Gaining a new fandom in five easy steps
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I first became an anime fan probably around the age of six, when I saw a single episode of “Speed Racer”. I didn’t know what was going on in the story, but that car was awesome. Later on, I unwittingly fed the growing otaku inside me when I became addicted to “Battle of the Planets”. The show seemed oddly edited, and the plots a bit repetitive, but that plane/spaceship* was awesome. My final step came with my introduction by rattrap to “Robotech: Macross”. True, I cringed every time Minmei appeared on screen**, but those transforming fighter planes were awesome.
(What pattern? Yes, I’m a SF hardware nerd, so what?)
But my first “hey, this is in Japanese” anime told the story of a comedy alien invasion led by a green-haired, tiger-stripe-bikini-clad princess named Lum. I saw a single episode before leaving for a con, and began learning the fan technique of “supplying one’s own storyline to go with the untranslated video”. Still confusing, but the princess was adorable, and the love interest was clearly a complete dork: a character I could relate to!
Oh, I still might have escaped anime fandom. Pretty unlikely: I still had the “Dirty Pair”, “Captain Harlock”, and “BubbleGum Crisis” ahead of me, and all those wonderful, wonderful, animated spaceships and giant robots. But no, I was doomed: at the next con I attended, a local fan delectably costumed herself as Lum.*** That was pretty much it for me. I’ve been con-going, costuming, and performing ever since. And now that Starr’s picked out a couple of characters to try, and I’ve hooked up with Luna-C, I don’t see this changing anytime soon.**** As was said at Farpoint, I’ll stop by reality long enough to get the bills paid, but I’ve got the next con marked on my calendar…
*The Phoenix was only supposed to be a plane, but American translator/editors turned it into a spaceship. I have no grounds to criticize, as I did that often enough with my toys when little.
**In the Japanese original, Minmay does sing better… but she’s not really much less annoying.
***Longtime members of southwest Virginia fandom may well remember the lady in question. Especially if they’re straight males or gay females.
****Fear not; I have enough respect for your collective eyeballs to never wear a Lum costume. Besides, it’s drafty.
In which I succumb to Lunacy
Saturday night, I got to fuel an old addiction. Like many other addictions, the experience was thrilling and draining. It also cost a few bucks, but at least this addiction doesn’t do any physical damage. Really, I don’t remember when I was first bitten by the acting bug, but I know I was quite young. I understood even back then that some people got to share their games of make-believe with the entire world, and that sounded to me like incredible fun.
Some years later, 1986 or ’87 I think, I attended Stellarcon with a crowd of new friends from a club named VTSFFC. We learned that their Saturday afternoon masquerade was desperately short of entries, and I remembered seeing at RoVaCon a group called “Doctors In the House” that performed costumed science-fiction comedy skits. Inspired, I grabbed what little I’d brought for hall costuming, and created the “Starfleet Vice” troupe. We had a great deal of fun over the next few years, but after many performances at RoVaCon, Technicon, and SciCon, we moved on to other things, and Starfleet Vice faded away.
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| “Starfleet Vice” – RoVaCon 1987 From left: Heather McLaughlin as “Kei” from the Dirty Pair, Paul Danielsen as officer “Crock”, Sonoko Konishi as “Yuri” from the Dirty Pair, and me as officer “Stubble”. I don’t even remember what the skit was that year. |
Starfleet Vice t-shirt graphic From the left, the characters are “Ruth” (Beth Lipes), “Dr. Whizbang” (Mark Haymaker), “Cmdr. Paisley” (Tom Monaghan), “Stubble” (me), “Crock” (Paul Danielsen), and “Herald Harold” (Mike Layne). Eventually, Tom acquired a paisley “Next Generation” Starfleet uniform. Audience members were driven blind. |
Further years later, I learned that my VTSFFC friend Helen Madden had become involved with “Luna-C”, a group that I later learned had evolved from the old “Doctors”. I enjoyed Luna-C’s performances at many cons over the next several years, and often felt twinges of nostalgia for the stage – by then, I’d done “You Can’t Take it With You”, “Arsenic and Old Lace”, “Gentleman’s Agreement“, and “Space Rogues“. But I had plenty else on my plate and never seriously concerned myself with those old memories.
Well, at this year’s MarsCon, I was socializing with Luna-C members after the performance, and I jokingly suggested that with the hall costume I was wearing I could have substituted for one of the players. A little further into the conversation, and it wasn’t a joke. So, this weekend I attended a convention I hadn’t planned to hit in 2010. I had an amazing time, and had my first hit of serious memorized-lines-and-costumes acting in ages. It felt goooood.
They gave me six skits to do: an AFLAC parody (I wasn’t the duck), a “Fringe” skit where I played Peter, an SG:Universe scene where I played Dr. Rush, a James Bond / Austin Powers back-and-forth (guess who I played, baby), and two final skits in which I fulfilled a longtime ambition to play the Fourth Doctor. (I tried for days to get a Tom Baker voice going, and I failed; but Deb told me during the show that she thought I had the cadences of his voice nailed. Ego-boost +30!) I didn’t have as much rehearsal time as I’d hoped, and I know I mised some lines, but they covered for me wonderfully. I don’t think I did a bad job at all!
Now RavenCon is coming up, and both Starr and I will be joining Luna-C there if all goes as planned. Yep. Won’t be kicking this addiction any time soon.
Mars, the Bringer of Slack
I headed off to this year’s MarsCon with a single objective: to get drunk. I’ll be the first to admit that classier goals exist, but with one thing or another, 2010’s started off rough for me, and I needed some release. Besides, I drink so little that half a glass of dessert wine once a year is enough to make me pretty loopy.
I never got that drink, but I never needed to. A weekend of friends, costuming, laughs, and even a little gaming turned out to be just the prescription; by the end of the weekend, my body hurt, my head was spinning, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, and life looked so much better than it had a few days ago. In the short time since NekoCon, I’d forgotten why I devote so many resources to con-going.
I’ve avoided gaming at cons since I burned out on MechWarrior: Dark Age. Con gamers can be so angrily competitive that even winning leaves a sour taste. (And let me tell you, I’ll never play Button Men again.) This weekend, I got to game the way I enjoy it: Jesse Braxton brought a cards-and-custom-dice game called “Inn-fighting”, which was fun, fast, arbitrary, and not worth getting angry over. I’ve missed that kind of convention gaming so much.
Tom Monaghan and I began rebuilding our friendship this weekend. He’s not the same man he was a few years ago, but he’s more like the friend I remember from high school, older and wiser. He rediscovered BattleTech this weekend, and wants to get me into a game soon; we even discussed resurrecting Artificial Intelligence, or a descendant, as a webcomic. Do I have the time and resources for that? I don’t know. Am I fascinated by the idea? Yes, though I’m not sure who should draw: Tom is a better artist than I am, but a regular drawing gig would likely refine my skills a great deal.
I really do have some relatively traditional fan costuming planned for the future – I made contact this weekend with someone who could help me with some old-school anime outfitting I’ve always wanted. But from various (positive) comments I received this weekend, I’m developing a reputation at MarsCon for my over-the-top outfits, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying the rep.
The capper for the weekend? A casual enquiry about a costume commission led to a possible acting gig. Nothing’s set in stone, but I’m really stoked: I love the stage and screen, and I haven’t done any serious acting since Space Rogues. (Yes, I took it seriously. No matter how comedic or surreal the material, it’s not the actor’s job to laugh at it – only the audience’s. That’s often forgotten in low-budget work.) This is thrilling news!
Don’t know how long I can hang on to it, but I found my center again this weekend. Thank you MarsCon, for the opportunity.
The Forty-First Mikhail
The Tenth Doctor was the Crown Prince of emo.
This was a man who has saved the lives of friends, family, cities, civilizations, planets, and once the existence of the universe. He owns a machine that lets him travel to almost anywhere in time and space, seeing sights and having adventures no one else can match. On top of that, he enjoyed a fulfilling if unconsummated romantic relationship with a woman 880 years his junior, as well as brief flings with the likes of Madame de Pompadour and Queen Elizabeth I.
But, we’re expected to believe that his life sucks, and that somehow he didn’t get properly rewarded for his efforts.
My point here, is not a lengthy rant about how David Tennant’s Doctor was written. He had moments of charm and brilliance, and I’d watch him before Colin Baker most any day. No, his last episode led me to look at my own regeneration. We all do it, you know; though for most of us, the process is far less dramatic. Still, I don’t look, act, or think much like I did when I was sixteen.
Oh, there’s continuity there: I have plenty of memories from that time, and some of my quirks and mannerisms from back then remain in my personality. I certainly look more like I did at the time than Christopher Eccleston looks like Jon Pertwee. But like the Doctor or the Master, I’m simultaneously the same person and not.
Honestly, I’m pleased with the majority of the changes in myself, though I sometimes with I still had my teenage body. (Perhaps a little less scrawny, though.) I prefer being more experienced with life, and perhaps having a touch more wisdom. Being older is the price I have to pay, and since the only other offered option is being six feet under, I’ll take it gladly. Someone should have pointed out to the Tenth Doctor that getting to live a life of daring adventure, plus not having to die when all the rest of us do, doesn’t suck as much as he insisted it did.
Off, to outer space…
Starr thinks I should totally cosplay the new Yamato uniform. I like the looks of it, but the leather might be a little difficult for me to work.
I love that little fanfare that starts the theme song. Makes me want to go out and save civilizations.
Umm… it stands for “Nuclear Command Cruiser”. Yeah.
Back when I did a lot of Trek roleplay with the Starfleet crowd, we established space fighter squadrons on our ships, and decided eventually that we needed flight jackets. So we all bought dark-colored jackets in various materials and put Trek emblems on them in configurations that looked more-or-less authentic. Mine’s always been black denim, though it’s gone through different versions as the jackets each wore out. This one has a Next Gen combadge, a USS Yeager patch on one shoulder, a UFP emblem on the other, and a “Team Banzai” graphic on the back. (Why not mix my fictions?)
I’ve worn it a lot, in weather suitable for a light jacket and in practically any social situation that doesn’t require formal wear. I wore it to my Decipher interview, figuring it might help get me a job at a game company that made Star Trek cards. (Seemed to work…) Wearing it always felt like a bit of passive geek defiance: a declaration that yes, I was weird, but not unapproachably so.
Well, I wore it around during the unseasonably warm weekend, and if I needed further evidence that I live in a different world than I did in 1982, I got it. Twice, random strangers highly complimented my ‘flight’ jacket, both times following up with a brief conversation about the latest movie. I’m just not used to this. Eyerolls and smart remarks were once par for the course, but “wasn’t Uhura hot?” is a comment I’m not used to from the gentleman at the auto shop.
Whatever we old-schoolers might have to say about the recent film, it looks like interest in the franchise is back. Combine this with Obama’s public use of the Vulcan hand salute, and I’d say that the 21st century’s brought a different world for Trek geeks. I approve.
If you liked it, then you should have rolled Need on it.
Yep, I’m posting a lot of videos and a lot of MMO-related stuff right now. That’s in part because I’m too overwhelmed with life at the moment (sometimes positively, sometimes not) to be very deep.
So: if you’re familiar with the politics of loot distribution in high-level World of Warcraft raiding, you might find this as funny as I did. Otherwise, probably not.
Level 80
Mirandala hit the level cap. I barely know what to do with her now, she didn’t manage that at 60 in original WoW or at 70 in Burning Crusade.
Also, she made a pair of X-Ray Specs: a gadget which, from her perspective, strips all the other player characters in the game down to their underwear. But what else would you expect from me?
