If it's one thing Yaoi-Con provides for a person like me who has no interest in Yaoi, it's a great venue to show off one's ball-jointed dolls (BJDs) to fellow BJD owners. I was looking forward to taking the opportunity to meet with fans and haters of Traveling Valentine's Cosette and Eponine and Yo-Joe's Bizarre Adventure BJD webisodes. But I made prior plans that took greater precedence than Yaoi-Con. At least it was doll-related.

Earlier this year during Fanime, I bid on and won a 60cm Obitsu female body vinyl doll. Later during Dollectable, Victoria picked up a Haruka head for the doll. Now it was time to get the doll a face-up before attaching the head to the body, making her complete. A friend of mine (have you met my friend, Claudine?) recommended an excellent face-up artist (DoA member para_chan214) who just happened to be local. So instead of mailing the head off and waiting who knows how long, I spent the morning of Yaoi-Con Sunday at Ann's house. The house held a lot of dolls for Yo-Joe to meet while we waited for Ann to complete the face-up.

Ann did a wonderful job with Mi-DORI's face and I thanked her for the bargain price. It'll be fun showing her off and using her in future doll webisodes.

Thanks to Facebook, I learned about a Fanime kick off event held at Ed R Levin Park in Milpitas. It was close to Ann's house so I made a quick stop over there to get familiar with some of the Fanime faces. Most of the Fanime staff faces who I knew were currently at Yaoi-Con, so I was introducing Traveling Valentine to new people. I learned this event was more of a staff recruiting drive. I identified key staff members for potential collaborations.

The food was excellent, the people were entertaining, and the desire to make Fanime a wonderful was rising. The only bugger about the event was when the bait for the yellow jacket traps spilt and attracted even more of those flying insects. had I the weaponry, I would have reenacted the scene of Ocelot twirling his revolvers to fend off The Pain's wasps during "Snake Eater." Mi-DORI made a limited appearance but remained in the box.

With some more daylight to spare, I drove back to Yaoi-Con for one last visit. I was hoping to find a BJD gathering and provide a sneak peek of Mi-DORI. The con looked quite dead as people packed up, checked out, and bailed out. I spotted Andy wearing trousers that the hotel ordered him to wear. I see that I'm not the one ticked that society wears us to wear pants. On a whim I bought his red M-40. It's not an anime convention unless there's a gun in my hands.

I could not find a single BJD owner around the convention. I guess all the owners packed them up and headed home. But I showed off Mi-DORI and Yo-Joe at the lobby briefly for anyone interested in seeing the dolls. I think Eurobeat King was afraid to approach me.

I ran into Ally Union, who played me the audio for his bishounen auction sketch. That, I would have wanted to see onstage. The Triple-Changers and other people from last night wandered in for some last minute mingling. They were all tired and so was I. It was my cue to go home.

Pictures are copyright by Traveling Valentine. If we took your picture, feel free to use it on your site or cosplay gallery. While you're here, do sign the guestbook. This site was brought to you by the font AucoinLight.