Thursday

We started by flying out of Tally on a beautiful cloudy day. The check in ladies were so fun while we got our bags checked in, one of their sons also cosplays in the Atlanta scene and she was so happy at the idea of telling him that she met some cosplayers that day. She also made fun of Snip for having a heavier suitcase than me (which exposed us as cosplayers lol).

The flights (Tally to ATL, ATL to MKE) were very bumpy due to said beautiful clouds, and by the time we reached Milwaukee, the clouds had turned into a Silent Hill level fog. We picked up our luggage and met with Harley, the fabulous guest relations assistant director. She coordinated the shuttle taking us to the hotel. We shared the ride with Bill Butts who was absolutely delightful and personable the entire trip through the very spooky fog. Austin, our driver, gave us some great nearby recommendations for food along with trying to point out the cool architecture of the city when the fog was light enough. Oh, we also discussed there are apparently a lot of serial killers from Milwaukee- including Jeffery Dahmer.

We arrived at the hotel and met the beautiful Elysia who gave us our welcome packet (room keys, badges, physical copy of the contact, menu for the catering all weekend and copy of our schedule). We settled into the room and unpacked from our two meager suitcases and two backpacks.* We discovered one of the drawers was cursed to always stay open, always reopening itself when closed- which we blamed on the ghost of Jeffery Dahmer.

Dinner was at the 3rd Market Avenue, which is a warehouse converted into a food court. We got some very tasty Laotian food from SapSap and enjoyed the beer wall, sampling a bunch of different beers (pay for by ounce poured). At this point we had run into Artemistyck several times- at the ATL airport (same flight to MKE), outside of the hotel waiting on friends and then again in the food hall, We passed on the recommendation for the pie shop that was recommended to us (which had an incredible purple sweet potato pie) and he thanked us.

We had also gone to Walgreens to pick up some last minute supplies, including some chocolate for our co-judges. We traveled back to the hotel, getting to meet May Jean and Cherry in person while gifting them their chocolate. After, we worked on our slideshow presentation for a little longer and set ourselves up for success for the rest of the weekend.

Friday

We awoke to more Silent Hill level weather. Running back to Walgreens allowed us to see some of the city in the daytime, even in the spooky fog, she's beautiful. We had a very hearty hotel breakfast and returned to the room to get ready for the start of a very busy weekend, The cosplay of the day was to be our Forest Plague Doctor and Nurse. At this point I have given up on finding a front facing attachment method that doesn’t gap, so after the corset busk was snapped in, we sewed it shut- and honestly very happy with the result!

We got a tour of the facility, getting to see the back halls of the con center. Ronan did an excellent job of navigating the back ways and assuring we would be taken care of all weekend. We ended up in the guest dining area just as lunch was being served. The food all weekend was incredible. They always had an abundance of gluten free and vegan options. Lunch was a cauliflower sloppy joes with roasted fingerling potato salad- and it made me less of a cauliflower hater.

After we stuffed ourselves silly, we attended May Jean’s panel about different embellishments for cosplay. Very happy we attended as they recommended some resources we’ve never heard of before. Then it was time for our panel, and low-key the spirit of our inner entertainment educators took over and I don’t remember much. We had a packed room and several people came up to us afterwards and said they enjoyed it and it was helpful! So can’t complain about the results!** Definitely want to touch it up before doing it again at Metro.

After a very successful panel, we made our way to the judging room (with a brief pit stop to the cosplay sets). Finally getting to see the fabulous cosplay director Shane and getting the most perfect hug ever. Despite all the chaos Shane managed to make prejudging go so smooth. From making sure we had front and back photos of all the cosplays (which so came in handy for deliberations and feedback!) to making sure our in room helpers were on the same page as to what we needed. They even planned the time slots perfectly with enough cushion that we ended judging on time for both days (a huge achievement in our books). Also the cosplay staff was so helpful! From time keeping to lineups, they made our lives so easy. 💛

In the judging room May Jean, Cherry, Snip and I were all on the same wavelength so hard it was like having extensions of ourselves in the judging room. Cherry did an excellent job and you couldn’t even tell this was her first time judging! We took pauses between contestants for deeper discussions about what each brought to the table, and our judges made the 2 hours seem like mere minutes had passed. We all grabbed dinner together, getting to chat and get to know one another more. Dinner was a fabulous mix of Sinaloa Chopped Salad (vegan), Borrocho Beans (vegan/gf), Chipotle Lime Chicken (gf), Wild Mushroom and Chickpea Tacos (vegan, gf), Spanish Rice with Roasted Black Beans and Corn (vegan, gf), along with tortilla chips and corn tortillas. They also had some churros which were on par with Disneyland churros.

With nothing else on our itinerary for the night, we made our way to the exhibit hall saying toodles to our new friends. It was so much fun getting to see artists that we’ve never seen before simply by the nature of existing in different con circuits. We did find a booth that we absolutely vibed with- they sold a variety of pikmin and gundam related stickers, prints, pins, and keychains. We also found starter decks 7 and 8 of the gundam TCG, along with booster packs for those sets- all for an appropriate con price (like 3 bucks over retail) so we definitely snapped those up.

There was also a really cool MTG deck box company that we got the card of, unfortunately we didn’t have enough room in our luggage to take any home, but keeping an eye on their future collabs, We then began to mosey back to the room, when the kimono display by Tangerine Mountain caught our eye.

The exhibit was so well done, with the context for each station providing necessary information and thoughtful questions to help you examine each piece. We actually ended up talking to the owner/curator for about an hour. She had done a breakdown of some ceremonial samurai armor (1800s) and it was still sitting on the table in pieces. She let us see the inside of each of the pieces and let us take soooooo many detailed shots. I don’t know if we're going to attempt samurai armor again anytime soon, but so happy to have photos to help with future cosplanning. She also recommended (BOOK) which has an excellent breakdown of all the layers that go into the full outfit. Heads full of new knowledge we went to bed, knowing Saturday was going to be very, very long.

Saturday

We awoke and made the decision to wear the Bruders all day long. At this point in their life, the wool has stretched to our bodies and is very comfortable to wear for long periods. My only complaint is having to take so much off to go to the bathroom, but with a little planning, a small complaint.

Judging was a complete blur of banger after banger costume. We were really happily surprised to see that even the novices were paying attention to details like finishing the inside of their costumes! Definitely a wonderful cosplay scene in Milwaukee! The guest relations were so sweet and delivered us coffee and the immaculate chocolate covered rice krispy treats in the morning, and then a very tasty lunch of pulled pork bbq, veggie jambalaya (vegan,gf), corn on the cob, coleslaw (vegetarian) and corn bread with honey butter (vegetarian) when our lunch hour arrived.

Again, May Jean and Cherry were rock solid in the judging area, asking thoughtful questions and listening to every contestant eagerly talk about their cosplay. They also helped guide those new to the competitive scene talk about their cosplays. The vibes were immaculate. And Snip was my hero for taking notes on everything, as most of the time I was helping the contestants get through their judging monologues. We were in that room from 8:45-3:30ish and it definitely didn’t seem to be a tenth of that time. With most of our winners decided, we broke up to get ready for the walkons and skits!

We made the trek back to the exhibit hall to finish up looking at the booths that we had missed from the night before (the main reason for wearing Bruders all day :P) and then headed back to the cosplay area for the contest.

Photo credit: BHE Photos

We wished the contestants luck and reminded them to show the back of their cosplays and let them know that we were very proud of them. The Masquerade was so much fun to watch. Interestingly they space out the skits between walkons, which after said and done, we do like. It’s an fun way to break things up. Artemistyck did a fabulous job emceeing the contest, having lovely things to say about the contestants as they walked across the stage. Definitely would love to see him in this capacity again!

We had a brief 15 minutes to finalize our winners and then got to present our awards on stage. If I could have given an award to every single one of those contestants, we definitely would have. It takes so much bravery to submit your work to be judged, especially at the novice level. And every single one of those contestants did a wonderful job bringing their characters to life!!!

Photo Credit: BHE Photos

Post contest, pictures were taken (especially with our Judges Choice, AbbyArtsCosplay as White Rabbit Festival Deuce) and words of encouragement were exchanged. We finally got out of there at 8:30ish. At this point, we had missed dinner, so we made our way to the industry event where noms had been promised. And omg, they had soooo much local cheese available. Plus these incredible parmesan artichoke bites. We sat and chatted about cosplay competitions around the states with Elysia, Artemistyck and his partner Chase for a good while- until we said we were going to call it for a night. Chase did remind us that there was a game room and we joked that maybe we would bump into the two of them again in there.

We finally changed out of the Bruders and into our Taiko outfits, the game hall was so nice and surprisingly empty (note to self, go to game hall during the rave!). We played lots of Taiko, Jubeats and the washing machine game. There was even a prototype game where you played as a helicopter, kind of like a 3rd person dumbo ride. They had the game where you drive a train, and a cool scooter game where it’s basically Mario kart but on a scooter. At midnight we decided we were turning into pumpkins, and went to back to the room. Packing up everything so we could sleep in the next day.

Sunday

We awoke to the text that our flight had been cancelled and rescheduled for Monday- panicked texts to Elysia were made, and then we got ready for our final day of the con. We wore our almost finished*** Tracen Academy Uniforms and felt very bonita. Unknowing of when or where we would actually be leaving from, we dragged our suitcases to feedback with us.**** And holy smokes, most of the contestants had come for feedback! Thankfully the very amazing guest relations team had brought us coffee and rice krispies! We allotted three minutes to each contestant with promises to answer any DMs with further questions. Still with the short time, we went way over the projected 90 minutes scheduled. May Jean had to leave first to catch her flight, and then Cherry to get ready for her panel.

We wrapped up around 1:45 with enough time to run to Cherry’s panel about making a craftsmanship contest level cosplay! It was so well done and every time I thought about something I would have included if it was our panel, it was on the next slide! Post panel we said our goodbyes and wandered the con for a bit, finally ending up at the photography room which was next to the cosplay contest room, which housed the free photoshoot space. I'm so sad we didn't take advantage of this service earlier. The booth is run by the CosMeetUp Chicago group, where it’s free to get your photo taken and then 10$ for a 4x6 print, or 15$ for two. Our photographer ended up taking several photos and it was SO MUCH FUN. He had some great ideas for poses, allowing us to max out our silly meters. We can’t wait until they’re all up online! We did end up getting four of our favorites printed. And then got to yap with our best skit winner DreamstoBecome and handler Mel for a bit!

Finally we returned to our room, changed into normal people clothes and got dinner with Shane. I found a shawarma restaurant that was selling lentil soup and made us make the 15 minute uphill hike to glory. The food here was amazing and worth the trek. We had fun debriefing with Shane about how the weekend went and then spent most of the time swapping cat stories. Of course, it was at this moment that I got a text that our flight from MKE to ATL had been pushed back 90 minutes, meaning our already short layover would now be 2 minutes long. Thankfully, Delta let us reschedule for free! So we chose to sleep in and got a mid day flight.

Monday

Thankfully the trip back was uneventful, we enjoyed a nice quiet trip to the airport, finally getting to see Milwaukee without the fog, The architecture is so neat! At the airport we picked up some souvenirs, and enjoyed a relatively peaceful flight to Atlanta and then to Tally. We arrived home exhausted but happy, with all our furbabies eager to cuddle.

Overall observations

I took my 3DS with the hope that I would fill out my map some more and fill out I did! I now have Wisconsin and Oklahoma accounted for!

It’s weird being Known™ in a space. So many people stopped us to say how much they love our work and chat with us. Shane even told us people were intimidated to be judged by us and that’s so wild that people feel that way about us. I do think we have the skills and knowledge to be judging, but it’s weird to think that people view us the way we view our cosplay heroes,

Shane and Elysia were absolutely incredible in their respective roles. I would hands down go to any event where they were directors in their respective roles,

We absolutely could not have gotten through judging without May Jean or Cherry. Both are so knowledgeable and have a great talent for judging. It would be an honor to be on either side of the table in the judging room again.

We've gotten into the practice of making group chats for our fellow judges where we can all get onto the same page before the con begins, and this for AMKE 26 included making a rubric for how we would look at judging. This time is so valuable because it means by the time you're in the room judging together, you're comfortable with one another. Highly recommend taking this practice into your own judging!

*It should be noted that we typically drive to whatever con we’re attending, and thus are free to immensely overpack. The lightest we’ve packed before this in recent times was our large tote, three medium totes, large aldi reusable bag and two con floor bags (and a dolly to get it to the room)

**If you attended, we’re still waiting on those 4 page single spaces essays :P