Fishing is boring

Although I sort-of wasted 2 1/4 hours this morning catching NOTHING (but at least making my dad happy by going with him), I brought my iPod, so at least I wasn’t totally bored out of my mind. Because Alakazam brought her up in a couple of his posts, I decided to listen to Michelle Branch. And this time, ALL of Michelle Branch, every song I have of hers. I usually just listen to my favorites, and this goes for all artists. I bought her first two albums for the singles off it, “Breathe” being my favorite song of hers, followed by “All You Wanted,” “Are You Happy Now?” and “Goodbye to You.” But this time I decided to listen to all the songs I usually skipped, and I realized, she’s more than just a singles artist, she has some pretty strong albums all the way through. I discovered that a song of hers that I heard on the radio but had no idea where it was from was actually “Til I Get Over You.” And now maybe I’ll listen more to some of those other songs, but I’m pretty sure I’ll still play “Breathe” the most.

She also has some pretty good stuff in her “multiple-artist” songs (what are those called again?), like the one I’ve heard most on the radio, “The Game of Love.” She was probably most popular in 2003, when everything of hers got significant playing time. In 2005 she came back with “I’m Feeling You,” and then in 2007 I was forced to listen to country music at my job, and was shocked to hear her voice singing “Leave the Pieces,” which quickly became one of the very few country songs I actually like. It’s been a couple years, I wonder what she’s been doing. Hopefully she isn’t finished making music.

Mind games

When I write and think about writing fanfics, the writing side of my brain and the mathematical side of my brain are constantly at war. The mathematical side says “if no one dies, then nothing happens.” The writing side tries to convince me that I can be creative without something drastic happening, but the mathematical side continues to say that the only things that make up fanfics are births and deaths. +1 for birth, -1 for death, if no one dies then everything remains equal. It’s frustrating when this side of my brain gains power, it stops me from being creative. One solution would be to just start killing characters, but obviously the more who die, the less you have to work with. So the real solution is just to try to fight that side of my brain that thinks of numbers and nothing else, and work with the side of my brain that thinks about feelings. It’s a struggle that I’ll have as long as I’m a writer.

ColossalCon ’09

ColossalCon ’09 was the first-ever time I went to a con with… gasp… other people! Yes, I was not alone. And that made such a difference. Although I have fully enjoyed every con I have ever been to, simply because you hardly ever truly do feel alone, this time I actually had company. First on the ride up, when I took three people whom I didn’t know all the way to north-central Ohio, then once I got to the hotel and met my roommates Josh and Glenn. Before leaving I picked up a Poké Ball which would become useful for a Friday cosplay, and I got my biggest and best meal of the entire time I was gone, at Chick-fil-A.

Upon arriving at the hotel, the first thing to be concerned about was whether I would be able to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play that night at the hotel. Checking their listings, the answer was no, as the Best Budget Inn had no Versus. It also had no Cartoon Network, forcing me to miss Bleach for the first time since Tekko. The Best Budget Inn reminded me of the Bates Motel, and as I came up to it for the first time, I saw that the sign merely read “Best Budge.”

So I made a bad choice and ate at McDonald’s before going to the con for the first time, and in line for registration I nearly threw up. That was the first of my health problems that caused some hiccups at the con. We went around in the con for a while with me wearing my Haruhi T-shirt and holding Pen-Pen, then got a few pictures, played a few video games, then I was off to Buffalo Wild Wings for Game 4.

I met a Pens fan at the bar there, where I got a free root beer, as I cheered the loudest of anyone there, while shaking nervously as the Pens came back to win 4-2 and tie up the series 2-2. I was feeling so excited after the game that I didn’t even bother going back to the con for its final hour, and I went back to the hotel. After a late-night trip for Chinese, which I mooched off my roommates and actually enjoyed, I had been up 24 straight hours, before I finally fell asleep.

Day 2 started off with Glenn taking forever to get ready while I stood around waiting in my Aizen costume. We met our awesome neighbors who stayed next to us at the Best Budget Inn, a group of five girls who love Bleach and FMA. I really don’t remember doing much besides taking pictures before it was time for me to switch into my Lucian costume. I met an awesome Soi Fon cosplayer before going into Lucian mode.

It was then time to meet the cosplayer with the best costume in my opinion, Cynthia. As some people know, I have a Cynthia obsession, so getting to see a real-life Cynthia cosplayer was just awesome. Too bad she had a boyfriend… anyway, we got a picture taken together, which didn’t work out as well as I had hoped since I’m a foot taller than her, and Cynthia and Lucian should be more on the same height (if anything, Cynthia should be a bit taller than Lucian). Plus I couldn’t ship-tease Cynthia x Lucian as I had hoped since her boyfriend was the one taking the pictures.

Next it was dealer’s room time, where I fully enjoyed myself – the dealers’ room truly is the heart of a con. Why? Because not only can you buy a bunch of stuff that you’ll remember from the con, but you also get to see what wild and wacky stuff they have for sale that you just can’t afford, and get a laugh out of some great T-shirts. Moreover, there are tons of cosplayers around just waiting to get their pictures taken. So you kill two birds with one stone. I met my share of cosplayers while picking up something I’ve wanted for a long, long time… a Haruhi Suzumiya plushie!

Moreover, I decided to buy something “practical,” a Haruhi Suzumiya pillow. I skipped an Eva pillow, which I later regretted when I came back and it wasn’t there. I’m sure there will be more Eva pillows in the future. I also bought a Light plushie which would become immediately useful. Plus, I bought an utterly awesome shirt, “nyoro~n”!

Next, I got out of the dealers’ room and saw that autographs were being signed. The woman, last in line, was Cristina Vee, one whom I haven’t heard her voice in any anime, but apparently she does some cute stuff like English versions of Caramelldansen and Hare Hare Yukai (check them out on her myspace). There were also Chuck Huber and Brad Swaile, who look so similar that I couldn’t tell them apart. That led to me becoming flustered and just sort of dropping my program in front of Chuck, and waiting for him to open it up to the page of his picture, since I didn’t know which one he was. He said something in a Shou Tucker voice, though I forget what it was. I totally forgot to ask him if he did the “Edward… friend” line. In front of me someone had Brad sign a bag of potato chips (“I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!”). He even had a “L” stamp that he used to help out his autograph signing. He then signed my plushie and I got a couple pictures taken with him.

Afterward I had to go back to the hotel and get my other plushies and stuff in case I could get some more signatures, which I would. It was not long until the Bleach photoshoot, which for whatever reason I didn’t enjoy as much as in the past. Maybe it was “annoying Ichigo” as we all called him. If you were there on Friday, you know who I am talking about.

So after that I went off to get autographs from Michelle Ruff, Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey. Most important was getting Michelle’s signature on my “Haruhi’s Formula” book, as she did such an awesome job as Yuki Nagato. Then, as she signed my two Rukia plushies, came the moment of truth: what Rukia shipping do you support? Her answer: “I don’t know.” Meaning, she does NOT support Ichigo x Rukia! She seems to support no Rukia pairing for that matter, as she didn’t seem all that keen on the Renji x Rukia pairing that I suggested. But if she supported Ichigo x Rukia, she would have said it loud and clear, and she didn’t, so Ichigo x Rukia has taken yet another big blow. Go Ichigo x Orihime!

Travis is like 3 years older than me, but he has such a deep voice. He signed my Roy plushie, plus my mom’s Prison Break hat. He said he played “Soldier #1” on a Prison Break episode late in the final season. So somehow I managed to connect my fandom with my mom’s. Unfortunately, since I held up the line so much with my talk with Michelle, I forgot to get my picture taken with him, and I had barely enough time to tell Laura that Lust was my favorite Homonculus.

So after that I just wasted a little bit of time before it was time for Anime Millionaire, something I had greatly looked forward to before the convention. Having known about anime game shows in the past, and having seen online videos of Greggo’s Price Is Right, I knew that it was possible that this could be an incredibly accurate replication of the game show if they tried hard enough. Instead… it was okay, but not exactly what I had hoped for. The host was apparently a substitute, so he was very informal with it. That’s okay, because he was no worse than Drew Carey is on The Price is Right, but it didn’t have much of a game show feel to it. I knew hardly any questions, including some of the “easy” ones, although I did know the one million-dollar question that someone actually got to (What movie does Iron Chef borrow its music from? Backdraft). I had thought about trying to do my own Millionaire at Tekkoshocon, but this proved to me why it would never work; people kept on shouting out the answers to the questions, or giving hints (people putting their arms in triangles over their heads for “A” or people going “Y, M, C-” indicating “A” was the right answer). One person got to the million-dollar question and got it wrong; since it was not exactly Millionaire-esque, you didn’t lose anything by going for a question and getting it wrong. The prizes were undecided at the time of the con as well. Plus they ran out of questions way too fast and had to play Name that Tune and then a couple of videos to fill up time. So it was disappointing, but considering my expectations were sky high, it actually wasn’t too bad.

Then came the disaster of being invited to a party, but finding out that the person at the door of the party room was too drunk to remember the name of the person who invited me, so I got shut out. Afterwards I got the shakes really bad thanks to a migraine and ended up spilling orange pop all over my 5th squad messenger bag. I had to go back to the hotel to recover.

But after hanging out with our awesome neighbors for a while, and then a brief trip to Wal-Mart, it was off to the Dance of Awesome, also known as the “rave.” And yes, I danced. Seriously, I bounced up and down and really got into it. That was so not me, but I love the fact that I was able to break out of my shell and do something crazy yet safe. I imitated the Mark Madsen dance for most of the time. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ciMXvSE8U)

On to Saturday. I went to see the Female Stereotypes event with Michelle Ruff, Melissa Fahn and Cristina Vee. They basically broke down all anime girls into being one of three stereotypes: a Sailor Moon-type, a Mikuru Asahina-type, or an Asuka-type. Meaning, airhead, moe and aggressive. While they talked I tried sorting anime girls I knew into the three types. It actually isn’t very hard to find which type each one falls into. There are very few that don’t fall into any of those three types, and even those characters are not very important.

After that it was on to the voice recording workshop, where we got to do some on-the-spot voice acting with Michelle Ruff. Pretty fun, even though I really don’t have any talent at that. We learned what a “102” was but missed the part where individuals were going to try out acting, because we went onto the Fullmetal Alchemist Q&A. Everyone was there but Vic. That’s when, about 15 minutes into the VAs wasting time, all of a sudden a great cheer came from the crowd as someone walked into the room. It was Vic. If I learned anything over this weekend, it was this: Vic Mignogna is the Derek Jeter of voice actors. Meaning, he’s so extremely popular that getting his autograph takes quite a bit of effort. I could have gotten his autograph there, perhaps, but I failed, and then the rest of the day was devoted to doing just that.

I skipped the second half of the FMA Q&A (which was very little to do with FMA and more to do with people wanting to hear them say the same lines over and over again) and went on to get Melissa Fahn’s autograph. She’s so cute, I even admire her more for something she told the person in front of me, which was that she refused to do a character’s voice in a rape scene. Meanwhile I’m having her sign my Edward plushie – talk about an innocent character! She said she had a couple of those at home, telling me that she’s got a little bit of Tiffany Grant in her, being a fan of the characters she plays.

So after eating, I was rejected from returning to the FMA Q&A by a man with a gun (apparently they were pretty serious about this). Too many people were in the room then. I began to become a little desperate about getting Vic’s autograph, as he apparently was not going to be there on Sunday. So I stopped into the Voice Acting Outside Anime event with Melissa Fahn and Brad Swaile, which was pretty interesting. Unfortunately the whole time I was thinking about how I could get Vic’s autograph.

So I came out of there and went to Bleach photoshoot #2. Lots of fanservice pictures came out of this one. I ought to play Kisuke Urahara so I can get some Yoruichis. Too bad there isn’t a male character who likes Soi Fon. Maybe by playing Gin I can get some Rangiku Matsumotos. Aizen’s stuck with Momo, and most Momos are still bitter over that little backstabbing Aizen did. The real Momo wouldn’t be bitter.

After that it was all-out find-Vic mode. I went to get my picture with Michelle Ruff as I had forgotten to the day before. I left that table, walked just a little bit, turned around, and the line was humongous. It was Vic autograph time. So I waited in line – and waited – and waited – and after half and hour, Vic quit the line to go play dodgeball. So I got a copy of Bleach: Memories of Nobody autographed by Michelle for a friend and gave it to him before I went Vic-stalking.

I got out to the dodgeball court (a parking lot) and found our neighbors from the Best Budget Inn. One of them pointed out someone just standing around, like a normal con-goer, with no one paying attention to him. It was Aaron Dismuke, voice of Al. So I followed some people over and got him to sign my Al plushie. Seriously, he was just standing there, and hardly anyone knew who he was. He reminds me of a Pittsburgh Pirates player, who could go into public and not be recognized by anyone except for die-hard fans.

When Vic arrived, he was surrounded by an entourage by about 100 people, and it stayed that way for a long while. I mean, this guy was surrounded by fangirls no matter where he walked. So finally he and some organizers got the dodgeball game organized. Unfortunately, Travis failed to show up, thus not making it a true Risembool Rangers vs. Miniskirt Army matchup, but Aaron took Travis’s place as the captain of the Miniskirt Army.

The first ball thrown in the first dodgeball match by the first player – it hit Vic in the hands, and he dropped it, and he was the first person out. It was amazing. All that hype, and Vic’s the first one out. Except, that a few minutes later, Vic says that everyone came to see him play, so he’s just walking right back in. How about that? Vic Mignogna is a cheater! He later amended the rules so that both he and Aaron were invincible, but the rule-bending during the game made this just like the old playground. Gotta love it, we’re a bunch of 20-year-olds or teenagers watching or playing a game that harkens back to the days of our preteens.

Standing on the sideline, when balls came rolling over to us, we were told to send them back into play. So when one came to me, I kicked it over to the Miniskirt Army… and promptly got lectured by Amanda for doing so. Apparently Amanda and Caryn are big Risembool Rangers fans. I didn’t realize that this was like Packers-Bears here, so I made sure the rest of the time I threw the ball to the Risembool Rangers side, but with a catch: the three times I got the ball, I purposely aimed the ball right at Vic, trying to hit him. I missed on all three attempts. The Rangers won 2 out of 3 games, including the all-important “all-girls” game. After the game, everyone got a picture of Vic and Aaron together.

But that was not all. I had to get Vic’s autograph while I had the chance, as he announced that he was leaving at 6 am the next morning. So as fans surrounded him, so did I, pushing my way to the front. And finally, at long last, I got him to sign my Ikkaku and Ed plushies. He seemed surprised to see an Ikkaku plushie, probably because everyone else knows him from his role as Ed only. Before I left, I told him “keep the faith, man,” and he looked at me knowingly and replied “thanks.” Thus I got the feeling he knew exactly what I meant when I said that. Trust me when I say that Vic is more than just a good voice actor, he’s a good person too.

I wasted a bit of time before deciding to head back to the hotel to change, then to go to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Now knowing the result, that game ends up being meaningless. Maybe it got the Red Wings too cocky or something, I don’t know. The Penguins lost 5-0 even as I was invited by some girls who worked at Cedar Point over to their table, some who were Pittsburgh fans, others (including a guy) who were Red Wings fans. I wonder how the Red Wings fans at the bar who started chants up feel now? Oh, I know! STUNNED!

I came back a bit early, and I met up with my friends as well as the awesome Soi Fon, and we ran around the con aimlessly for half an hour. There were plans on going to the rave, but Soi Fon left, and I did shortly afterward as well. I decided instead to see the Death Note Double Feature.

The movies were awesome. The only complaints: the audio and video did not match up perfectly, which made it a bit awkward, and the big complaint that we were kicked out of the room before we were able to see the exciting conclusion to Death Note: The Last Name (the second movie). That made no sense, given that other places were still open all night long. That was my biggest complaint of the con, that I was forced to miss the last bit of that movie.

On to Sunday. Not much happened this day; I checked the dealers’ room one last time, but failed to find anything new or any good deals; I checked in on a little bit of a Ranma ½ panel, as part of my personal requirement to see some of Ranma ½ in any con I go to (well, not really, but I have seen Ranma ½ now in 3 out of the 5 cons I’ve been to). I then went to Last Chance Q&A and listened to some of the same old questions and requests: “do the dogs line!” One person even asked if the VAs got sick of answering the same questions over and over again, to which Brad Swaile pretended to get upset about. Afterwards it was the last chance to get autographs, and all I wanted was a picture with Travis Willingham, but he said that I couldn’t because they were all behind the table. That made no sense, as it did not stop lots of other people from getting pictures taken. I should have just pressed him on it and I would have gotten it, but instead I stupidly walked away. Never forget the power of persistence.

Closing ceremonies finished things out, which sort of turned into a feedback forum. Almost everything said there was positive. And let’s face it, it was positive. This was one of the best cons I’ve ever been to. Okay, so I’ve only been to 5. But still, this con jampacked stuff in from the moment we arrived to the moment we left. ColossalCon 2010 is definitely one I plan on going to, pending circumstances of course. ColossalCon ’09 will be remembered for lots of stuff, with no real one defining theme. Simply put; it was a con, and it was colossal.

Thank you

Thank you, Wyyrlokk, for renewing my faith in mankind. Your response proves to me that we still live in a world of second chances.

My side of the story

Let me just make a few things clear…
-Never did I have anything against Wyyrlokk, nor do I have anything against him now.
-Never did I mean anything bad by calling Wyyrlokk “the one with a W in his name.”
-The whole time, I’ve just felt neglected because I thought that I was being ignored.
-In fact, I did not just feel neglected by Wyyrlokk himself, but by all three of you, so it wasn’t like this was me vs. him.
-The fact is that I thought my best decision would be just to let the three of you have your discussions and stay out of them. But that was misconstrued by all of you by me “ignoring” Wyyrlokk, when I was the one who felt ignored by him.
-I wrote my posts of frustration because I was being left out and everybody went on just as if I had never joined in the first place; in short, I felt that nobody cared.
-When hearing that posting in frustration made P*A upset, I took down what I wrote and agreed that I would do everything in my power to make up with Wyyrlokk.
-Despite the fact that I felt like I was wronged, I have been the one apologizing for misunderstanding Wyyrlokk’s intentions, meaning that I have been trying my best to reach out to him.

So I know that all 3 of you read this, and here it is, my side of the story. Apparently right now all three of you have this one opinion, and it’s got me in a negative light. So I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m going to try to talk this out with Wyyrlokk. If you can accept my apology for misunderstanding you, then hopefully we can move on from this. If all of you are going to hold something against me, though, I am ready to disappear from your world forever… literally.