Well, on Saturday all of the members of the FFML in the Kansas City area
got together at Travis Butler's aapartment. I myself was late, being
held up at work. When I showed up, Greg Sandborn and John Biles were
already there.
Travis I had already met. Greg looked more-or-less how I imagined, but
for some reason I wasn't expecting the pleasant drawl that he speaks
with. John had given a good description of himself in Lemonade, and it
matches reality pretty well. John said that he expected me to be blonde
- the implications of that I don't think I'll go in to. :)
They were watching the You're Under Arrest OAV #4 on laser-disc. Travis
has a laser disc player he got for $100. It tends to stop unexpectedly
and sometimes is difficult to get started. It behaved well today.
My memory is already hazy, but I think the next thing we watched was a
UY OAV, "Inaba the Dreammaker". I've only seen a few of the TV episodes
and one of the movies - I'm not a big UY fan. The OAV surprised me.
Everyone was drawn *very* well - Shinobu actually looked somewhat
desirable. The story was good, zany without going overboard like UY
usually does, and Lum and Ataru were less repulsive than usual.
We then watched some of John's Sailor Moon tapes. We watched the first
episode subbed, and then the ending to the first season dubbed. John
was having trouble using the VCR, since the remote control was balky and
would only work if he held it in certain positions. John was contorting
his body in several different ways trying to get it to work, prompting
the peanut gallery to shout out, "In the name of the moon, I shall Fast
Forward you!"
I couldn't believe how much the animation improved in this series.
Episode 1 was bad, just bad. The end of the first season was *much*
better.
John provided running commentary throughout the showing of the two
episodes. He told us how two of the evil generals were in love with
each other. In the subbed version, the two generals are men. In the
dubbed version, the gender of the effeminate one gets changed to
female. This led to some new ideas for a fanfic: "The Nature of Love,
Part 2: The Sailor Moon Crying Game".
It was at this point that Greg had to leave so that he could go home,
sit in a dark room by himself, and get drunk. We wished him luck and
watched the one tape I had brought: the opening and closing animations
from Ranma 1/2 (comes with the Digital Dojo).
We then went to dinner. We talked about recent going-on's on the FFML.
Travis and I briefly continued our running debate of PC's vs. Macs.
John told us about some of the projects he's working on - everything
from DnR to Akane in the Robert Jordan universe to a supplement to the
Encylopedia Brittanica. We need not fear that John will run out of
things to write about anytime soon.
Back to Travis's place. We watched the first three OAV's of Video Girl
Ai. I borrowed the tape from Travis. Even though the tape was labelled
"Video Girl AI 1-6", it actually only contained the first four OAV's,
leaving me hanging. Bummer.
We listened to a tape Travis had of a humorous radio show, then watched
an episode of "The Prisoner" to aid John in a (yet another) fanfic he
wants to write. Travis showed me his Ranma/Prisoner fanfic, which looks
pretty good. We then all went home.
I borrowed John's Sailor Moons tapes, and he got my VCR to keep. One of
us got a really good deal.
So far, I can only watch so much of Sailor Moon before I have to shut it
down and give myself time to recover. I really liked the Sailor Moon R
movie I saw at AWA, but so far there's not much to like in the early
episodes of Sailor Moon, which is the reason I never got into it when it
was being aired. I'll try to force myself through them.
That's it. 'Twas fun. It was nice to put faces to names. It was nice
to discuss topics one can normally only exchange emails about. Hope we
can do it again.
Thought I'd share it with y'all.