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-UE
Comments
Congratulations, Kraken!
About a year ago, before the elections, there was this grassroots political party (called "None of the Above Asnwers") that I got superficially involved with because they looked promising.
Now, they had a shtick that basically anyone could candidate for a place at their party ballot and that anyone could vote to push their candidate of choice via online voting. Which was all fun and games until a TV tarot reader known as "Milan the Seer" came out on top.
Yeah, this guy.
A lot of drama erupted over what should be done, and that is when I jumped ship.
Eventually they signed up for the elections as a Vlach minority party so they could enter parliament under a much lower treshold (basically, playing the system), and won one seat which was taken by the party founder, who now recieves a huge monthly wage without ever showing up at parliament sessions or doing anything.
Congratulation Kraken.
That's both hilarious and sad, depending on how invested you were in the party. By the time a lot of memeslang showed up in the mailing list, and a cursory glance at their FB showed this kind of crap:
I lost any investment in it and now I'm along for the drama.
Insanity: Yes on Proposition Popcorn
Thanks, guys.
(TL;DR at end of post)
So I just found out my usual buddies from the anime club aren't going to Katsucon tomorrow.
Currently, my only reason for going is to get my newly-acquired copy of Kiddy Grade autographed by Monica Rial (the voice of Lumière). And of course I'll find random merchandise to buy, probably, but three hours roundtrip worth of transportation in one day just for this is...a bit underwhelming.
Time to check the rest of the schedule.
8:00 AM: "Do You Know Your TV Tropes" panel
what
9:45 AM: "The Aging Otaku: Fandom and Getting Older"
Well, this could be an interesting panel to observe.
11:15 AM: "No means No! Defense against Fanboys and Fangirls"
If you mouse over you can see that the content is about, as a cosplayer, how to avoid annoying people, including ones making unwanted sexual advances. Not sure if interesting to observe, as I don't cosplay, and I certainly don't make passes at cosplayers either.
12:00 noon: "Katsucon So Far"
I have no idea what this is, but I'm going to guess this is a combo retrospective/history lesson for Katsucon veterans and an intro to the convention for newcomers. So, basically, meta stuff.
12:00 noon: "Voice Actor Panel", includes Monica Rial
Well, she's gonna show up later in the evening for an event of her own anyway.
2:00 PM: "Aniplex of America Industry Panel"
Now this will be interesting. The actual business aspects of the media industry. I'm imagining questions about how the economic downturn has affected the industry, and how the industry views fansubbers, digital piracy, and other issues.
4:00 PM: "Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl (TV-PG)"
I have no freaking idea what this series is about -- not even the description helps -- but that is one cool name.
Also, I thought Erio is a male name. At least on Mid-Childa it is.
4:15 PM: "Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial"
Well, here's the autograph event.
5:30 PM: "Composing Music For Games - Music Production and implementation"
Well, this is another interesting one. I've actually been interested in doing some chiptune writing myself. Doesn't say who's running this event, but I'm gonna bet it's Inverse Phase (since they did something similar at AnimeUSA).
6:00 PM: "Anime Music Appreciation w/ Katie from SAO"
That's another topic I like. Of course, chances are that people are gonna be fan-fawning over pieces I don't know, from series I've never watched, by composers I've never heard of. Except Yuki Kajiura of course since she's pretty famous.
BTW, "SAO" stands for "Symphonic Anime Orchestra", which is I think this volunteer orchestra that Katsucon has organized to play a concert at some point in the con. Not a certain series that seems to be widely panned yet still remains apparently quite popular.
6:00 PM: "A Certain Scientific Railgun (TV-PG)"
I guess I could try starting this here. But wait, it conflicts with the above. So I'm not even going to start at the beginning. Screw this.
6:30 PM: "A Guide to Buying ALL THE THINGS: Money Management & Animu Paraphernalia Manual"
I guess this might be ever so slightly useful since I'm starting to buy stuff.
Though my personal rules seem to be serving me well so far.
7:30 PM: "Katsucon Karaoke"
Fantasy expectation: All the J-pop I know, including rare hits like Melocure's "Agapé".
Realistic expectation: Various OPs and EDs from shows I don't watch (or maybe even don't like).
11:30 PM: "Character Building 201: Developing Depth"
Well, this is interesting, the way the average TV Tropes article is interesting to me. Curious media commentary stuff, but not immediately useful nor overwhelmingly appealing.
----
And at 3 AM there's Baldr Force EXE, which has been on my to-try list for a while. At 6:30 AM there's Squid Girl, and at 7 AM there's Tales of Vesperia - The First Strike. We're talking Sunday already. That's basically a continuous band of activity, without sleeping, since I don't have a hotel room there. 8 AM brings Anime Name That Tune, 11:30 AM hosts the possibly interesting "What a Woman Wants in Otaku/Man", 12:30 PM has another showing of Railgun, and the Symphonic Anime Orchestra finally performs at 1:30 PM.
But if I don't sleep, I might simply end up passed out on the floor of the convention center. Or sick on Monday when classes begin again. So fuck Sunday.
----
Convention admittance costs $50. I expect to be able to get that at least partially compensated.
----
TL;DR
Costs:
* $some amount less than 50, most likely, unclear how much, for admittance
* 3 hours of transportation (counting roundtrip), and $7 for train fare
* a day's worth of time
Benefits:
* Monica Rial's autograph on a copy of Kiddy Grade
* a panel discussion about the anime industry
* an intro to composing game music
* commentary about anime music
* opportunity to spend even more money on merchandise, including small chance of finding things like a Kiddy Grade messenger bag (about $25), various J-pop or soundtrack CDs (prices may vary), some Chihaya Kisaragi merchandise that might fit my lifestyle (i.e. not a figurine), or other interesting stuff.
Good idea? [y/n]
Yeah this does sound kinda interesting.
^Drinking plenty of fluids is a good start.
It seems like the only unique feature of going to Katsucon tomorrow will be getting Monica Rial's autograph.
So, is it worth up to $57?
Of all the things to get my school into the news, honestly.
It's even so fuzzy that you can't tell much of what's going on. You can barely tell that that guy is wearing a horse head.
Heaper's Hangout seems kinda like more wonderpost-y, angstier, more active IJBM. This makes me think, what would be HH's musical theme (same question for BTL, for that matter)? Nyan Cat song? Because I cannot think of IJBM's theme as anything but the Smoldering Corpse tune.
BTL.
All three places (Video is a bit NSFW)
Milos, either this is some complex metaphor I don't get (perhaps because I haven't been there for a while), or you're quite disillusioned for a founder.
Is . . . something going down at BTL right now, some big angry argument?
Very disillusioned. There's also some drama going on right now in the secret area, and I won't go into details and won't say anything no matter how hard you pressure me, I've got more important thinks to think about right now.
Namely, seeing the deeds of an honest-to-god psychopath and how many people are willing to turn a blind eye to evil, and I think I'm returning into my misanthropic phase again.
Basically, there's this student of molecular biology with Mengele as his profile pic and the Auschwitz gate as his cover photo (I'm not bullshiting you, here's the guy) who posted how he bought a pet hamster and mutilated him for the lulz, complete with pics, on the Facebook group of his faculty. Now, a friend of mine who also studies molecular biology, with the help of another friend, decided to share that to other people on FB and Twitter and alarm the police, college authorities and several animal protection groups.
But the faculty administration and the admin of that Facebook group (some girl on the first year) are doing the best to cover it up to avoid harming the faculty's reputation, and there are people who even support the guy and his actions, and have even opened a support group. The worst thing is that he somehow found out about that friend's status message and has liked some of the comments on it. I must say I'm worried for my friends, not to mention utterly disgusted at how some people treat the matter.
WARNING: BOTH LINKS CONTAIN IMAGES OF A MULTILATED HAMSTER, IT'S NSFW AND VERY UNPLEASANT TO LOOK AT.
Hrrr-Chuck is "hamster" in Serbian. Who would've thought. Also, I was going to say I'm not sure how this links to BTL, until I realized it isn't supposed to. But don't worry dude, I sent that rat-it-out message to them facebookers. BTW you guys are hardcore, when we had a hamster mutilator in here he was busted quite quickly.
You had a hamster mutilator too? Well, damn. Good thing he was busted, though.
Built some sort of hamster guillotine and posted videos on the 'net. Makes you shudder, how many who are that nasty aren't that stupid.
>is married to Hitler
Sounds like an attention-seeking tryhard, bet he killed the hamster quickly before taking the knife to it. Screencap everything in case he nukes his profile if the heat gets too much(good idea), then dox him anonymously to every militant leftard group and PETA equivalent you can find(bad idea, but results could be hilarious). Perhaps try feeding him to a chan, if how they feel about cats is anything to go by(neutral idea).
Edit: ran the hamster pics through reverse image search, finds nothing, so it likely isn't gore plundered from the depths of the interweb but original content.
Well shit. Now I understand what the hell is going on in that image you linked to in your Facebook feed and really wish I didn't.
I may have been on the internet too much...
You know what just came to me, if he's married to Hitler... GAAAAY! Isn't there around any bunch of skinheads to "straighten him out"?
I think I've started to confuse All Nines and ClockworkUniverse now. But I can't think of a portmanteau I can mentally refer to them by.
BTL is a forum for humans to post on. There's not much of anything going on there right now.
Speaking of "not much going on", do you guys think it would be a good idea to attach a forum to my webcomic's site when it first starts, or would a comments section cut it?
A forum is a much better idea than a comment's section. Basically, anyone who really wants to discuss your comic isn't going to mind spending thirty seconds registering on a forum, but it will keep out a lot of the stupidity that comments sections tend to generate.
At least, in theory.
In practice, a comments section is probably fine just when you're starting out, since an unpopular comic isn't going to get aggressively stupid comments like other places on the internet do, and even if there are some bad commenters it'd be easy enough to moderate it.