This is my second convention I've ever attended. The first one was LinCon back at Sweden (that one was much bigger, so big in fact it boasts one of Sweden's largest game convention, SFotR however has the boasting rights of "Newfoundland's largest geek convention", not that it means much).
Yes, there are board games in this convention too, but it's a really small area of it. It's more dedicated to geek culture of sorts, so throughout my entire day there, I can't help but compare it with the other con I went, as opposed to the other con that I didn't go but constantly hear horror stories about: NärCon.
This event was held in the Sheraton Hotel. Mind you, this is St John's, so the hotel isn't big to start with. So by that, the convention itself isn't the largest either. Heck, it's not even big, but it's something!
This event was held in the Sheraton Hotel. Mind you, this is St John's, so the hotel isn't big to start with. So by that, the convention itself isn't the largest either. Heck, it's not even big, but it's something!
I only bought the day pass because the weekend pass is pricey and I couldn't really find someone to go with (although I do meet lots of the people I play board games with over there and kinda just group hop around). I went to some panels because I guess that's what you did in cons. I have to say: this is my first time attending panels, and it's.... strange? I guess its more accurate to say that I'm not used to this kind of format. I've never really watch any panel videos on YouTube since it doesn't really interest me, so I came into this with 0.5 prior knowledge.
The panel that I attended was called: Epic Lit Wars: Ignorance Edition. So what it is is that a bunch of these authors get together, they pick a topic, and then they debate about it. The Ignorance part of it is that they didn't do any research, and kinda just have to wing it as they hear the topic. The topics are stuff like: Batman or Ironman? Star Wars or Star Trek? The fun part of it is that if one person picks one side, the other person have to debate for the other side, so things get interesting on topics like: The Hobbit, movie or book? Apparently no one likes the movies, so the lady who had to debate for the movie was basically drawing straws. Also: the audience votes who wins, and the winner stays and the loser gets kicked out and the next author comes in and next topic!
Overall, a pretty fun panel. I like the concept. The one thing I don't like is that it seems the audience votes for their favourite thing, rather than the better debater. An example would be The Hobbit one. The person debating for the books was super shy, and basically said nothing of substance, but things like: "well everyone knows the movie sucks right? Why are we debating about this?" kind of spiel. While the lady was basically debating as though as her life was on the line, and she lost by like 19-1.
My other complain is the food here in the convention. We're in a hotel, and the food was made by the hotel's kitchen. The only food that was offered was: coffee, tea, water, pizza, hot dogs, and fries. Oh my goodness, that's insanely unhealthy, and the only vegetable in this whole thing is the hot dog topping relish. This is the one part I could actually compare it with LinCon. Although LinCon only serves burger, it was a damn good burger, and there's actually fresh lettuce and tomatoes on it I guess. Well, the pizza has tomato sauce on it too.... Oh! As for vegetarian option, all you get is cheese pizza. That's it, it's just the regular salami pizza but the salami removed (something I noticed here is that events like to serve pizza, with choices of salami pizza, or cheese pizza for the vegetarians). If you're celiac, then all you get is fries! I met a friend at the event and she told me "wanna grab dinner in the convention" in which I just outright said NO. There wasn't those squirmy "ehhhh I would rather not" but just a NO. The event was downtown so at least I get to just walk out and grab some grub.
And there's this. This is one of those things I would have never dreamed of experiencing myself. This thing made my eyes roll back into my brain so many times but I just couldn't say anything cause it's not nice. This is one of those few events where geeks get to meet up with like-minded people without getting made fun of or feel discriminated in the usual way, but oh GOSH are their conversations super cringe. Why, why, whyyyy does this hotel NOT HAVE STAIRS (they do, but it's only outdoors). Which means going between floors, even though its just a single floor, requires you to use the elevator. I swear I felt like a video game character at the time, where waiting for the elevators and elevator rides are actually secretly loading screen, and the con-goers conversation around the elevator scripts are written by some Bioware/Marvel-wannabe. The way they speak, their choice of words, oh gosh. I would say this part would be the most genuine part of a convention though, that no matter how big or small the convention is, this is gonna happen. This is the true con experience (provided that you speak the language of course, I probably wouldn't get it if it was in some foreign cons, ie: NärCon, or even Montreal's cons)
 |
| The vendors area |
I spent most of the time in the gaming room I believe. Found a friend and we both played Overcooked 2 for a long time. We played it on the switch, and I'm not really good at it. I blame it on the joy-con. A wise man once said:"A poor craftsman blames his tools, unless it's Jerry" - Jerry. We got 3 star for most of the missions (apparently there's a 4 star which requires double the amount of points of the 3 star). The hardest decision to make in the game I believe was deciding between grandma chef or wheelchair raccoon chef (I went with the sweet ol' gran-gran). I played some Overcooked! before (the first game), and I guess it seems the difference is that there are more recipes, more screw-you maps, and I don't know if you could do this before, but you could throw ingredients now? The throwing makes it so much more easier (if one can throw well).
Had dinner, then a friend invited me to a bar. Turns out it's one of the friend's birthday, and they're all celebrating it in a Spanish bar. When I asked what group of friends is this, the answer was the "Latin dance club". Oh shit.
__________________________
I'll take this time to talk about an anime that just finished this week, called: "My Housemate is on My Lap, But Sometimes, on My Head", or as Crunchyroll calls it: My Roommate is a Cat.
Personally, I prefer the Japanese translation of the title, cause its kind of playful in a way. The Western naming scheme is just so plain, bleh.
Why am I talking about this anime, where there are way more other anime which kicks ass this season. We have Mob Psycho 100 season 2, we have the long awaited adaption of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, we have the hype machine that is The Rising of Shield Hero, the anxiety machine that is The Promised Neverland, and the whatever the hell this is Boogiepop and Others by Madhouse. But why am I talking about this specific anime? Well, let me tell you why.
We start out the episode at our protagonist, Subaru,'s parent's funeral. Yep. Subaru is, I guess your recent university graduate, and apparently a very successful author. However, he is a very quiet, introverted person. The only people he communicate with is his parents, his childhood friend and his family, and his editor. As you can see, with the parent's passing, that circle basically got cut by half. The people at the wedding were all of the parent's friends, and his childhood friend, in which there are whispers around the funeral about "so what's Subaru going to do now?" and stuff like that. Apparently, Subaru doesn't do anything but read and write. He doesn't cook, sometimes does not shower, and if his deadline approaches, he doesn't eat (which is always a source of panic for his editor).
So there you go, we start out the story with this dude. Sad, lonely, angry, and vulnerable. Due to his anxiety, he kind of waited for everyone to leave first, then only he went to the parent's gravestone alone, to do his prayers of sorts. He was offering sashimi to his parents, when suddenly a stray cat snatched the fish! One thing led to another, and now he unofficially adopted the stray cat. The only problem is that, he knows nothing of animals, nor rearing a pet, cat.
Halfway through the episode, the show switches perspectives! Whaaaattttt~~~ Now we're watching the show through the cat's perspective! Oh my, what a cute gimmick! That was the part when I went "Okay, okay, I see what's going on~ I'll stay for awhile then rather then just quitting the show." Of course, watching through the cat's perspective was really cute and all, so I continued.
At first, I stayed for the cat's perspective. It's a really cute thing, and I always can't wait for the second half of the episode because that's when they switch. But as the show goes on, as I told you, Subaru has no expertise whatsoever in raising a pet, so he has to get out of his comfort zone to do so. And boy, it's amazing. The character growth in this show is subtle, but very realistic. The best part is that because he has a cat, the editor constantly visits his home to play with the cat (that's how I relate to the editor, because I always visit my friend's house to play with their cat), and the childhood friend is always bringing her little sister over to play with the cat, then slowly the little sister comes alone, then slowly the little sister brings her friends over, and so on and so forth~ So you can see that a lot of times our main character is forced to interact with people, which is really difficult because of how he is.
By the second half of the show, it's not that I got tired of the cat perspective thing, but I was super invested into Subaru's perspective now. From the way he started going to the pet store to ask about cats, and then going to the vet, and then making more friends because a lot of the other cat owners started giving him advises on how to raise a cat; you can really see how he's starting to change. One of my favourite episode is when he agreed to do a book signing. He hates human interaction but he sort of got goaded into doing it because there was a glimpse of out-of-comfort-zone-stepping due to his character growth.
Also any episode with the dead parents were a tearjerker (which is a lot of episodes, surprisingly). I think one part of the show is that the parent's were constantly trying to broaden his comfort-zone, and he didn't realize that until after their passing. Somehow, having a cat helps him realize that, like having the cat rummaging through old photo albums and what not, forcing our main character to tidy up the place, which he then decided to flip through the photo albums and saw all the notes that the parents wrote and what not.
I guess one of the thing I like about this show is that it shows character growth through a very normal way. Most of the "guy growing up" tropes in anime is through the shounen genre, which means there are lots of fighting. You know, rival kills my family of sorts and now I have to get stronger and take revenge sort of deal. Yeah those are cool, but sometimes you want a breath of fresh air, one that doesn't go over the top, or have some superhuman abilities, and yet still get the job done. The other thing is that this guy is more around my age. The usual trope is usually some kid as young as 14 saving the world or something, but this one is a university graduate trying to get his life together, which is pretty rare in an anime. So mundane, yet so relatable and effective!
 |
| and give this show a try! |
__________________________
I went to the bar, with the intention of saying hi, wishing the birthday girl happy birthday, and leave. One of the draw of the bar is that there is a space for patrons to do some Latin dances. And then I realised, people who visits this bar, ALL KNOWS HOW TO DANCE. Man, they arrive, order a drink, and then they start dancing. I was just sitting there going o_o . People like me will probably never set foot in this bar, and opt for a regular bar instead, where dances involves jumping and raising hands or something, I dunno. This bar, man the guys and the girls, wooooh!
One thing led to another and then I basically treated those 2 hours as dance class. Everyone there was super supportive, and they taught me some moves as I struggle to keep up with them.
It was really fun! I had another realisation too! If I were to come here with my regular group of friends, we would probably just be sitting by the booth for the entire evening. But since I came here with a friend who already can dance, to meet up with other people who can dance, in a bar filled with people who can dance, usually I would feel super out of place and just kind of disappear into a corner. So one of the thing I have to change is my mindset. I changed it to a gym perspective.
Most of the time, when you enter a gym, you're gonna see a bunch of super buff or fit people doing some super difficult routine or lifting some heavy weights, and I'll just be there, the fatty, feeling intimidated and out of place. But one of the things that I also know is that all these gym rats are super supportive people. They don't care if you're fat or skinny or buff or handicapped, the fact that you brought yourself to the gym to do gym stuff is good enough and they'll support you if you need any help. With that mindset, just replace the word gym with Spanish dance bar, and gym rats as dancing kings and queens. I figured that as long as I try, it's okay, and the folks around me will help me out.
So yeah, I stayed way longer than I planned to, met lots of people. Heck, even met one of those guys who I played video games with over there, and he's there killing it on the dance floor with his girlfriend. Seems very fun, would do it again if I have the chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment