Here it is; the long-awaited, much talked about fanfic event of the season;
Mercutio's trip to Anime Central. You may worship my prose at your
convenience.
Tales From the Con II: Anime Central '99.
The Con Diary that doesn't even bother to TRY to paint an accurate picture of
Con life, but instead dedicates itself to the seamy underbelly of fanfic
writers lives.
Day One.
Theme of the Day: Driving. Lots and LOTS of driving.
Friday had lots and lots of driving in it. ^_^ I live in upstate New York,
so I had to get on the road about midnight and start cruising for Chicago.
Twelve straight hours behind the wheel is NOT fun, thank you very much.
A cool thing happened once I hit Chicago city limits. You see, I knew how to
get to Rosemont, but had absolutly NO idea beyond that where the Ramada was.
However, as I was pulling onto the Skyway, this green Chevy Cavalier with the
Michigan vanity plate "NERV" pulls out in front of me. Figuring that this
can't POSSIBLY be a coincidence, I latch onto them like a barnacle and follow
them all the way to the con. Thanks, guys, if you're reading this.
I can say this about ACen; they REALLY need to pull their act together for
next year. Their schedule was the most disorganized I have ever seen. Rather
than publish schedules of when things are going to happen in their program
book like every OTHER con in the country does, they instead passed them out
on individual sheets that were completely inaccurate and had to be updated
practically every half hour. And video schedules were nonexistent..... they
just pasted sheets of paper filled in with marker on the video room doors
every day.
That aside, my first day went by fairly well. While hanging out aournd
pre-reg waiting for my roomate (Hi, Ken!!!!) I met Sean Gaffney and Lara
Bartram. Talked for awhile.
A quote from Sean: "Having established the rumor that Lara isn't married to
Mike, and the rumor that she isn't married to Richard, we must now move onto
other targets."
-_-;;;;
After this, I hung around and waited for Ken Arromdee, my roomate, to show.
Since he was late (I lerned later his flight was delayed), and I was tired, I
hit upon a solution: put a sign on the wal that said "Ken Arromdee: Roomate
HERE." on it, with a downward pointing arrow. Sat down under it, and fell
asleep till Ken showed and shook me awake.
We checked in (thank God I was with him; Illinois law requires you to be a
certain age to check into hotel, and I wasn't) and after we settled in, the
fun began.
Shortly before the big pre-panel meeting of authors, I changed into my
costume. I decided to go a different way than most cosplayers: I have now
become the second person (behind Chris "Reiraku" Willmore) to ever dress as a
fanfiction character.
I think I make a good Ryo Muhoshin.
All the panelists, authors, hangers-on, etc. got together outside the art
show around 7:00 before heading out for dinner. I have to admit, I was a tad
nervous meeting these people in person, mainly beacause of the age
differential involved: I'm only eighteen, the youngest in the group by at
leats seven years, and at least half these people are old enough to be my
parents. I got over it pretty quick, though, since nobody seemed to care. Was
surprised Biles wasn't there; learned later he was asleep.
It was nice to see Gary Kleppe again, even though he seemed a lot more
withdrawn and reserved than at Otakon. Still keeping a good sense of humor,
though:
"I was sure that when you posted that request to the list, you'd get a reply
from Tybalt saying 'Sure, I'll share a room with you. Heh heh heh.' "
Nobody recognized my costume except for Sean and Lara!!!!
Dinner was cool; we all piled into a variety of cars and skooted down to
Denny's, where we got some intersting looks from the patrons. I sat with
Sean, Ryan, Mark Engels (whom I almost mistook for Mark Latus and started
throttling him screaming "Where the HELL is Hurricane Season?!?!?!") and the
Wilde family.
Sidebar: If you ever have the opportunity, watch little Rachel Wilde and Sean
together. For some reason, she thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced
bread, and treats him like a gigantic toy. It's fun to watch.
Anyhow, during the meal someone brought up the idea for a "worlds worst
crossover" contest. A number were proposed; Shindlers List/Tenchi Muyo!!! "No
Need for Jews!!" (which I believe someone is actaully WRITING) and La Blue
Powerpuff Girl. The winner, I believe, came from Justin Wilde:
Urotsukidoji/Hello Kitty.
If anyone ever has the oppurtunity to watch Travis Butlers parody of the
"Child's Toy" opening credits (in which he subs in the characters from
Evangelion) I suggest you do so. It is 'smeggin HILARIOUS. Especially the
crowd of Dancin' Rei's. We all laughed so hard we were almost thrown out.
After dinner, we all posed together for a big group shot in fron of some
limo's outside Denny's. Hey Pearson, when can we all expect our copies of
that? ^_^
The rest of the night was basically just people sitting around; I hung out
with Sean (thnaks for the rum), Lara, Richard (Lawson), and Nick (Leifker),
talking fics before we all headed off to bed. I can't really recall much (I'd
been awake for 33 hours at this point) except that Sean was obsessing about
"Complete Control," and that Lara kicked Richard under the table a few times,
but there were a few interesting tidbits:
"You're slipping Genma the tongue?"
"We don't want to hurt you but we will if we have to, Sean."
Lara: "So, I was talking to Chris awhile back....."
Me: "Waitwait.... is this the insane Canadian Chris, or the slightly LESS
insane Canadian Chris?"
Willmore or Davies, which is slightly less insane? You be the judge.
Went to room. Collapsed on bed. Slept for eight hours.
-End Day One-
Day Two.
Theme of the Day: I Swear I Am Not Making This Up.
Woke up about 11:30, with just enough time to shower, dress, and skeedaddle
on over to the fanfic panel. Sat next to Gary.
I won't try to go over the topics covered by the panelists: that's already
been done. I'll just focus on the things that interested me, and hopefully
you.
This panel was different from others: generally, there are a few panelists
who do most of the talking, and a couple who are basically pretty quiet and
don't say much. This time, though, EVERYBODY up there had something to say,
and with Gaffney in the audience keeping up his insane babble (I believe at
one point Lara turned in her seat and said "Sean, why don't you just go on
up there and save everybody some trouble?") it was fairly lively.
The only annoying part was this jerk sitting a couple rows over who kept
self-promoting himself; he'd raise his hand, and ask some completely
inconsequntial question followed by lengthy explanations of his own writing.
Dude, NOBODY CARED!!!
Funky Quotes:
Nick Leifker: "I just want everybody to know..... I _AM_ Jeff Lawrence!!!"
Possibly also Nick, but not sure: "Hey, what's so wrong about putting Bert
van Vliet and DJ Croft in the same story?"
I had to restrain my Fist of Death.
THIS exchange was fun:
Me: "So, what do you guys think of 'fanfic conventions?' You know, like the
big assumption everybody always uses that Mrs. Tendo's firts name was
Kimiko....."
Zen: "Oh, everybody knows that Mrs. Tendo's first name was Nodoka."
At this point, Nick attempted to brain Zen with his own battle spat.
After the panel, an impromptu meeting took place outside pre-reg, where we
(the authors as a whole) decided to wait until after the Music Videos and
then head down to Yaohan.
Sean: "I tend to orgasm when I'm bored. You guys knew that, right?"
About three of us tried to strangle him at this point.
Sidebar: It was around this time, I think, that Lara altered her con badge to
read "Lara Bartram: I _am_ sweet and innocent, damn it!!!!"
Nothing remarkable about the Music Videos; some were good, some were bad. The
setting of Evangelion footage to "Du Hast" (Eva meets German Death Metal, BIG
stretch there -_-;;) didn't work out as well as you'd think, and Ikari Gendo
is, indeed, "One bad 'mutha."
Having stupidly volunteered my car for the trip to Yaohan, (for those who
don't know, Yaohan is this plaza that caters to ethnic japanses/chinese
living in Chicago; all kinds of imported stuff) I managed to fit John,
Richard, and Mark in among my comic books and cooler, and we all headed out,
following Zen's 3WA truck (niiiiiiice pinstriping, Zen) and Travis's Car of
Fools (containing Sean and Lara).
Yaohan was fun; checked out the latest imports, some people bought CD's, and
we had a great lunch at the food court; I highly reccomend the orange
chicken. Amazingly enough, Zen TOTALLY missed the place that served
okonomiyaki until it was almost time to leave.
The group considered buying a few six-packs of Asahi on the way out. Decided
against it.
Whilst everybody else wnet to check out another store, my carload of people
decided to go back to the hotel. After cajoling the guys into springing for a
gas fill-up (Richard, John, and Mark are now my best friends for life) we
attempted to retrace our steps, since none of us knew where the hell we were
as we'd followed Travis the whole way.
It was at this point that I got us all lost. Yes, I admit it; it was my
fault. I kept going past the turns we had to take and then having to loop
back to them. At least we had some interesting conversations; We established
the fact that tokyo-3 is composed 1/3 of NERV personnel, 1/3 of people
mooching off of the NERV personell, and 1/3 of people who do nothing but spy
on the Children 24 hours a day.
"This is Agent ZR-Q, we've got a class two alert here; Ayanami Rei almost had
a facial expression."
And, our impression of Ikari Gendo at a tollboth:
"That'll be two fifty, sir."
"Your toll is irrelevant; we are behind schedule. Allow us to pass."
Eventually, after many twists and turns, we made it back to the hotel and
dispersed our seperate ways.
After a brief nap, I checked out the video rooms; nothing good was playing
until at least ten o'clock, and since that was canceled (Castle of
Cogliostro, the Miyazaki Lupin movie) I had a free night.
Unfortunatly, I happened to fall in with a bad crowd (John Biles) and we
basically hung till midnight in order to kill some time before the fan
parodies. He taught me and his roomate Clay to play Mythos, the Cthulhu-based
CCG; we thanked him by reducing his sanity points to zero during the three
hours of eldritch-drenched play. I won when I managed to summon up Tulzcha
before Clay could get enough alllies out to complete his scenario. ^_^
We then headed out for the "Midnight Madness" showing of the fan parodies.
Some were bad, but some were PHENOMANALLY good, especially "Koko wa Otaku,"
the Greenwood spoof from this new group based at UH, and "Evangelion: Bad
Scottish Dubbing," which induced at least two personal incidents of
synchronicity for me ("There is no Shinji, only Zuul," eh John?)
Eventually, we both succumbed to exhaustia; shook hands, and staggered back
to our rooms for sleep.
-End Day Two-
Day Three.
Theme of the Day: Lara Says Funny Things.
After the usual pleasantries of packing up and showering, me and Ken parted
ways as he handed me his room key and I went and checked out of the hotel.
Hung out in the lobby and watched the crowds drift by; eventually hooked up
with some of the people I'd met; Sean, Lara, Pearson, the Wildes, etc.
At one point, Pearson asked us what we'd like to see happen in later parts of
Anime Detective. I made the mistake of replying "Yeah, when is Andy going to
score with Nene?" at which point he attempted the ancient "Death by Camera
Bludgeoning" technique on me.
The group I was hanging with (I'm desperate for human contact outside of this
computer; sue me, okay?!?!) moved around and broke up several times; the fire
alarm around 1:40 was interesting, if not annoying. eventually, as the hotel
emptied out and we watched the con equipment being dismantled, the only ones
of us left were either those driving or those with extremely late flights;
Me, Matt Lewis, Leifker, Freemage, the Wilde Clan, Todd Hall, and Sean
Hayden, all monopolizing the good couches in the lobby.
I'll never forget what happened next; little Rachel Wilde, who had come into
possesion of a plushie Pikachu, stuffed it in her backpack and ran around
proudly displaying and saying "Pikachu in here!"
Lara just kind of leaned back, smiled motherly at her, and said pleasantly
"Gotta eat'em all."
God help us all if that woman ever reproduces.
*ahem* Anyway, the next couple hours 'till I left were spent in idle
conversation. I took copious notes.
I want avow at this point that EVERYTHING in the section that follows is the
unvarnished truth.
*********
First, Lara leaned over and said "You might want to write this down; Sean
was just stroking me." And it wasn't Gaffney either this time, it was Hayden.
A little bit later, Lara got to hold Kodachi, and we were all so jealous,
somebody called out, "Everybody, jump Lara!!" and of course, we did.
Then, the discussion turned to food; several people swapped recipies, Matt
Lewis (who, for a member of the International Canadian Conspiracy, is pretty
cool) told us about this place in Ontario that serves all this really cool
rare stuff like Elk and Buffalo.
Lara then expounded upon her taste in side dishes: "You can forget about the
tempura.... hand me the cucumbers. They're MUCH more satisfying."
By now, we were all sorta bored, so Lara put on some see-through plastic, and
me, her, and Hayden knocked boots.
We talked about sports briefly. Lara sprung this revelation on us; "I like
guys with sticks. The longer and firmer, the better."
Lara's favorite sport is hockey.
The converstaion turned to writing style and technique shortly before I left.
Lara (are we sensing a theme here?) distributed a few copies of her longhand,
and told us "It all rather depends on what position I'm in while I'm writing."
Remember, everybody; everything in the above section is completely and
one-hundred percent true.
*********
Okay, you probably want the explanations now, don't you? Well, the "Kodachi"
incident was this: Bridget Wilde, while we were all jabbering like baboons,
was quietly producing pieces of fanart which she then distributed; I made off
with a picture of Azusa Shiratori squezing the life out of a Pokemon. She
drew a DAMN fine picture of Kodachi that everybody wanted (I think Hayden
ended up with it ultimately) and while Lara was holding it, we all sorta
swarmed her. I feel embarressed about that, actually.
As for the boot-knocking, it was just that; we knocked our boots together a
few times.
Well, that about wraps it up; I left the hotel shortly thereafter; while
everybody else in our merry little band went of to eat and wait for
airplanes, I got to drive for eight hours, have my car die on me in
Cleveland, spend the night in a dingy flophouse, get my car fixed, find out
it wasn't fixed right, and limp 300 miles home at 40 miles an hour.
I hope you all enjoyed your flights. -_-
That's it from me. The con kicked ass, and it was nice meeting everybody face
to face.
-End Day Three.
Best Quote of the Con:
"My mind is like a vacuum; nature abhors it."
-Matt Lewis.
-Mercutio
"A plague 'a both your houses!"