Blech. So another fat pause in posts, and when I finally bring myself back into the habit, it's with much less fanfare than I'd hoped.
It began, as so many things do, with the birth of my son, the beginning of many epic projects, and an all-but-inevitable slide into insomnia (or in-zomb-nia, as my loving wife insists I pronounce it). I saw several movies that I'd really wanted to write Nerdviews on, but things kept piling up and most of the movies this past summer were more disappointing than anything else. Perhaps in the coming weeks I'll write-up mini-digest Nerdviews, with just a couple of sentences (heh--yeah, sure--just a couple of sentences) to sum my feelings on a lot of the movies I've neglected over the life of this blog. I think the superhero sequel to the Dave Lizewski movie (keeping it family-friendly, yo), Oblivion, Pacific Rim, and Despicable Me 2 all merit mention, but I've also been kicking myself for not reviewing Dark Knight Rises and Amazing Spider-Man. And with Agents of SHIELD officially picked up for a full first season, I need to give that a write-up with a special surprise element tacked on. Filmatleven.
Most importantly, I've still got to get my most important new article series started: Nerds of Interest. Intended to be a series of features on different nerds I've met and taken an interest in, I should've posted the first article in this series months ago. I've already interviewed the really nice ladies behind Horsefeathers Cosplay as the first in this series, and I owe them (and you) a big apology for not getting that put up post-haste. They have helped inspire me to finally bite the bullet and get into cosplay fully and truly, and I definitely want to honor their influence and that of Cosplay4UsAll in my hobby insanity.
Along those lines, I made my first foray into cosplay. And as one should
expect of me, it's been intense, grueling, full of mistakes and petty
triumphs, and way too rushed by conservative cosplay standards. You see,
October 10th was the one year anniversary of Star Citizen being
revealed to the public and opened up for crowd-funding, and they made a modest event out of the observance. On September 19, they announced a photo contest to coincide with the event, which would close a mere two weeks later. Never one to let reason bar me from setting a goal, I decided that I would make a Star Citizen cosplay in that time. The (sorta) end result was a pretty feldercarb picture of a frakkin' awesome work-in-progress cosplay that didn't even place or get mention in the photo contest. I'll post more about this costume and my progress towards completing it later, but for now here's the underwhelming photo:
Those who follow me on Facebook or Google Plus can see some of my other pictures as well.
I'm not cowed from the hobby, but I don't think I'll put up any more pictures without taking the time to get some decent ones taken with a decent camera and photographer. No offense intended to my wife, but I felt like a motorized tripod with a remote would've been a better setup. Alright, I guess I intend a little offense with that comment. Anyways, the point is that this first frustrating entrance in no way dissuades me from cosplay. Expect to see a lot more on that in the future.
Another article series that needs posting: Nerd Level Up Program. A simple series of fitness and general wellness goals I've set for myself, I've already hit enough of my modest goals that I've essentially backlogged two or three level up posts. This actually dovetails with my interest in cosplay, but working out regularly was one of those things that was always a part of my holistic life goals.
My RPG muscles are starting to atrophy. I haven't sat down for a proper tabletop session in well over a year, and the lack of RPG goodness in my life is really unacceptable. On the homefront, I'm this close to actually doing verifiable work cleaning out my dungeon basement game room and facilitating game play down there. On the blog front, though, I've been planning a couple of things for a while. The GURPS Centurion project is still under way--more character write-ups and eventually several comic pages.
I try to keep a bead on the search terms that bring people to my blog, and every once in a while I come across a really unusual set of search terms. Months ago, I found a particularly interesting phrase on my stats page: "GM tips for scaring their players." My my my. I just love that there is a GM out there looking for tips to scare their players. So at some point in the future I want to make an article of tips for getting emotional reactions from your players: fear, sadness, awe, and elation.
On the back of my embarrassing cosplay failure, I decided to throw myself into the concerns of others, like an infested Terran from Starcraft. In the middle of my clumsy cosplay sprint, I got in touch with one of the fine members of Grievance Gaming, Shrivasta, about helping their group with a charity drive for Extra Life. Here's a little statement from Shrivasta about the event, coming up November 2nd:
As many of you know, Grievance will be participating in Extra Life next month on November 2nd, 2013. Extra Life began in 2008 as a way of honoring a young lady named Victoria Enmon. Tori’s battle against acute lymphoblastic leukemia inspired the Sarcastic Gamer Community in a way that is difficult to describe. Members sent in video games and bought gifts to keep Tori’s spirits up despite numerous hospital stays and three bouts with the deadly disease.
Tragically, Tori lost her battle with cancer in January 2008.
Since then, the gaming community at large has participated in the Extra Life project, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in the US as well as Canada! This year is no exception. In November, thousands of gamers will be participating in a 25 hour marathon gaming session for charity!
This will be the first Extra Life team for Grievance, and we aim to make it an annual tradition. We’ll not only be taking pledges for the hours played, but we will also be auctioning off items to the community to raise additional money for Extra Life as well.
I've been a fan of Extra Life for some time, and the Grievance Gaming guild is a fun group of gamers, so when I happened across Shrivasta on Facebook, I decided to do a little something myself. Since I'd made some paperweight-sized ODST (from the Halo franchise) helmets in the past, I thought it'd be great to make one with a custom base and a medic paint-job and add it to the Grievance auction. Here's a picture of the early print of the model, before I got really hands on with the piece.
Please spread the word about this worthy cause and seriously consider donating. And if you want your own ODST medic sitting on your desk, be sure to get in touch for that auction.
So all this stuff is nice enough, but it doesn't mean too much if I'm not going to post regularly, does it? Well, the number of followers I currently have means I need to post at least twice a week, but over the past three months or so I figure you readers have a back log of 31 posts. So as I get back into blogging here, I'm going to try my level best to put in an extra 31 posts (in addition to the two weekly you've already earned), so that by December 31, 2013 you should have just as many posts in the past year as though I hadn't been MIA the past three and a half months. I don't know how reasonable that will be, but it's a good goal to close out the year, and it's quite obvious I've got enough content lined up to fill those spots.
Today's been a fairly lazy day on the Nerdery front. I've been working on several gargantuan blog posts that will take a good deal of work due to either the tremendous writing/editing load necessary or due to editing media I want to attach to the associated blog posts.
In particular, I've been stalled by the release of the addictive State of Decay, which came out on Tuesday on Xbox Live Arcade. I'm currently in the research and evaluation stage of writing a review for it (ie, I'm playing the game as much as my spazzy, tow-headed spawn will let me). That should be forthcoming within the next handful of posts, if all goes well the next few days.
The big news in the Nerdery, though, was a small package I received in the mail. Tearing into it, I dropped my engraved metal Citizen's ID Card, a beautiful little reward for most Star Citizen backers. Featuring my planned character's name, my founder and pledge status, and a really neat engraved circuitry design along the top and bottom, this is a first class bit of totally superfluous game bling. And I love it. I love getting collector's editions of games specifically because of these sorts of baubles. In the Fallout New Vegas collector's edition, for instance, you get a neat case with a starter deck of Caravan cards, a graphic novel, and a handful of poker chips from the casinos featured in the game. The Dragon Age: Origins collector's edition came with a fabric map of Thedas. Which is awesome because I can now say I've literally caressed Ferelden to my cheek. I love you, you hound-loving nation of malcontents.
Now Star Citizen is fast joining those noble ranks of uber-sexy nerd add-ons that make me unjustifiably enthused for the game beyond the promised gameplay experience. Plunking this plate down on my laptop keyboard, I then snapped a few pictures and threw together the following image. Later tonight I'll be reviewing my character's crew contracts, which will totally be used as an in-game charter for anyone wanting to serve aboard my Constellation-class merchant ship. Oh yes, I'm serious. In the coming weeks, I'll probably share my multi-page crew forms at some point in the future, as well as my detailed thoughts on space-mining as a potentially deep gameplay feature for Star Citizen.
In other nerd news, I've been taking baby steps towards cosplay ever since the euphoric epiphany that was the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. I'm still at the point where I'm just testing stuff out as I research options and pick the brains of much more experienced and talented cosplayers. Most of the stuff I'm actually doing right now is helping out some other fine folks with a project of theirs while also using that effort as an opportunity to sponge up their methods and talents as best I can. But, I'm not just working on other people's stuff. You could say I've got some nerdy projects in the works.
I'm hoping to have something relatively wearable ready for my son within the next week, so if that happens as I hope you can bet you'll get some more images of it in the next few days. The idea is to present him with this as a novelty consolation prize for being ousted as the cutest thing in our household once his little brother is born. Of course, I think this makes him even cuter than any merely human son could ever be--he's not just cute now...he's supercute!
Nerd Butter: For everything, there is a qualifying level and then there is another, superlative, exemplary level. There are many Olympic athletes, but only a few medalists. You might be a sports fan, or you can be the guy in the stadium with baseball stitching painted in his beer belly. And so it is with being a nerd. There are nerd requisites--what I call Nerd Bread--and then there are nerd specialities--Nerd Butter. While just about every nerd should be into Nerd Bread, Nerd Butter is what sets you apart as a nerd of a special caliber. And in the end, it's the specialties that make being a nerd so much fun. Starting off a new month, and I can also say that the Facebook page companion to this blog is now up and running. If you want to, head on over to FB and lookup Ben's Nerdery. I'll be putting up photos there--some from the blog, and some from the cutting room floor as I add more and more coverage of conventions and other events. In particular, I've got about 30 pictures under my coverage of C2E2's cosplayers that I didn't get to share in the C2E2 2013 Roundup. Check it out, and feel free to share the pics around your Facebook (or Google Plus) circles to help spread the love. Today's topic is cosplay. That stands for "costume play" for those of you scrunching up your faces in confusion right now. Cosplay allegedly comes from Japan, because they formalized the portmanteau and made a sub-culture of it. But portmanteaus and sub-cultures are what the Japanese do best, so I don't give them much credit for that. No, costume play has been an informal part of a lot of non-Japanese societies long before they made it sexy and called it cosplay. I'm thinking of the 60s and 70s fans of The Lord of the Rings doing dramatic readings of Tolkien's works in costume. Heck, even Tolkien himself was known to occasionally burst into lecture hall in chainmail and shouting "Hwaet!" to start class*. And this sets aside the western halloween tradition of costume parties and masquerades in general, which are similar but aren't quite cosplay. Cosplay is about appreciating and exploring the characters you dress up as, in addition to being a social dialog between fans. Characters from books, comics, shows, movies, and games are all fair material for cosplay, but comics and games are probably the more common expression at a general event these days. Although I must have seen about 100 Jayne Cobb beanies at C2E2--I even caught a few staff wearing some. Cosplay is fundamentally about exhibiting the fandom that went into the costume's planning, creation, and display, and that makes it different from Halloween parties where the costume is still the secondary identity. That's why it's customary to identify a cosplayer more like an actor playing a role, and it's not unusual to address cosplayers as their characters at cons and events.
Cosplayers approach the hobby from all different angles. Most of the time cosplay begins in relation to conventions. As I'm sure you guessed from my cursory coverage of the cosplay at C2E2, you could go to a convention like that and do nothing but cosplay-related events. Heck, I could very easily have sat outside the event itself and done nothing but take pictures of the fabulous cosplays as they arrived. I'm pretty sure some people did, and I've heard stories of people doing that quite deliberately (sometimes because they've been kicked out, but whatever). At C2E2, I was absolutely blown away by the Ms. Marvel cosplay you see in the gif here, and I kick myself that I didn't get any decent still pictures of her or her sister, who was a perfect Kasumi. I remember seeing them just outside the venue on Friday, and only the rugged lure of Ron Perlman and his autograph kept me going. Which is good, because later I was pretty certain that if I talked to them I'd have made a bigger boob of myself than when I met Ron. I'm pretty sure I made the right call, because Imma stoopid.
Other cosplayers get into it from a performance angle, and since they're dressing up in costumes for photoshoots for modeling or acting anyways, they adapt to the cosplay sub-culture. I find it hard to respect this angle, as some people seem to use cosplayers as a way to milk the nerd community for support and enthusiasm without actually enjoying the nerdiness itself. They also make it more difficult to distinguish regular cosplay from the fetishist elements of it--because a lot of the cosplay that gets noticed these days only gets recognized for being sexy, and many of the other fun aspects of the hobby get pushed aside for...mammalian enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, I'm a mammal. I'm a huge mammal. I could probably talk mammals all day. But when exhibitionist types insist on reducing cosplay to that level, they also make it harder for people to get into it for just the cosplay and not the sensuality of it.
(You do know what I mean by mammalian enthusiasm, right?)
And then there are those who get into cosplay from a production side--they might get asked to help someone make an element for a costume and in the process get wrapped into the excitement. (Note: you have to be kind of weird to get excited about most of the process of cosplay; most people find the work of it incredibly tedious.) I mean, if you're going to enjoy sewing, prop or wig-making as a hobby in itself, you might as well turn into a service for your fandom too, right? In a big way, this last option is my story. I've always loved cosplay and had a vague idea of wanting to get into it somehow and someday, but I never really felt comfortable enough with it to commit myself to it. Then Star Citizen came along (don't worry, that post is coming before the blog sprint ends) and it got a crazy notion into my head. Several crazy notions, but one of which could be helped by getting advice from cosplayers. And so at C2E2 I began talking to the awesome Cosplay4UsAll about their process and ideas, and mentioned my own, and I soon realized that I might be able to not only do the crazy idea I had, but also help them with their own costume. And if I'm going to help someone else make a costume for cosplay, I'd be gorrammed if I wasn't going to cosplay as well. The very best cosplay, in my opinion, is about dedication, attention to detail, and ingenuity. You take a costume and analyze it. Then you research construction methods, sometimes learning entirely new skills. You pull out all the small elements and make them into something really specific and accurate to the inspiration. And, most of the time, you have to cheat to do so, because the character you're cosplaying is made up and sometimes their appearances are just BS. So unlike a reenactor, who is specifically recreating something that has been made and probably could have its construction eventually nailed down, there's no manual for making an Optimus Prime costume. You just pull something out of thin air and shoot for awesome.
This kid shot for awesome and ended up making me have an absolute guano-insane fit of hoarse-throated screaming. It didn't matter that the contest was driven by audience participation--I would've screamed myself silly out of excitable nerd sensitivity. He may not have been the best cosplayer of the weekend, but he was the most impressive and definitely got the biggest reaction from me and the rest of the audience. And yes, the camera is shaking at the end because my cheese is starting to slide off my cracker. The other thing that really appeals to me about cosplay is...wait for it...wait for it...the role-playing aspect of the hobby. Yes, it's not an essential aspect of cosplay. A lot of people never step fully into character, and if they do it's only for momentary photo ops. But I love seeing people become their characters when they step into their costumes, and as I start plotting my own cosplay, that sort of stuff is really enticing--romantic**, really--to me.
I'm still in the early stages of cosplay--that is, the entirely fictitious planning and pipe-dream stage. But now that I am announcing it here on the blog, where possibly up to a dozen people I don't know can read it, I am at least somewhat committed to this course of action. Plus, here's a little teaser of what I'm thinking of for my first costume. That's right, I'm going to cosplay as the Ren Faire albino Geralt of Rivia, from the series The Witcher. It's a fantasy series I've been more and more interested in since I bought The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings for Xbox 360, and one of the first things that really struck me about the game was the gritty and layered costume design. Where many fantasy games make outlandish and out-proportioned outfits for their settings, The Witcher costume design was largely reasonable and inspired by historical outfits. The main hero of the series, Geralt, sported some of the neatest costumes--worn and utilitarian, and not afraid to be somewhat shabby. Which fits the character so well, as Geralt is a raggedy, beaten, and brutalized hero that is so abused that he's virtually inured to it. *"Hwaet" is the Old English precursor to our word "what", and it also is the first line of many Old English poems, including Beowulf. ** Alright, wisenheimer. I mean romantic in the traditional, emotionally affected and disconcerted sense. Not in the lusty sense. Settle down.
UPDATE 5/26/2013: So after rereading this post today, I realized I'd neglected to expound on a lot of key stuff. Some of it I will save for a future post, as I'm having trouble bringing over some of my shaky Cloverfield-esque video, but for now I've expanded the Cosplay section of this post a lot, including a video of the Silent Hill nurse disturbing GenCon.
Today is a very special post.
A titanic post. And not because it's a lumbering, arrogant compensation-device bound to hit the biggest humiliating force of nature in the ultimate example of post-industrial hubris. It's a titanic post because it's huge.
Today's blog is about my impressions of Chicago Comic Entertainment Expo (C2E2) 2013. In a lot of ways, C2E2 was the final impetus that got me back to blogging here on the Nerdery. It's a fantastic convention here in the Midwest that has grown by leaps and bounds since it started in 2010. I'd heard about it in previous years, but never really felt the pull to go. That was largely true this year, too. Despite how much I'd loved attending Fire and Ice, I knew C2E2 would be vastly different and the basement-dwelling homebody nerd inside kept telling me I didn't want to go to such a vast, impersonal convention. Plus, I hate going into the city, and it'd be expensive, and a dozen other chirps of procrastinating unambition from the drowner within. No, I wouldn't go, and I was pretty certain I'd be a happier nerd for it.
That worked well enough until my wife happened to win a pair of weekend passes to C2E2 from a local radio station. Whoa. My cheapskate crutch snapped under its own weight as now the only real cost of C2E2 would be entirely volitional--I'd only spend money if I couldn't keep a steady grip on my wallet. So we'd be going, I reluctantly agreed. Reluctantly still, because that infernal pasty guy who never leaves the game room still wasn't that excited about going. But he was okay with doing research. And research is what did him in.
"It's a titanic post because it's huge."
Just looking over C2E2's website was enough to melt away the pasty contrarian in a wash of pure white fire. Hundreds of artists in Artists' Alley, a huge swathe of the convention floor dedicated to tables for artists from all sorts of comics, each with prints to sell and commissions to take. "Oh, I do love the artwork," crowed the little drowner, rubbing his clammy murderous hands together. "Maybe I could get something with the Avengers in it--or Ms. Marvel. I likes Ms. Marvel..." The creature's resolve was already cloven. Then I went over the guest speakers and panels. "Marvel vice presidents and editors talking about future of comics?" he drooled into my inner monologue, dropping his articles like a slob. That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers. Once I clicked on the featured guests, the fight was done. "Ron Perlman?! Hellboy?!" screeched the drowner in helpless fanboy giddiness as I dropped my blessed silver claymore down on his clavicle, splitting him wide. There would be no second thoughts, no hesitation. I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine. Oh yes, I would make his signature sit on my Hellboy Director's Cut and it would be most sweet.
And so I went from being staunchly opposed to going to being ravenously excited about the proposition of meeting the man who is the hub of my Movie Web (it all begins and ends with Ron). Not even the brutal and graphically rendered slaying of my slacker subconscious could allay my enthusiasm for leaping into the unknown and coming out with my trophy in the form of Ron Perlman's handle scrawled on my DVD set.
Seriously, my mouth is watering right now.
So I went after all. The first day, Friday, I brought my 14 year-old brother in law because my silly pregnant wife was having a sympathy attack over my two year-old who'd been sick that week. Seriously, the sympathy attack is one of the most illogical and destructive beasts of living with a pregnant woman--and the sympathy never flows towards you, either. It pretty much always opposes your enthusiasms and has water in its eyes even when 'everything is fine'. Bah, I didn't have time for that on April 27--that was my day to capture Ron Perlman's script on my tomes of Hellboy! So I picked up my brother-in-law and we rode the train down into the city, while I gave him a primer on the birds and the bees of comics, Nerdery, and what wonders we would inevitably see (since I knew so much).
"That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers."
Saturday my son was feeling better--actually, my son was feeling better on Friday, but after a day of sympathy attacks my wife was feeling better--and so I took the missus with me on the continuing nerd fest while my son terrorized my parents for the day. It was great, and we got to see even more awesomeness, despite being hamstrung by my wife's over-encumbering pregnancy. Although I did find that drafting behind her made navigating the dense crowds of the convention much easier--no one wants to bump into a strange 8-month pregnant lady at a nerd gathering.
Then on Sunday we brought my son. Decked in a Spider-Man hoodie and wide-eyed over the spectacle of getting to ride a train for the first time in his life, and into a tunnel no less, my little sidekick was beside himself with manic joy at the con.
It sucked.
For those of you who are considering bringing a toddler to any convention, let me prepare you for it. First of all, the ladies will constantly be complimenting you on how cute you are with a blonde-haired blue-eyed toddler in your arms. And it is cute. Guys will say it's awesome to see your little Web-head going fwip-fwip to show how he uses his web-shooters. And it is awesome. You'll also have to lug a thirty-five pound snatching kleptomaniac around all day, wrestling him into your arms while he donkey kicks your junk in an effort to get to the toy retailers' alley or to sprint ahead of the line to sit in the Mach 5. You get to watch his hands so he doesn't yank people's hair as countless strangers with fascinating heads pass within claws' reach. Yeah, maybe it is cute. But it's also a pain in the arms, back, and gonads, and people give you funny looks for every tantrum he throws rather than thank you for restraining him from ripping their redheaded wig off at the scalp.
And to top it all off, when my son saw a perfectly realistic Spider-Man posing with other people, he was totally speechless. The shrieker gasped and his slack-jaw look of wonder had all the pronouncing power of an old fish. Just flapping lips, wide-eyes, and a faint press of air that could only vaguely be translated into words.
"Hey, who is that, Bucky?" "Spider-Man."
"Well then, call him."
"Over here, Spider-Man."
"No, Buck, he can't hear you. You gotta call louder." A small pinch on the thigh, trying to either throw some sense into him or encourage him to narc on me to the red and blue hero.
"Spider-Man. Spider-Man come 'ere." As faint as ever, though plaintively urgent this time.
"Hey, Spider-Man! Can we get a picture?" I called out as the cosplayer turned his back and began to move on. I trotted up to Spider-Man and showed him his quiet doppelganger. My son's arms swung wide and he pitched his body forward to embrace Spider-Man and transfer into his arms.
"Spider-Man," he said, voice now contentedly smaller than ever as my wife and I got some of the only pictures of him both awake and still from the whole day. When that was done, he hugged Spider-Man around the neck.
"Bubye, Spider-Man. See you later."
Yeah, maybe it is awesome. But I still don't recommend it.
In the interest of breaking down my impressions into easier-to-digest chunks (yeah, right, like I do that), here's the major categories of attractions at C2E2 that thoroughly enchanted my weekend.
Celebrities
There was a tremendous amount of star power at the con. Convention veterans like Burt Ward and Julie Newmar were there, as well as a bunch of stars from The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Felicia Day, Sam Huntington, and Patton Oswalt were also there meeting fans and signing autographs, but the biggest three in my esteem (other than The Man himself) were the Babylon 5 trinity: Bruce Boxleitner, Mira Furlan, and J. Michael Straczynski. I'm actually a very belated fan of Babylon 5, only recruited through Netflix Instant Watch, so I didn't have any signable goodies for them. If I did, you can bet I would've hit them all Friday morning after stopping off at Ron Perlman's table.
Ah, Ron. I was pleasantly surprised that going straight for the autograph tables immediately after getting to the con Friday morning was the way to go. There were hardly any people at all getting autographs yet. Except for Ron. Out of maybe 40 fans getting signatures at that point, I'd guess that twenty of them were in line for him. I felt perversely proud of Mr. Perlman for it.
"I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine."
Now, I had a really stupid pact in my mind to be charming and erudite when I met one of my cinema idols. There was a vague scenario sketched in my mind where I could say the right words that would get the celebrity to want to strike up a friendship with me and go play wargames or something. Unfortunately, the Ron Perlman fan in front of me was a svelte She-Hulk wearing booty shorts and a tattered tank top, so by the time I got up to the front of the line of fans all I had really determined was that I should not make an ass of myself. See how that went with my poignantly-remembered transcript:
Taking my Director's Cut in hand, Ron says, "Where would you like me to sign it?"
"Right there on the front," I answer dryly. At this point, I'm thinking: Man, his head is really a normal size. Yeah, I know. Somehow, over the years of seeing him tower over other actors in these grand roles, I'd gotten the impression that he'd make me feel like Frodo's scale double once I met him, never mind the reality that he's only an inch taller than me. So for an awkward silence, I just chanted: Don't talk about the size of his head, Ben. He will totally go Angel on you if you freak out on him. Be cool. So I was being cool. I was also suddenly aware that I was standing in front of Ron Perlman and I wasn't talking--not cool! "I really love the video commentary on this set. Your comments are especially well-informed and they show how well you know and appreciate the material," I say, silently complimenting myself on not sounding like a lunatic.
"Yeah? You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and watched the video commentary since we recorded it," he says with a smirk. Ron can smell loon.
"Really?" I ask, idiocy welling up within, boiling over. "Well, if you want to watch it you could borrow it. I'm going to be here all weekend." Now, I had thought that would be a clever way to ingratiate myself to the celebrity, still clinging to the delusion. Of course, I went home and started blogging zombie party favors, so you know the story doesn't work out that way.
"Oh, that's okay," Ron said with that Vincent smile. "I'm pretty sure I have a copy at home."
Oh my giddy-odd. Did you really just say that? He probably thinks you're a loon. Just get the picture taken with him and go.
"Mind if my brother takes a picture of us?" I say through the stupid-stupid-stupid in my throat.
"No problem," he says, magnanimous in the face of demented fanboy.
Wow, his hand is like not really warm or cold. It's a just right hand. Shut-up! Don't say anything but thank you!
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Ron Perlman's frakkin' shaking my hand!!!
Artists
Walking through Artists' Alley is a real chore. And I don't simply mean because it's super-crowded navigating the rows of tables and aisles choked with fans to find the artist you're looking for. I mean because there's so many awesome pieces of art on display. Each table sports a dozen or more display pieces, and then they have entire portfolios of art prints that you can pick up right there. I really liked chatting about the art with the creators--especially the couple that were really impressed by the details and elegance of their work. Even surrounded by fans, they were genuinely impressed by viewers who saw and loved the details. And then there's the great commission prices for artwork. You can watch artists at work on those commissions, sketching iconic characters in real-time while you chat about the latest scandal in nerd interests. You know: Star Wars being ruined for kids these days, the New 52, and Michael Bay. Yeah, it's definitely a part of the con where I could envision spending an entire day next year. (Oh, did I mention I am definitely going next year? Spoiler alert: I'm going next year.)
One of my favorite pieces of art was one I found on Friday, by Stephen Bryant. I was drawn to his table by his painted covers, in particular a piece called "The Power of Three" featuring Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and Liz Sherman. Having just come down off my I-met-Ron high, I picked it up right away and started talking with the artist and assistant as I went through the rest of his portfolio. Then I found my favorite picture of the con. Entitled "Iron Man: Dreaming Big", it featured a young boy lost in a thick volume of Essential Iron Man, with a image of the cinematic Iron Man floating above his head, springing from his imagination. Oh, I love that piece, and so that got added into my impulse purchase as I gushed to my brother-in-law over it and proved much more socially competent with Mr. Bryant than I was with Ron. Then, joking as I realized I was breaking my own personal promise to 'not spend that much,' I grabbed a print from Stephen for a friend whose birthday was coming up. It depicted Deadpool in Eddard Stark's classic "Winter is coming" pose. The best part? I had been at the con like two hours and already spent almost as much money as I would've on the two weekend passes. Oops.
So then the rest of our time we spent in Artists' Alley on Friday was ulterior-motive scouting. For those of you who aren't married, that's when you look for products to show your spouse to make them assume you must've spent a lot more money than you really did. "Hey, I know I picked up three art prints, but if I was really out of control I would've picked up a dozen. See? Look at all this great art I didn't buy...Can we get that one, too?" So on Saturday we grabbed another 5 or so art prints, this time impelled by my wife, and we really only stopped because of failure to visualize where they could go in our house.
Artists' Alley: totally worth a day on its own. Don't go there at all if you don't want to spend money. Just don't.
Panels
The panels were great, and varied from intriguing and intellectual to creators having mass love affairs with their fans. The rooms where the panels were actually located, however, were harder to find than a matte surface in Abrams' Star Trek reboot. If you're going to the con for the first time, know that all of the panels are held upstairs, and--while there are stairs leading up inside the main convention floor--the stairs you want are actually up the escalators before even entering the main floor. Yeah, those other stairs just lead to a sort of island food court that is designed to fulfill the same function as the Lost Woods in the Zelda games--be as confusing as possible in a confined, closed space.
The panel with the Marvel leadership was great, and since that was a Friday panel, I had the pleasure of sharing it with my brother-in-law who was pretty ignorant of all things Marvel that weren't in the last batch of movies. (I say was pretty ignorant because I think he went home that day a genuine Marvel fan.) It was a great time that made me proud to be a Marvel fan. In a fairly packed room, the Marvel heads were funny, personable, and showed they not only knew their fans as an abstract demographic but also were able to read us as a collective batch of Midwest nerds sitting in front of them. I loved it, and by the time I left they had sold me on Marvel Unlimited and gotten me excited for the upcoming Project Gamma.
But of course, my absolute favorite panel was Ron Perlman's Q&A on Saturday. In a massive hall filled with probably fifteen hundred people, Ron fielded questions direct from fans in a frank, crassly charming hour or so (too too short). There were a lot of good questions asked, and it was clear the room was full of true fans. A couple of fans just gushed over Ron more than ask questions, and he handled it with hilarious and dirty back-talk. He even shared a few details that I'd never heard before, one of which was clearly a tender subject for him, so it all felt intimate despite being so grand. I wanted to ask him a question or two, and I would have done so, but by Saturday it had dawned on me how dumb I came across the day before. So I kept my trap shut.
An aside: my wife would tell you that at one point I got quite animated and pointed to some random fan thinking he was Guillermo del Toro popping in on the Q&A, but that's ludicrous. First, I totally never said that. Second, I don't get dumber the closer I get in proximity to Ron Perlman, but I might get more loony. Thirdly--and I'm not admitting anything--but it would've been an awesome publicity stunt if the director of some of Ron Perlman's biggest movies, including his next one Pacific Rim, had just shuffled into the room and stolen the show for a few minutes, right? I mean, it's not a totally dumb idea. But I never said that, so it's all just my wife's gravid eccentricity.
Cosplay
Oh my, the cosplay. I'm going to have a lot to say about this in upcoming posts, so I won't go into much detail about what cosplay is or anything other than to say that I was overwhelmed by how much good cosplay was on display at C2E2. And I don't just mean hot costumes. I'm talking about people with cinema-quality outfits, or with realizations of costumes not yet seen in live action that absolutely blew me away. Even before getting into the main hall on Friday morning, there were at least a dozen people I wanted to take pictures of. I snapped a few, but not nearly as many as I would've liked. Partly because I was keeping an eye on my brother-in-law, and partly because I was certain that I'd see all of the really good cosplayers in the costume contest they'd have later that night. In short, I was a putz. Don't be a putz. Take tons of pictures. Because you will see hundreds of awesome, well-done costumes, and the contest itself was only 30 people. Granted, I saw great cosplay on the stage, but I missed out on great photos for second-guessing myself.
I don't think anyone suffered more for their cosplay than this girl. Chelsea from Lionheart Cosplay and Makeup Effects went as a female Carnage--the insane symbiote that makes Venom into an occasional hero by comparison. She had white-out contacts, painful-looking dentures, and that latex tongue hanging from her jaw. Probably the greatest crime about the whole affair is that a lot of the fabulous, scrupulous details of her costume were really hard to notice and appreciate from a distance. When I talked to her after Friday's contest, it was clear that the entire getup was exhausting her in real-time. Lionheart, indeed.
The greatest thing about the fantastic cosplay at conventions like this is that it's by far the most social aspect of the experience. You might not have any interest to talk to some random comic book guy, but when you see someone dressed up as a perfect Hudson from Aliens, or the Red Ranger's T-rex dino-zord, or frakkin' Captain Planet, you just have to talk to them. I myself really enjoyed dragging my shy brother-in-law to the side of the stage after Friday's cosplay contest and talking to some of my favorite cosplayers from the night. I won't go into too much detail, but I'll say I met some really cool people that I hope to meet again and even feature on this blog in the coming weeks.
One of those people was Courtney from Cosplay4UsAll. She dressed up as the nurse from the horror game series Silent Hill, and in that costume she won the crowd's approval for best cosplay in Friday's costume contest. Besides having a great costume, she also had far and away the most disturbingly accurate twitch-walk that perfectly emulated the horrors from the Hill. The contest's MC (I believe her name was Trin) simply wigged out as Courtney shuffled up onto the stage, and as we all cheered I'm pretty sure she was planning an escape route. I love the roleplay aspect of cosplay, and the fact that Courtney stayed in character for her stage walk was fantastic. Included below is a brief video of her creeping around GenCon 2012. Even after the show, when I met her and the rest of the family composing the Cosplay4UsAll team, she stayed disturbingly mute. It was only when we I started talking about video games that she had to break character to brag on some of her Mass Effect and Borderlands cosplay as well. Even then, she kept it hushed so other people wouldn't see her talking. Great people, and I'm already working with them on another project. Filmatleven.
My brother-in-law, being a typical high school boy with little or no knowledge of true Nerdery (I mean it, some of his honest questions absolutely killed me--like when he asked if the vintage Captain Power toys were from the 60s), really loved this Deadpool cosplay. Wise-cracking, uber-violent, and gun-toting, Deadpool is a fun Marvel character that is known for breaking the fourth wall with almost cartoony antics. So when this cosplayer, Michael, dressed as the "merc with a mouth" he went over-the-top, and was naturally pitch-perfect as Deadpool. A scratch-built 60-pound cannon, Deadpool's "The Solution" was a big crowd-pleaser. At least it was once it got assembled and lugged up onto the stage.
Finally, I was really impressed by the large number of quality Iron Man costumes at C2E2. Friday alone we saw at least three or four Iron Man cosplays that were good enough to make you do a double-take. I found it particularly fun when we stopped to have a bite to eat and an Iron Man tromped through the food court area, liking stalking up on a blonde or a cold one. Or looking for a mechanic to help him take a bathroom break. Either way, it was one of the nerdy little moments that was ridiculously common at C2E2--like seeing Ms. Marvel in her Warbird outfit resting her heels while munching on some celery. So mundane and disarming. So priceless.
And yes, I like Ms. Marvel. Shaddup.
If you were thinking about going to C2E2 before, it should probably be a foregone conclusion now. It's a fun convergence of a lot of nerd elements, and the chance to rub elbows with so many nerds in such uninhibited surroundings alone is worth it. Also, keep an eye out for more pictures and a lot more coverage on cosplay as Nerd Butter in the next week or so.
