Skecon 2018 – Je suis baguette

Hello geeks!

I'm back home from my last con for the year and it was Skecon, which I've been loyally attending since the start in 2012. The quality has declined over the years (2013-2015 being the best years, imo) but it's still a comfy little fun hang-with-friends con that I want to keep supporting. 

Since 2016 I've been a con worker and I continued in that line this year too, especially as there was a screaming lack of workers this year and I felt like I couldn't just watch and do nothing.

Let's get to the summary!

Skecon entrance.

Skecon was held on 2-4 November, the first weekend of the month, just like past years. It was in the campus area again and I personally think it's a pretty okay building and all but yeah, Folkparken was better. xD Mainly because of beautiful nearby photography spots for cosplayers.

The days before the con my Facebook feed was bombarded with Skecon and Skecon people desperately looking for more con workers. As I've been part of the work force since 2016 it was an easy choice and made even easier because I traveled alone this year and thus didn't have to plan around others. I'll admit that I'm kicking myself now afterwards that I didn't ask Sacchan's little brother Joni if he was interested – turned out I met him the day after the con, during school lunch, and he said that he was bored the whole weekend and would have gone with me in a flash if he had known. ;_; I can't deny that my experience was flattened from not having any company for a majority of the time – I didn't even run into any friends! D: I regret hard not remembering to ask Joni...

Friday 

I took the bus down to Skellefteå on Friday morning. I arrived 12:15 in Skellefteå and my team leader came to pick me up. Speaking of which, this year I worked in the "teknik" group, which I guess one could translate as technology – or more exactly, working at the video game room in particular. I'm not the most tech savvy guy out there but as it was video games I didn't feel too misplaced as I've been a gamer all my life. Why I ended up in this group was because it had the most urgent need for more workers.

Skecon 2018 ticket. Pretty stylish!

I got my con band and worker t-shirt (which, for some reason, only were available in L and XL) and then we plugged in all the game consoles, screens and such. Skecon officially opened 15:00 and the con felt very similar to the two last years in both atmosphere and where things were. My first working shift was to run from 23-03 so I had the whole day to explore the con!

Con worker t-shirt. Glad it was black this year as
light colors make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

One of the first things I did was to go get something to eat from the worker's green room. This was where the first issue popped up – there was no micro. Now this wouldn't have been a problem but it was a problem because all con workers got one warm meal a day, which was pre-cooked thai wok stored in a refrigerated counter. See the problem? No one wants to eat cold wok. ^^" I soon learned that Skecon had its own micro but that the Skecon organizers had forgotten it at home and it wasn't exactly close. So I was running back and forth and bothering the non-con cafeteria lady if they had a micro and I felt like she probably thought that I was annoying and so my anxiety kicked in hard and I just sat and waited for someone else to solve the micro mess. It took pretty long but we finally, somehow, got to borrow the cafeteria kitchen's micro (even though it seemed impossible when I asked) until the following morning. Skecon's own micro appeared on Saturday.

Hidden little green room on the second floor.

It's honestly no big deal but I had a bit of a "wut" reaction when I noticed that of all the wok foods probably little over half were vegetarian options. I was one of the first to eat a warm meal and from just eyeballing the food boxes it seemed like most were veggies and the lesser half were beef with maybe five chickens thrown in. Now I'm not picking on vegetarian/vegan foods or anything (I eat vegetarian options at school myself about once every week) but it felt a little disproportional as meat-eaters are still the general majority. :S Mad respects to those who can and choose to go green, I wish I could but meat is too good to give up completely lol.  If many workers had informed about special food requirements it makes sense though, can't know!
I'll admit that the veggies with noodles was the best wok box – the rice ones were too bland and tasteless (too much rice and not enough of the rest, noodles had some hotness to them). 

Major bonus points though for actually having proper cooked food and not just pan pizzas, instant noodles or some such! That's one step forward that I haven't experienced at another con yet. Just wish there would have been soy sauce, sweet chili sauce or something to add more taste and make the wok less dry.

Skecon entrance and info desk. (the info worker hid under the desk xD)

I don't remember in detail what I did before my first work shift started. I do know that I spent like 80% of my Skecon time (at the con building) in the video game room as it felt like it was so quiet everywhere else. Maybe it's just me having bad timing but whenever I went downstairs it was always really empty, just a few scattered congoers in some corner or such – even the merchandise hall was quiet the times I went there. It could be that whenever I was roaming the con then everyone else was participating in some programs or activities lol, who knows?

A part of the video game room.

Working at the video game room was fun and relaxing – game sounds everywhere and the occasional amusing rage guy. There were a lot of consoles for being a small con (I think there was about 10, ranging from Super Nintendo to PS4 and there were some that weren't plugged as we had more consoles than available screens) and there was something to play for everyone. It was highly amusing to watch this group of loud but hilarious guys swear by this one Hello Kitty Super Nintendo game (Japanese only), saying it was the best game in the room – it looked like some kind of cutesy Pong type of 2-player versus game and didn't seem like anything particular on first glance. But my lord, the amount of sudden rage and laughter, "FAN JAG GJORDE SJÄLVMÅL!!" and screams that this game generated was probably the best part of the con. xD

Upstairs crafting area before the video game "room".

Long paper roll that anyone could doodle on. Con memories.

As I had a late shift I of course got really tired halfway through, mainly because I've been sleep-deprived for quite some time now. I forced myself to play some Monster Hunter World (on a new save file) during the quiet moments to not accidentally fall asleep. Do you know that feeling when you're playing on autopilot and momentarily dozing off at the same time and then catch yourself falling asleep and so you twitch back to life, continue playing for a few mins until you drift away again and so on? :'D That was me the last 2 hours. 

The clock eventually struck 03:00 and I was like ohmyglerb I'm gonna fall asleep standing. I did not expect that I'd be so tired as I'm often a night person. Thankfully I got a ride to the sleeping accommodation.

Entrance to the sleeping accommodation. (a school building)

I had previously left my luggage there and reserved a spot near the sockets, of course. So it was easy to just sneak in and go to bed. Oh and speaking of which, when I packed for the con at home I had some trouble figuring out what I could be bothered to drag with me to sleep on; I felt like a matress was way too cumbersome because of its size (and my air matress has a hole) and so I looked around my living room and had a genius moment – why not take the bean bag? :'D It's super lightweight, takes little space (as it's so worn and thus squishy) and I can shape it around my body so it's comfy to lie on. Best idea ever.

My ghetto bean bag setup... which was awesome, btw.

I'm never gonna bother with matresses again. xD This was so fucking convenient and surprisingly comfortable, haha. And yeah, I totally slept with a bathrobe on top of my pyjamas as it's typically cold to sleep in a classroom during winter time. I'm glad I brought it with me... and wool socks. But I forgot my fucking toothbrush and toothpaste, classic.

Saturday

I fell asleep fast and it was horrible to try to get up when my alarm rang. I had no morning shift, thankfully, but I was the person responsible for holding the Pokémon Go Gengar day event and so I had to wake up early-ish anyway. Now I'm an active PoGo player and as the 3-hour Gengar event happened to be on Skecon's Saturday I didn't want to miss it. But of course it's hard to play such an event in a city that you're not super familiar with and, most of all, don't have any connection to the local player community. So yeah, my one chance to get any Gengar raids done was to gather a PoGo raid group from Skecon and then walk around centrum and hope we bump into others along the way.

I was the organizer for an activity, woop de doop. :D

I expected more people to show up but it was literally just me and two others. I wasn't sure if we'd even be enough but luckily we got one more player once we headed to the sleeping accommodation (first gym there). It was a lot of fun to raid and even though we were short on people at the end, and thus couldn't raid the last hour, I'd still consider it a success! Too bad for us we realized about halfway that we had started from the "wrong direction", which meant that once we reached centrum we were often walking to the opposite direction of the random players that we bumped into, which made getting enough people for the later raids hard as everyone we met had already done the gyms that we were heading for. :/ Ended up helping an elderly couple and some young kids on our last Gengars as they had problems beating it – the couple was so cute as they said that they were actually playing for their kids who couldn't play themselves. #parentinggoals

The campus had several geeky/artsy statues all over the place. Pretty sure
it's part of the building and not Skecon but still... that Mr Bean. :D

Once the Gengar day was done me and the guy who stayed the whole time (the other person left after using up all free passes) headed back to the con building. I think this was when I took the majority of the photos that you see on this summary as it was light outside and yeah, pretty much my only free time to get good photos. ^^" Oh and yeah, I'm pretty sure that I missed the budo display because it was during the Gengar hours. *sadface*

Skecon view towards the cafeteria. This is what you saw once you
had passed the glass corridor "Gabriels gränd".

Being alone at the con without my travel company or any friends felt a bit like something was missing. :( I still had my fun times but yeah, something just wasn't there and I never really got that con feeling that you get when you share experiences with people you care about. Now I was alone during Närcon this year as well but Närcon is infinitely bigger than Skecon so it's a lot easier to pass time there and they are very different in terms of atmosphere. I know for sure that next year I don't want to go alone because Skecon primarily feels like a hang-with-friends type of con and without friends I mostly just aimlessly wandered around on my free time, whenever I wasn't entertaining myself playing video games, that is.

Entrance to the Dealer's Hall.

I assume people wonder by now what the feck is up with the title of this summary so I'll clear that one up for you now – you see, in the green room we had the thai woks and.. a small mountain of freshly baked baguettes. You also need to know that I've played MH4U for thousands of hours and French players using the Insect Glaive are the most infamous player type in the game, mainly for having a rumor/stereotype of being bad at playing and mounting the monster (which is the Glaive's specialty), in particular. When you play online you have pre-set text messages that inform the others in your hunting party during the quest if you do specific actions and yeah, the default text for French players for mounting is "Je suis monté!" – and it's like the biggest, most atrocious meme in the whole game. No one takes it seriously. There's a well-known joke drawing circulating on the internet of a French hunter with the moustache, beret on his head and the Insect Glaive shaped like a baguette stick instead of blades and I just can't. xD Baguettes are ruined for me because of this meme connection, lmao. I've never eaten so many baguettes in 3 days, tbh. I love baguettes so I don't mind. :DD

The Dealer's Hall was located in the same place as previous years, behind the staircase up to the second floor. It's a bit hidden if you ask me but I can't think of many other options where you could place the vendors. Most vendors I'm pretty sure were the same ones from previous years and even same placement on the items so yeah, as soon as I entered it felt like I had already seen everything, lol.

Second-hand video games.

Fantasy statues and stuff. Pretty neat.

Obligatory pocky and ramune booth.

Artist's Alley was almost non-existent and even more hidden than the merchandise sellers. I feel sorry for the artists as I honestly wouldn't even had noticed Vera Kroese's booth if I hadn't turned around as it was placed on the opposite side of the vendors and in such an awkward angle that it was pretty easy to miss.

VerasArtsyStuffs table with perler art.

I ended up killing some time chatting with Vera and I'm glad that I did. She was super friendly and even did a custom perler magnet to me of Suicune's box sprite from the Pokémon games! Sadly I heard from her that she won't return to Skecon as she said that it's not worth it because the table price was way too expensive (400 SEK) considering how hard it was to make sales because of the bad position and thus lack of visitors – she would have been on minus if she hadn't had one customer doing a big order. She barely made up for the table's cost and said that she sold a lot better at Nordsken, which had Artist's Alley tables for the same price and a lot more buyers. I recommended her to check out Närcon and also helped place another custom Pokémon order for my childhood friend.
I can't deny that Artist's Alley had a really bad placement (especially when compared to the steep price of a table) and together we thought that it would have been a lot better if they had been placed in the corridor where a lot of people passed by, especially as there were only two AA tables so they would easily have fit. Vera said that most people just went to the Dealer's Hall once or twice and if they didn't buy anything that time then you were sure they wouldn't return.

Upstairs. Legend's shop and board games area visible.

Legend mainly sold TCG and board game/DnD related stuff...

... and some occasional Pokémon and Nintendo merch.

What was previously the craft corner was now Legend's board games area. I heard from the vendor that board games were really popular this year! There was also some kind of "learn to play Pokémon TCG" activity and I suspect it was held here as well as I saw some people playing cards on one of the tables. This area was basically the geek corner and made me regret a little not bringing my own cards with me, haha.

TCG and board games area. Geeks galore.

Board games were popular this year!

My Saturday work shift was from 16:00 to 20:00. What you need to know is that the Super Smash Bros. (Wii U) tournament was to start on 19:00 and because me and another guy had our shifts overlap on this hour we had to run the competition. Now this sudden responsibility that I had not planned around made me shit a paralyzed brick or three, mainly because I'm horrible at leading any kind of activity on which you need to talk to an audience and appear as if you know what you're doing. xD Also, our team leader basically just told us that "it's your tournament because it's on your work hours so do with it as you like", which kinda just made me panic more as I'm not invested into tournament play rules and had to speed-read on the SSB wiki to have some kind of idea what rules were common etc. Now I'm thankfully familiar with the SSB series (played a lot of SSBM back in the good old days) so it wasn't completely unknown territory to me but yeah, I had massive anxiety as I felt like I couldn't run such a popular tournament properly with all the tension, commentary and applauses that make it entertaining for the audience. ;_;
My facial memory is horrible too so I had to awkwardly ask after each fight who played what character as I couldn't see which competitor picked which character from where I was standing. Thankfully I think that I managed to make my social awkwardness somehow turn into a running joke and it was thus kinda saved from being a hot mess. x) It was entertaining to watch the tournament though and I hope that the participants enjoyed themselves too. Just please don't put me as the main holder on like the most popular tournament next time as I think I mentally shat myself and felt like I didn't do it justice; I struggled hard to get anything out of my mouth aside from voicing the next fighters and it was mightly embarrassing in my head. ^^"

Super Smash tournament final rounds. (the guy in yellow won 1st place)

One thing that I noticed early on was that there seemed to be no guest of honor. Skecon has been a forerunner on its earlier years (first real Vocaloid concert in Sweden and Akeboshi mainly) and now has silently dropped off the charts and turned into this humble and comfy chill con in Västerbotten. My wild guess is budget issues and while a lack of a notable guest doesn't affect me all that much I think it might explain why I get the impression that Skecon is slowly getting smaller – you need to do game-changing stuff and bring in the big names to pull in new visitors and keep some of the old ones who "grow bored".
Now I did hear from an organizer that on an earlier year it was a bit of a "disappointment" as more people were interested in the con's usual activities than going to see Dunderpatrullen that were a previous guest of honor. Now I'm not blaming Skecon at all, just thinking out loud, but there was a period, and still is, when Dunderpatrullen was the guest of several cons (Närcon and Nerdcon comes to mind) and thus it had probably already lost some of its exclusivity impact and started tasting wood to some. Like I don't even personally care about any Youtube celebrities but even I've felt the "Dunderpatrullen, again?" lately. :S I kinda hope that Skecon would bring Akeboshi back again, that was amazing and then he could resign the official Skecon micro as the signature is starting to wear off. xD

There was an origami workshop held by two Japanese ladies. Probably
the closest to a guest of honor you could get this year.

Origami table. You could also do your own candy sushi here.

On Saturday night I was sure that I wanted to go sleep early, to catch up on my missed sleep hours – and I also had my last work shift 7:00 on Sunday so yeah, early morning ahead. I think the clock was about nine something when I started walking towards the sleeping accommodation, expecting there to be a guy there who would open the door for me as I had seen on the mornings. But there was none.
I spent some time beating the nearby gym in PoGo before I eventually realized that no one would come and so I messaged my team leader about the locked sleeping accommodation. I found it hella weird that it was locked during what would be a reasonable and kinda normal sleeping time for many, especially those con workers with early morning shifts like me. Not gonna lie, I was starting to get annoyed as this was already a problem last year and it had obviously not been fixed.
Soon enough my team leader called back and explained the situation – seemingly there was some kind of issue that if Securitas would happen to inspect the building (it was a school) while there was someone inside, without Skecon's own security guard being there too, then Skecon would get in trouble. The reason it was like this was because of the aforementioned massive lack of work force for the con and thus there was no way to list people as "sovsalsvakter" (sleeping accommodation guards) as they were needed in other fields. Now this made sense and my team leader even agreed that it was something that should be fixed next year as, at the very least, con workers should have the right to go to sleep whenever they needed because of work shifts. Preferably congoers too as not everyone wants or even can stay up until the option to go to sleep with the "sovsalståg" (lit. sleeping hall train, basically a guided walk to the place with a keyholder) started on 23:00. I feel like that's a really late time.

After waiting outside for almost one hour in total (since I went out, that is) I finally got inside and could go sleep.

Sunday

I woke up around six on the morning. Everyone else in the con worker room were sleeping. I tried to be as quiet as possible and figured that I'd just leave my stuff and pick them up after the con as I didn't want to make noise.
My last shift was from 7:00 to 11:00 and it was a slow day. I think that a majority of all visitors didn't even return for the last day as downstairs seemed really dead too when I took a walk around. It was so quiet that the video game room barely had any visitors at all and so I just peeked when this other worker watched the Castlevania animated series and I played some SSB and PoGo to pass time. I need to check out the Castlevania series too as it seemed really cool!
Before long Skecon had officially ended and so we started to put all stuff back to how it was before the con, moving chairs and tables and so on.
My buss left from Skellefteå on 15:20 and I got a ride there from some other Skecon worker, whom I helped put the classrooms in the sleeping accommodation back in order.

~~~~~

 And that's about it regarding Skecon this year. I hope that my summary doesn't sound overly negative as that's totally not intended. x) Skecon is this slow-paced small con that has a generous selection of activities for its size (karaoke, fun games, craft rooms and workshops, video game tournaments etc) and it's really beginner-friendly. There are hiccups and things to be improved but overall it's a solid con, albeit the tickets are a bit too expensive on 300 SEK imo. I enjoy myself the most being a part of the work force and I'll continue supporting Skecon in the future, especially as the people behind Skecon are what makes the con go from average to great. There is this cozy feeling of unity and there's no pressure or drama and that's so relaxing in itself; this small bubble of acceptance and familiarity that I've built up over the years. The organizers genuinely care and try their best to make it work too, despite limits that are out of their control – like the lack of workers this time.

Psst, Skecon, if you read this: give me a laptop, wifi and sweets to munch on and I'll easily take the task of sitting and letting people into the sleeping dorms next year. ;) I've literally heard previous workers call it torture but just having entertainment and not too many hours at a time would fix the "torture aspect" in a heartbeat!

Thanks Skecon for having me and thanks to you for reading! ♥

~ Shiro Samurai out.

Skecon 2017 – I don't even know anymore

Hello hello ~

I've returned home from my trip to my sixth Skecon and I thought that I'd write my summary of it as soon as possible so that it would be done and out of the way because I'm stressed as fuck about other things. ^^" Skecon was held on 3-5 November 2017 in Skellefteå's Campus. It's basically a school and the same con building as last year so yeah, for more photos of the location (because this year I didn't take many) just check out my summary from last year.

Now let's get on with the summary ~ 

Skecon entrance.

Okay so, as I mentioned on my plans post we had some major issues with getting a driver for the con trip and, in the end, neither Sacchan nor her little brother Joni could come. The problem was eventually solved by my boss Carina, who decided to help us out and drive our asses to Skellefteå and then immediately drive back home after dropping us off. I understand she wanted to make it comfortable for her daughters whom I had to watch over during the con #consenpai xD because this was their first anime convention, more or less – Sabine had been to the one-day Chibicon but Skecon was the first for Therese, the older one of the two. They're both good friends to me and yes, they were my con company for this year's Skecon. I knew it wouldn't be painfree but overall I think we managed well, despite the occasional drama that occurred because of Sabine's temperament and fears/anxiety. But I'm getting ahead of things so I'll get back to that later, although I'll leave out some of the details because I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. ^^"

Friday

Not gonna lie, this whole con trip started awkwardly. The day before we all had agreed that we'd need to be on the road approximately 07:30-08:00 at the latest (or that's what I remember) and so I set my alarm clock up. I went to bed sort of late because I was up fretting over if I had packed everything and I intentionally left some of the packing for the morning as I couldn't take them during the night.
One of my alarms rang really early (like, 5 or something) and that was so that I'd get up to put on the dish washer and then go back to sleep, which I did.
I had calculated that I'd need about one hour to get ready and so my alarm was for like 06:30 or something like that but yeah, what I actually woke up to was someone ringing my doorbell at like 06:15, if I recall right. I thought at first that it was like a prank ringing or something so I went to check through the door hole and then I saw my boss, with her recognizable blue jacket, and I was like "oh shit kill me". xD I was still in pyjama and everything and with my hair in like Super Saiyan mode, it was embarrassing as fuck. She asked me if I wanted to go see my cat before leaving (he would stay the con weekend at her place) but I was like "nah it's okay" because I realized everyone were ready already (I saw the car outside waiting...) and I was like ffffffuuuuuucccck. :::DDD So yeah, stress deluxe and I finished my packing, speedboosted my yoghurt and pissed off towards Skellefteå.

The car trip down went fine, no issues. We had a few breaks and everyone except me ate at Skellefteå's Max; I just didn't want to eat hamburgers like 10:30 in the morning or something like that. xD Needless to say we were at Skellefteå really early and, at first, we were worried that the con wouldn't even be open and we'd have to sit with our hideous amount of luggage in the bus station and then walk to the campus area from there, once the con opened. Luckily, because I was a con worker, I had access to this one Facebook chat and asked there if we could get inside and got a positive reply so yeah, after the burgers we headed straight for the campus.
Once we got there I went inside to look for any Skecon workers but only saw like ordinary students and middle-aged people eating at the restaurant. I got worried but it turned out that all the other con workers were upstairs. I then went back to the car and we took all our stuff out, bid Carina farewell and went inside. My boss is awesome, deal with it. ;)

Skecon poster.

Because we had so much time to spare (I only needed to be there at 15:00, when the con started) me, Sabine and Therese went out to town to scout around and play some Pokémon Go after we had dumped our luggage in relative safety. We raided an Exeggutor (they're both new PoGo players and I'm helping them learn how to play) and went to check the town square for restaurants in advance. I must admit that I thought that something was really off when I saw this one really empty-looking area that I was sure was where the buses used to be – it dawned on me much later that the bus station had indeed been moved to a new place and that's why the old place looked so weirdly familiar.

Once back at the con more con workers had showed up and I went to meet with my team leader for the weekend. This year I would work with the cleaning patrol when last year I was at the entrance – I just wanted to try something different! I met her and we went upstairs to pick up my worker gear, namely a badge and a t-shirt. I also helped to tape up the big paper roll thingy on the wall so that people could draw on it.

Con workers got this badge to wear around their neck...

... and a worker t-shirt. :D

My team leader showed me around and where to find the cleaning supplies etc and after that the con officially opened. I went back to the girls and told them how to get their paper ticket exchanged for con tickets and then I pretty much had to leave them on their own as my first work shift was from start to 20:00. Of course I had plenty of opportunities to check up on them regularly and answer any questions because, as a cleaner, I could freely walk around the whole con while looking for trash on the floor, empty bottles lying around etc. The con was generally clean and the attendants picked up their own shit and so I didn't always have anything to do, but I did my rounds and checked out all the toilets every now and then. I found a bag of energy drinks and candy that someone had forgot in one of the toilets and left it to the lost and found counter at the info desk. I hope that people noticed the lost and found and went there if they had lost something because yeah, stuff always disappears at cons. I lost my old camera at a big con many years ago and someone found it and left it to the lost and found and I just... I'm still amazed that they didn't steal it.

Entrance view. Information desk is the red table in the center
of the image.

View from the entrance past the info desk. Fun fact: those two dresses (yellow
and green) are made completely out of paper!

Benefits of being a con worker was of course that I got free entrance (350 SEK a weekend ticket would otherwise cost), free sleeping accommodation if needed (50 SEK) and free food once per day. Of course you can't really expect much from free food (at least not in nutritional value) but it's better than nothing and I'm a poorfag currently so anything goes, lol.

The con band was the cutest one for Skecon so far!

Skecon's merchandise has never been anything out of the ordinary (and I'm wary of buying anything because the risk of counterfeit goods is high at cons) and, although this year there was some new moderately interesting stuff for sale, I went home empty-handed. I must admit that the doormats were quite interesting but there was none from a fandom that I'm really into so I couldn't really pick one that I knew I really wanted. I was also a bit disappointed that most of the t-shirts with cool prints were girlie models (Cupcake Cult) and thus out of the questions because yeah, as a guy it would just be uncomfortable and sizing would be off. There was this one Cupcake Cult shirt with a steampunk print of Link from The Legend of Zelda but yeah, even though it was an XL girlie model it looked too small for me – comparable to a (smaller) unisex M at most. And maybe it's just me being cheap but 250 SEK for a t-shirt kinda stings, to be honest.

Merchandise sellers, seen from the entrance to the hall.

Of course there was the candy and drink table!

Geeky embroidered towels was something new for me.

The obligatory "cool kid" caps. I've kinda been going
back and forth with if I want one or not for years. xD
I guess I keep looking for the perfect design...?

Artist's Alley was basically just this one table. I was
hoping for more but oh well.

Initially Sabine was really disappointed with the merchandise (I can understand her though, she's really picky with what series she likes and the variety was rather poor) and threw a hissy fit because she was looking forward to buying merch the most. She's literally 10 years younger than me and so it was a bit hard (and awkward, because I'm an awkward potato) to keep her in control because she is really stubborn and has quite brutal mood swings. She went outside to sit alone in the cold for at least one hour and I felt horrible because I couldn't make her happy because yeah, I don't have control over what merchandise is available. :'( I know it means a lot to her because she was looking forward to buying stuff from her favorite series and she seems to be the person who gets really happy spending money on things she wants/likes, basically. She found stuff she wanted on Saturday though, hence why I wrote initially.

I felt so bad that me and Therese started thinking of ways to get her happy again – I really didn't want her to get a bad memory from something that is meant to be fun. We came to the conclusion that getting food from town could be a decent option because at least a part of her anger could come from being hungry since yeah, it was more than five hours ago since we last ate something. Also, by going to centrum for a while we could temporarily avoid the sensitive topic of Skecon itself.
I told Therese that I knew of a really good Chinese restaurant and asked her to relay the message to Sabine (they're sisters) outside. Therese came back and told me that it worked and then I went to find my team leader to plead her for some time off so that I could go to the restaurant with them. I explained the situation briefly and she was super kind and said that of course she will let me go. ;A; I then went out and told Sabine about the restaurant myself and yeah, she looked really pissed and sad. But seemingly there had been a communication error and Therese had said that I knew of a sushi place and when I corrected and said that it was a Chinese restaurant Sabine promptly continued sulking and sat down again. Shit. I felt like I needed to come up with something quick and googled for sushi restaurants in Skellefteå – thank God I found two! I picked the one with better ratings and opened Google Maps and thankfully it wasn't far away. And then we moved out.

We found the restaurant after a bit of walking (it was close to Max) and went inside. My first impression was "oh this is gonna be expensive" since it looked to be a fancier place. Luckily the menu seemed quite normal in the price range for a sushi restaurant in Sweden and the girls decided to share a 12 pieces mixed plate. The sushi looked really good and was laid out in a super fancy way on a big leaf and there was a detailed figure cut out in cucumber and everything. The sushi did its trick and Sabine was back in a good mood and goofed around with Therese in the restaurant while I just sat there and felt embarrassed because the restaurant was so tip-top and they were very loud, lol.

Limited Skecon 2017 merchandise for sale at the info desk.

We got back to Skecon and I returned to do the remainder of my working time. Once my working shift was over I went upstairs to the video game room and played some Mario Kart 64 (I had never played it before and oh lord I was so bad!) and then I think we headed for the sleeping accommodation as the tiredness kicked in. We didn't really know where it was (and I didn't remember because I got lost last year) and so we asked in the info before leaving and one of the workers agreed on showing us the way there. We had to carry all our luggage there and it was a pain in the ass, not gonna lie. My shoulders were screaming... and then Sabine started screaming because she kept accidentally dropping her stuff and because me and the guide walked first we didn't notice they were falling behind. Oops, sorry. ^^" I was walking semi-fast because I just wanted to get there before my shoulder would rip off or something...
We waited for them to catch up and eventually got close to the sleeping accommodation, which was another school. Sabine saw some random school boys running in the gymnastic hall (sports training practice I guess) and totally flipped her shit and started screaming that she refused to go in there and so on. I knew she would be unhappy but I wasn't expecting this caliber of rage. xD Carina had implied that Sabine has a really hard time with being near other people and a fear of strangers stealing stuff etc and, while I can relate to it being uncomfortable and undesirable, I've just learnt to deal with it because sleeping halls at cons are the cheapest option and most young people don't have the money to pay for hotels, me included. But yeah, I must admit that at this point I might have lost my patience because I was really mentally tired from the day and just wanted to sleep. I still felt bad because I can totally understand her fears (I'm the same but just not so... extreme) and personally I avoid sleeping accommodations as far as possible. Honestly, Skecon is to this day the only con where I feel comfortable picking this option because it's small.

The class room that we slept in. My "mattress" is the orange
couch cushion to the left.

As luck in misfortune would have it we were very early (at least compared to others) at the sleeping place and actually ended up having like 3 hours of alone time before others started coming to sleep past midnight. This was a good thing because me and Therese had time to calm our third member down and we lied down and started sharing funny and embarrassing childhood memories and stuff like that to get our thoughts somewhere else. We all ended up laughing hard and although Sabine still made sure that we knew that she was still angry (not at us, of course) one could tell she had calmed down from the previous tantrums because yeah, earlier she was threatening to take the first morning bus back home and was crying – it was horrible to watch because one big reason we went to Skecon (and Chibicon) was to help her socialize and work on her insecurities while feeling included in this new community. She's a really sweet and funny girl when she's happy but God have mercy when she's not. xD

Saturday

Man it was cold to sleep the night. I woke up several times because my feet were cold and yeah, I totally forgot to take my own wool socks even after I told Therese to take some with her. >_> Dumb-dumb.
When I eventually got up I noticed that Sabine was already up, playing with her phone. I assumed she had a hard time sleeping – I mean, it's not really comfortable to sleep on the floor among strangers. We woke up Therese and put on our clothes and left for the con – I took with me my gray bag because I had my cosplay in it. Sabine seemed okay-ish and we agreed on going to town first to buy some breakfast before going to the con.
At the town we did a nearby Bayleef raid (this was literally the day before the raid bosses changed) and then walked to Lidl to get something to eat. We ate our breakfast outside while sitting on the stairs to another building because there were no benches nearby. Some random man was playing on his accordion outside Lidl and provided some living music while we ate, it was pleasant.
After we were done eating the girls wanted to go check some clothes in town and so we parted ways because I headed to the other side of centrum to grab some of the remaining gym badges on PoGo and then went back to Skecon.

Skecon's cafeteria area.

The video game room upstairs.

The drawing/crafting room.

Some of the artwork. I love the Waluigi one. x)

I don't wanna be that person but I wondered how come the paper was brown this year and not white like on all previous years? I understand and respect it if it was for the sake of being more environmental-friendly but otherwise it just came off as really cheap and seemed to be a hint of a poor budget this year. Brown paper just isn't as inviting to draw on and that was really noticeable on the roll that I helped to attach to the wall near the stairs leading upstairs to the gaming and drawing rooms; last year it was all full but this year it screamed of its emptiness – even on late Saturday night it was more than half empty, like what the actual fuck? It might just be me overthinking things but the fact that on the Skecon bingo thingy one of the tasks was to draw on the stairs paper and yeah, it just made me think that perhaps it was a desperate attempt from the con's side to get people to draw "con memories" on it because they noticed it was turning into a flop and tried to salvage it? I don't know but at least the (also brown) papers taped to the tables in the drawing room were used more actively...

If I remember right the karaoke was absent last year but
this year they made sure to make people aware of it.

On Saturday my working shift had been moved to start (and thus also end) one hour later, which meant that I started work at 17:00 and ran until 22:00. I think I was back at the con from the breakfast trip somewhere around lunch time or something and just chilled while waiting to cool down before I would go and change into cosplay.

Skecon activity schedules.

Skecon activity schedules.

I took my gray bag and occupied one of the roomier toilets near the cloakroom. I was fighting with my mind trying to decide on if I really felt like cosplaying or not and, for a while it looked like I'd actually just say fuck it and stay casual because yeah, I was still mentally tired from all the drama yesterday and putting on cosplay felt like a huge chore. But then I started thinking that, if I didn't cosplay now, I'd get no other chance during the con and then I would have carried that heavy-ass bag around the whole weekend for nothing... and then I got angry and cosplayed anyway, lol.

I must admit that it felt a bit weird to put on a cosplay that I last wore in 2014 and that I made in late 2009, at least the shihakusho kimono tops. x) I was really scared of messing up the eye makeup because my original plan was to do a makeup test before the con at home, but I didn't have time for that and then I thought that I'd do it on Friday night before going to sleep but yeah, then I lazied out because I was too tired after the day. So yeah, no test-runs and the makeup that I originally did for Gin when I wore him during 2012 is way below my current standards (I didn't even use liquid eyeliner back then!) and I didn't want to do it the same way so well, now that I was stuck here with only this cosplay I had to do an improvisation makeup and hope for the best.

Just photo proof that I actually wore Gin.

It wasn't too bad but I couldn't be bothered to make it more fancy since the clock was ticking and I only had time to cosplay for about 4 hours before I had to change back into my workwear. The wig is not my original wig for Gin (it currently looks like a disaster) but it had to do for this time since I plan to buy a better wig for him in the future – I want a silvery violet wig for him. Also I didn't bother with the waraji because hardly anyone has ever asked me for a photo at all the Skecons I've been to (and any small cons in general) and my waraji needs to be upgraded anyway and besides, I'd rather take my winter shoes so that I can easily go out whenever needed and don't have to carry another pair of shoes around all day because that's annoying as fuck. :)

While I was changing into cosplay Therese texted me and asked where I was... and some random person knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay. xD I guess I stayed in there long enough for people to get worried since I do legit take forever getting changed into cosplay, lol.

Most of my free time in cosplay I spent upstairs in the drawing room with my company. We scribbled some shit and just hung around and then some people came and wanted selfies with me; I was shocked at first because I was completely unprepared and then I felt incredibly awkward and insecure, to the point that I wanted to decline the offer but accepted anyway since I didn't want to come of as rude or make them sad if they liked the character/my cosplay. The following hour I felt extremely uncomfortable for having obliged – I knew that I was so stiff from the surprise that I couldn't even do the eye thing properly (Gin almost never opens his eyes and always have these creepy squinted eyes) and yeah, not being able to control the camera myself makes me extremely anxious and self-conscious...

Once my free time was over I changed out of cosplay not gonna lie, it was relieving and put on my working shirt and went to patrol around. Before long I got really hungry and took a quick food break and went to fetch my... err... highly nutritious dinner from the fridge.

My dinner, day 2. (day 1 was the same but original Gorbys, lol)

If I understood things right Skecon had some deal with Norrmejerier (a dairy company) which meant that there was a shitlot of free milk for all the con workers to drink during the weekend, which was pretty cool because I'd rather have milk for food than something carbonated and sugary. Today I had to pick the veggie Gorbys since the original meat ones were gone (I managed to grab one on Friday) and I really can't stomach Billys pan pizza, which was the second option – unless you preferred cup noodles. I didn't care for the noodles since it's literally almost no nutrients whatsoever and I have a lot of (better brand) noodles at home, lolol. But yeah, there were pan pizzas in many different flavors but I didn't want to take any risks because I remember from the school days how I was like the only kid in school who refused to eat when it was "pizza day" because it was Billys – for everyone else it was like the best school food ever. There's just something with the consistency that makes me gag and I just can't because it's so greasy it's basically swimming in its own fat – so yeah, I snagged the Gorbys because at least that goes down for me.

While I was eating this one guy walked past with milk cartons in his hands. He suddenly stopped and asked me if I wanted milk. I was like "sure" and he just casually handed one bottle over (same as on the photo above) and continued his life. I didn't think so much more about it, except that now I had two milks for my dinner rather than one. xD

Oh and another little thing I feel like mentioning: on Friday I was surprised when I went to get my food and there was no plate to put it on and nothing to eat it with. I thought it was weird but just ate the thing directly out of the bag anyway. I later asked other workers about it and they said the same thing and that Skecon probably just forgot to buy in one-use plates, forks and knives. It's a small thing but it still left a kind of image of carelessness. On the second day the issue was fixed but by this time I already got used to the "eat it out of the bag like a savage" and so I didn't bother.

Video gaming room at night. Best time to play after a long day!

Stinkin' cute mini SNES! >w<

Once my working shift was over I went to check up on the girls and both wanted to go sleep already, I told them that they don't have to wait for me if they're really tired and remember the way there. I went upstairs to play something for a few minutes after; I found that the Gamecube was free so I played some Melee before I eventually got bored because no one came to play with me.

(warning: prepare for a rant ahead) 

I was pretty tired by now and I figured why not go sleep because I had a semi-early shift on Sunday and it would be tough to carry all the stuff back to Skecon and then around town to get to the bus station after the con. So yeah, I was just about to go head out myself when Therese texted me and said that she can't find the keys to get inside the sleeping accommodation. I told her to look at the metal platform stairs thingy next to the door because that's where the keys were hanging last night and we had been instructed to look for them there if we needed to get inside. But after repeated messages from Therese saying she can't find them I started to feel weird about the whole thing and went to ask the info desk about it – I said that I had some friends outside who can't find the keys and then they dropped the bomb: the keys are not there anymore.
Turns out that they had decided to change the system so that, instead of leaving the keys in a hidden spot so that visitors can go sleep when they wanted, now everyone had to wait for specific "sovsalståg" (lit. sleeping hall trains), which meant that there was a leader with the keys who'd walk there with everyone wanting to go sleep and open up for them. In theory it sounds organized and good but in reality it was a mess. I understand not wanting to leave the keys for hours outside because anyone who knew where to look could just steal them but yeah, the change was poorly informed and implemented (at least by the time I needed it, dunno how it worked on previous hours). I literally didn't know about it before I asked the info. It wasn't written on any obvious place (like the noteboard thingy near the info desk or on the big screen) and only a hand-written A4 paper was stuck on one side of the entrance doors and it was, truth be told, easy to miss. So yeah, I was told that the next organized walk there would be at eleven and so I thought "okay" and took my stuff and sat down near the info desk and waited.
The clock strikes eleven.
The clock goes past eleven.
The clock is five minutes past and no sign of anything happening.

Every minute past eleven I'm getting bombarded by Therese's messages asking if we have started walking yet, to which I reply negative. I'm starting to feel uneasy thinking of how pissed Sabine must be and how cold they both must be by now since they've been standing outside for at least 40 minutes.
I don't see the leader with the keys anywhere – I don't even know who it's supposed to be. I see a few people gathering, one of them being my workmate from the cleaning patrol. I ask the info again about the leaving time and now I'm suddenly told that the train won't leave until the rave has ended because it's supposed to be co-arranged. At this point I'm getting moderately annoyed because the rave should have ended already but it's going overtime meanwhile my friends are freezing and probably unable to walk back because of pains/tiredness...
I start talking with my workmate about this and after a while a woman appears and says that she's the leader. I perceived her as quite annoyed because she was saying something that she had just been there and now she had to go again, borderline guilt-tripping my friends for choosing to stay outside (it's not directly next to the campus and Sabine has been complaining about shafing pains while walking since Friday) and for not noticing the sign. It sounded like she barely had any free time and had to walk that same trip back and forth constantly and, even worse, it seemed like she was the only one who had to do it...?
People around me soon enough start talking about how they had sleeping accommodation workers/watchers on previous years and how it was inhuman to keep them stuck in long shifts there because they got bored to death and thus they scrapped it this year. Other workers joined in and soon enough there was a loud quarrel about whether or not having workers at the sleeping accommodation was good or not because this topic clearly divided people. I was afraid that people would actually start fighting over it but it was summed up with a "we sure have a lot of improvements to do for next year" – so fucking true because this is embarrassing.
Some ideas about how to make it better for sleeping accommodation workers was tossed around, like having all con workers (cleaners, technicians, info, entrance) do 1 hour of obligatory sitting there but personally I think that getting more workers in general for that task and give them like 2-hour shifts and then at least 4 hours of free time between their next shift would perhaps work to get rid of the boredom of sitting many hours in succession. I know that a friend of mine worked as a sleeping accommodation worker last year and he didn't seem unhappy with it but, at the same time, I heard another guy complain how it was torture (dunno what year) when they had to sit 8 hours there. But whatever the case I agree that there should be workers there because otherwise you take away from every attendant the freedom of going to sleep whenever they want to and not be dependent on someone else – and that's a big deal. Especially considering how shitty the whole organized tours were like "yeah one leaves at eleven" and the later it got past the planned time the more it felt like they probably just pulled it out of the hat and it wasn't scheduled or pre-planned at all...

The clock was like 20 minutes past eleven, the rave had ended and no other congoers had still shown up for the walk. The person with the keys obviously got sick of waiting because no one showed up (I assume the ravers weren't even informed, lol) and just told me in a rather bitchy tone that we'll leave. The whole walk to the sleeping accommodation was stiff and awkward as fuck because I felt like a burden to her because, to me, she seemed like she really didn't want to do this anymore. Before we got out of the campus area I saw Therese and Sabine standing near the gate to the campus – I was surprised to see them there. They were happy to see that something was finally happening but one could guess that they were not pleased, just like me, with this shamefully unorganized mess. Needless to say Sabine was furious and powerwalked back to the sleeping halls, way ahead of everyone else, and in my mind I was thinking that she's never gonna want to go to another Skecon again, especially because I praised it for being a good convention before we left home (at least it was legit good in 2013-2015) and then we get this clusterfuck that's even worse than last year, which was still okay but could have been better especially considering the ticket price.

Rave going on.

Rave without the bright rapidly flashing light that I caught on first photo.

I'm gonna backtrack a little and say that during my working shift I took a quick trip to the rave (to check for trash) and while it seemed like a fun little activity for party animals it's really not something for me. Besides, there was this really musky smell of sweat going on there that hit me like a brick wall when I entered and I think I might have done my life's fastest 180 degrees turn and scrambled out of there. Not trying to bash the rave but the smell was just... eww. x)

So yeah, once we got inside the sleeping halls I explained the situation and why it took so long for Therese and then we went to bed. I don't think anyone was particularly happy at this point, I know that I was ashamed, tired and just astounded by how badly organized the whole sleeping issue was. Like holy hell.

Pssst, I'm kinda sad I missed the martial arts display, it's been a tradition of mine to participate in it.

Sunday

Okay, Sunday. Soon I can get home.
We woke up at like 08:30 or something, packed our stuff and headed out. My working shift started 10:00 and that's pretty much what I prepped for as soon as I got to the con. We ran into some money issues because the girls were out of cash and had no money for breakfast, which was a problem. I still went out to do my rounds and ended up finding a half-full big carton of juice which I brought back to them – better than nothing, I thought. Soon enough I got hungry myself and went to eat my third and final Gorbys with milk and while eating I happened to spot the main organizer walk past me. I had earlier noticed that some baguettes and stuff were put up near the info desk and asked him what these were for, he said that it was mainly for workers but con attendants could have a bite if they wanted to. I explained the situation of my hungry and moneyless friends and he smiled and said that it's okay for them to go eat. Luck in misfortune again!
I went back to the girls and told them the good news (I had to ensure Sabine that good news weren't followed by bad news) and then they went to eat and everything was fine and dandy for a while again. Oh boy, this whole trip has been such a rollercoaster.

My working shift officially ended at 14:00 and somewhere around that time the "milk guy" showed up again! He asked me if I wanted milk and I was again like "why not" and he then told me to follow him, so I did. He led me to the fridge from where I had taken my con lunch and asked me how many I wanted. It soon dawned on me that he didn't talk about individual bottles but cartons. He filled one and was like "you do want another one, right?" and I was all okaaaaaay. :'DD

Skecon's parting gift. Yes, I like milk. :::)))

Before being done for the day my team leader drove me and my workmate to the sleeping accommodation and we cleaned all the toilets there and put back the school's benches etc how they were before the con. I found a men's bathroom while cleaning that had a really strong smell of cigarettes and this caused some angry and disappointed faces as smoking indoors is not acceptable and the smell is hard to get rid off. We informed the rest about this and I hope that it won't happen at future cons.
During the final cleaning I asked my team leader if she could drive me and my friends to the bus station and she was such an angel to agree. ;u; It turned out that the bus station had indeed moved to another place and I didn't know where it was so I'm thankful she took us there because getting lost with that amount of luggage would have been really annoying. So yeah, Skecon was then over for our part and we took the bus back home. Carina picked us up from the bus station when we arrived and drove us home.

~~~

So uhm, what can I say? If I'm brutally honest this was the worst Skecon so far and yes, I've attended all Skecons to this day since the first one in 2012. It's not a complete disaster (most of the people are really nice, I enjoyed my company and there is stuff to do for entertainment at least) but the con itself left much to be desired – what happened with the ambition to be fun, unique and bring in things no other Swedish con had done before? Right now it just feels like Skecon is comfortably falling into the "let's just be a small generic con with no special things to set us apart from the rest" mold and the lack of big-name guest of honors etc, at least compared to before (I'm sorry if Tenkou was supposed to be a guest but I had no idea about her presence until after the con, to be honest... Poor advertising?), just underlines this; I really miss the concerts. If it's a budget issue I understand but the price keeps going up and the quality down and that's just no. Also, I should have realized that something would be off when like a week before the con the schedule (which didn't have so much going on) still wasn't up on the website, like what?

As I said previously Skecon 2013 and 2014 were the best ones and 2015 was good, even though it felt a bit like recycling what made 2014 amazing (Vocaloid concert) and thus lost some of its impact and wow-factor. Seriously Skecon, go back to Folkparken and bring in the good stuff and you might not lose me in the future. The people are lovely but the con itself needs to fix its knots along the way because great company can't hold up against shortcomings in other fields forever.

This year's edition just felt like it wasn't properly planned –or, as we say in Finnish, juostenkustu*– and that whole sudden sleeping hall change thingy really turned into an awkward and confusing fuckpile. For the love of Jesus, please take back the sleeping accommodation workers but give them human working times so that anyone would actually want to do that job because yeah, I'm pretty sure that most congoers don't want to be dependent on others to decide when they can go sleep or not, especially when promised times are not even followed...

* = it's hard to translate directly but it's basically "take a running piss", meaning that something was done in a rush and/or really sloppily.

~~~

Thanks for reading and no hard feelings! I wish Skecon all the best and that they'll learn from their mistakes. A big thanks to Sabine and Therese for coming with me and I hope that both of you had a good time overall and will want to go to more conventions in the future!

~ Shiro Samurai