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silveradeptMe: I miss all of the camaraderie of going to conventions and talking with other people about what was there, and all of the texts back and forth about stuff.
Also Me: If I post anything about my ordinary life, it will ruin the carefully-curated image I have been building up for all of these years. Everyone will unfollow me and I will never find another subscriber again.
I was at convention for the last few days, as the after-COVID cycle moved from winter to fall and then, things will go back to spring so that it's much more a spring-fall cycle once more, between the big metropolitan convention and the small more women-focused convention.
It was arranged differently this year, where basically all of the panel spaces, plus dealer, author, and artist spaces were in one building, the family headquarters, the pride lounge, and the East Asian related programming all in a second building, the gaming and the main stage in a third space, and a fourth space for all the autographs and signing. Basically, it was compartmentalizing what you were there for the convention to do so that you didn't have to shift from one location to another unless you wanted to change what you were going to convention for.
Since I did the credit card payments and spreadsheets before setting off to the convention, my budget for this year was basically for the art book and nothing more. Which still meant a good scavenger hunt among the booths to see which artists were in attendance, a task made considerably more difficult by the understanding that not all of the artists who had participated in the book were present, and some of them had made that change after the insert card was printed showing where everyone was. There were also some duplicates of both who was where and at least one page number duplication (that I only noticed after getting home.) I got all the ones that I could by day two, and so the rest of my time was spent wandering, looking at goods and looking for good cosplay. I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do, and I'm beginning to feel even more than usual that I'm not watching the same series everyone else is (I do recognize the gay pirates, but there was an entire amount of people with toadstool/mushroom hats and another set who had various blades and chainsaws as hands and through their heads that I was basically clueless about.) I did see a Raptor Jesus, and a Venom-Symbiote with one of the inflatable T-rexes. And a very small amount of Miraculous Ladybug and others.
And Beowoolf, the cult hit of Eurovision this year, standing in line for the maid café. Because, yes, in the East Asia zone this year, one of the local maid cafés had opened a satellite branch. I looked in at it, and I have the suspicion that I would not do that well with the pink atmosphere of that specific maid café, on the assumption that there would be others and others of different costuming choices. (There were more pedestrian entities like the Consulate-General of Japan and the apparent sister prefecture of the entire state, as well. Many of the selfie backgrounds were also in that space.)
Things got off to a rough start, in that the first night, neither of the final two panels, both, ironically, about censorship appeared at all, with the guests that were scheduled to appear not showing, but also not the other panelists that were going to help. I had a great conversation with other attendees and librarians in the audience (because of course we were) and I have a feeling that if enough of us were willing and able to stay the time, the librarians would have marched up to the microphones and delivered a panel on censorship ouselves. (We didn't. I kind of wish we had. Even worse, I'd put in for a panel about the history of censorship and how media related to it that wasn't selected for this year, so I would have had something useful already prepared.)
I ended up playing some casual Smash Ultimate that night and it was okay, in that I felt like I got some value for my time that I wanted to spend there. I even won a couple matches here and there.
Almost all of the fan meetups were also on the first day, and I had the same general problem that I always do in meetups, where, bereft of a useful conversation to start or charge into, I mostly looked awkward and didn't say much.
So, the first day went pretty poorly, with the canceled panels. The second day went a little better, with a stretching workout in the morning that made me feel all of those muscle groups pretty heftily, and then from there into some better panels about mental health and media, disability representation, the way that Deep Space Nine has become a lot queerer of a Star Trek in all the ways it can, and an interesting panel about how MST3K is a blueprint for transformative fandom activities, as well as a self-demonstrating article on how to do those things. I may have contributed to the next version of the talk that will be at a different Metropolitan Comic Con by asking a question about how the MST3K Mantra applies to the way that transformative fandom is perceived. There were notes taken and a short answer given about how sometimes the younger generation of fans coming into transformative fandom have to have it explicitly explained to them that transformative fandom is about more than just replicating canon situations, canon pairings, and canon dynamics from new authors, and that if they start getting upset when they see things that don't fit that, they need to repeat to themselves "It's just a show, I should really just relax."
The night ended with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is pretty chaotic when everyone's going on their own script of riffs. There were some great lines, though, like "Hey, Riff, what do you think about the Supreme Court?" "We could do better." Things picked up a little bit at the end of day two. Still missing having other people to do convention things with, and slightly lamenting the fact that I haven't exactly spent a whole lot of time making fannish friends locally so that I don't have people to say hi to and chat at convention with. Of course, I would have to make the effort to find organizations and then attend meetings and things like that first, and since I normally work later than others do, I'd need an organization that meets later in the evening locally. Not impossible, just that I have to, y'know, actually do the thing. And then stick to it. And find time for it.
Day three was spent mostly in the Main Stage area and getting to know the Nerds Know group, who apparently came from Florida and basically got an entire room to themselves to run panels in all the days of the convention. So I got to listen to Rob Paulsen, Phil Lamarr, Maurice Lamarche, and Grey Delisle perform an abridged movie script in many of their various characters' voices, and Christopher Eccleson talk about doing Doctor Who and many of the other projects he's been in. (And how, with time and the continued appreciation of the fandom, he's appreciating and understanding the pull of his series more.) And there were cartoons, and a panel about some of the more risque things that cable cartoons could produce (Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life, for example, and some episodes of the Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory that would need significant bleeping to make it on cable) and a small look into some of the more interesting things that Japan has produced and put on television (including Razor Ramon HG and various variety shows) and a short history of the evolution of a very specific, age-restricted set of visual arts with their origins in Japan. Those last two panels reminded me of some panels I used to go to, before the move with the local animation group, where there would be some history of tokusatsu and also some history of various visual arts associated (and the panel was 18+ because sometimes you find out that there are such things as adult films with the Super Sentai idea and you get to see some of the parts that aren't hardcore.) I'm still of two minds about the Nerds Know group, mostly because the panels where they let the clips do the work did not have a lot of commentary and exposition with them, and probably could have been done much more Anime Hell style, or similarly. The vault of their clips is probably pretty impressive, but I feel like there could have been more hosting duties taken on or banter involved to go along with it. Still, I had a lot of laughs from the clips themselves.
Day Four meant starting the day by learning and practicing a short sequence of strikes and blocks with kendo weapons. I was feeling the mask I was using quite a bit, as it made it harder to exert myself in, so I did the right thing and took breaks when I felt that I needed to. So all of my exercise panels for the days were first activities, which was a good idea and helpful, but I sometimes miss the effortless energy I seemed to have when I was younger and doing an hour and a half of training five days a week and even more on football Saturdays. That might also be something to take up with time and money, but also, you can see the flitting about starting to show up, and of course, since this is Metropolitan Comic Con, most of the organization in the area are near or around said metropolis, which means extra transit time on top of getting out of work later. I need things that are much closer to me, of course, if I want a prayer of being able to get to them on time.
There was a panel with Rob Paulsen and Mauriche Lamarche talking about (and often performing) Pinky and the Brain, and then it was back to the Nerds Know department for a world tour of interesting commercials (and one dig at Bronies) and a look at some of the worst live-action adaptations of various anime properties, including getting to see the full pilot of the Saban Sailor Moon series, just recently brought to light. It very much feels like a Saban property of the 80s/90s, even though all that was ever made was the pilot. And after those panels, the experience came to an end, and then there was the going home and deciding to write up the whole thing as a way of staving off the con drop and possibly shamelessly soliciting comments from people in an attempt to recreate the whole "driving back from convention, talking with your friends about what happened."
And I think I might have gotten an idea of something to do as a cosplay. It's unlikely anyone would recognize it, but that's not supposed to be a stopping point, anyway. It will almost certainly require some thrifting to make work, which means now I have to figure out where the right place to thrift things that are likely to fit me (I think I am now big and tall as opposed to merely tall) and to see about building some props that will help make the character more recognizable in the guise I have planned for them. And it'll potentially mean learning how to lighten the color of hair and facial hair (or pleading with the local resident). Mostly, I want to see if it's possibly to do it, and for it to be low effort and low cost to do it. Because there's another, more ambitious thing I'd want to do, but it could require learning ridonkulous levels of papercraft, which is not something that I do well at all, or how to simulate ridonkulous levels of papercraft. (Which, no, let me get my first hit of thrifty cosplay first before I think about whether or not to try doing other things. And again, we'll see if the interest sustains and persists or whether it fades again, like it probably will.)
Also Me: If I post anything about my ordinary life, it will ruin the carefully-curated image I have been building up for all of these years. Everyone will unfollow me and I will never find another subscriber again.
I was at convention for the last few days, as the after-COVID cycle moved from winter to fall and then, things will go back to spring so that it's much more a spring-fall cycle once more, between the big metropolitan convention and the small more women-focused convention.
It was arranged differently this year, where basically all of the panel spaces, plus dealer, author, and artist spaces were in one building, the family headquarters, the pride lounge, and the East Asian related programming all in a second building, the gaming and the main stage in a third space, and a fourth space for all the autographs and signing. Basically, it was compartmentalizing what you were there for the convention to do so that you didn't have to shift from one location to another unless you wanted to change what you were going to convention for.
Since I did the credit card payments and spreadsheets before setting off to the convention, my budget for this year was basically for the art book and nothing more. Which still meant a good scavenger hunt among the booths to see which artists were in attendance, a task made considerably more difficult by the understanding that not all of the artists who had participated in the book were present, and some of them had made that change after the insert card was printed showing where everyone was. There were also some duplicates of both who was where and at least one page number duplication (that I only noticed after getting home.) I got all the ones that I could by day two, and so the rest of my time was spent wandering, looking at goods and looking for good cosplay. I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do, and I'm beginning to feel even more than usual that I'm not watching the same series everyone else is (I do recognize the gay pirates, but there was an entire amount of people with toadstool/mushroom hats and another set who had various blades and chainsaws as hands and through their heads that I was basically clueless about.) I did see a Raptor Jesus, and a Venom-Symbiote with one of the inflatable T-rexes. And a very small amount of Miraculous Ladybug and others.
And Beowoolf, the cult hit of Eurovision this year, standing in line for the maid café. Because, yes, in the East Asia zone this year, one of the local maid cafés had opened a satellite branch. I looked in at it, and I have the suspicion that I would not do that well with the pink atmosphere of that specific maid café, on the assumption that there would be others and others of different costuming choices. (There were more pedestrian entities like the Consulate-General of Japan and the apparent sister prefecture of the entire state, as well. Many of the selfie backgrounds were also in that space.)
Things got off to a rough start, in that the first night, neither of the final two panels, both, ironically, about censorship appeared at all, with the guests that were scheduled to appear not showing, but also not the other panelists that were going to help. I had a great conversation with other attendees and librarians in the audience (because of course we were) and I have a feeling that if enough of us were willing and able to stay the time, the librarians would have marched up to the microphones and delivered a panel on censorship ouselves. (We didn't. I kind of wish we had. Even worse, I'd put in for a panel about the history of censorship and how media related to it that wasn't selected for this year, so I would have had something useful already prepared.)
I ended up playing some casual Smash Ultimate that night and it was okay, in that I felt like I got some value for my time that I wanted to spend there. I even won a couple matches here and there.
Almost all of the fan meetups were also on the first day, and I had the same general problem that I always do in meetups, where, bereft of a useful conversation to start or charge into, I mostly looked awkward and didn't say much.
So, the first day went pretty poorly, with the canceled panels. The second day went a little better, with a stretching workout in the morning that made me feel all of those muscle groups pretty heftily, and then from there into some better panels about mental health and media, disability representation, the way that Deep Space Nine has become a lot queerer of a Star Trek in all the ways it can, and an interesting panel about how MST3K is a blueprint for transformative fandom activities, as well as a self-demonstrating article on how to do those things. I may have contributed to the next version of the talk that will be at a different Metropolitan Comic Con by asking a question about how the MST3K Mantra applies to the way that transformative fandom is perceived. There were notes taken and a short answer given about how sometimes the younger generation of fans coming into transformative fandom have to have it explicitly explained to them that transformative fandom is about more than just replicating canon situations, canon pairings, and canon dynamics from new authors, and that if they start getting upset when they see things that don't fit that, they need to repeat to themselves "It's just a show, I should really just relax."
The night ended with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is pretty chaotic when everyone's going on their own script of riffs. There were some great lines, though, like "Hey, Riff, what do you think about the Supreme Court?" "We could do better." Things picked up a little bit at the end of day two. Still missing having other people to do convention things with, and slightly lamenting the fact that I haven't exactly spent a whole lot of time making fannish friends locally so that I don't have people to say hi to and chat at convention with. Of course, I would have to make the effort to find organizations and then attend meetings and things like that first, and since I normally work later than others do, I'd need an organization that meets later in the evening locally. Not impossible, just that I have to, y'know, actually do the thing. And then stick to it. And find time for it.
Day three was spent mostly in the Main Stage area and getting to know the Nerds Know group, who apparently came from Florida and basically got an entire room to themselves to run panels in all the days of the convention. So I got to listen to Rob Paulsen, Phil Lamarr, Maurice Lamarche, and Grey Delisle perform an abridged movie script in many of their various characters' voices, and Christopher Eccleson talk about doing Doctor Who and many of the other projects he's been in. (And how, with time and the continued appreciation of the fandom, he's appreciating and understanding the pull of his series more.) And there were cartoons, and a panel about some of the more risque things that cable cartoons could produce (Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life, for example, and some episodes of the Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory that would need significant bleeping to make it on cable) and a small look into some of the more interesting things that Japan has produced and put on television (including Razor Ramon HG and various variety shows) and a short history of the evolution of a very specific, age-restricted set of visual arts with their origins in Japan. Those last two panels reminded me of some panels I used to go to, before the move with the local animation group, where there would be some history of tokusatsu and also some history of various visual arts associated (and the panel was 18+ because sometimes you find out that there are such things as adult films with the Super Sentai idea and you get to see some of the parts that aren't hardcore.) I'm still of two minds about the Nerds Know group, mostly because the panels where they let the clips do the work did not have a lot of commentary and exposition with them, and probably could have been done much more Anime Hell style, or similarly. The vault of their clips is probably pretty impressive, but I feel like there could have been more hosting duties taken on or banter involved to go along with it. Still, I had a lot of laughs from the clips themselves.
Day Four meant starting the day by learning and practicing a short sequence of strikes and blocks with kendo weapons. I was feeling the mask I was using quite a bit, as it made it harder to exert myself in, so I did the right thing and took breaks when I felt that I needed to. So all of my exercise panels for the days were first activities, which was a good idea and helpful, but I sometimes miss the effortless energy I seemed to have when I was younger and doing an hour and a half of training five days a week and even more on football Saturdays. That might also be something to take up with time and money, but also, you can see the flitting about starting to show up, and of course, since this is Metropolitan Comic Con, most of the organization in the area are near or around said metropolis, which means extra transit time on top of getting out of work later. I need things that are much closer to me, of course, if I want a prayer of being able to get to them on time.
There was a panel with Rob Paulsen and Mauriche Lamarche talking about (and often performing) Pinky and the Brain, and then it was back to the Nerds Know department for a world tour of interesting commercials (and one dig at Bronies) and a look at some of the worst live-action adaptations of various anime properties, including getting to see the full pilot of the Saban Sailor Moon series, just recently brought to light. It very much feels like a Saban property of the 80s/90s, even though all that was ever made was the pilot. And after those panels, the experience came to an end, and then there was the going home and deciding to write up the whole thing as a way of staving off the con drop and possibly shamelessly soliciting comments from people in an attempt to recreate the whole "driving back from convention, talking with your friends about what happened."
And I think I might have gotten an idea of something to do as a cosplay. It's unlikely anyone would recognize it, but that's not supposed to be a stopping point, anyway. It will almost certainly require some thrifting to make work, which means now I have to figure out where the right place to thrift things that are likely to fit me (I think I am now big and tall as opposed to merely tall) and to see about building some props that will help make the character more recognizable in the guise I have planned for them. And it'll potentially mean learning how to lighten the color of hair and facial hair (or pleading with the local resident). Mostly, I want to see if it's possibly to do it, and for it to be low effort and low cost to do it. Because there's another, more ambitious thing I'd want to do, but it could require learning ridonkulous levels of papercraft, which is not something that I do well at all, or how to simulate ridonkulous levels of papercraft. (Which, no, let me get my first hit of thrifty cosplay first before I think about whether or not to try doing other things. And again, we'll see if the interest sustains and persists or whether it fades again, like it probably will.)
