unbibium | Entries tagged with fandom

the medicine made me chatty, but not in that I was talking to people and had good things to say and attentive, but that the random bullshit thoughts in my head would be spoken, even when they were just swears of frustration, or the contents of a sign I was looking at, or the path I was walking from the light rail to the convention center.

I saw Shatner speak. It was drastically different from Nimoy's appearance last year, in which he gave a one-hour autobiography, accompanied by a slideshow. Shatner's talk was almost entirely a Q&A, in much the style of Kevin Smith, in that a simple question often resulted in some light ball-busting of the asker, followed by a long, tangential, and profound story.

After that, the cast of Eureka had a panel, and that was good too but I kind of nodded off a bit near the end. I confess, I have skipped a season or two of that.

About 45 minutes before Rocky Horror started, I found a katamari of bronies walking down Washington Avenue singing songs from the show. I had the idea to try and promote Rocky Horror to them. It didn't seem to work, because the fandoms have little in common besides an acceptance of gender dysmorphic tendencies. But I was looking forward to seeing how the Rocky fans contended with it. If cruelty were my aim, I would have tracked down the pack of furries I saw this morning, and invited them.

PJ snd Brooklyn were there, as they were yesterday... no costume this time, so harder to find.

met more redditors too... after Rocky, though, I had little to do but follow people around and watch them relate to each other, while I was in full shell mode. so I went home. I probably should have stayed and gotten drunk. For some reason, I was afraid to.

So I was trying to follow the protests on ~~4chan~~ /b/, with middling success, when I found a few threads about Digimon fans, and something about them caught my eye. The next thing you know, I found websites like Digiclipse: Connecting the Believers:

Project digiclipse is the combination of hope, belief, and the theories of members of all digimon believers. The point is, we believe that digimon exist, and we are determined to find a way to bring them to us.The way we attempt to do this, is simple, yet hopefully effective. We gather all the belivers that we can find, and focus on our goal at the exact same moment all around the world, hold our digivices to the sky, and the laws of mind over matter tell us that we can achieve our goal; a digital portal opening somewhere nearby.

And apparently the threads all over /b/ were a result of some of these people having picked yesterday.

I've known about otherkin, people who think they're dragons and elves and vampires. And then some friends pointed out animekin, who take seriously their delusion of having the soul of an anime character. I made an LJ post where I "came out" as a Nintendokin, claiming to be legitimately an eight-bit video game character in spirit. And I thought that was a joke that nobody would be able to top.

Not only are there people who think an anime/video game franchise is as true as some people think the Bible is... but they've picked a franchise that was invented specifically to rip off Pokemon.

They had a campaign video on YouTube, but due to intense trolling, it was marked as private. That's the first time I've seen people on YouTube do that, even when 4chan invades them. Update: Someone posted a copy and the first comment I noticed read "Coming from a former "Digimon are real" believer... come on, you guys. Seriously? I think this whole bit is like seven years old now. Time to quit and do something meaningful with your lives." So there have been people like this for seven years? I have truly lived a sheltered life to not notice.

For those who couldn't be there: Wil Wheaton's performance at Comicon/Comic-Con/whadeva.

Met Walter Koenig and Wil Wheaton.

Saw the first act of "Star Trek: Of Gpds and Men" where all the Trek actors with nothing better to do show up. Not bad; effects and set design are spot on, but the script is a bit amateurish. I was surprised at how good the blooper real was.

I am running into a lot of friends.

I wish I had brought my copy of

stacebass's Violet compilation to show around. There are other local cartoonists here, and I got some of their work to see how it stacks up. I gave one of them the URL to Violet Moore.

I have two hours to kill before Wil Wheaton does his reading. Am I a bad enough dude to mutilate a song in the karaoke room?

I remember playing D&D just a few times. The games were played in an apartment living room, on a large table surrounded by deck chairs, and the DM was at one end behind his screen.

Now, about a week ago I was at

miwasatoshi's house, and noticed there was an L-shaped desk in the corner with a computer on it. Now, in most homes, an L-shaped desk would be placed against the wall. But this desk had its corner aimed at the middle of the room. One resident apologized for the inefficient use of space, but we still had enough room for at least six people to sit comfortably in the middle of the room.

This got me to thinking about alternative seating arrangements, particularly for people with lifestyles IKEA doesn't design for. An L-shaped desk turned outward might be better for DM's than the typical "Knights of the Dinner Table" setup, as the DM does have a priveleged position, and perhaps the seating should reflect that.

An even better setup might be a bar, like those built into many apartment floorplans, including my own. The players sit on barstools, and the DM stands behind the bar, runs the game, and serves the occasional soda or snack, maybe even warming up a Hot Pocket or two if you don't want to slow down the action by ordering a pizza. But would a DM want to take on the additional responsibility?

What's the most unique, but functional, seating arrangement you've seen in a home?

How many LJ comments have I held back because I realized that I was tying EVERYTHING into something Penn &/or Teller have done? Plenty, let me tell you.

So, instead of boring you all with my obsession, I'll pose a small challenge. In this post, leave a comment with any topic whatsoever. Let's see how many I'll be able to connect to the works of Penn & Teller, or a topic discussed on Penn's radio show.

Obvious topics include: religion and the paranormal, magic, monkeys, second-hand smoke, smoking monkeys, Tuesdays, hot tubs, bees, or waiters offering you a choice of waters. For any of these topics, I can get you a URL or a torrent within two minutes. (late additions: guns, foie gras.

If enough people succeed in foiling me, then perhaps I'm not obsessed after all.

I'm thinking of starting a petition for the next season of BSG.

Just once, Colonel Tigh has to threaten someone by saying ( Season 3 finale spoilers )

First of all, Jack Black looked totally different in the HBO series. If he were a serious actor, he would have gained 40 pounds to play himself in Pick of Destiny.

I also, by chance, found an old tape of Mr. Show episodes, where the D's HBO series premiered, and I stopped recording right before the D started to play, because it was the late 90's and I was like "this looks like it's going to be lame," so I didn't get to hear Double Team until years later. So I missed out on a few years of that fandom.

Also, if you go to their website, it will play a few songs off the Pick of Destiny soundtrack, but cleaned up as if for TV or Wal-Mart, using the kiddie-swear approach (fuckin' → frickin', suck a cock → suck a rock). They should have hired a real Mormon to replace the swears more creatively, or at least used "frak" so that Battlestar Galactica fans wouldn't notice.

I'd like to reiterate that I love William Shatner for the precise reason most people hate him: he's his own biggest fan.

He's going to host a special on the History Channel called "How William Shatner Changed the World." The description says it's about inventions inspired by Star Trek, which sounds kind of lame, but I'm recording it anyway, because I trust the producer that green-lighted that title.

Trekkies 2 showed this fan video being produced in Germany, where they built a replica of the TNG bridge, and played their favorite characters from the original series, movies, and TNG too.

I noticed two things.

First, their movie-era Spock was a dead ringer. They could not have found a more perfect look-alike.

Second, their original-series Kirk totally didn't look American. He looked really really Eastern European. I didn't think that was possible, especially in comparison to some white Canadian actor's portrayal of a starship captain from Iowa. But, yet, he had a face that just made me think "Finnish C64 demoscener?"

It reminded me of how, when they made "Hunt for Red October", they staffed the Red October with a bunch of Russian immigrants they found in Los Angeles, and the director kept trying to keep the ones with the least-American faces in the shot. It makes me wonder whether it's really possible to tell someone's ancestry by their facial features. Then, next time I'm in France, I can spot the German guy right away and ask for directions in German right off and he'll think I'm psychic. Then I can tell him he's in terrible danger, and if he gives me $1000 I'll remove the curse.

No, then he'll just ask me if I'm psychic then how come I couldn't find the Rue des Peches station on my own?

I watched "Trekkies 2", and once again was reminded what a disservice I've done myself by giving into the stigma in college, keeping tight reins on my fandom exposure. That would have been the perfect time to learn Klingon. You know when you're 18 and you tell people that if you turn out a certain way, they have permission to shoot you in the head? My brother has that permission if I ever become fluent in Klingon. I better call my lawyer.

"You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills." -- Napoleon Dynamite

How about ice breaking skills? When conversation grinds to a halt, starting it back up is a feat that is more valuable than computer hacking.

Conflict resolution skills? Anger management skills? Tact skills?

The free software movement distinguishes "free as in beer" from "free as in speech". Likewise, perhaps we should distinguish "cool as in Klingons" from "cool as in Fonzie", for lack of a better example.

Damn, I could use a good Pac-Man costume, like the one I saw at CGE 2002. The costume was incomplete; it was basically a hard plastic shell with yellow sleeves. The back hemisphere was either missing, or never existed; the shell might have had some other purpose before being used as a costume. It's certainly not something I could make myself, nor something I think even a craft-conscious person could make for less than a few hundred dollars.

I searched on eBay and found a lame one.