24 Frames Per Second

"... Everything is going exactly as I have foreseen."
"Nothing can stop us!"
"Yes.  You would need a bizarre combination of reviewers, nerds, gamers, and internet personalities to defeat us now."
- Executor and Terl, To Boldly Flee (Channel Awesome, 2012)

I finally am posting part 3 of the log following Ry and my events at ConBravo! 2012.  As the quote already makes obvious, I am way behind in getting this done.  Apologies!

Previously in ConBravo!...

Ry and I had gone to the vendors and have collected a couple pairs of earrings.  We were planning on staying longer to get buttons, but we had to continue onto the next panel...

This panel was the ever-famous Atop the Fourth Wall LIVE!

Thing is, though, we apparently didn’t get going early enough.  You know how I said before that the lines for panels started 45 minutes before the time the panel started?  Well this panel was supposed to start at 6pm so we got to the line at 5:16.  … They were already past the cut-off point by that time!  It was very disappointing.  We for a bit thought they should have been monitoring the area better so people didn’t line up so early… but even then they would still be waiting right outside the area.  It’s just so unfair.  You could argue that it was our fault we didn’t come early because we decided to go to the marketplace instead, but what about the people who were at another program during that time?  So disappointing.  And we weren’t the only ones who felt that way as we heard several people around us make the same complaints.  All of us, though, stayed in the line anyway, in the forlorn hope that we might, just might be able to make it anyway.  “Maybe they will suddenly decide to change to a bigger room to fit all of us,” someone said.  But alas, this never happened, and the rest of us were deprived from seeing a new episode and possibly having some part in a Linkara video. 

(This is what we missed apparently.)
 

 

Some people opted to instead go downstairs and line up for the D20 battle, which would involve Linkara and Spoony, while the rest of us went for what Ry and I believed to be an even better alternative – stay there and be the first in line for the “Music and the Internet” panel with Paw and Todd in the Shadows (there were also two actual internet musicians with them, Mega Ran and Skrypnyk?  I'm not 100% sure, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong).  The wait was long but we passed the time starting what would soon be for the con a long series of Hangman games.  I’m sure the D20 thing was awesome, but I will say right now that missing it for this was totally, totally worth it and the best option we could have chosen.

But here is the D20 battle if anyone is interested:

As you would expect from a title such as “Music and the Internet”, the topic here was, well, music and the internet.  More specifically, we were discussing how to use the internet to your advantage as a musician, the issue of copyrights when you’re make remixes, video sites and music, and recommendations for users looking for good music websites to buy from that also support the indie artists. 

 

Paw Dugan and Todd in the Shadows.  Three guesses which is which.

It reminded me of how funny Paw and Todd are – I mean, it’s not like I didn’t already know, I watch a good number of their videos – but this was them right here, in reality.  There was an easel next to the table with the topic written on it and Paw drew the music notes above it (so he boasted) – with those music notes he made one of the funniest-looking linefaces ever.  The conversation itself was very interesting, the reviewers and the musicians getting to know each other during the actual session and learning how the other handles their careers, what they know, things like that.  Pogo was also mentioned and the world of remixing/sampling in general, and how you can’t really make money off such music but it’s an excellent starting point and really adds to your resumé and makes you recognisable.  That particular part of the discussion made me feel much better about my vidding hobby.  Ry did record the last bit of the discussion, but due to a fan being placed within the room to lower the temperature, the dialogue isn’t even audible.  But we have it anyway.

 

Paw's funny drawing would've been viewable if not for the uproarious power of the Loudest Fan Ever.

After the panel, Paw said he would go downstairs for anyone who wanted a signature or anything, so we followed – but not before catching Todd since he had to return to his room to work on a video.  Ry had bought some chocolate Canadian money to give to Channel Awesome members as a bit of a joke and token, so by “catching” Todd, I mean Ry managed to give him some of this money… and then accidentally bumped into him while trying to get back to me.  Thankfully that was not the high point of our experience with Todd.  And almost immediately after that I saw a girl hurrying down the hallway to get to Todd and, unsurprisingly but still awe-inducingly, it was Lindsay Ellis the Nostalgia Chick!  It’s funny how someone can look so normal when they aren’t famous, but then when they are they look so distinctive.

Downstairs we did find Paw surrounded by several people wanting autographs, including a chick who was getting every Channel Awesome member to sign her catbus.  We were instead boring and had him sign the front page of our booklets.  I really like his signature – it’s illegible but has a little pawprint in the middle of all the scribbles.  It was an excellent touch.  Paw also had the best reaction to Ry giving him money.  “Ooh, energy to keep me going!  Thanks!”

We then took a washroom break and when we returned to the lobby, we did not expect to find a Doug Walker there!  We couldn’t get his signature because he had to leave, but Ry managed to give him some chocolate money.  “Hey thanks!” he said, which was the standard reaction we got to most receivers of this gift.  Now back upstairs to catch Lindsay’s panel, where we didn’t beat the line starter this time but even if we didn’t make it into the panel, the reason why was so so worth it.

AND WE DID MAKE IT IN YAAAAY.

We even ended up in the second row.  The girl next to me said, “Isn’t this exciting?  It’s Lindsay Ellis and Elisa Hansen, less than five feet away from us!  And Todd and Paw Dugan in the corner!  [They were sitting on the floor against the wall.]”  She wasn’t wrong – it was indeed very exciting.  The topic, unsurprisingly for those who know Lindsay’s field, was “Being a Girl on the Internet”.  Most of you are probably thinking, “Oh, the feminist topic then,” and the funny thing is that feminism itself was part of the very topic – how many women shy away from calling themselves “feminists” because such a word has been given such a bad wrap on the internet thanks to some “radical feminists”.  Someone in the audience even dared to call it “female supremacism”, which led Lindsay to joke, “Yeah, at least white supremacists are honest and tell you exactly what they want.”  There was also the discussion of women getting a hard time from said “feminists”, like Lindsay herself, and of course men – still.  Mostly how some like to comment on the cleavage or the appearance in general or how much she swears instead of the actual content.  It wasn’t a panel to say, “Look at how we as women are still beaten down,” but to brainstorm how we as women can handle it to hopefully improve everyone’s overall internet experience.  And pretty much the biggest conclusion was, “Have a thick skin, ignore 90% of the negative comments, take heed to the other 10% that’s constructive, and if it starts to become dangerous, call the police.”  I loved both Lindsay and Elisa, as well as the third girl who was a web comic artist named Katie Shanahan, and how all of them talked about this civilly, logically, and without holding any hate or degrading to anyone, even the biggest insulters (to them they just held confusion and bewilderment).

Here be Lindsay.

By the way, I know I’ve been mostly talking about Lindsay in this and Elisa very little, and that is because Lindsay was the one heading the discussion and doing the most talking and having the most stories to tell.  Elisa talked, of course, but as a sort of subsector to the Nostalgia Chick, she doesn’t get near as much bad reception, thankfully, from others.  Questions directed at her were mostly ones like, “Did feminists hate you for playing the part of the Makeover Fairy in Lindsay’s review of Grease?” 

 

And here be Elisa.

 

Also notable was that there appeared to be at least three journalists at this panel – all women of course, probably web journalists or bloggers or something along those lines – but I’m sure they were journalists because they each asked a question and were jotting things down in a notepad.  But for me personally this was another panel that inspired me and made me feel more self-confident.  Lindsay in particular was very amusing and intelligent and it just reminded me of how much I like her as a person by just being who she is.

What was even better about this panel was that Lindsay, Elisa, Todd and Paw invited whoever wanted to to come and meet them at the elevators for talks and signatures and so on and so forth.  And this is truly where the meaning of “Awesome” comes from.

When we all go there, us fans lined up along each wall in the hallway and Paw opted to run down and high-five all of us.  “Now just stay down that end,” said Lindsay.  Paw went, “Awwww,” and pathetically lowered his head and moped.  “Nah, you can come back.”  “Yay!”  And he high-fived all of us again on the way back.  Lindsay then came over near us to sign that same chick’s catbus (she even called it by its original Japanese name, the “nekobus”), and so the session for a brief while turned into an autograph moment.  Lindsay signed both of our programs and Ry gave her and Elisa some chocolate loonies.  Then Ry and I briefly got separated as the group gathered closer because Lindsay and Todd had surprises for us.  The surprise?  They actually had posters to sell us!  And not just Todd- and NChick-specific.  There was a little poster each of Todd and NChick, but even better was the big surprise poster which was…

Well… you remember the Top 11 video Lindsay did for the Least Awful Disney Sequels?  And how there was a certain poster displayed in it as a horrible inside joke?

That’s right… they actually had printed copies of the Disney’s Anne Frank poster!  Glossy and big-sized and everything!

They were selling that one for $10 and the little ones for $5, and as soon as I saw that beautiful poster, ohmygodmustget!  Even if they weren’t doing autographs with them (which they were), I wouldn’t care because I’d have that poster and I knew already that it was going to be the best purchase of this year’s ConBravo!

Except then we were interrupted by a volunteer who told us that we had to move down to the lobby.

So us fans and Elisa took the elevator down while the other three took the stairs.  Once the doors shut Elisa turned to us and said, “Now I have you all under my power.”  Ry and I were united.

We came down to the lobby and were happily greeted by Lindsay, Paw and Todd, who were now setting up everything on a table instead of the floor.  We were all just kind of gathered around for the first bit, but then apparently a line was eventually formed.  Ry and I were confused… were we the second people in line?  Were we in the line at all?  Several people, meanwhile, were coming up asking what was going on.  Ry explained it to one guy and he responded with, “Oh, I have to troll them!”  We had no idea what this meant.

Apparently it meant the guy was going to return in an LMFAO costume with a stereo that was blaring “Party Rock Anthem”.  Believe it or not, the New York gang were perfectly okay with this, even Todd who hates the song.  They all had a friendly chat with the guy while continuing to sign and hand out posters.

Somehow, after several minutes Ry and I had ended up pressed against the wall where the table was while still not being in the line.  Eventually one guy to our left was buying posters next and meanwhile we were expressing our confusion to each other.  The guy overheard and told us, “You just have to be assertive!”  Lindsay overheard him and then apologised to me in which I flustered, “Nono, it’s okay!” right before thinking to myself, “Ohmygod Lindsay Ellis just apologised to me.”  I am a terrible fangirl.

But then we finally managed to get all three posters, the Todd one going to Ry while the others to me.  All four reviewers from the New York gang who were there ended up signing that gorgeous Anne Frank poster, I thanked them all so much, and then we went to put all of this in the car.

I was extremely jittery afterwards.  That time with them was so amazing!  It was like we were one big happy family where all of us were important.  They didn’t treat us like fans, they treated us like good friends.  I wasn’t squeeing over the fact that I had something of theirs, or for the status symbol of having something from them with their signatures – I was squeeing because they had acknowledged my existence.  They now all know of LilbunUWiz (even if they don’t know the name), who didn’t have the assertiveness to say I was the next in line.  And with the friend who gave everybody chocolate CADs.

And after looking myself in the mirror soon after, I realised that I actually had quite a distinctive appearance; I was wearing glasses, a scarf, a director’s hat, and was carrying a kangaroo.

So in all our jitteriness, we didn’t really want to go back to the hotel just yet.  It was about 10:30 by this point and the night felt young.  So we came back into the building and that was when I saw myself in the mirror.  And speaking of Joey my kangaroo…

We turned back into the lobby and Lewis where did you come from?  He was giving out signatures so we lined up to get one in my program.  (Ry also asked me if I wanted to get a picture with him and I was like, “Ajjfaajeoifh shush.”)  And when I got to him, he asked me if I wanted an autograph in my program… or on Joey?  I hadn’t even thought about Joey but that was such an awesome idea!  I was being overly modest about this, though, in my nervousness, so he was like, “Okay, I’ll try.”  It didn’t work because Joey’s fabric doesn’t agree with permanent markers.  So he ended up signing under his picture in the program instead.  Joey did get a token, however, since the permanent marker left a smudge, so it wasn’t all a loss for him – just nothing to boast about.  Ry also wasn’t able to give Lewis any of the chocolate because she was saving the rest for Spoony the next day.  Poor guy – we imagined all of them conversing about it when they got back to their respective homes:

Todd: “This girl gave me some Canadian chocolate money.” 
Doug: “Hey, I got that too!” 
Lindsay: “Well, I guess she must have been passing them around, because I also got some.” 
Paw: “Me too!”
Elisa: “Same!”
Lewis: “… I didn’t get any…”

We decided to go to the second half of the panel where they were having a trivia game for Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.  It was done up in a Jeopardy!-type format and it finished soon after we got there.  I did get some of the questions we caught though.

And then we were finally heading back to the hotel where we would spend the last half-hour of our day catching up on a few of Doug’s Disneycember videos, since we’ve been watching them by how far we are in our Disney Marathon.  And we both peacefully went to sleep… or at least I did… knowing that we had just had what some would coin as, “The Best Night Ever”.  Could Sunday possibly exceed such a night?

"She'll become a crazy cat lady!"
"She only has one cat."
"Give her time..."
- Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Jayson Thiessen and James Wootton, 2010-present; Lauren Faust gets a notable mention of course)

Surprise surprise, I'm a pegasister. I know it wouldn't have been expected last time I made a journal entry, but hehe, everybody has their own quirks, don't they?

When was the last time I made a journal entry? Or, more precisely, made a journal entry that wasn't RP-related? I have been meaning to make more entries in the last, oh, year or so - or at least some sort of form of self-expression, vidding or filming or whatever - but I will admit that RP-ing is the culprit for most of my artistic breaks. (Where I have been RP-ing, and as whom, is of no surprise to anyone who saw my most recent post.) Oh and I'm sure our new labrador puppy is to blame, too; this is my first time ever taking most of the responsibility for such a thing and I seriously feel like a part-time mother.

However, this is three weeks following one of the most amazing weekends of my life as a film-loving, Disney-fangirling, overall geeky individual... and that weekend was spent at ConBravo! in Burlington, Ontario - a geek convention that has since last year become famous for being "the only Canadian con Channel Awesome visits". Don't know what Channel Awesome is? Well if you're someone like me who loves critique, especially in the world of films, television, music, and other various artistic mediums, then I highly recommend you go crazy on their website. And since he has been apart from the Channel for just over a month now, I will also direct you to the ever-funny Spoony Experiment. But I will warn you that from here on out, you might have trouble following what I say unless you are knowledged/a fellow fan of the members of these two sites (or other forms of geekery that were at the con... but since you are reading this journal, I'm presuming you already fall under this category). Anyway, the coinage of "the only Canadian con Channel Awesome visits" isn't going to stay I'm sure, but this label is 98% of the reason why Ry and I went last year, and 99% of the reason why this year. Much like last year, only much more dramatically, the con far exceeded my expectations. Last year we only went on the Sunday due to scheduling issues (and, being noobs in the con world, shying away from staying all three days), but this year we stayed the whole weekend at a hotel outside of the con site but still in Burlington. I have written a log of our experiences on paper since I've come and to give you an idea of how long this will be, the papers were 16 full pages long... and I'm adding as I type on here. So if you can't handle my intense levels of detail in this, I sincerely apologise, and I advise you take a few breaks in between if you have trouble with tl;dr posts. Then again, this is a post of mine so it shouldn't be too shocking. This here is exactly what happened during our stay at the small-but-ever-growing-in-popularity ConBravo!


Friday - Driving, Cosplaying and Bronies

Like most road trips, something, little or big, is usually bound to go wrong at some point. Our moment began before we had even left the house. We were meant to leave at 10am, and from about 9:45 I was sitting in Ry's bedroom waiting for her to come and give me something to help me finish my packing. After fifteen minutes I came down to find that she had been spending the last half-hour or so dealing with a freezer which had its door left open for twenty-four hours and thus refused to shut again. Only three things from it had thawed out, thankfully, and Ry's dad managed to take over for us while we got our packing together - we took some of the thawed food over to my house while I got some extra things, so it wasn't until an hour after our original planned time - a.k.a. 11am - that we finally headed out to Torontario. The 401 showed no mercy on the way there. The city itself was fine, but prior to that there were at least four or five times somebody had cut in front or behind someone (including us) so closely that we seriously thought we were going to witness or be part of an accident. Basically people were being stupid and wanting to get somewhere if it killed them. Literally. And not even thinking about which lane they should be in. At least that was the worst part of the driving and when we finally got to Ontario's capital, we met resident Atlas and had a friendly reunion. He introduced us to a place where they serve breakfast all day (since Ry and I hadn't eaten yet), and the two of us indulged in a nice meal of French toast with strawberries and whipped cream. Oh, and we caught up on friend-related things but that's not important for anybody reading this.

It was then we headed to Burlington. It was 3pm, so we were driving during rush hour, but at least we didn't feel like someone was going to pummel us this time. We got to the hotel with little hassle and the room was excellent. The only thing was that they gave us a king-sized bed even though we paid for a queen-sized one, but that's probably the best mistake one can make for a reservation. Even better was that said bed was comfy as hell. The three of us chilled on it while Atlas introduced us to SNAFU comics - due to not knowing enough about the sources, I can't say what I thought of it.

And then right after that came the big moment - registering for the con! Of course, whenever you enter a convention there is usually the one reminder that comes into your head: No matter how geeky you are, ther eis always someone geekier. And possibly a little strange. There were of course hundreds of cosplayers but I don't recall recognising too many at this time. Atlas recognised way more than Ry and I did and I can't remember what those were. It shows how my geekiness lies in other places. For instance, we all undoubtedly recognised all of the fellow bronies and their cosplayers - out of the three of us we managed to spot two Applejacks, two Pinkie Pies, one or two Twilight Sparkles, one Rainbow Dash, one Fluttershy, one or two DJ Pon3's, and one Discord, all in that one Friday evening. [We saw several more in the next two days too.] And speaking of cosplayers...

"Cosplayers Shorts" was the first program we intended to go to. We were a little late for it, and didn't really have any idea what it was supposed to be about, but we managed to get in and find out. We were sitting on the floor, but it was carpeted so we didn't really care. It turned out that "Cosplayer Shorts", though we could easily have guessed this, were short films people had produced that either focused on cosplayers or the characters the cosplayers were. The first was an Epic Mealtime parody, which was both amusing and gross of course; the second was a music video basically giving a montage of cosplayers from another con; the third was, if I recall correctly, a Link cosplayer at an office job; the fourth was another montage; and the fifth was sort of a parody/homage to the Occupy movement, where it was called "Occupy Hyrule" with Link as the leader of the movement and being interviewed... so it was also a sort of Legend of Zelda parody. By far the best video out of them in terms of editing and pacing skills was the Epic Mealtime parody, but in content I think I would have to say the last one, since the poke-funs at the Zelda games were pretty amusing. However, it did kind of remind me of how little I do know about various video games and animés/mangas and comics and pretty much most geekery in general. Most of my geekery revolves around old classic films, Studio Ghibli, Channel Awesome (which, ironically, derives from the exact geekery I've just mentioned), MLP, and Disney.

Yes, why isn't there any more Disney-based geekery? Most people go gaga over Nintendo and ponies, yet they all think they're too old for Disney or something. Yet there is so much potential here! We already have a Gaston meme, and some Disney play-offs of memes. We could make t-shirts our of these and make buttons and fanart and panels based around various jokes and discussions. Hell, there are hardly even any Disney cosplayers! Why are there so few Disney geeks? It’s not like there aren’t people my age who love Disney and geek over it, but it still doesn’t seem to be con-worthy. Somehow it doesn’t count in the realm of “con”, even though targeted at a much younger audience, and the video game that is a crossover with Square and Disney are. What the hell? Why can’t we have a Disney con sometime? Am I just unaware and there’s a long lost one somewhere in the United States? And don’t tell me, “We have Disney parks,” that’s not the same thing!

[For the record, we did end up seeing two people cosplaying as Sorcerer Mickey and a human Ariel on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.]

Anyway. Dinner was due, so we went to one of the eating places across the road. It looks like most of the con members went to Boston Pizza, but screw that, we went to Tucker’s Marketplace, which is your typical western buffet. “Grab a plate and go crazy!” says their sign. I hope that doesn’t result in any china-smashing.  There were also these weird-looking birds at the front.

It was good, though, for a buffet – there was some shrimp, some pasta, and a lot of meat and mashed potatoes. Dessert was pretty good, too, typical chocolates and ice cream and so on. It wasn’t the most notable meal of the day.

The highlight overall came after that. We had originally intended to go to the How to Train Your Dragon panel, but it was already halfway done by the time we were finished dinner and we figured we should get ready to line up for the next desired panel, since the lines always started 45 minutes before the program. The panel in question… was the brony panel. Surprise surprise, we are all bronies. Also surprise surprise, the line was already fairly long by the time we got there. We ended up chatting with a few of the bronies next to us in the line, discussing Season 3, giving each other brohoofs over who our favourite ponies were, and so on and so forth. We also talked about the irony of having the panel across from ours be 4chan. And at one point during the wait, that same 4chan panel’s door was visited by somebody. Some people also caught him for autographs. I reacted in much the same way as last year when I realised Noah Antwiler had just walked past us: just standing there, staring, trying not to squeal… and meanwhile, my brain was screaming: Ohmygod, that’s Lewis Lovhaug. Linkara is less than five feet away from me!

I am not quite sure why he was at the door to the 4chan panel, maybe because he had a panel or something in there later. But it was still Lewis freaking Lovhaug.

And then he left and I felt like an idiot for reacting like a fangirl.

Soon after that our panel opened and we all filed into the small-ish room. We got pretty good seats, actually, we were in the fourth row or so… well except for Atlas, who happened to get a chair that was right in front of a post. Who thought that was a good idea? Thankfully, the talking was more important than the seeing so he didn’t suffer too much. And the talking was everything ponies; we discussed our favourite episode moments, confession stories, the rise of the brony community, what such a community may mean for the future, theories of what the previews of Season 3 mean, and trying to be a brony in a life full of non-bronies (of the negative kind). We also played a bunch of remixes and other such similar things. Hosting the panel were three cosplayers: a DJ Pon3, an Applejack, and a Pinkie Pie, and they all had a lot of knowledge on the subject matter and had very interesting stories to tell. Overall it was very insightful, inspiring, and ohmygod the brony community is so friendly! I have seen fellow bronies and have talked with some of them (outside of Atlas and Ry) on Plurk, but this was the first time I had ever gotten together with them in the same room and actually talked with them and heard their thoughts and such. They are much like what I have heard about the LGBT community – generous, open-minded, and accepting and loving of everypony, brony or not. It made me very happy to be a part of it. Friendship is magic, after all!

(By the way, about halfway through the panel we had to move into another room where we had to sit on the floor in a haphazard circle. We all loved the closeness and Atlas never did miss the marvellous view he originally had.)
 

The Brony panel, with our cosplaying hosts.  Plus Discord on the left.

It was midnight by the time it was over and we then had to take Atlas back to his abode. But all along the way we were chatting about ponies, music, ponies, and a potential cosplaying plan we have for next year… and ponies. Hopefully Atlas can stay for all three days next time. We said our loving, magical-friendly goodbyes and then the remainder of us returned to the hotel. For once we didn’t feel that sad about leaving our best friend, probably because the fun was only just beginning. We got a little lost on the way due to the decision of taking a different exit off the Don Valley Pkwy, but we got back safely and conked out by 2am. The con had already hit off excellently… and we hadn’t even reached the Awesome yet.

To be continued...