#connecticon 2014

[archivehornets]

Polaroids scans provided by Jackie from Connecticon 2014. Fun fact: In the first photo, Troy is wearing his "Robert Cop" shirt. The middle photo is from a panel during the period right before the final entry coming out, so there was a huge turnout!

[ectonurites]

A bomb threat on the day of the dashcon anniversary no less 😔

dfghjkll not the dashcon anniversary......... MAN

[princeofcatscosplay]

Mako Mankanshoku⭐️ Debuted CtCon 2014 Photo by Jessica Claflin ✨don't remove caption✨

[phantomdwagoncosplay]

Character: Bloodmoon Akali

Cosplayer: @twilightdwagon of @phantomdwagoncosplay. Costume by Twilight and mother. Props by @nolofin and Twilight.

Convention: Connecticon 2014

Cosplay Photos by: Jessica Anne Photography

[someawesomeamvs]

Warning: Violence, spoilers, potential seizure trigger, gore

Title: Who Will Follow Zero?

Editor: GettysburgForever

Song: Do You Hear the People Sing?

Artist: Les Miserables - 10th Anniversary Concert Cast

Anime: Code Geass

Category: Drama/Action

Award: Connecticon 2014 - Best Other

[timdoubleyou]

cant believe joseph delage flashed his entire ass to the connecticon 2014 Q&A audience

[pixiedane]

What are the top 5 things in your life right now?

I got this ask soon after I posted the meme but I just sort of stared at it, perplexed, wondering what counts as “things” and “right now”. What I can tell you is my July, and into August, is wildly out of control – and it is entirely my own fault because I am quite easily perplexed and constantly overcommit but also why does everything have to happen all at once all the time?

Let’s talk about my degree program. I am one credit away from completing my Masters. I started in 2014, taking one course a semester because I also work full time and I’m a single mom. I’d planned to write a capstone for my final credit. Last Fall I outlined my proposal, created a reading list, met with four separate advisors – and became convinced there was no purpose to my project. I decided to start over with a new topic, got a new advisor, and planned to use this summer to write the proposal and finish this coming Fall. There were two summer courses I really wanted to take, ‘Developmental Psychology’ and ‘Writing for Television’, but I had A Plan. 

Then, rumors of a Starfleet Academy series rose up again and that’s my dream job? And I could take the writing course, at a university well-regarded in the industry, for less than $200. So here I am in this class. It meets for three hours twice a week and the homework includes reading 6 books, watching countless hours of television, and writing assignments due each class, culminating in a pilot script due the end of this month, two weeks or five classes from now. 

Meanwhile, I am meeting with my new capstone advisor (not the topic advisor, the program advisor) tomorrow and my draft proposal is also due in two weeks. And I still work full time and I’m still a single mom. My tween daughter is not a ‘thing’ but she certainly occupies much of my time (this week she has camp and I am so tired of driving you have no idea). My job is a job, boring, not particularly fulfilling or requiring me to stretch my intellect or imagination, but it, somewhat by definition, requires work. Work that is physically and emotionally draining: I work for scientists and educators and with immigrants and none of the above feel happy or safe in the US at this moment in time. (Aside: the world is on fire, everyone I know is hugely stressed and anxious, just existing is exhausting. I do what I can when I can.)

I have three cons coming up. ConnectiCon, Star Trek Las Vegas, and Cumbercon. All three have a working component – work that is waaaaaay more fun than my job job, but is still work. I guess my blogging commitments fit in here, too. Plus I’m plotting both costumes and looks for STLV cuz it’s five days (all the components of my Team Cornwell look are complete and I cannot wait to show you all – and Jayne!!). And of course events such as these require me to Be Social. Which I love! But definitely takes energy. See also: family camping weekend, friend’s bridal shower, another family camping weekend, friend’s wedding, planning a holiday Disney trip for nine.

And I’m renovating various rooms in my house (mostly DIY because that’s my budget) so at the moment the second floor is closed off, I’m sleeping on a loveseat in the living room and my clothes are in a laundry basket on an armchair. We don’t have AC, my eczema is flaring, and I’m fighting off bugs (I hate Summer, it’s the worst!!!!). 

Finally, there’s my 300,000 fanwork projects. 

(I didn’t count, but I think there are five things listed in this.)

[purplecatghostposts]

They actually confirmed this at a panel at Connecticon in 2014 (highly recommended watching the panel on YT, it’s so good). Troy is like “Yeah in Entry 15 you can read in between the lines-” but Joseph and Tim keep interrupting him saying “Rocky was a good dog”

my deeply obscure and possibly original marble hornets theory is that the operator killed rocky. in entry 15 tim specifically mentions alex having dead animals in his yard, which is random, and even more randomly jay SPECIFICALLY asks "like...pets?" and tim doesn't know. like what a peculiar and specific interaction. it could also explain his overreaction of "YOU BROUGHT YOUR DOG!" the dog was IN DANGER. rip to my mans rocky keep thottin it up in heaven king

[redandfranticfeelings]

5 thru 10?

5. What are some things that make you feel at home (if that makes sense)?

i got hyper vibes from connecticon obviously since i was with Real Hyper TM. and also hot topic embarrassingly, and any geek shop.

i associate acting and singing stuff with candace mostly but thats p much it. stuffed animals too, and that also kinda applies to hyper.

6. What are your favorite kin blogs?

i dont follow many kin blogs but i like @kinplace cuz of how they do the positivity blurbs. and most of my mutuals are kin though only a few actually match my source material ( @helgageraldinepataki, @agenderpinkiepie for pnf, and em and arguably [bc she shares with me and has a diff canon than me] lexa for NC)

7. Do you miss anyone from your past life (or alternatively: Do you wish you did things differently)?

i dont have the concept of “past life” but there are times when thinking about 2014 hyper’s behavior makes me uncomfortable and dizzy. and i guess i technically miss someone considering i think about him almost constantly and wish he were with me.

(also benny. benny is amazing too. i treated him poorly but he rlly is.)

with candace i kinda wish everyone were here. mostly jeremy and stacy.

most of the reason i even kin moondancer is bc i miss twilight and it felt like she was talking to me when she talked to moondancer. 3

8. Do you differ from your canon a lot (Or differ from the stereotypes surrounding your kin)?

well im preeeeetty sure im not a goddamn stalker. nor do i have actual attraction to critic. she was never in love with him lol, it was clingy projection because of loneliness. i also have far more of a conscience even though i have some clingy needy and even manipulative urges i wanna get over.

as for candace people seem to believe she genuinely hated her brothers, which is so untrue. at worst she just wanted attention over them.

im more peppy than moondancer too.

9. Any hobbies or habits that kinda relate to your kintype(s)?

my fanfic/fanart self indulgent garbage connects me to hyper and my theater stuff connects me to candace c:

10. Do you have any irl kin pals?

@demonics is the only one i know irl whos kin and we have incredibly different kintypes lol

[archivehornets]

A snap from Connecticon, 2014. (photo from Ink)

[stillarobyn]

I don't travel much in these parts anymore, but I feel I need to, to set the record straight...so to speak.

I was there, Gandalf, here's my bona fides: I discovered the Slender Man on Deviant Art summer 2010, quickly discovered the SomethingAwful forum thread for the creepypasta, and through that, MH. This might not have been the very beginning (it was a couple months before season 2 hit YT), but it was while the series was still active, meaning it was peak Tumblr days for Marble Hornets fans. New entries would drop and fans would be analyzing and theorizing for hours that night, or the next day. A new tweet would have everyone all a-flutter.

And we were showing up at cons. I went to GMX 2012 (I believe the second convention MH made an appearance at?), ConnectiCon 2013, GMX 2013, and GMX 2014.

If you've seen videos of the MH panel on YT from GMX 2012, they're almost certainly mine. (Hi, I still see your weird comments, please be normal about real people, thanks.)

For years I was in a core group of fans who made the trek across truly impressive distances (I from Maine, several from the UK, Texas, Michigan, Florida, DC), all joined by a shared interest in Marble Hornets.

You wanna guess what else we all had in common? We were queer.

Let's look at just that core group from GMX 2012 (HOLY shit that was ten years ago, I am the crypt keeper): we had me, a bisexual (also nonbinary but I didn't know it yet), four trans men, one trans woman, two nonbinary individuals (not counting myself), and of the cis people present, we had two bisexuals (again, not counting myself), a pansexual, two or three asexuals. I have a group photo and I'm at least 80% certain the only cishet people in it were the MH crew.

(I won’t post the group photo out of respect for almost all of them who I haven’t spoken to in a decade, but here’s one of me from that con.)

And of those in this group, we had writers and artists of all types. Some of what we wrote, even cracky fan theories, were fun ways to weave our own queer experiences into this weird niche piece of media we loved.

I wrote some Jay/Tim fanfic, I wrote some gen fic, I privately wrote some always-another-gender Tim/Brian fic (private bc unfinished btw). I have a popular Jay/Alex fic ramble on here that gets reblogged every 6 months or so. And I had more than one near novel-length AU roleplay docs (this was before discord servers) with multiple friends.

Some folks had private role-play characterizations and alternate universes and fanfic for people in the know. For example, there was mirror!Alex, a rainbow-festooned party boy who, if not trans, was certainly gender non-conforming. And a lot of fan interpretations favored Jay and/or Tim as a trans man.

Why? Probably for the same reason so many queer fans flocked to this series. And this is something I've sat with for years, pondering, because what a bizarre niche, right? Except horror is often about feeling out the edges of reality. Horror is about taking the feelings of wrongness - with the world, with ourselves, with other people - and giving those feelings a truly threatening visage.

There are plenty of other themes in Marble Hornets, isolation and mental illness to name a couple, and it's not insignificant that many queer people deal also with mental illness.

So here you have a group of mentally ill queer people who flocked together in their common interest in a story that resonated with their suffering, their own feelings of internal wrongness (body dysphoria), or of society and others in their lives trying to tell them they should feel wrong (social dysphoria).

So if the story is going to mirror the horror on the inside, it's no big step to want the story to also mirror their joy on the outside.

Queer love, trans protagonists, fuck it, trans antagonists too!

Bending the gender binary in fan media is not new. If you know fanfic, you're aware that it's not even recent; it is practically tradition.

So if you want to go back to Marble Hornets before "the gender nonsense", I guess you want to go all the way back to the SA forums?

There have always been people who are cringe about their media engagement. The infantilization of characters from horror, made even worse in the creepypasta fandom, rubs me the wrong way. I see it still in those YouTube comments I remarked on above. You kinda just hope that the youths grow out of it eventually.

Like, OP, you can want a different type of media engagement than queer headcanons. You can look for whatever it is you appreciate in horror, and I'm sure you'll find people who share that. Marble Hornets has the one moment that scared me more than any other horror media ("Jay...what time is it?"). I think it's shortsighted to declare that the way you appreciate a horror story is the correct way.

But try to see it from the perspective of intersectionality between horror and queerness.

(And if anyone has some good essays or academic writing on the subject, please point them my way, I am eager to read more.)

I was in the Marble Hornets fandom back when it first began. I’m very glad I left before all this strange “gender” nonsense began. It’s sad to see people cannot appreciate horror anymore without pulling gender headcanons out of thin air. Just like with Saw, it’s very cult-like.

[forever-graphically-frozen]

This Friday, we say goodbye to many Marvel characters, so I dug up the cosplay that started it all: Sharon Carter aka Agent 13. Not the best, but it’s interesting to see how far I’ve come from this (about 2014-ish) 📸: @summerwolfcosplay or @owlfeatherphoto (sorry guys! I can’t remember who took this) . . . . #Marvel #MarvelCosplay #SharonCarter #SharonCarterCosplay #Agent13 #Agent13Cosplay #MCU #MCUCosplay #WomenOfCosplay #WomenOfCosplayWednesday #WaybackWednesday #CtCon #Connecticon #Avengers #AvengersEndgame (at ConnectiCon Convention) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwpLF-TDKe8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1sj6j6bnyi22c

[princeofcatscosplay]

Since it's coming close to CtCon, throwback to the two times I got to meet the lovely guys of Marble Hornets in 2013 and 2014! ✨don't remove caption✨

[crystallllines]

"Actually, the first convention was in 2004, not 2014. And it's called ConnectiCon, not the 'Hartford Convention.'" Oh, of course! Silly me, what was I thinking? Yes, the first ConnectiCon was held so that delegates from every state in New England could gather and complain about the rest of the nation in secret.

[anneboleyns]

yellow and blue, please

i’ve done yellow but blue:

what do you do when you’re sad?depends how sad. it varies from functioning entirely normal & just ignoring it, to spiraling or having a panic attack that ends in self harm. i guess most of the time i’d write in my journal/record a voice memo (my voice memos are another kind of journal i employ when i don’t want to physically write)

what are some things you do when you can’t sleep?stay on my phone for hours and hours. reading fanfic, making edits for instagram or twitter, just scrolling through twitter.

what was the best (non-romantic) night you’ve had?probably connecticon 2014, my bestfriend and i saw the fireworks and ran around through hartford, and danced at the con rave. it was a great night.

what kind of covers do you have on your bed?a plain white down comforter, light blue sheets and dark blue pillowcases.

who is the last person you told a secret to?i don’t know. i don’t keep many secrets. maybe the girl i’m talking to, we had a really long conversation about our childhoods and relationships with our parents.

[niduss]

would you consider ever going to connecticon if you dont go already? Its closer than katsucon and i feel it would be super dope to meet you and maybe give you a hug if you are okay with that

I actually went to Connecticon in 2014 and had a TON of fun. I’d love to go again, tbh. Unfortunately, I’m trying to lay off going to “BIG” cons a bit until I’m actually making income (right now I’m making nothing, just living off savings). I decided against going to Katsucon, because of this. 

But yeah, I would consider it. I’ll keep it in mind!