name that's annoying and inconvenient to say out loud. I mean you can't argue with me that Northern Lights Anime Party doesn't sound like a rave or a club event (think Neonya) or such. I do understand why they took an unconventional name in a way though, it makes you stand out and such but yeah, there's so many easier names one could have used that would have incorporated the same nordic vibes: Rollocon, Rovacon, Auroracon, Northcon, Porocon, Lumicon, Repocon, Revontulicon and so on and so on. And that's just from the very top of my head. There's nothing wrong with plain functional describing names like Rovaniemen mangapäivä/mangatapahtuma/animetapahtuma either – no room for confusion there!
I did learn afterwards though that apparently the name Northern Lights Anime Party is a relic from their debut year 2023 when it was seemingly only a 3h event with some snacks and programs and seemingly it even was age-restricted? In that light of knowledge I can understand the desire to hold onto the roots for sentimentality and to signal that it's the same people behind it, a continuation if you may, so whatever they do I am fine with it; but my honest opinion is that Northern Lights Anime Party is a very awkward name for an event due to its length and misleading mental associations.

Anyways, we arrived in Rovaniemi and the issue of getting to the con venue started. While it might have been only a 15 minute walk from the train station the issue was that it was blasting cold (-20 degrees celsius or more) and we just wanted to start the con day as soon as possible. Firith tried to get us a taxi but all the taxis already in place had some outrageous minimum prices that seemed borderline suspicious to me. Like I think they were all trying to bank in on tourists wanting to go to the Santa Claus village and for us who just wanted a short ride to centrum we were basically, well, fucked. :) Firith had to try several different taxis before finding one who was even willing to drive us, which seems absurd to me because isn't any paying customer a ride worth taking for a taxi driver? I mean our trip costs him like max 5 mins and then he could go right back to the station without hardly missing a beat? It just seemed hella weird to me with the whole "minimum 25+ €" fees like bro, isn't it required by law that the customer pays according to what the taximeter says and not what you come up with? :S Rollo has some highkey sus cabs man.
We eventually got a (still overpriced) ride to Monitoritalo Monde, the event venue. Much to our luck we immediately noticed that it had a Kotipizza quite literally in the same building, except on the other half of it. xD

Immediate view of the cafeteria upon entering the building.

Upon arriving we were a bit confused on where to find the proper entrance. You see, the street-facing side of the building had all these offices in it and it clearly didn't look like the right place. So we wandered around a bit until we realized that you had to go around the building to the backside or something to find the actual entrance (some signs pointing to the right direction would have been nice lol, not everyone is a local). Anyways, we finally get in and much to my surprise the building looks a lot smaller inside than how it appeared outside. I understand a lot of the "outer bulk" is used up by those offices and whatever other facilities that weren't a part of the NLAP's venue deal but yeah, I was a bit shook lol.

Cloakroom and info desk combo. Stairs led upstairs to the Artist's Alley.

Anyways, I immediately spotted the information and cloakroom desk (which had been combined) and went to ask if there's changing rooms reserved for cosplayers. I was met by this person dressed up as March 7th from Honkai Star Rail who said that technically there is changing rooms but they're for the cosplay contestants only and that, if possible, if we could change in the bathrooms instead. This was surprising to me, as a long-time congoer, because the norm for a while now has been that there's always public changing rooms somewhere in an event and that, oftentimes, it's even discouraged to use the bathrooms for changing into cosplay because it takes up so much space and might prevent others from using the very vital facilities for their intended use. I'll never forget that one Desucon years ago when some random young woman screamed for full lungs at a locked bathroom stall "cossaajat vittuun sieltä!!" :'DD (lit. 'cosplayers get the fuck outta there!!').

Oh well, after the confusion settled me and Firith shamelessly crammed ourselves into the biggest toilet we saw. Firith had already done Alicia's makeup before leaving Kemi and so only needed to put on the dress and wig and boom, done. I had to do everything starting from moisturizing my face lmao. Needless to say I took my time getting into costume, not because my costume is intricately complicated to put on or anything but because I'm not particularly fast at applying makeup. I almost felt like a criminal for taking so long in the invavessa and was waiting for someone to scream at me to get the fuck outta there lmao. When I was doing the base for my makeup I could hear Firith chatting outside with a male voice that I presumed to be Hant. I had a slightly trippy experience because even though Hant is a completely new encounter to me his voice sounds weirdly familiar? He either has a voice that is very similar to someone else I know, is very generic or I've randomly seen or heard him at some con before.

The main lounge area feat. pop-up library. Bathrooms were to the right.

So while I was taking forever putting my costume on Firith and Hant were going through years worth of not having seen one another while sitting on those black sofas seen on the photo above. The reason I took longer than normal (or at least felt like it to me) was because in the middle of doing my makeup I got a random panic attack out of the blue. I have no idea what triggered it, maybe it was stress, but whatever it was I ended up shaking so badly I could hardly stand up and even less finish my makeup! It was quite debilitating because due to the constant uncontrollable shaking I got eyeliner in spots where it shouldn't have been (like on the upper part of my eyelid, thank god it was hidden by the lid crease) and even managed to hit my blue eyeshadow brush on my nose and poked my mascara applicator into my eyeball too. ;_; I did take some medicines I had been smart to pack with me just in case, although in said panic I accidentally chewed them instead of swallowing the pills whole and oh my lord the taste was disgusting!

Somehow I managed to calm down after a while and salvage whatever I could of my makeup accidents before exiting the bathroom. To my relief Firith and Hant were still sitting there. I barely had time to put my stuff down on the sofa before seemingly a con volunteer came to ask me if I wanted to participate in the cosplay competition. This caught me offguard because I was under the impression that the cosplay competition was starting in like less than 10 minutes and they were still trying to get contestants like what's going on? I told the recruiter that I'm cosplaying an OC and "it's probably not allowed" because the common rules are that OCs are almost never accepted into competitions. The recruiter answered something akin to "yeah that's probably not allowed" and then when they were an earshot away from me I overheard them saying "I guess..?". Not gonna lie, this uncertain remark baffled me, I mean it's safe to assume that said person was the cosplay competition organizer (and, as I learned later, probably also one of the two main organizers) and it just came across as unprofessional – as in, it gave me the impression that they don't even know their own rules? I understand being young and inexperienced but yeah, you don't want to appear unsure and doubtful within earshot of attendants because it immediately gives off an unprofessional look regardless of how casual the event might be. At least make sure to try to uphold a professional front even if there's crises or difficulties behind the scenes, aka be mindful of what you say when there's visitors nearby. #protip

I gotta say though that I'm honestly not surprised by the contestant recruiting issue because like a day or so before the event it was informed on NLAP's social medias that they would extend the cosplay competition application which usually translates to "panic mode: not enough contestants" for those in the know of how organizing works. I kinda saw it coming though because let's be real – a tiny, new, poorly known event in the north that has a cosplay competition with a ruleset that has high requirements to participate; requirements so strict they're basically in line with what big, established anime conventions use. There's an obvious mismatch and slight delulu here at play – you can't run a small convention with big-scale competition rules (80% self-made cosplay requirement), especially not in the north because all the competitive sweats are in the south and those in the south extremely rarely bother to come to the north. You will get next to no entries because the rules are too strict. A more realistic cosplay competition rule would be something like 50% self-made or, if you want to be low-threshold and focus on beginners (and making sure the quota gets filled), then allowing bought cosplays but that some aspect(s) of the cosplay has to be self-made or modified and that can be anything from styling the wig to having made the props. The latter example is what Mericon uses, where I've been one of the judges and co-organizers for two years now – and while Mericon is in the south and bigger in scale than NLAP it's still a small event and is of equal age (debuted 2023) and yes, getting enough contestants even with such lenient rules still isn't a guarantee. The newer generations just don't seem to be as interested in competing as the people from my generation (millenials) and bought costumes are on the rise too. So yeah, already when I saw the cosplay competition rules I knew that they would have to resort to last-minute rule changes (basically went from strict to almost anything goes) and recruiting on-site. It was so clearly out of touch. This was apparently their first cosplay competition but still, please do your research lol.
But hey at least they managed to get 6 contestants in time for the contest so it could be held! Would be a shame to have to cancel one of the few activities there was.

View of the main stage. Matsukirppis (second-hand) table to the left.

I did not watch the cosplay competition myself but I heard that it had some difficulties and oddities with it too. Firith's summary mentions a bit more about the experience as a contestant so you can check that one out, if interested!
While Firith was busy with the contest I took to my duty to take the general con photos for our summaries. I also ended up upstairs in a room where this one guy was sitting next to a table with some D&D stuff around him. This was part of one of the planned activities – a beginner-friendly oneshot campaign with pre-made character sheets to fit the theme of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, unless I remember wrong. Please don't stone me I haven't played the game. xD So the dude was the DM and I got the impression I might have very well been the first person to show interest in attending. I went through the character sheets, asked some questions and eventually did a preliminary reservation on the orc character. The DM guy was very chill, easy to approach and assured me that it was noob-friendly and he had the patience to deal with a lot of hand-holding and guidance because yeah, to date I've only played one small campaign with a group of friends and Sallukka as the DM.

D&D room and a friendly (but lonely) bro.

I told him I'd be back for the start of the campaign and that hopefully more interested people show up during the day. There was one slight problem I noticed though and that's that the campaign was to start pretty late at 16:00, aka roughly the time when we had planned to go eat pizza. This realization made me scurry down to meet up with Firith and Hant and ask for some re-scheduling to free up the time slot for the campaign. This ended up being a very good idea anyway since neither me nor Firith had had breakfast on the morning and it was about 13:00 already and we were moderately hungry. Hant didn't mind an earlier pizza break earlier because who in their right mind does? No but really, moving the dining time forward ended up working in our favor because it gave us a very convenient opportunity to play the Necrozma raid hour in Pokémon Go without having to stand outdoors in the cold!

Kotipizza group selfie!

So yeah, we waddled our way over to the nearby Kotipizza and ordered our foods. While waiting we took some group selfies to pass the time and Hant told us that he'd keep tabs on where the local Pokémon Go gang was raiding so that we wouldn't miss when they arrived at the raid just outside the Kotipizza we were at. It was such a blessing that Hant happened to be part of the local player community because otherwise we'd have no way of keeping track of when it was time to do the raids!
Oh and I find it kinda fitting that Hant cosplayed a Christmas version of James from Team Rocket. xD

I spoiled myself with Sienimestari in lankku form, om nom nom.

Yes, we were totally extra slow so that we could fit in two raids on the same gym. I even got a shiny, lucky me! Shame the IVs were shite but that's to be expected lol. Classic Pokémon Go. xD

Oh, I forgot to mention but before I entered the D&D room before the pizza raid I checked through the Artist's Alley. It was upstairs just like the D&D room was, although I gotta say that the corridor the artists were placed in was quite narrow. Functional yes, but narrow. I can understand that this was probably the only viable place to put it because the event had so little space to work with and so every free meter counted. The only other option I can think of would have been in the main hall where the stage was but that would probably have come with too dim light conditions and being subject to noise and distractions from other activities like the aforementioned cosplay competition and the Mario Kart tournament.
I'll admit that there were more sellers than I expected there to be at an event of this meager size. Some were familiar from before but there were I think two or so whom I didn't recognize! I sadly didn't buy anything this time, it's this time of year when my limited money is already spent on Christmas presents. :'(

View of the first half of Artist's Alley.

Located in the same corridor as the Artist's Alley was also the local Seta ry table highlighting LGBTQ+ rights, which are very relevant in pop-culture subgroups because it feels like the norm is that everyone is queer in at least some way. :'D A great place to promote inclusivity and equality, in other words. I mean you will find your target audience lol.
I'm not sure what other organization or promotional booths there were? I know that NLAP had some collaboration partners with some shops and such and one of the bigger ones was the local library. Libraries are a rather obvious collab partner for anime events because of mutual interests like expanding youth activities and presence in the city and motivating people to borrow books and media for the upkeep of literacy and creative skills, be it through reading manga or developing artistic skills through "how to draw" books.

A closer look of the pop-up library on the main floor.

Rovaniemi's library was present in the shape of the pop-up library as mentioned before yes, but they also had a "make your own free pins from delisted comics" workshop which seemed like a really cool idea for repurposing and recycling old and worn out manga pockets etc. I lowkey regret not checking it out at least, I honestly didn't really notice it at first and when I did I didn't really have time anymore rip. :'( But I know that at least Hant used it to make a pin and it seemed to work well?

Oh and when it comes to random side activities there was this "vote for husbando of the year" competition that was a playful take on a popularity contest with fictional character. What you did was that you voted by drawing a heart on the blank page next to your chosen husbando's portrait and at the end of the event the winner was announced.
Honestly when I think about it I'm surprised that I haven't come across this formula before given how easy it is to set up and how fun and engaging it is for the visitors?

My favorite husbando Neuvillette was there so of course he got my heart. <3

I'm not entirely sure if there were any rules, I couldn't find any? But I assumed it was one vote (aka heart) per visitor. I felt bad that Wriothesley (on the other half of the list) had zero hearts for a majority of the event and that was just not right because Wrio is a king and deserves love too – thankfully Firith agreed and gave Wriothesley one heart!

Before I knew it the clock had ticked its tocks and I had to run back to the D&D room after having had a coffee break with the group. I gotta say that befriending Hant was very organic and easy, he's so chill and we immediately hit it off with our dumb humor lol. But I'm not too surprised because a friend of Firith's is by extension most likely a friend of mine (to be). I had a feeling though that the DM guy might not have been able to bag other interested players and so I managed to talk Hant into joining me because he showed signs of being interested and had nothing else to check out, the one thing making him hesitate was that he had never played D&D before. I comforted him by saying that if you're a super noob then I'm the noob who's only one step less nooby lmao.
So we went up in tow and my prediction was correct – there was no one else there. I was the only one who had signed up to play for the whole day. I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the guy because he had clearly put a bunch of effort into doing all the necessary preparations and even handwriting skills and attack papers for all the character sheets to make them as accessible as possible for beginners (color and symbol coded etc), not to mention sit the whole day in that room and just hope for people to show up. Good thing I had dragged Hant with me (hyvä et joku on yllytyshullu eiku) because you need at least two players plus the DM to be able to play and now we could play! I mean.. during the whole day it felt like I kept seeing the same 20 or so congoers in the venue so it felt like there weren't many unique visitors to begin with and, honestly, no one really gave me the vibes of being tabletop bros; I kinda felt like I needed to secure myself a playmate or the whole activity would have been cancelled.

I'm not gonna go too much into detail on what happened during the mini campaign because that would take way too long (and I'm getting tired of writing this post, been at it for 7h now lol who said blogging isn't hard work) but let's just say that it was combat-focused and had to do with a portal appearing and evil entities coming out of it and later we met a NPC old man who was a bit sus but tagged along us and then we went inside the portal into some hellish landscape and there were more enemies. I played an orc berserker and just ungabunga'd my way forward with a bigass maul and Hant was a cleric. The NPC old man was a sage (well, actually a warlock in disguise #spoilerbroiler) and it was kinda hilarious because he tried to assist us by attacking some enemies across the bridge with smaller fireballs but he hit crap rolls and missed every single attack – my man has some skill issues lmao. :'DD I gotta give some props to the DM, he was super accomodating and funny and did fun voices and showed us images of the characters etc on a tablet to increase immersion and such. Really 5/5 guy when it comes to taking care of your players, would definitely play his campaigns again if I see him somewhere. Only sad thing is that when we were roughly halfway into the game I got a message from Firith asking if we were done soon – that's when I checked the clock and realized that the con was closing in 30 minutes and I needed to take a taxi in 15 to catch the train, sos! We had been playing since 16:00 and the clock was roughly 17:30 already, I don't think the DM had expected it to take so long either! So much time had passed in the blink of an eye! Well, we managed to speedrun that second map we were doing and then the DM just resorted to putting on his story-mode voice and telling us what happened and how it ended because yeah, no time left to play through it properly. I found it funny that somehow I sneaked past some intimidating tower guard in my bulky heavy orc armor without alerting anyone. xD

With the campaign wrapped up I speeded downstairs to grab my belongings from the cloakroom (no time to even take off my cosplay) and hurried outside to catch the taxi that was parked in front of Kotipizza, Firith had gone ahead and was already waiting for me. I felt a bit bad because I didn't even have time to say goodbye to Hant. *sniff*

The train trip back home went okay, except that we both were so tired we bought overpriced Red Bull at the restaurant cart in the train lol. Monitoritalo Monde had some weird rule of no energy drinks in the venue so we were running on fumes half the day due to poor sleep.  If there's anything that grinded my gears during the trip back it's that there was this one very obviously sick woman on the same seat row as us (classic us luck), just on the opposite side of the corridor, who kept coughing and doing these very moist inhale-the-snot-back sounds during the duration of the whole trip – like ffs, if you're down with the flu or whatnot then at least wear a fucking face mask if you have to travel or, even better, stay home. It's a minor inconvenience for you but might save someone's life in a worst case scenario so yeah, what happened to the lectures the pandemic taught you?
Guess if we both got sick immediately after the con? Of course we did. :)) My money's on her being the spreader and yes, I'm kinda salty because we both belong to the immunocompromised risk group and had things we needed to do and now we've both been sick for almost a week due to some selfish rando... :C #bigmad


And that sums up my first Northern Lights Anime Party experience. I know this summary might sound a bit harsh but despite the palpable inexperience showing through with the running of the event I have full understanding of the fact that apparently there were only two people in charge of organizing the whole event and all the roles and one of them was seemingly a teenager (based on what I heard, can't confirm the accuracy), so not even an adult yet. I mean yeah, it explains things and the people whom I assumed were the organizers both looked young to me. It's actually pretty wild even when you stop to think about it but nevertheless it's an achievement in itself to host an event of any size at such a young age and whoever the organizers are they should get a standing applause for taking on the daunting task of arranging an event with little to no prior experience – a lot of people wouldn't have the balls to even try or would give up once it got too overwhelming.
We need these people, these firesouls who have the will to actually try and do stuff for the geeks in the north, even if what they produce isn't perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. I mean yeah, Northern Lights Anime Party had a lot of minor hiccups and things to improve on but it's already a win that the event started and ended and, as far as I know, nothing had to be cancelled and no major disasters happened? Sure that the opening ceremony was late by one hour and the cosplay competition award ceremony started before its scheduled time slot because the organizers apparently thought that the people had already left (what kinda reasoning is that, trust your visitors!) and so probably felt a panicked hurry to salvage what might have looked like a premature ending of the event (when odds are that people were outside eating or taking photos etc). I can understand the stress and panic when the venue looks near empty but hey, stick to the schedule and if you have to do changes then make sure that said changes are informed to the visitors via social media, info desk notifications or such. You got this, GG for the effort and the courage. <3

That's all for the last con summary of the year. I honestly had a great time and would attend NLAP again if it's hosted next year. It has all possibilities to grow better with time!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

Gingacon 2024 – Furries and a missing cheese slicer

 Hello peeps and woofers alike~

Last weekend I attended my first Gingacon event and, as the name implies, it is an anime convention especially aimed at fans of the Ginga series and other works by mangaka Yoshihiro Takahashi. Gingacon's target audience was also the furry community and people overall who are into animal-themed fictional works and toys (Pokémon, Digimon, Tamagotchi etc) as well as stories and fan creations.
This year's Gingacon was held on Saturday, 23rd November in Tampere, Finland. The host building was a school commonly called Tredu by the locals.

Let's get this summary started!

 

Gingacon info booklet.

My trip to the con started on Friday but, I admit, I might have been panic-packing on Thursday. As mentioned in previous blog posts I had planned to rewear my shiny Mightyena gijinka and, well, that costume consists of parts from other cosplays, stuff from my wardrobe and from my vintage kimono collection. It's effectively a fancier closet cosplay with some accessories added on top to make it more recognizable, aka a pair of ears and a tail – of which the latter I didn't have during its debut. But yeah, when I was packing my suitcase I might have had a panic moment when I realized that I didn't really remember exactly what brown pants I had used for the costume previously and all the brown costume pants I found didn't fit! So there I am losing my shit over some pants until it dawns on me that "hey, weren't those old corduroy pants I snagged from grandma brown?". *lightbulb moment* So I go digging through my wardrobe like a dwarf digging a hole diggy diggy hole and I found the damn pants and, even better, they fit so comfortably! Pants crisis, averted.

...
Except that wasn't my only crisis. I had a wig crisis too. xD I did find the old wig I had used for this cosplay but when I quickly tried it on I just had one blaring opinion – it looked like shite. It just wasn't flattering on my face at all, way too much fiber and poofiness on top. And the more I thought about it the more I kinda wanted a longer and shaggier wig but, of course, I only own short brown wigs. :)) I have like two bigass plastic containers full of wigs and somehow I never have the wig I need – a cosplayer's eternal curse amirite? Oh well, I ended up borrowing a wig from Firith, who was my con company for the trip too. I will buy a more fitting wig later for the next outing.

On Friday we took the train down to Tampere. I should maybe mention that we had an accommodation catastrophe since Gure, who was supposed to accomodate us during Gingacon, got sick with fever a few days before the con déjà vu and that threw our plans out the window. So in a last-minute panic I'm scrambling to get a new place to stay in while Firith loses all hope of even going. Our train tickets were non-refundable too and we literally knew no one else who lived in Tampere. Another thing is that Gingacon is held in an area outside of Tampere's centrum so there's not really any hotels nearby (and it's not like we could have afforded an emergency hotel stay on such short notice anyway). In my desperation I asked around in the Gingacon work crew Discord group and luckily Nawulf in there suggested this one airbnb that was very close to the con building, which ended up being our saving grace that secured the con trip!

It was late when we arrived to our airbnb stay and we both were a bit nervous because we had never used an airbnb before. Luckily the host was friendly and showed us great hospitality so everything went well! It was one of those airbnb types where you live together with the family in their home, essentially just renting a vacant room for the stay. We were allowed to use the living room to watch some TV; it was nice to wind down a bit before going to bed.
On Saturday morning we packed our stuff and put our costumes on before leaving (luckily there were like three bathrooms so we didn't hog the only bathroom in the house for cosplay prep xD). We were a bit behind schedule but not too bad.

Tampereen Seudun Ammattiopisto, aka Tredu.

I think the clock was around 12:30 local time when we arrived to the con. It looked quite empty from outside and we were momentarily very confused because there were signs on the front doors saying something like "entrance not allowed" and there also weren't any obvious big Gingacon signs anywhere stating that we were in the right place. Luckily we weren't dumbfounded for long because someone from inside noticed us and came outside to welcome us in and told us that they were working on hiding those "no entrance" signs.

View to the right (feat. cloakroom) upon entering.

Immediately upon entering the information desk was in front of our noses. There was a slight queue so we waited for our turn to get our badges. I had applied to be part of the work force and, more exactly, a green room worker. Firith in turn had applied for the cosplay competition and thus also got a badge, albeit an orange contestant badge instead of a blue worker badge. :3

My worker badge (and con ticket) featuring Gingacon's mascot Routa!
(yes, I censored my name for privacy reasons)

As soon as we got our badges we headed to the cloakroom to drop off our luggage and almost immediately after that Firith had to bolt for the cosplay competition's pre-judging phase. I had roughly 20 mins left to explore before my 3h work shift would start.
One thing that I quickly noticed was that Tredu was extremely similar in style to Pohjankartano in Oulu, except smaller. I mean the similarity was tripping me through the whole day lol! If you've read any of my Matsucon summaries you'll probably get what I mean with how these two buildings resemble one another, especially the way the stairs and upper floors are arranged.

General view of the main area, including the stage.

Another general view, Artist's Alley visible in the back.

I didn't really have enough time to do any proper exploration before my shift would start so instead I just kindly waddled over to the green room, which was hidden away in a corridor to the left half of the building, near a vending machine. There were signs pointing me in the right direction so I didn't get lost lol.
One thing I immediately noticed when stepping inside the green room was that it was surprisingly large in size, especially for a smaller con like Gingacon. There were tables full of many different food items including instant noodles, fresh fruits and vegetables to put on bread, snacks, chips and cookies, Pocky sticks, orange soda and juice and porridge and yeah, basically anything that's easy to eat or prepare! There was so much more variation than I expected; hands down probably the most comprehensive green room I've used to date, 10/10 would work again.

One of many green room tables.

I don't know if I misunderstood or misremember or if the information was wonky, but I do remember asking if there was any warm food and was told that Gingacon didn't supply warm food to the workers, unless you count the instant noodles. But then not long after I learned that there was some homemade food in the fridge that was free to use and had seemingly been prepared for the con workers? There were like two or three aluminium packages with some chicken dish inside and I think there was a bowl of salad too or something? I was just perplexed why said homemade food didn't count as a warm meal? Maybe it was just brainfarts on one or both sides but, whatever the case may have been, one thing was clear – there was enough food so you wouldn't have to work on an empty stomach.

This food package gave me a laugh. xD (artist unknown)

My work shift lasted from 13-16 and I spent that time watching over the green room and doing various tasks to keep it functioning like instructing and helping green room users, emptying the trash bags, making more coffee whenever it ran out and so on. Usually Nemi was also there to help me observe the situation so it never really got too hectic or overwhelming. Most times it was actually pretty chill and manageable and thus a pleasant working experience.

One tiny little thing that kept occuring though was that someone would every now and then come and ask where the cheese slicer was because there was a block of cheese but nothing to slice it with. Turns out that Nemi had forgotten to bring the cheese slicer. xD So yeah, those who wanted cheese on their bread had to resort to violating the cheese with a knife for the first hours of the con while the cheese slicer was on its way. Eventually there was a message in the Discord channel that the slicer had arrived, and because Nemi was hosting the Pokémon Go meetup at that time and thus I was the sole person watching over the green room, it meant that I put on my errand boy shoes and ran to pick up the much coveted metallic object from the info desk.

THE MYTHICAL CHEESE SLICER HAS GRACED US.

In hindsight I would perhaps have liked to check out the Pokémon Go meetup but it collided with my working hours so no can do. It was nice though because there was an in-game event running called the Wild Area and Gingacon put lures on the pokéstop just outside during the full duration of the con. I must admit I've kinda fallen off the PoGo wagon, I have no clue about the whole Dynamax thing and so on but it's still fun to play casually every now and then. I just hope that all my mons aren't horribly outdated by now lmao.

Oh and speaking of Pokémon, me and Firith decided already on the morning when we put on our cosplays that we would postpone photoshooting my shiny Mightyena outfit. Reason number one was that we wouldn't really have time (bless the diminishing sunlight hours during the winter months in Finland) due to our respective responsibilities and reason number two was that my ears didn't function at all like intended and thus I didn't really feel like having a proper photoshoot before fixing them... again. I didn't have time to test wear them before the con. You see, I've remade them once but despite my efforts to add in steel wire they still didn't stay upright (I really need a different attachment method for support than just safety pins). So my ears were just hanging down the sides of my face and I looked like a sad doggo all day. *sniff* But at least I have a proof photo that I did have the costume on!

Crappy phone quality, I know.

I did have some slight difficulties with the lenses, or more exactly one of them. For some reason the right eye one kept being lowkey scratchy so I took it out and reinserted it like three or four times before it went away. I was starting to worry that the lens was defective (I had not had time to test these before the con either) but luckily that wasn't the case. I intentionally bought super bright manson-styled lenses to look more cartoony and well, shiny Mightyena has super vibrant blue eyes so I wanted to match that for extra accuracy haha. I also added those triangles to aid recognizability a little but I'm honestly not sure if anyone actually knew what I was supposed to be lol. Not like it matters anyway, I still had plenty of fun!

This was by the way the first cosplay on which I had a big floofy tail. I had to constantly remember to lift the tail up and out of the way before I sat down because otherwise it would get in the way due to its rather massive size. xD At least I can say that the tail mostly functioned as it should; the only thing I need to fix for next time is to move the elastic loops even closer to the edges to keep the edges from protruding – something I didn't realize while sewing it as a first-timer. You live and you learn!

Tail awareness every tiem.

While I was working in the green room I got handed this little bag of gifts from the organizers. I was quite taken at first because I have not experienced this kind of appreciation before as a volunteer worker. ;;_;; Apparently every worker got a 'thank you' goodie bag with Gingacon merchandise featuring the mascot character Routa, which was super cute and made me feel seen omg.

Standard issue green room meal. :'D Stupidly delish noodles!

Once my obligations shift was over I immediately headed over to the plush doll meetup on the third floor. This was the one program I had planned already prior that I wanted to attend. I gotta admit though that I'm a lazy congoer when it comes to attending activities like lectures and panels etc, most times I might see something interesting when the activities are revealed online but then when I'm at the con I most often ain't really in the mood during that specific time when something I was moderately interested in is happening. It's like I'm not feeling it, you know? Like the headspace is not right at that moment and then I just can't be arsed because I know I wouldn't stay focused and/or invested enough. Maybe it's a neurodivergence thing or maybe I'm just getting old, who knows lol.
Anyways, this stuffed doll meet was something I really had a drive to check out – one big reason being that it stood out to me. I've honestly never seen such an activity at any con before (which feels weird when I think about it, I mean so many alt people collect plushies) and it seemed like a relaxed low-threshold meetup where you'd maybe hear some fun and engaging stories.

Plushie meetup collection!

One key aspect of this meetup was that it was free-for-all, meaning that you didn't have to reserve a spot in advance, aka it was essentially a drop-in program. You were also encouraged to bring any soft toy with you to the meetup to show it off and tell the others about the story behind it, if you wanted to. This was the part that incited me to attend because oftentimes people have some emotional attachment to plush dolls and I find it interesting to hear this kind of personal stories, even if it's brief. Oh, and did I mention that I love plush dolls in general? I have soooo many from my childhood and also a bunch of newer ones that I've bought as an adult – mostly imported ones from Pokémon Center in Japan and such.
Honestly I really enjoyed the meetup, we all sat in a circle around the room and just one by one we told the others the story behind the particular plush we had brought with us to the meeting. The stories ranged from tragic accidents to unhinged, outright hilarious ones like taking a short-time loan to afford a must-have plushie that was out of budget at the moment.
I hope that this type of meeting will be held in the future too (staple meetup at future Gingacons?), it was a great social experience which helped me feel less childish and stigmatized in my plush collecting hobby.

My childhood fish plushie and boba tea.

I left the meetup a little before it officially ended because Firith had gone earlier to order us some bubble tea and was waiting for me in the main hall. I decided to be silly and sneaked up on Firith because I saw that my target was reading a book and thus not paying attention and then I took my fish plush and lowered it in front of the unsuspecting reader's face while singing a part of a meme variant of the Kalakaveri (lit. 'fish friend') song by K-Citymarket food store. Video below is of the edited variant, I don't know who the original creator is but all credit goes to whoever it is. Y'all can thank me later for the brain rot... or not. :'D Laitetaan vahinko kiertään!

While we were sitting at the table enjoying our bobas a shy person approached us and asked if we wanted to adopt a puppy, as in those adoptable character arts you might find on sites like Furaffinity or DeviantArt. It took me a second to realize what was going on and then this person made it clearer by asking if any of us two likes to draw, to which I raised my hand. So the gist is that this person had designed a bunch of adoptable puppies (essentially a reference art that you would claim ownership of) and I was presented with a lot of random numbers to choose one, kind of like a lottery ticket. It was a cute little encounter that I didn't expect but which gave a heartfelt touch to the overall atmosphere of the con. I wish I would have talked more with this random stranger but they disappeared almost as soon as they came, although they were very polite and charming with the whole "hey I'm socially anxious but want to get to know new people and this is my way of breaking the ice" shtick.

Yes, my phone's low battery makes me uncomfortable too.

After that encounter we finally had time to plow through the Artist's Alley and the dealers. There were some familiar artists whom I had bought from already at other cons but there were also some new faces I had not seen before, like some people who sold handmade ceramics! I was a bit let down because I didn't really find anything that really caught my fancy (I like supporting independent artists and buying small items) despite there being quite a nice amount of tables. There were several who had interesting items but I was mostly looking for magnets this time, especially because my keychain collection is growing so large at this point that I don't know where to display all the ones that I own, send help. x) 

View of Artist's Alley.

More Artist's Alley. JeMiChi's table in front.

On the second floor was what was referred to as the "Ginga room". This included the booth of Suomen Hopeanuoli-fanit ry which is the association that organizes Gingacon. There was a lucky wheel and some merchandise for sale, including Ginga fanzines. I also saw during my brief run-through during the day that on the second floor were also different activities like a fur workshop for making ears and tails and opportunities to draw and color in Ginga-themed linearts. But when I did my proper exploration the fur workshop and the drawing room had already closed for the day so yeah, I didn't really get to observe them in action. Seemed like fun concepts though based on that one quick glimpse I did catch.

A part of the Hopeanuoli-fanit merch booth.

Oh, I forgot to say earlier but I did meet Lillepysen briefly, an old friend of mine from many years back. We used to play video games together casually and shared some fandoms. It was nice to see her again and swap some words, albeit a bit in a hurry because we both had stuff we still stuff we needed to do haha. Ah, cons and running into people you know~

I also ran into some completely random people just randomly duking it out with a Beyblade battle near the video game room. It made my closeted little nerd heart take an extra beat because it was so nostalgic and unexpected! I remember when Beyblade first came out – I was obsessed! I had a Gameboy Advance game (which kinda sucked, sadly), duvet covers, stickers and of course some G1 spinning tops. Even begged dad for money so I could buy a Beyblade from the local toy store during a vacation when I was a kid. xD

Surprise encounter: Beyblade battlers.

This impressive Tamagotchi and virtual pet display
was near the Beyblade trio.

It was getting quite late at this point. I had wanted to check out what the retro video game room had to offer but I also knew that I wouldn't really have time to sit down and play because our ride was coming soon to pick us up. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I was honestly happy that the consoles in the room really were the true retro stuff – there was a Super Nintendo, Playstation 2, Playstation 1 and so on. Yes, the good old ones that takes me back to simpler days. I think the newest console I saw might have been a Nintendo Gamecube?
There were surprisingly many gaming consoles too, a lot more than I expected – I didn't count but I'm pretty sure that the total amount was close to 10 or so. Two thumbs up from me, a really solid game room. Whoever arranged this deserves applause, I lowkey regret that I didn't have a bit more time so that I could have played at least a little.

I got so excited when I saw that the Super Nintendo had
both Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars!

We had to leave the con a bit before it officially ended because we were dependant on Gure (mostly recovered) giving us a ride to the train station and thus had to work with more than just our own time schedules too. We had to catch a train to Harjavalta that same night but before the train would depart we had some time to kill so we went to have some pizza in the train station. It was surprisingly good, especially when hungry.

Lordipizza. Yes, the Eurovision winner Lordi.

We boarded the train and it was full of people. We had the random chance encounter to be situated next to a couple in their 50s who clearly looked like metalheads.. and also clearly looked like they had just been in a bar drinking. The lady was in the sleepy phase but the longhaired dude (he kinda looked like Marko Hietala except with more narrow face and features) was super chatty and curious about us. We both had changed out of costumes before leaving the con but we still had makeup on so yeah, I had my casual clothes (I look like a rocker so he probably sensed that we're his people lol) with those Mightyena triangles below my eyes and I guess it caught his curiosity. It was funny because he asked where we had been and I assumed he didn't know what cosplay was so I explained it in simpler terms, like taking the long way around to make sure he gets the gist of it and then this man just looks at me and his eyes widen and he goes "do you mean that cosplay thing?" and I'm like say whaaaat how does this random dude know the word cosplay? XD He then goes off on a tangent about how he fucking loooooves Star Wars (bro literally goes like "I have ADHD I can't stop talking", bless his heart) and how he's always wanted to try to dress up but that he didn't know how to nor where and now he fears that he's too old and it would be improper of him to go to any conventions. I encouraged him to go to any free events first and check it out because age is really not a hindrance and that there's people of all ages who enjoy dressing up (even though you mostly see the young ones in social media and on the streets). He seemed genuinely interested and really inspired and ngl I wish that he gathers the courage to actually go check out a cosplay event in the future. This was hands down the most wholesome random drunk encounter I've ever had. Not to mention that of course we also talked about metal bands and what bands we had seen live and he had like all the same favorite bands that I do, it was absolutely crazy how much we bonded over such a short time. They were going to the 70 000 Tons of Metal cruise too, that's a bucket list thing for me.

This about sums up my Gingacon experience. I didn't mention every little thing because this summary would have gotten so long (hopefully Firith will mention what I didn't so you can read that report for a more complete picture of our trip!) but let's just say that this was an eventful journey with a lot of twists and turns but which turned out well in the end.
Gingacon left a very good first impression on me – I went in with low to no expectations and was positively surprised in almost all fields. It might be a small con with a specific target audience (the prominent Ginga focus might deter people who aren't familiar with the series) but it felt so genuine and passionate through and through. I also want to say that I find it really great from an inclusivity perspective that there are cons like Gingacon and Pörröcon etc that are extra welcoming towards fursuiters and furries because yeah, sadly I have seen that there is negative stigma and attitudes towards the furry community among the broader anime/manga community, especially online. I don't get the impression that such behavior would be common in Finland but yeah, I believe everyone deserves a safe space to express themselves and their interests freely – as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else and abides by the law, of course. We are all just geeks of different flavors doing geeky things that makes us happy.
All in all I'm really happy I attended Gingacon and I would definitely consider a revisit next year, especially if it's in Tampere again. I know Gingacon has existed since 2016 but I've always been either completely unaware or simply forgot of its existence after hearing about it, until now.
And finally, a big thanks to the main organizers for the flexibility and compassion in arranging my work hours to suit my current capabilities, it's always a blessing to come across such thoughtful and understanding people in higher positions. <3

And before I end this post, here's my lil' con loot:

The contents of the 'appreciation bag'!

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this report! Remember to follow the blog if you like my content and aren't already a reader!
See you again soon! ~ Shiro Samurai

Shiny Mightyena cosplay ears and tail WIP!

 Hello everyone!

Years ago I quickly threw together a shiny Mightyena gijinka (aka human version) which included making a pair of ears for ease of recognizing the character. I took a few progress photos already back then but never got around to publishing a WIP post of how I made them because I wasn't happy with the ears and intended to remake them at some point. Well, that "at some point" finally arrived because I plan to rewear this cosplay at Gingacon.

So if you've ever wondered how to make simple costuming furry accessories then here's my debut experiences lol. I'm sure there's plenty of other more professional ways to do this but I tackled the project in a hurry with a "random bullshit go" mentality, just winging it from my head. :'D

2018 unpublished WIP photo of the starting materials.

So I started this project and did the first version of these ears in 2018 with some yellow fabric, a scrap piece of fake leather, some threads in matching colors, safety pins and stuffing (not pictured). I drew up a pattern of the general shape of the ears and then transferred that design onto the yellow fabric and cut it out. Mightyena has that type of long pointy ears with the inner ear being almost the same size of the outer ear.

Inner ears also cut out.

I handstitched the inner ears to the front-facing half of the ears because I didn't want to have as many holes in the leather that a sewing machine would make. That and I liked the rugged look of the handsewing, I thought it was fitting for a hyena Pokémon. In case it's not obvious each ear has a yellow front and a back side and the leather part only goes on the front.

Completed handsewing.

After that I used a sewing machine to put together the front and back sides. I left the base of each ear open so that I could turn the right side back out again and fill the ears with stuffing.

It was at this point when I realized my mistake. I had not factored in seam allowances and the concept of volume, which meant that the inner ear part ended up way too big, covering almost all of the surface when filled. Another issue was that the filling made the ears heavy and so they would droop when attached to the wig with safety pins and just wouldn't stay upright. This was a look that worked for my even older Espeon gijinka (first set of ears I made) but it didn't work at all for Mightyena.

2018 version completed ears. Eww.

And here ends the 2018 mishaps and efforts and we jump back to the current year of 2024 when I decided that this shit needs an overhaul before I dare wear it out in public again lolol. 

Okay so after digging these wonky ears out of my wardrobe my first mission was to open up the base and remove all the stuffing. Once the ears were flat they were easier to handle and so I took a seam ripper in hand and started undoing the handsewn stitches that kept the inner ear in place – after all, one of the two big mistakes was that the inner ear was way too big. Once I freed the inner ears I measured and sketched out the amount I needed to remove on the backside of the fake leather (don't want visible marks!) and then I cut it off carefully. I shaved off like 1 cm from all sides except for the base.

First steps towards an improved appearance!

I had decided that for Gingacon I wanted to add a fluffy tail to my costume for more recognizability and to have it feel more complete and less like a closet cosplay lol. It still is a closet/recycling cosplay though. *screeches*
I bought some fur fabric from Eurokangas in Oulu, it's not a perfect color but it was like the only brown option that looked passable as canine fur and didn't make me think of a bear or moose. I would have ideally wanted a darker, more cholocate brown fur but I was really short on time and the options were very limited. It sucks that the fabric store in Kemi closed down and that the Eurokangas in Tornio also disappeared already years ago.

I worked on the ears and the tail simultaneously, swapping back and forth between the two depending on where I was and what equipment I had to use. The tail is a very simple creation; I just bought a roughly 35 cm piece of fur, the width of the fabric, and then I folded that in half and cut the other end into a tapering tip while leaving the folded, now upper half to be the base of the tail.

I was convinced the 80 needle would break but it didn't??

I've never sewn fur fabric before and especially not furry fur like this. It's quite difficult to keep the hairs in check and when I was cutting the end of the tail into a tip I had loose fur flying all over the place. xD Luckily my new rehabilitation place has a hobby room and there's a sewing machine there, albeit an old Husqvarna one. I was quite distrusting of the machine because there weren't anything but 80 strength needles and the fur I had was very thick – I was sure it would break or jam while I sewed the tail shut. Yet somehow the needle didn't break during the whole odyssean ordeal and I just sat there wondering if the sewing machine was secretly an overpowered Autobot on a mission to save my day or if I had somehow cheesed the law of unfortunate setbacks. GG needle, well played.

Tail edge sewn shut.

Sewing the tail took quite a lot longer than I thought it would because I spent so much extra time trying to keep the fur hairs away from the presser foot! I mean I had to constantly be there re-arranging the direction of the fluff and trying to move away as much stray hairs as possible to not have an excessive amount get stuck in the seam. It's an impossible mission to complete perfectly but I did what I could.

Turning the tail back out. It's so fluffy.

I left a relatively large gap up on one of the sides near the top so that I could easily turn the fur side back out and later fill it with stuffing to have it actually look fluffy and not like a hairy pancake.

I left the progress of the tail for a bit and jumped back into finishing the ears. For this I paid mom a visit because I needed some additional stuffing to fill the tail (the stuffing I removed from the ears was nowhere near enough) and I also wanted to brainstorm ideas for reattaching the faux leather parts onto the ears without having to undo all the seams first, to separate the front and back pieces, because that was a lot of extra work I didn't want to do and didn't really have the time left to do either. I mean now that the ears were already assembled I couldn't exactly handsew the inner ears back on because the stitches would show on the backside and that would look fugly.

Hello vliesofix my new friend!

Mom had recently ordered this material called vliesofix from Germany for her sewing/craft projects. It behaves similarly to interfacing fabric except that it has heat-activated glue on both sides with a peelable film on the other side.

So what I did was cut out a suitable piece and put the glue side down so that it would stick to the backside of the inner ears. My vliesofix piece was slightly too small to fit both ears but this was easy to solve by just using other scrap pieces to cover the missed spot; make sure not to have the edges overlapping because that might make peeling off the film more difficult.

Preparing the vliesofix.

I used an old towel to protect the ironing board from glue. You could of course just cut the vliesofix directly into the correct shape to minimize product waste and glue residue, but as I was already working with scrap pieces I didn't bother. I also made sure to protect the fake leather by folding over the towel on top, before ironing, so that the iron wouldn't touch them directly in case of damage (the iron was on a high heat setting). If you're working with delicate fabrics, or fabrics of which heat-resistance properties you are unsure about, you might want to sandwich them between another heat-tolerant fabric like cotton.
I gotta admit though that these photos were from my second try – my first try was a major oopsie because I accidentally put the glue side facing up (it's quite difficult to tell them apart on a quick glance) and when I pulled away the towel, to reveal my work, the ears were still there but the vliesofix had stuck to the towel instead and I had to tear it off. xD I has the dumb!

Successful attachment.

I cut tiny scrap pieces into the shape I needed to fill in that one corner that didn't fit into the block. After the first glue side was fully attached I trimmed off all the excess product and then peeled off the film to reveal the second glue side. This side I would then attach to the yellow part of the ear by ironing it again. I used the towel of course for extra security although it also meant that the vliesofix took a bit longer to fully stick. Despite my efforts it didn't fully attach itself (glue wore out or evaporated or something, I dunno) so I had to use some fabric glue on a few spots to finalize the attachment of the inner ears. For once in my life fabric glue actually seemed to work. I have so many bad experiences with fabric glue being absolutely worthless crap that just created a mess.

The last part involved using wire to get the ears to have some support so that they'd stay somewhat upright. I bought some cheap steel wire from Dollarstore and layered it like six or so times, after which I bent it to a roughly matching shape and twisted it to become more united and stronger. I used two wire frames like this per ear, except the second frame was half the length of the first one (so basically one curved and one straight piece).

Example of the wire shape before insertion.

After completing the wire frames I just inserted them into each ear and then I sewed the base of the ear shut and called them done. Done for now at least. Yes, I intentionally omitted the stuffing altogether for the remake although I did briefly consider other attachment methods than the safety pins. I mean, safety pins are an inexpensive and effortless way to attach something to a wig without it being semi-permanent, although it can be a bit cumbersome to set up as you need to make sure that the ears are on roughly the same height and position etc. I did consider buying a thin headband and attaching the ears to that for an easy wearable, but I saw no suitable ones in the stores I had time to check.

With the ears completed I could focus on the tail.
I stuffed it to my liking and then came the part that I kicked myself over – I had not paid any mind to how to attach the tail to my costume in advance. Or more like I had thought about options but I hadn't foreseen that yeah, it would be a lot easier to add belt loops or whatnot if you do it before sewing the tail shut on all sides except for that one gap. -_-
I decided to add elastic bands so that I could just thread through any sashes or belts to attach the tail. The hard part was sewing said elastics onto the backside of the base of the tail without losing my sanity along the way; all the measuring was just rough eyeballing and gut feeling because there was no way to really know where the heck any correct placements were because of constant shifting lol. Having one hand inside the tail (and locked to only one entrance direction) and one hand unable to properly keep things in place, due to how thick the fur was etc, made it really challenging to handsew the elastics in place. It would have helped had I kept two openings on each side of the tail because then I would have had more control to adjust once my hand with the needle went in. So yeah, the elastics aren't perfectly aligned but whatever, they do their purpose and as they'll always be against my back no one will really be staring at them.

The final task was to handsew the gap closed.

I finished the tail by handsewing that entry point closed (secure the stuffing!) and with that my Mightyena cosplay was upgraded ja minusta tuli virallisesti turri me thinks and a bit more complete than last time. I gotta say though that the handsewing was also done completely in the blind, the long fur completely hid my stitches upon doing them and I was impossible to even see where the folded edges waiting to be closed were, I had to go by touch only and hope that my needle poked through both layers on its way. Gotta say that these experiences make me appreciate and respect the fursuit makers even more than I already did, just handling the fabric itself requires so much extra patience lol.

Finished tail, it's honestly pretty stonks!

I would have wanted to try the costume on before Gingacon to see how it looks but I don't really have time for that anymore; I haven't even found the costume parts nor started packing yet and I'm leaving on Friday, send help. I just have to trust that they function as they should.
Oh well, I will try to get some cosplay photos soon so that I can put a link here that shows how these furry accessories look when worn!

Gingacon event summary will be up next, see you soon!
~ Shiro Samurai out.