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tl;dr, part i
-i have flu coming out of my eyes. I was fine while everyone else started dropping from paxpox so I thought I dodged it but noooooo, I just got hit last and hardest. I cannot talk out loud but I am mostly doing fine on pure adrenaline as I am having far, far too much fun to stop and rest.
-when I asked for time off for PAX, my non-weird boss said she had no idea I was a nerd. I told you I was an amazing compartmentaliser. It's partly appropriateness, but also that old habit of secrecy and codeswitching, not just within but between fandoms. I didn't get to share my fannishness communally until I was 17, and that may have permanently affected my habits regarding it. I like small compartments, intimate and securely closed. Some of them are made of glass; others, not so much.
-did I mention we were at PAX East? I feel like I never even scratched the surface of that shit, and I also wandered about the expo floor realising how few games I play now, new games in particular, and feeling like that part of my life has fossilised. I didn't play videogames there; I didn't want to wait in line for Neverwinter, and it's an MMO anyway ie. not my scene; I didn't especially want to play any other prerelease demos, didn't bring a handheld for the Handheld Lounge, didn't try BYOC. We went to a few panels, and they were dull. I spent time with people, and was very happy to do so.
-there were lovely new people! And one of them was Fly's friend![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
ipgd, best known as the cover artist for the Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff book, and she brought us more lovely people, and okay look i had an embarrassing squealy fangirl moment when she introduced us to Toby "Radiation" Fox - the main composer for Homestuck, who is at least gracious enough to have a running joke about how nobody knows who the fuck he is, but unfortunately for him, I knew. And then I discovered that he is a completely brilliant Fiasco player - I GMed a six-person (this is way too many), one-and-a-half-hour (this is way too fast) game on the floor underneath a staircase, and only two of us had ever played before, and it was a wonderful revolting sex-and-drugs-and-guns-and-social-awkwardnessfest.
-We went to the Friday night PAX concert to see the Protomen. They had two opening acts; first up was the Videogame Orchestra, who are a badly-named covers act with a singer who is made of x-factoresque melisma - they did everything you'd expect, including a version of Snake Eater that sounded like an oversincere disco song, with Miss Melisma belting it out as if it were the best, meaningfulest thing in the world. This seemed like fandom at its most embarrassing level of consumer culture until we heard the second band, who were worse; Those Who Fight, an excruciating Squeenix prog act who were evidently trying to be The Protomen but - with a paper-thin voiced-over fanfic narrative, incidental and without faith, and without any original composition - they clearly did not even kind of get why the Protomen are good.
O god are the Protomen good.
I lack words for how good the Protomen are, especially live - I wasn't into them until I saw them live last year. They're one of those bands that are so heinously great at performing that I can't even bear to listen to their recordings for a long while after seeing them live, but, if you want somewhere to start, there's this:
And I could try to list their hybridised, cybernetic parts - their on-stage theatrics and character drama, their complete conviction in their dystopic 8-bit headcanon - but I guess I love them because they are fandom at its absolute best; art that looks at its canon like no one else ever did, that comments on canon and uses canon to comment on everything else, that's ambitiously original and irreverently canonical and intensely aware of its audience. and no shit, i don't think there's a better band making rock music right now - not one that I've heard of anyway, and the genre is meant to be dead, and nobody even cares about their weirdass NES canon either, but oh god they are good.
-therefore we went to their post-PAX gig too, at the Middle East on Sunday night; at this point we were an unwieldy group of about twelve or thirteen people, jointed by a few key human social nodes, and bunches of us had spent the weekend lurching indecisively around a con failing at finding enough to eat and playing board games on odd corners of floor. We got there just as the first act were finishing up, and early into the second (Bright Primate, they were excellent, we bought two CDs), I went up to Radiation and told him that he'd been regularly making me happy for the last couple of years and could I buy him a drink?
He said sure.
I asked what.
He said anything!
I asked him to be more specific, and he refused, so I asked if he liked whisky, and then got him the nicest kind I could see behind the bar.
a) reasons why I like being an adult, or more specifically, an adult with sick amounts of unearned and undeserved money; I can now be at the other end of niche geek celeb drink-buying activities, and it's more satisfying than how things were when I was broke and 22: b) now, see, Radiation (so I am told) literally weighs 105lbs and is shorter than Fly, and M stared at me right after and asked if I was sure he was old enough to drink - which I was, as I'd looked at the colour of his entry wristband before asking, but barely enough that I guess I can still assume that he had not often been offered drinks by creepy older women. Well. Kid can dance. We lost track of him at one point and only later realised who the mad flaily person waving a cereal box aloft at the front of the pit had been. He got the band to sign it afterwards, too. I assume they had no idea who the fuck he was.
Smart people tried to explain to me how the Protomen's sound is built more for tiny clubs than for spaces like the PAX arena, and what I retained of that explanation was Fly's comment that arenas and stadiums were themselves a technological innovation in music, a space that sound had to expand to fill. All I could grok were the consequences; I was thoroughly happy and Matthew says he hadn't rocked out that hard since he was a teenager and he hurt for days afterwards, and another among us vanished, only to be found later out on Mass Ave having a life-changing drunken crying session.
-when I asked for time off for PAX, my non-weird boss said she had no idea I was a nerd. I told you I was an amazing compartmentaliser. It's partly appropriateness, but also that old habit of secrecy and codeswitching, not just within but between fandoms. I didn't get to share my fannishness communally until I was 17, and that may have permanently affected my habits regarding it. I like small compartments, intimate and securely closed. Some of them are made of glass; others, not so much.
-did I mention we were at PAX East? I feel like I never even scratched the surface of that shit, and I also wandered about the expo floor realising how few games I play now, new games in particular, and feeling like that part of my life has fossilised. I didn't play videogames there; I didn't want to wait in line for Neverwinter, and it's an MMO anyway ie. not my scene; I didn't especially want to play any other prerelease demos, didn't bring a handheld for the Handheld Lounge, didn't try BYOC. We went to a few panels, and they were dull. I spent time with people, and was very happy to do so.
-there were lovely new people! And one of them was Fly's friend
-We went to the Friday night PAX concert to see the Protomen. They had two opening acts; first up was the Videogame Orchestra, who are a badly-named covers act with a singer who is made of x-factoresque melisma - they did everything you'd expect, including a version of Snake Eater that sounded like an oversincere disco song, with Miss Melisma belting it out as if it were the best, meaningfulest thing in the world. This seemed like fandom at its most embarrassing level of consumer culture until we heard the second band, who were worse; Those Who Fight, an excruciating Squeenix prog act who were evidently trying to be The Protomen but - with a paper-thin voiced-over fanfic narrative, incidental and without faith, and without any original composition - they clearly did not even kind of get why the Protomen are good.
O god are the Protomen good.
I lack words for how good the Protomen are, especially live - I wasn't into them until I saw them live last year. They're one of those bands that are so heinously great at performing that I can't even bear to listen to their recordings for a long while after seeing them live, but, if you want somewhere to start, there's this:
And I could try to list their hybridised, cybernetic parts - their on-stage theatrics and character drama, their complete conviction in their dystopic 8-bit headcanon - but I guess I love them because they are fandom at its absolute best; art that looks at its canon like no one else ever did, that comments on canon and uses canon to comment on everything else, that's ambitiously original and irreverently canonical and intensely aware of its audience. and no shit, i don't think there's a better band making rock music right now - not one that I've heard of anyway, and the genre is meant to be dead, and nobody even cares about their weirdass NES canon either, but oh god they are good.
-therefore we went to their post-PAX gig too, at the Middle East on Sunday night; at this point we were an unwieldy group of about twelve or thirteen people, jointed by a few key human social nodes, and bunches of us had spent the weekend lurching indecisively around a con failing at finding enough to eat and playing board games on odd corners of floor. We got there just as the first act were finishing up, and early into the second (Bright Primate, they were excellent, we bought two CDs), I went up to Radiation and told him that he'd been regularly making me happy for the last couple of years and could I buy him a drink?
He said sure.
I asked what.
He said anything!
I asked him to be more specific, and he refused, so I asked if he liked whisky, and then got him the nicest kind I could see behind the bar.
a) reasons why I like being an adult, or more specifically, an adult with sick amounts of unearned and undeserved money; I can now be at the other end of niche geek celeb drink-buying activities, and it's more satisfying than how things were when I was broke and 22: b) now, see, Radiation (so I am told) literally weighs 105lbs and is shorter than Fly, and M stared at me right after and asked if I was sure he was old enough to drink - which I was, as I'd looked at the colour of his entry wristband before asking, but barely enough that I guess I can still assume that he had not often been offered drinks by creepy older women. Well. Kid can dance. We lost track of him at one point and only later realised who the mad flaily person waving a cereal box aloft at the front of the pit had been. He got the band to sign it afterwards, too. I assume they had no idea who the fuck he was.
Smart people tried to explain to me how the Protomen's sound is built more for tiny clubs than for spaces like the PAX arena, and what I retained of that explanation was Fly's comment that arenas and stadiums were themselves a technological innovation in music, a space that sound had to expand to fill. All I could grok were the consequences; I was thoroughly happy and Matthew says he hadn't rocked out that hard since he was a teenager and he hurt for days afterwards, and another among us vanished, only to be found later out on Mass Ave having a life-changing drunken crying session.
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Hear you on the decrease in video gaming -- I don't play much these days, although J has started to re-ignite my interest with games easily obtained on Steam.
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I am usually the same way about lyrics, though obv it depends on how the vocal is situated in the mix. Back when I sang a lot myself I paid much more attention to them, but these days it always takes at least a while for me to get into the lyrics.
Mm, part of my problem is that when I get into a game I tend to get VERY into it and then burn out. There are a bunch of things I want to play rn, but I feel like that's not how I want to spend my limited free time right now, and I keep saying I'll get back to it later. :/ Then I think of all the games I've loved, and how old they've grown in a very young medium. I'm just not excited about technical progress in gaming any more.
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And I'm glad you had such a good time. I hope the flu doesn't kill your fun too much ;;
Oh god I just don't know what to say, everything sounds amazing, I wish cons here were half as fun.
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artRule 35 too.I've been to three cons now and I had fun at all of them, but for me it's primarily about the people I'm with. The smallest con I went to was the most fun for me in terms of panels/workshops, because everything was fan-run and geared to the side of fandom I'm interested in, and there being fewer people meant that panels were much more interesting than the 'listen to industry types talk for an hour' model you get at big cons - you get groups of people yelling at each other about fanfic instead. I think I've given up on big-con panels after this. :/ But I love being with old and new friends and playing at people-watching and being huge nerds in public. And concerts, obv.
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I can understand what you're saying here, though. It's that pride by proxy. They're awesome, and they're part of "fandom" as a concept, just like you and me, and they excel at what they do. It's so nice :DDD
Cons here are fan-run by definition, with Chile being far away from... well. Everything. But I don't think we do the same stuff you do, with small cons. IDK. Maybe I've just had bad luck. But I've never had too much fun in a con, which is a pity, because in theory they sound like such a good idea. I loved cosplaying last year, though, but most of what we did was wander around dressed up and take pics, and nothing else.
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Yes, pride by proxy; and the way they make you believe in their old robot fandom. THEY REALLY WANT YOU TO GO OUT AND FIGHT THE EVIL ROBOTS WITH THEM, OKAY. Their lack of shame in finding lasting, universal meaning in an 80s videogame really helps, I guess. XD
It really does depend on the people, for me. I don't think any of the cons I've been to would have been nearly so much fun without the people I was with. At DragonCon, all I did for two days was hang out with people from MGS fandom, sit in on writing panels, take pictures of cosplayers, and buy art but it was still a blast.
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But, uh, yeah, I realised in about 2010 that I'd reached a point where a) virtually none of my fandom friends knew what my otp is, and b) that I had no intention of changing this. we are not going there, end of, you get this. (and I can def sympathise with amazing fanfic, ignore canon; lol, I am mostly like that with DC Universe too).
Even with fandoms I can bear to mention I'm involved in, I fear that effect that imo is best described as 'Let Me Tell You About Homestuck'; by talking about the specific rather than the general of fandom, you can wind up alienating the people in your group who aren't in that specific part of fandom. It's fine if you're dealing with a group of people who are all doing the same thing in the same fandom, but a diverse group of friends is a different beast from a fangirl echo chamber. I figure I can keep snowballing along all the awesome people I've met that much more easily if I don't get my public self wodged in one or another of those compartments.
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