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felassan · 4 months ago

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BioWare Blog post: 'Unveiling The Veilguard: Cast and Characters Detailed at San Diego Comic-Con' [July 31st]

"San Diego Comic-Con has come to a close, but not before delivering mountains of Dragon Age fun for the amazing fans in attendance. The highlight of the week was the panel we hosted on Friday featuring some of our cast of companions who – in conversation with host Lucy James – shared new insights into their characters and revealed even more lore about Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We also joined our partners at Dark Horse on the showfloor for fan signings, giveaways, cosplay photoshoots, and more. In case you weren’t among the lucky attendees who got to experience this year’s convention in person, don’t worry – we’re here not only to recap all the action but also to share photos from throughout the weekend. Everything kicked off Wednesday night with the Dark Horse booth opening and some giveaways. Our team also enjoyed a celebration of Dragon Age with our partners at Fandom on Thursday night. Then on Friday came our panel “Dragon Age – Meet The Heroic Companions of The Veilguard,” which featured voice actors Zach Mendez (Lucanis), Jessica Clark (Neve), Nick Boraine (Emmrich), and Ali Hillis (Harding) and highlighted the heart of every Dragon Age title: the companions. The panel opened with a bit of background from Creative Director and 16-year BioWare veteran John Epler and Creative Performance Director Ashley Barlow, who helped to cast and direct over a thousand conversations and brought hundreds of characters and storylines to life."

"As Epler explained, Dragon Age: The Veilguard sees players embark on a perilous quest to face powerful Elven gods and stop the apocalyptic destruction they’re unleashing. You’ll step into the role of Rook, battling on the front lines alongside a deep and compelling cast of companions who together comprise The Veilguard, a group of heroes who have come together to stop the veil from breaking and bringing about the end of the world. Rook must become the unexpected leader who can rally and unite the group. Throughout the game, you can explore the detailed storylines of each companion, navigating love, loss, and complex choices that influence your relationships. “Companions have always been such a big part of this franchise,” Epler asserted at one point during the panel. “You’ll navigate some of the most compelling individual storylines you’ve seen from BioWare. I’m really excited about the bonds players will form.” Barlow later added, “I feel like you can fall in love with any of them. Everyone that has touched this project has put a piece of their heart into it and into all of the different characters you could cross paths with. I know for me at times, in the companion stories, it seemed like I was watching a scene out of my own life. It’s a powerful feeling to have something or someone to relate to on screen.” Meet the Cast With that, the panel shifted towards the companions themselves, as well as the actors who brought each character to life. First up was Zach Mendez (Horizon: Forbidden West, Married Alive), who voices Lucanis: an expert assassin of the Antivan Crow faction. Bloodthirsty, calculated, and a workaholic, Lucanis was raised with high expectations and fears disappointing those he loves. To him, being an assassin is his only job and identity to be excellent at. “As soon as Zach was cast, he deep dove into Dragon Age and read everything he got his hands on. He did it all to create that depth of character you can really feel,” Barlow remarked. “Zach’s a comedian, he would easily find the humor in anything Lucanis was saying. And sometimes I’d have to remind him he’s a deadly assassin and to stay bloodthirsty, but I think he found this cool way of finding the light in the darkness.”"

"“After I finished [The Wigmaker Job], I realized this might be the coolest guy I ever get to play,” Mendez said. “What struck me was his mind is as dangerous as his knives. He’s constantly attuning himself to the kind of shifting terrain of every mission. And also, he’s kind of hilarious. I mean, if you look at his relationship with his cousin Illario in The WigMaker Job, they’re constantly giving each other crap. But there’s a lot of love there. So I got to pull from my relationship with my brother, because we love each other dearly but we can be ruthless with each other.” Mendez also revealed to fans that, in addition to voicing Lucanis, he actually recorded lines for a variety of other characters, including the Grey Wardens. “I can go ahead and play a bunch of characters, so I had to really steep myself in the understanding that, okay, the Grey Wardens go through a lot to actually do what they do. They make a pretty intense bond. So, I tried to bring that as best I could to the physicality… I cannot wait to see how it plays out the game.”"

"Following a few more quips from Zach, the conversation moved to Jessica Clark (True Blood, Pocket Listing) and Shadow Dragons rebel Neve, a cynic with a heart of gold who cares deeply about helping people and never leaves work half-done. She also has ice powers to halt an enemy or take advantage of the environment. “I’d describe her as the working class hero trying to make her hometown better,” Epler commented. “I love her loyalty,” Clark shared. “I love her dedication. I love how much she loves Docktown and its people and how she really sees a different vision that I’m into, as John said, and then what’s previously been depicted, and she’s really really fighting for those people and she loves those people.” Clark also commented on her experience with the casting and recording process: “Even though [the cast members] were all separate disembodied voices a lot of the time, we really all bonded. I know in a lot of projects they’re like all ‘we love each other,’ but we really do! And it just evolved so organically. There was something magical about it just being our voices in the beginning.” Full of Character Next up was Nick Boraine (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Black Sails), who plays Emmrich – a sincere, friendly, and scholarly necromancer who comes complete with a skeletal assistant, Manfred (voiced by Matthew Mercer of Critical Role). “He’s part of the Mourn Watch,” Epler explained, “an elite group of necromancers who are revered in Nevarra, but outside it, they are odd at best and evil at worst. He’s your well meaning but oblivious academic – assumes everyone has an academic’s curiosity, so can be pedantic on select topics.” While Boraine agreed, he found another aspect of the character even more remarkable: “I love the fact that the writers took Emmerich and explored the whole idea of death and the whole idea of necromancing by bringing kindness into it. I really responded to that and got into that and I know it sounds crazy, but it’s to not have this idea that death is vulgar or something to be terrified about, but something to actually engage with on so many levels. I just love the fact that the writers had the courage to do that in a game like this.” Barlow chimed in to share insights from her time working with Boraine: “Nick encompasses Emmrich; his sophistication, and eagerness to teach and learn, his hot nerdiness. Often Nick is just playing off of someone making a sound, and he takes it and internalizes it and gives it meaning and care, which is amazing to watch.”"

"Finally came Ali Hillis (Mass Effect 3, Naruto) and everyone’s favorite dwarven scout Lace Harding, who returns with a big heart, positive outlook, and some unexpected magical powers. “The world’s changed a lot in the time period since Inquisition,” Epler observed. “She returns as an excellent scout and archer, and has been leading teams through the wilderness while covering friends in battle.” “My favorite things about Harding are the little things like she loves her mom,” laughed Hillis. “You know, she loves to write letters home and she’s always talking about her mama’s stupid stuff like that. I love that relationship. She likes plants and raising plants which is inspirational since I kill them. But just the texture they add to the characters. That’s in general, but for me, it’s those little things that really kind of give me a bunch of stuff to work with in my brain.” Barlow effused, “Ali brought a weight and a history to this project as an anchor of the series. There was a growth to Harding. She’s a veteran now. She’s a trusted voice at the table, and the writers did such a great job of integrating her with the new team and finding the relationships with each of the unique characters.” Photo Opps Our panel ended with a crowd Q&A, but SDCC was just getting started. Our team spent the rest of the weekend giving away posters and exclusive Discord pins, signing those posters, and of course, meeting fans out on the show floor. Footage of the full panel should be available in a couple weeks, so for now we hope you enjoy these photos of our favorite SDCC moments! We’ll have more to share next month – including a new roadmap, more looks at the game, and our official release date (!) – so don’t forget to follow our BioWare and Dragon Age social channels. – The Dragon Age Community Team"

[source]

#dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age the veilguard spoilers #dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #long post #longpost #video games #dragon age: tevinter nights #mass effect

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toadallytickles · 7 months ago

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NEST 2024 + Gatherings Going Forward (again)

Attended my 4th NEST this year! This is just a quick point-form summary as I’m still dropping and wanted a write-up before I fly out this weekend to see my moms!

Perhaps I wore my “tickle me I’m cute!” shirt on Friday- and perhaps it got me pinned and gang tickled by 4 friends UGH- I haven’t been gang tickled since last June which is WILD honestly. Kinda hoping wishing this June it happens again 👀

Learning that it’s okay to let people touch me. 🙄😒 From my past writing “AUNT 2024 + Gatherings Going Forward,” I shared that I’ve denied myself from playing with friends until everything felt perfect, but recognized that I set the bar way too high and that maybe I just fear that “awkward first session” because I’m really awkward with touching and this fetish. At NEST this year I’ve allowed friends I’ve met and connected with at previous gatherings to tickle me in the con-spaces to break that touch barrier in a fun, familiar way for everyone. I also let myself engage in pick-up sessions with friends to get that “awkward first session” out of the way! I had to reassure myself throughout the weekend that it was okay that they were touching me, and they were touching me because they wanted to~.

My nesting partner is choosy about the gatherings he attends as he wants to focus on those he has connected with already, and can find gatherings overwhelming at times. This NEST made me feel similar- I want to continue attending gatherings, and I love meeting new people, though going forward I’m going to focus on regular attendees and friends I know from previous gatherings. There are a lot of regulars and mutuals I would love to get to know better and potentially play with- I’m just really awkward and don’t know how to approach people, and in turn I feel I accidentally give off a closed-off vibe. I would like to be part of my friends’ friend group, I just don’t know how to integrate! NEST going forward, I would love to volunteer and help out more to continue making the gathering the best it can be!

Oh, I had my first Wawa experience! I tried their Caramel Cookies and Cream Frozen Cappuccino, IT WAS SO GOOD, Starbucks Frapps could never. definitely kept me up way past my bedtime! 😋 Also the mascot is a (Canada) Goose because Wawa was originally a dairy farm in Wawa, Pennsylvania, and the Ojibwe word “we’we” means “Snow Goose.” Now I need a Sheets experience~.

I got to try out @ticklingduck's vibrating tickling rods! @mister-ttt and I did record content including them! They are like a small Pursonic (without it stopping after 2 minutes~)! 😏 I also BOUGHT ONE!! 🎉 @ticklingduck's socials: Etsy, Twitter, Tumblr.

Wore my Geurdo Link cosplay on auction night, even though I was not participating in the auction, and I was extremely shy so I just sat in the audience and didn’t really show it off LMAO!! (Still editing the tickle video featuring this cosplay, previews are in the NEST Server and on my OF~).

I’ve had the literal pleasure of forming a play partner dynamic with a local friend, and he has really built up my confidence, self-esteem, and has helped me be more self-sex-positive. It was exciting to carry that sex-positivity into some sessions this weekend, and I learned that I really like being consensually sexually violated by friends.. 🥴💦 don't look at me.

This weekend really validated my growth and boundaries. Finding this gathering somewhat personally hard to navigate because I wasn’t meeting my exact wants (a me-issue, not NEST's), that helped me recognize that I’m not the same person I was at my first NEST and other 2019 gatherings, and that I’m truly growing. I wasn’t able to navigate NEST like I did in 2019, so now I know I’m on the right path and know what I’m exactly looking for.

And finally on the last day of the gathering, I’m sitting in the lobby in my lazy travel fit, not showered, sporty wind-breaker, capris, my glasses, pink paw print socks + sandals of course, and a guy I’m pretty sure was not part of the NEST group asked me if I was “Kyle-“ and there were other men around. I say no, and guy just wanders back to where he came from. Assigned Kyle at NEST. I have not felt gender euphoria in a long time. 🥹

anyway, the end. looking forward to the next gatherings~

#hi I'm never here but I'm doing really well! just lots going on in the in-person scene so I'm active there!#I still pop in from time-to-time. But I'm definitely happier in-person.#Thought I'd share my NEST 2024 experience as Fetlife got this! My AUNT 2024 is on my Fetlife too!#Anyway- I hope to see lots of familiar and new faces at NEST 2025~! I'm hoping to do lots of volunteering at future NESTs and events! :)#my posts #NEST #NEST 2024 #tickle gatherings #my writing #tickles #text

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c0tt0n-c4ndy05 · 7 months ago

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Huskerdust cosplay shenanigans !!

This weekend my city hosted a con in which me and my friend @luudopatica cosplayed Husk and Angel Dust :)) someone asked us for a romantic pose and we did a hand kiss💞💞

I also added some details in their designs to reference our outfits!! (I believe Angel is a ribbons enjoyer and I stand by that)

May do more cosplay inspired art after your requests :D!

#hazbin hotel #huskerdust #angel dust #hazbin hotel fanart #hazbin hotel angel dust #husk #angel x husk #my feet hurt for days after those shitty high heels #if y’all want pictures I can post some❤️#I love and appreciate all your support

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wromwood · 1 month ago

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I went to NYCC this weekend for two days: Thursday and Friday. It was a fun time, and I'm so glad I went, but I thought I'd share my negative experiences from the reason why I went on Thursday, and how it could've easily become a con-ruiner if there weren't a few silver linings.

Click on the Read More if you want to hear about the Alex Hirsch signings and panel, and how NYCC made the events near-total disasters.

Warning: This story is long, but that's because its poor handling can't be condensed to a bite-sized retelling.

So, I wasn't always planning on attending NYCC on Thursday. Since all the Saturday and 4-day passes sell out before the general public even has a chance to buy them, I swooped for what I assumed was the next best day: Friday. One-day tickets are about $80 each, and once you combine those costs with both my potential cosplay and exhibit hall/artist alley shopping expenses, you can see why I wasn't originally planning to go for another day.

However, near the beginning of October, NYCC made a last minute announcement that Alex Hirsch would be at NYCC on Thursday and Friday. He would have signings on Thursday and Friday, and a panel on Thursday evening. I've never seen Alex Hirsch in person before, so this (and an NYCC-based costume contest held by Hirsch and announced only a few days after the main event announcements) was enough to make me buy an additional Thursday ticket.

Now, before I explain what happened during Hirsch's NYCC events, I want to clearly establish what information fans knew about them beforehand:

Every event involved Alex Hirsch, Joe Pitt, and Ian Worrel.

The signings were specifically for The Book of Bill. You had to have a copy of The Book of Bill to get a spot in the signing, which you could either bring yourself or purchase from the Barnes & Noble booth that would be set up nearby. You could also bring one additional item for signing.

Both signings were free and first come, first serve. They did not require any sort of prior purchase or reservation.

The panel on Thursday evening also did not require any sort of extra ticket purchase or reservation. (Reservations are only available to Empire or Main Stage panels; the Alex Hirsch panel was in one of the 400-level rooms.)

If you're thinking that this seems like too little information for something that could easily get chaotic in the wrong hands, then great! That's what I thought myself when I examined every event listing for any scrap of detail with which to prepare myself. Alex Hirsch is the creator of one of the most beloved modern Disney cartoons, and his fanbase had only increased and been given new life after the publication of his new book. And yet there was no way to reserve a spot in his two signings? I only hoped that NYCC knew what they were doing.

Thursday arrived, and so did I at the Javits Center in my Bipper cosplay. I arrived at around 11:30 AM, and the Thursday signing was at 3 PM, so I spent a couple of hours walking around the show floor, buying expensive One Piece merch, and taking pictures with the Duolingo owl. I headed down to line up for the signing at 2 PM, thinking that being there an hour in advance would be enough to secure a spot.

... No, it wasn't.

I arrived at Hall 1A to an in-progress mob of Gravity Falls cosplayers. There were Bills, Dippers, Mabels, Fords, and Grunkle Stans as far as the eye can see, and nearly everyone was holding copies of The Book of Bill. I spotted an AMAZING cosplayer who was dressed as a member of the Church of Ciphertology and holding up a huge foam puppet of Bill. The puppet had ropes connecting its arms with hers so that it looked like she was being puppeted by it. She had been standing by the wall outside the hall, but was now moving into it, and I followed her raised Bill puppet like a guiding beacon.

I was soon in the middle of a sea of costumed people. There wasn't even a semblance of a line here, at least not this far back. Fortunately, we were mostly all nice and united in our love for Gravity Falls, so I didn't experience any pushing or shoving. In fact, I even struck up a lovely conversation with the people in front of me.

Unfortunately, all of us were united in another experience: we had all been caught off-guard at how disastrous this event was turning out.

Most of us had followed the same plan that I had developed: arrive an hour early to get a spot in line. Some of us had been more careful. I later learned from the Ciphertology disciple that she had arrived closer to noon, but had been warned by security that she couldn't actually line up for this event. Lining up would only occur an hour before the signing, at 2 PM. That was why she had been next to the wall when I arrived. She had more right to be at the front than I did, and yet she was only a few feet ahead of me when we entered the mob.

While I didn't interview many other attendees, we quickly formed the hypothesis that this "no lining up before 2 PM" rule was why the mob had formed. Everyone - both the people who had arrived earlier and the newcomers who thought 1 hour was "early" - had rushed to form a line that the NYCC crew members just couldn't create.

We waited there for about 15-20 minutes. Occasionally, a crew member yelled for us to take a big step back (only some of the mob complied) and sometimes we were asked to all raise our copies of The Book of Bill in the air (for a photo? to check who was eligible for the signing? I'm still unsure).

Finally, at around 2:30 PM, we heard a crew member shout, "All right! We've run out of tickets for the signing! The rest of you have to leave!"

This was the wrong phrasing for them to use, because immediately, a number of fans started shouting things along the lines of "What do you MEAN tickets?!" "No one told us we had to have tickets!!!" "How do we get tickets?!"

Because there were only so few NYCC crew members on the floor, the announcement was mostly spread through word of mouth: a number of people at the front of the mob had been given "tickets" (wristbands?) so that they could line up for the signing. They didn't even get close to my part of the mob before they ran out of spots.

I, and so many other people, had to walk away disappointed, hoping that we could at least get into the panel later.

Before I left, I said this to three different NYCC crew members: "Hey, I know that there's another signing tomorrow, and I also have a pass for tomorrow. What should I do so that I don't miss this event?"

Every response I got was a variation on the phrase "I don't know." This is important to remember. I tried my best to learn what to do ahead of time by asking NYCC employees.

Anyway, later that evening was the Alex Hirsch panel at 6:30 PM. After the disappointment from the signing, though, I didn't want to take any chances. After spending an hour for lunch, I headed to the location for the panel at 3:30 PM, 3 hours ahead of time. I saw a NYCC crew member and asked when and where I should wait for the panel to start.

His paraphrased advice: "Listen. There's the room where the panel will be. You take a seat in there now and sit through three panels. That's how you'll have a seat later."

This may sound like cheating, and an unfair thing to do when you consider the people who may actually want to attend the panels before the one you're camping out for, but it wasn't against the rules. Only the Main and Empire stages require the rooms to be turned out for new people between panels. For the other panel rooms, you can camp out in your seat for as long as you want.

So, I followed his advice. I walked to room 406.3 in the middle of a panel about censoring non-fiction comics and found an empty seat.

I was shocked to see just how small the room was. According to the NYCC website, the room can seat about 300 people. That may sound like a lot, until you remember that 1) this is NYCC, which had 200,000 attendees last year, and 2) THIS PANEL IS FOR ALEX HIRSCH. I couldn't help but think of the mob I saw earlier, and just how many of those people wouldn't be able to fit into this room.

When I sat down during the censorship panel, the room was only about half full, and I saw two other Gravity Falls cosplayers already. After that panel, I walked to the front and took a seat in the third row (later, I even managed to move up to the second row, so I had a very good view).

An hour later (about 4:30 PM), the room was almost entirely full with a crowd that was almost entirely Gravity Falls fans. An hour after that (5:30 PM), the room was absolutely full, and we had already gotten word (and pictures) from people on the outside that there was a line of hopeful latecomers stretching around the floor.

One odd memory I have from around this point was when a woman showed up at the front of the room and addressed a bunch of us in general, saying "Hi, I'm from Disney. Are there six seats that I can have?"

All of the people near her (including myself) shot her looks and muttered replies along the lines of "Hell, no." She didn't further explain what she meant or provide any credentials, so I have no idea why she expected to get so many seats at once or what she needed them for.

I'll skip past the rest of the evening, as the panel was largely a nice time after that. I sat next to some really kind, awesome people who were great to talk to and share art with between panels, Alex Hirsch (as well as Joe Pitt and Ian Worrel, of course!) shared great stories, and I got to witness the awesome Ciphertologist cosplayer win a Bill Cipher Ouija board. It was a nice way to make up for missing the signing earlier, and I'm glad I was able to attend.

... and yet, not only did I still feel a sting of guilt about the hundreds of other fans who couldn't attend, but I couldn't stop thinking about something I discussed with the other fans I sat with: even the lucky fans who attended the panel were only able to do so because we spent hours of our con-going experience sitting through panels we wouldn't have otherwise chosen to attend. The panels were interesting in their own right, but that wasn't the point.

It's not cheap to attend NYCC. At around $80 a day (if you didn't buy a 4-day pass), time is money. There could be other panels that pertain to our interests happening during the waiting time. Guests that we might've wanted to get photos or autographs with. An entire show floor to explore. Merch to buy. Many of us only realized that we'd have to wait this long in one room earlier that day. We hadn't properly prepared for the fact that - new friendships and fun between-panel conversations aside - this time was practically wasted.

Don't get me wrong: I'm so happy I managed to attend the panel, and I'm glad I had the time to talk to such lovely people. But this wasn't fair to us as con-goers, and it especially wasn't fair to the con-goers who couldn't get in the signing OR the panel, or who were only able to get a ticket for Thursday and couldn't spend more time doing what they wanted at the convention on another day.

Speaking of the next day: I was determined to get a personalized signing from Alex Hirsch on Friday. That day, the signing started at 1:30 PM. Keeping the "no lining up before an hour ahead" rule in mind, I decided I'd arrive two hours before at 11:30 PM. Not far enough in advance to absolutely antagonize security, but hopefully far enough to scope out the scene and join other fans in making a game-plan for when and how to line up.

I arrived at Hall 1A at 11:30 only to learn that the signing tickets (which were now confirmed to be wristbands) had LONG since run out.

From what I gathered from other fans and NYCC crew members, the convention decided that the first come, first serve model would begin from the moment the convention opened that day (I think 10 AM?). Gravity Falls fans could stop by and get wrist bands for the signing until they ran out, which they did QUICKLY. Apparently, they gave out even fewer spots than on Thursday.

I definitely feel that the issue here wasn't me not thinking of getting there right as the doors opened. The fans were given one set of rules on Thursday, and just as it had been spread through word of mouth, they were changed the next day with basically no notice (apparently, some fans heard more info from staff members, but this was irregular). There was no formal announcement about the new wristband distribution, which meant there was no way for fans to know about this unless they showed up as early as possible, which was established to be a bad thing for the signing just the day before. And this is on top of me asking NYCC employees what I should do to not miss my chance at a signing! Either they changed the rules last minute, or the NYCC workers I spoke to really weren't told a thing by the convention planners.

I, and many other people, were rightfully pissed off to lose our last chance at getting a personalized autograph from Alex Hirsch.

There was one silver lining, though, that kept the day from feeling ruined. The signing was scheduled to go from 1:30-3:00. At 2:30, I decided to head to the signing just to wistfully stare at Alex Hirsch from the Barnes & Noble booth. I had a good view and stared wistfully away next to a few other fans who had hoped (in vain) that extra people could be squeezed in for the signing.

Then, after everyone with wristbands got their books signed and about 5-10 minutes before the signing was totally over, Hirsch, Pitt, and Worrel were handed a couple stacks of The Book of Bill from the Barnes & Noble booth. They quickly signed the stacks, then left.

To our delight, the employees came over to the lingering fans who weren't able to get wristbands and started passing out the copies. So I did end Friday with a signed copy of The Book of Bill! I also got a couple of sticker sheets that were being given out during the signing, which is nice. The waiting around was worth it.

Even so, that doesn't fully make up for just how disastrously the events were handled. This wasn't a case of fans not being in the know about how conventions are run. This was fully caused by NYCC either not knowing or not caring just how big of a crowd Alex Hirsch would draw. They dangled the chance of first come, first serve autographs to hundreds of people without providing the best guidelines on how to obtain them. They reserved a panel room that wasn't nearly large enough and didn't consider the implications of seat-camping. It was a nightmare.

Hopefully, you appreciated my dramatic retelling of these events. The moral of this story is: don't assume that just because NYCC is one of the biggest conventions in the country that it is guaranteed to competently run all of its events. They can mess up.

#this is me #gravity falls #the book of bill #alex hirsch #nycc #nycc 2024

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siflshonen · 8 months ago

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Omg, could you tell us more about your experience at the con? how did they find out about the manga development?

Uh, okay, so some context is necessary here. lemme just copy-paste what I told my friend in the chat real quick.

This weekend I had the pleasure of being a guest handler for the cosplay contest judges at Tora-Con this year (look them up - they're all incredible!) and after the awards ceremonies, me and one of the judges hit up the day-ending Yaoi for 300 panel, which was hosted by the cheerily gay cosplay contest emcee dressed as Alfred Fire Emblem - er, mostly. The panel began with him kicking up his feet, looking to his co-host, ripping off his wig and saying, "It's been a day. Pass me the yaoi!"

Basically, the panelists had organized BL, yaoi, and “yaoi” titles and popular ships into goofy categories (wholesome, doomed, toxic, Baby's First Yaoi, divorced, old man, rivals, toxic and doomed, Komaeda, musical, etc.) with a different pairing (fanon, canon, whatever) per slide. As each popped up, the audience laughed, cheered, booed, whatever-ed in response. “Yaoi” was used loosely and of course there were slides for stuff like Supernatural, Sherlock, the red and yellow M&Ms, Bert and Ernie, Metal Gear Solid, Homestuck, Genshin Impact... Very broad and meant to garner reactions. In many ways it was a retrospective of the Greatest Hits of popular guyxguy ships on Tumblr, so for a lot of attendees it was really more like a walk down memory lane.

So like. They had several “My Hero yaoi” items in there like DabiHawks (which got a big reaction! The people love HotWings!), TodoDeku (got a polite reaction), KiriBaku (a mild reaction and some awwwwwws.) (The guest with whom I was attending with politely claps but shakes their head at TodoDeku, so after I was polite and was like, “I just like Todoroki to be included”, I then was more honestly like, “but dude it’s BakuDeku or nothin’!” and they were like, “Thank you. Thank goodness.” I didn't realize it then, but this moment heralded what was to come.)

Finally, near the end of the panel, BakuDeku comes up (with the anime still of Izuku as Katsuki's cane, of course) and the room FUCKING ROARS.

Our hosts (who evidently don't closely follow the series) go wide-eyed and then, after a pause, wigless Alfred Fire Emblem tries to take back the energy and goes, “Oh, so you make a big reaction for THAT?!” and it turns out I am not the only manga reader in attendance because then like half the room - myself, my escorted guest, and two other folks at our table at the center-front of the room included - scream in perfect synchronicity, “THAT ONE’S REAL!!!!!!!!!"

A person at my table - clearly also an anime-only - says with the playful innocence only an individual with a kind and sugar-sweet romantic heart can possess, “No! They were right with the KiriBaku! :)” and then turns to meet me and my guest's and another girl's eyes, and I watched as theirs widened in fear as we all looked them dead-on and said, “No, you don’t understand. THIS one is real.”

And the room got REAL quiet until the hosts changed slides to, like, I dunno, Gravitation or Yugioh or something and the energy picked back up.

#ask #bakudeku #tora-con #toracon #yaoi #yaoi for 300 panel #super fun panel I highly recommend #I've been told I should play dramatical murder and I might just for the giggles #i didn't know who yaoi jesus was #I don't interact with a lot of actual BL and yaoi I'm sorry #i just like my oft-homoromantic shonen series

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draganwhorror · 29 days ago

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So I have some fun little tidbits of information to share from my time at Frightmare in the Falls. I had to miss Ted's Q&A panel today because of the timing of my flight, so alas, I do not know what was asked/answered at his panel. However, I did get to chat with him quite a bit this weekend (especially Friday), and I wanted to share what I learned.

I asked Ted about Popsy, the Stephen King dollar baby he was a part of back in 2019. He said he honestly didn't have much to tell me about that, other than he knew there were directors (not the guy who did Popsy) who were abusing their contracts, which is potentially why Stephen King ended the program. He also said he assumes King has some type of claim or rights over the dollar babies, so whether or not it will ever see the light of day is completely unknown.

I asked Ted about Red Light, and he said it's becoming a feature film (full-length) now. Same director, same producers, etc. The only difference is, he won't be starring in it this time. He didn't say anything about the short film, but he did say he will be an executive producer on the full-length version. He also said the reason he's not starring in it is because he doesn't have time/has been super busy with other projects. He did say he's grateful for all the work/projects he's got going on, though. What those are, I can't say. I didn't ask, and he didn't tell me anything more.

I also brought up The Fountain Clowns, mostly out of curiosity, since it was considered "lost" until recently. Ted said he didn't remember the film at all, even after I mentioned it was one from the early 90s he did for a director who was in film school at the time, and that he played a Justice of the Peace named Hayden. He just chuckled and said he didn't recall it.

I did go see Ted before I left today to let him know I was going to miss his panel and see if I could ask him a question at his table instead. He agreed, and so I asked him if he'd ever had a role that he found challenging or difficult, not in terms of stunts or physicality, but more like getting into a character's head or portraying that character (and I used Skinner as an example because of how vicious he is towards prostitutes/women in general). Ted thought about it for a bit, then apologized for not having an answer for me/being evasive. He said making movies is hard, and all of his characters were difficult in some way. He said TV is easier, because if a movie gets behind on schedule, everyone panics, starting at the top and trickling down to even the lowest people on the totem pole (like craft services).

I jokingly brought up Planet Raptor, and he went off on a tangent about that film. Said it was absolute shit, and that none of the people (director, producers, writer, etc) really cared about it. Said they just wanted to rush it and get it out to Syfy Channel as quickly as possible. I told him he was the best part of the film, and that he'd given it his all, doing his best with what he'd been given. He said the whole cast gave it their all, even though there wasn't really any reason to. Then I told him Dr. Tygon was a dick, and he laughed.

Ted also told me he only did Millennium Crisis because he wanted to hang out with friends in New York. Said the movie wasn't very good, but he did it just because it gave him an excuse to be in NY to spend time with friends. I'd say that's pretty valid. 😂

Oh, and Ted apparently (jokingly) feels bad for me because I told him I'd seen like 90% of everything he's been in. He was like, "Most of it sucks." But he loved my cosplay of Pavel. He gushed over it a few times and told me I looked good/just like him. 🫣 According to him, I'm the only person who has ever gone to a con as Pavel, and I guess he got a kick out of it.

I think that's everything. I just wanted to share that with all the Ted fans on here. Hopefully we'll be seeing Ted in a bunch more fun stuff soon! 🤞

#random post #ted raimi #interesting little tidbits #ted is so fun to talk to #convention conversation

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arimiadev · 5 months ago

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(you can read this article down below or on my blog!)

How to Sell Visual Novels at Conventions

Or, “how do you table at an anime convention and actually get people to stop by your booth and actually get interested in visual novels????”

Picture this – me, someone who’s never been to California nor flown alone arrived to the Hyatt at the San Francisco Bay, being greeted by several online friends I’d known for years but never met in person. After a great time walking around the surrounding Burlingame area and meeting back up with the rest of our group, we had to actually put in some work for the day.

That is, setting up our booth for the convention starting the next day.

We unpacked box after box, taking turns standing around with our hands on our hips and heads tilted wondering “how the hell are we going to set all of this up?”. I decided to make it my job to set up our keychain display. All I had to do was get a copy of each keychain we had and pin them up – we even had a box from prior conventions that had a single copy of (most) of our keychains, for displaying. But as I opened more boxes, I found more and more keychains…

After threatening to change the password on their Vograce account, I found we had 10+ boxes of merchandise for niche visual novels that we were trying to sell at a vtuber convention. Not an anime convention, not a gaming convention, a vtuber convention! Going to bed that night, already tired, I was sure there was no way we would make a profit…..

…And yet, we made more on Friday than they had for the entire convention in 2023. By Sunday, we had made more than double that, having sold items to over 100 customers with most purchases around $40 each. We weren’t selling fanart, we were selling a majority completely original art.

We lived the dream of a lot of indie developers – we sold physicals of our indie games and people bought them. But how did we do it??

a little context

Some background – OffKai Expo is an annual vtuber-oriented convention in Burlingame, California, a suburb of San Francisco and just 15 minutes away from their airport. If you don’t know what a vtuber is, just go watch my oshi Gavis Bettel. In 2023, Studio Élan had a booth at the convention as it’s somewhat local to some of our members. We decided to have another booth at the convention for 2024 and I offered to work at it (what’s a booth without a marketer?).

The only anime convention I’ve ever been to was the local one in Memphis, namely Anime Blues Con, but those are….lacking, to say the least. Not much to do, very limited artist alley, waning attendance (which was already small to begin with), barely any new artists nor sights year after year… I’ve always wanted to go to a convention outside my area, to say the least.

But how did we manage to make the weekend successful?

conceits

What we did won’t be entirely replicable for most devs reading this, but there will be some insights and takeaways that I’ll highlight that are applicable to anyone wanting to table at conventions and sell their games.

Our table was for Studio Élan x VirPro – it was a joint table between our yuri visual novel studio and our indie vtuber friend streaming group, Virtuality Project. We sold some merch for VirPro, but I’d estimate that was no more than 20% of our sales – we still would have made a profit even if we weren’t selling that merch.

this table held our limited VirPro merch. we were able to hang our Élan prints on the wall behind it thanks to our friends at Studio Nekomata allowing us to tape our prints to the backside of their display. we also had a Miho cutout, but she didn’t want to stand up this weekend…

However, it is important to note that Studio Élan is not a new studio. We’ve been around for years, have 15k followers on Twitter, and have several visual novels released. We’re not extremely well known, as we are within a niche within a niche, but we aren’t unknown either. Some people actually cosplayed our characters at the convention! It’s definitely possible some locals came to OffKai Expo just to see our booth & panel (we also held a panel on Saturday where we announced 2 new games).

Another thing to note is that we have a stock of merch from running an online store and having held Kickstarters before. Specifically, we have physical copies of almost all of our games as well as artbooks, soundtracks, clothing, and more. We had tons of keychains and 11×17 prints, sure, but we also sold a lot of merch that is much harder and more expensive to produce.

So, tl;dr, things we had going for us:

We are established developers with a following & released games

We have a sizeable amount of merch already made for our online store, including physical games & artbooks

We were boothing with our indie vtuber friend group and selling their merch on the side

But our main problem:

We were boothing at a vtuber convention, not an anime or gaming convention

Now, with all of that out of the way….

convention standards

First off, let’s look at some basic things you can expect while tabling at a convention. (for the purposes of being specific to visual novels, when I say “convention” I’m only referring to anime & gaming-adjacent conventions—OffKai falls under this as vtubers are both anime & gaming-adjacent)

At a convention, you will typically be selling in either the artist alley or the dealer’s room, which are both referred to as the vendor’s hall. For small conventions, these two may be the same area. The artist alley is typically for artists selling keychains, prints, and more. The dealers room is for vendors that sell larger merch or have more items to sell – this can include artists but also includes people selling imported items (such as anime figures) and companies.

Conventions have a set amount of hours that the events go on and the vendor’s hall is usually not open the entire time. These rooms will usually open in the morning, around 10AM or so, and allow vendors an extra hour for fixing things before opening every day. For OffKai, we had to stay at our booth for about 8~ hours every day, except for Sunday. Sundays are always the shortest days for 3-day conventions, as the convention will usually wrap up around dinner time (if not earlier).

Vendors get time the night before the convention starts (usually Thursday night, with most conventions I’m referencing being Friday-Sunday events) to set up their booths. It took us around 3 hours to fully set up our booth, with 4 of us working on it. Setting up your booth will go a lot smoother if you do a trial run before the convention.

Every convention I’ve tabled at or known a vendor at provides vendors with at least 1 table and a chair. More chairs are usually easy to get, you just need to ask staff before the vendors hall opens up.

tip 1 – bring a friend

Conventions provide tables and chairs, but they don’t provide helping hands! You’re probably going to need help unpacking and setting up the table, but you’ll definitely need to take breaks during the convention for the bathroom, food, and more. You can’t just ask staff to sit at your table and you can’t just hide everything while you’re gone. Bring a friend to help out!

If you have to go alone, make friends with the people boothing next to you and ask them to watch over your table if need be. Be sure to keep your money and payment processors with you if you ever have to step away. And bring snacks & water!

our merch

Like I said, at Élan we have typical merchandise for our visual novels like keychains and acrylic standees, but we also have physical copies of our games for PC & consoles, artbooks, soundtracks, and more.

We had these types of merch:

Acrylic & wooden items

Keychains

Standees

Pins

Print media

PC discs

Console discs & cartridges (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5)

Artbooks (game artbooks, limited edition anniversary artbooks)

Soundtrack discs

4×6 prints (CGs, key artworks)

11×17 prints (key artworks, exclusive convention artworks)

Clothing & fabric

T-shirts (4 designs, 1 color each)

Hoodie (new collaboration design, for all of our games)

Scarf (new collaboration design, for 1 of our games)

Fabric flags (key visuals)

Misc.

Grab bag (misc small items)

$5 bin (misc small items)

Pencil bag

Mousepad

Enamel pin

Plushie (limited Makeship leftovers)

Some of these were items we’d never sold before such as the hoodie, scarf, and 11×17 prints. Some of them were also much more of a hassle than others.

In terms of storage and cheapness to make, prints and stickers are by far the winners (we didn’t sell stickers at OffKai but plan to in the future). Prints are basically the best thing you can sell for production cost:profit, as a 4×6 print can cost you $0.20 but sell for $5+ and an 11×17 print can cost $0.60 and sell for $15-20.

On the other hand, t-shirts can be some of the most difficult merch to work with. They take up a lot of room (we had at least 2 boxes of just shirts/hoodies) and require you to have multiple different sizes. The plushies were great & easy to sell, but at the same time they cost a lot per unit and take up even more space than shirts.

The physical copies sold great, but the cost to produce & room to store them makes them unwieldy for most developers. I would recommend them over more bespoke merch like clothing, though—several people came to our booth, having never heard of our games, and left with a physical game. CD discs rather than DVD cases are much easier to store and can be handmade, although ours are manufactured.

tip 2 – be selective with what merch you make & bring

Unless you’re lucky enough to have a convention down the street from you, chances are you’re going to have to travel to the convention. That means packing everything up, possibly shipping it, etc…. You need to be picky with what you bring if you don’t have multiple cars to throw it all in.

My merch recommendations:

4×6 prints

Ours were $4-5

Dirt cheap to print, easy to store

Easy for people to buy because of the low price point and ease of carrying

Idea – these are so cheap to print, at the very least print some of your key visual & logo to hand out to people for free

Stickers (die-cut or sticker sheets)

Dirt cheap to print, easy to store

Easy for people to buy because of the low price point and ease of carrying

Idea – some conventions won’t allow you to hand out free stickers. For conventions that don’t, I would sell either singular die-cut stickers or sell them in packs

Keychains

Ours were $12-15

Cheap to print, not very hard to store

At this price point people want to have an attachment to the characters before buying

Idea – if your game is relatively unknown but you still want to print keychains, consider packaging them with something else like the game or a sampler CD of the demo / soundtrack

Physical CD disc games

Ours were $30

Not cheap to print, not very hard to store

People will buy copies of games they’ve never heard of because it’s an interesting item to own and seen as more value than a digital copy (even if physical is more expensive)

Idea – it doesn’t cost much to get a 50 pack of CDs, the cost comes from the packaging and time to make the entire thing. If you don’t have a finished game yet, consider printing your demo out on CDs in paper slips to hand out for free

our booth

Now that I’ve talked about basics for conventions and what merch we sold, what did our booth actually look like?

We didn’t have a pre-convention trial run, so we were essentially winging it. With all of the merch I outlined, could you believe we crammed all of the display copies on 1 table, 2 shelves, and 1 clothing rack?!

Our main focus was making sure each of our physical games were visible. After all, we were at a vtuber convention where most attendees didn’t know us, so we wanted to have a way to show off our games. We spent a lot of real estate on showing individual game copies and having brochures spread out.

tip 3 – have an idea of how you’re going to display things before the convention

We also brought several items to display merch. For keychains & pins, we had a simple corkboard leaning on a photo stand / easel. For acrylic standees, we had a clear nail polish stand. For physical copies, we had photo stands and bookends. For clothes, we had a small clothing rack. For physicals, we had 3 small bookcases. These were all extremely helpful, but they are added costs and more things to carry to the convention.

here’s a better look at our 2 bookshelves. the purple ladder one was at the back of the booth highlighting some items and storing various artbooks & bundles and the smaller one was at the front left of the booth by the VirPro merch, basically in the walking aisle

The corkboard and various photo stands were must-haves, regardless of what you’re selling. A corkboard makes it easy to display anything on it, whether it’s keychains, stickers, mini-prints, announcements, posters, and more. Photo stands were also super helpful for propping our corkboard on but also showing off individual physical copies.

this was me trying to arrange the corkboard and acrylic stands. photo stands and art easels can in handy!

Along with the display stands, we also brought some decorative items like pink table clothes and flowers. These aren’t required, but help make your booth more noticeable.

A few miscellaneous items I plan on bringing to our next convention are a hand sanitizer dispenser, a small air purifier, and fliers. I always keep hand sanitizer on me, but it’s easier to use it when it’s in a convenient bottle and place. Several of us got sick after the convention (despite me wearing a mask), so I’m also bringing a small air purifier to keep some germs away from the table. I also want to bring small fliers for our upcoming games—while brochures are wonderful, I want something that’s easy (and cheap) to hand out to anyone who looks at our booth, not just the people we talk to.

tip 4 – be aware of merch thieves

We arranged our table in a way that we didn’t have to worry much about people stealing merch, though that is a problem at some conventions. As you might’ve noticed from the pictures, our smaller items like the keychains are at the far back of the booth, right beside where we sit. That allowed us to keep a better eye on it.

Rather than sitting behind our tables, we arranged our booth to be where people would walk inside it. This allowed us a way to talk to people easier. We also made sure to hide our card readers, phones, and more when any of us left the table, though this was easy because we almost always had 2-3 people at the booth at any time.

my advice

If I were an indie dev looking to booth at a convention and had the time and spare change, I would if it were close enough to drive to and the booth cost under $500. Unless you’re an established developer or have a popular artist working on your project, it’s hard to justify that cost.

tip 5 – don’t forget to budget for…

booth costs

extra badges (most booths come with 2 free badges)

hotel

travel

food

merchandise manufacturing

any shipping fees (your luggage, merch, etc.)

display items, extra things for your booth

While you may find a booth for $250, you also have to remember the travel fees, cost of food, all of the extra items you’ll need aside from merchandise, and more. A $250 booth for a 3-day convention could easily end up costing you $2,000+, and that’s if you don’t pay yourself or coworkers for their time at the booth!

If you’ve never been to a convention before then definitely go to one as an attendee before becoming a vendor. Get a feel for the place and have some fun, even if it means you won’t be able to booth there for months or a year.

tip 6 – be sure to bring…

Some kind of handout for people with your game & logo on it (fliers, business cards, brochures, etc.)

Small stationary merch for your game (4×6 prints, stickers, etc.)

Corkboard to display things on and something to prop it up

A way to take card payments and cash for change

Hand sanitizer

Pen/pencil and sticky notes

Clamps

Tape

this is the inside of our old brochure! it details our different games and highlights some upcoming titles

I’d also try putting your demo on CDs to hand out to people who seem really interested if you can. CDs are pretty cheap to get now, and even if you just get a 50 pack that can run you around $12, which ends up being $0.25/CD. Not a bad cost for getting a potential fan, if you hand them out only to people who are really interested or package them with other merch and sell them.

Your main effort if you’re not an established developer, however, will be awareness. Talk to the people who stop by your booth. Tell them hi and explain to them what you make. I had several people clearly not understand what visual novels were, but I had many more who became interested once I mentioned we made these games. “Wait, you actually made them?!”

tip 7 – talk to people!!!

People at conventions think art is cool. They think indie games are cool. Be honest with them and show them your hard work. Yeah, this means you have to put on your extrovert cap for the weekend. Just don’t treat it like you’re a car salesman—you’re a game dev first and foremost and enjoy this line of work so much you want to share it with strangers at conventions. Let that shine through in your words.

All in all, conventions are stressful, tiring, and a lot of fun when they’re run well. If any of this sounds interesting to you and you find a convention close enough to you or one that will be relatively cheap to attend, I recommend trying it out.

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OffKai Expo was so, so much fun and I’m so happy I was able to attend. It was a well run convention, our booth did amazing, I got to meet actual fans IRL, and I was able to finally see a lot of my online friends in person. I was scared leading up to it but I’m so glad I pushed myself to go. Having an in-person panel there where the room was almost full absolutely blew me away—I kept asking “do they know what room they’re in? Did they get lost?” If you came to our panel or booth, thank you!!

— Arimia

read more of my articles on tumblr here!

#visual novel #visual novels #my articles #indie game dev #game dev #visual novel game

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thefrogdalorian · 10 months ago

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The Best of Both Worlds - Chapter Three

Din Djarin x Female Reader Modern!AU

❁ Series Masterlist ❁ My Masterlist ❁ Read on AO3 ❁

Word Count: 8323 Rating: General Summary: Your internet bestie arrives in preparation for the Star Wars convention you will attend together. Everything is set for the greatest weekend of your life! Until you arrive at the con and find yourself overwhelmed by all the crowds and noise. At least you have numerous incredibly realistic Mando cosplays to distract you from how stressed you feel, and there's one in particular which is uncannily accurate... Content Warnings: Reader struggles to eat due to nerves and feels anxious due to crowds. Also, not sure if it's really a warning, but there's some allusions to fandom discourse in this one, particularly how men in the SW fandom can behave towards women. So warning for fandom wank, I guess, but reader goes off on them ;) Author's Note: A very long update, wow. Honestly, this chapter was semi-autobiographical lmao. It was my exact response to how busy SWC was last year, even down to hiding under the stairs! Except I did not have a cool internet bestie (just my uncool irl bestie), nor did I stand up and speak in a panel like reader does. I did however see many amazing cosplays and the picture of the Din cosplayer is one I took there! :) Hope you like this one. Not sure for how long me updating every two days will last, but my mind is fully focused on this story for the moment, so who knows! Thank you once again to the wonderful @suresnips for being my beta! Couldn't do it without you ♡

3. This Is Why (I Don't Leave The House) [Reader's POV]

You could scarcely believe that the person you had spent so many hours of your life gushing over The Mandalorian with online, was really here with you in your little flat. Ria had arrived a few hours ago and you two had instantly gotten along famously. Somehow, it was as though you had always known her, even though this was the first time you were actually meeting in person.

You had left your flat earlier in the evening with a mix of trepidation in the pit of your stomach and overwhelming excitement crackling like electricity as it coursed through your veins. The prospect of finally meeting someone who meant so much to you was both daunting and exhilarating. There were so many things that could go wrong, since you had never spent any time together in person and were unsure of your dynamic in that sense. There was pressure, too, particularly bearing the distance Ria had travelled from the U.S. in mind, plus the money you had both spent on ForceCon tickets.

It was a big deal for you to invite someone over to your flat to stay with you like this. From morning until evening, the two of you would be in each other’s presence constantly. At least it was only for five nights… Ria was leaving first thing Tuesday morning as you had to get straight back to work. You quieted your nerves with the thought of how brief her visit would be, until a notification lit up your phone and made your stomach drop:

[thisistheslay]: 18:36: I’M HEREEEEEE!!!!

Ria must be here at the station. You searched around frantically for her, trying to spot her amongst all the commuters that were barreling through the station. You realised, then, that you had no idea how tall she was compared to your own height. That was something you had never needed to know online. Finally, you spotted the brown hair and thick black glasses that you instantly recognised as your internet best friend’s, making her way towards the barrier and the incredible weekend of nerdy fun that lay before the two of you.

After approximately five seconds of being in each other’s presence, you knew that all your fears were unfounded.

As Ria had fumbled with her phone to make the contactless payment and make her way through the gates, the way her face had lit up at the sight of you instantly allayed your anxiety. The bone-crushing hug she had pulled you into had helped too, it was hard to believe she was actually here with you. This hug was for all of the hard days you had endured, separated by many miles when the two of you had just wished you could wrap the other in your arms and be there for them.

It struck you how poised Ria was in real life, too. At the end of the day, the two of you shared a pretty nerdy hobby, it would have been understandable if she was quiet and a little nerdy. But here your internet best friend was, pushing her way through the busy rush hour crowds and throwing the death glares of the commuters, mainly old men in suits, who had glared at the two of you for daring to embrace in the middle of the station hall and block their way from making it to the next tube.

It always baffled you to witness how eager people were to push and shove their way through others for the sake of arriving at their destination just two or three minutes earlier. Somewhere along the way, it felt as though a basic human kindness had been lost in how Londoners seemed to interact with each other when it came to public transport.

But that was a gripe for another time. Your best friend was here, you would not let anyone ruin that. As you emerged from the station and onto the street, you found at a loss for what to say, other than asking about her flight. Luckily, Ria filled the gap in conversation by incessantly babbling about her travels here and the shady characters she had encountered during her two layovers, as she chatted all the way back to your flat. All the guilt you had felt at having her make her own way here – you had wanted to meet her at the airport but work had prevented you from getting away on time – vanished as you saw how much confidence she possessed. Her bubbliness was almost overwhelming, you could scarcely get a word in edgeways. But secretly you were glad of it; ordinarily you found that you were a little awkward in the presence of people you had just met as you adjusted to their presence and their energy. Ria more than compensated for your social shortcomings and fortunately, your dynamic appeared as though it would translate from online into the real world.

Ria burst into your flat after you had met her at the station, full of enthusiasm, lighting every corner of your abode with the warmth and humour that had always been present online. It was incredible how much energy she had actually, considering the fact she had just endured a transatlantic flight. You marvelled at her energy levels, considering you felt exhausted after merely going to the shops. It was so amazing to have her here with you, though.

You had laughed before meeting her about how bizarre it was that internet friends always seemed to know the most intimate details about your life, in a way that you never felt comfortable sharing with real life friends… but you had never seen each other’s legs! Yet, now Ria was here, legs and all.

The two of you were inflating the air mattress for Ria to sleep on, keen to get an early night after so much travelling and how early the two of you would need to be up to make your way to the Dockside Convention Centre for the Con the following morning. You positioned the air mattress underneath the TV, on which you had just spent hours watching your favourite episodes of the show that had brought the two of you together. Of course, you had only intended to watch one episode. But with Mando, there was no such thing as only one episode. Once you started, you just couldn’t stop and you had ended up watching most of the second season. Both you and Ria agreed that the second half of it was incredible, but it was a bit of a slow start. Overall the pair of you preferred the first season, which was a pretty popular consensus amongst fans.

Ria had no qualms about her sleeping arrangements. London was an extortionate city at the best of times, but accommodation when ForceCon was in town – especially close to the convention centre – had meant that your offer to allow Ria to stay in your flat was the only way she had been able to afford to come. It was a debt to you that Ria was grateful for. You didn’t see it as any kind of debt though, you knew she would do the same for you.

Plus, there was no way you could not offer to help her. If something as ridiculous as actually encountering Mando happened, she would never be able to forgive you if she was not by your side.

Ria had always been your closest friend since you had first met her online and you were so relieved that there had been no hint of awkwardness between the two of you. Ria had made herself right at home, and you had struggled to believe as the chatter and laughter continued that this was genuinely the first time the two of you had ever met in person.

You watched in awe as Ria moved around your flat, her brown hair which she usually wore in a bob, now tied up ready to sleep. The glasses with thick-black frames were still on her face, a sure sign she would be scrolling on her phone, probably replying to people on her wildly popular blog, before she finally got some sleep.

Now that she had changed into the tank top and shorts that she would sleep in, you could see more of the extensive tattoo collection she possessed, including a few Mandalorian tattoos. There was an outline of Mando’s helmet that was so well-done, it made you want to rush out to the nearest tattoo shop and get one for yourself. You knew there would be tattoo artists at the Con too, but you also knew you would inevitably chicken out.

With her confident nature and collection of tattoos, you were both in awe of, and utterly intimidated by your best friend. You thought, as you watched her climb onto the air mattress with a giggle, as it tossed her around, that Ria seemed so much older than you even though she was actually eighteen months younger! But that was the bizarre thing about being in your mid twenties, people either seemed to be fully formed adults or still more like teenagers. There was rarely any inbetween.

You shouldn’t have been surprised that the two of you had gotten along so well. After all, you and Ria shared a similar sense of humour, had a similar taste in music (that wasn’t the Mandalorian soundtrack) and a love of books that had allowed your friendship to blossom into something more than purely an entirely Mando-centric friendship that you felt like you shared with some of your other online friends. It wasn’t as though the friendships were shallow or that you didn’t get on with them or anything, but you had just not spoken more deeply about other parts of your lives in the same way as you had to Ria.

“How’s the air mattress?” You asked with a smirk as you watched Ria toss and turn as the unpredictable surface tossed her around.

“It’s fine! Just a bit lively but honestly now I’m lay down, it’s super comfortable. I’ll be asleep in no time,” Ria smiled.

“Good,” You nodded. “Still can’t believe you’re really here. I thought about this moment for months but now it’s actually here, it’s surreal,”

“I can’t believe I’m here either. In this flat, which I’ve seen so many times on FaceTime. It feels so weird in the best way!” Ria laughed. “We’re going to have the best time this weekend.”

“We are. It’ll be incredible,” You breathed, trying to contain your excitement so that you would actually be able to get some sleep. The thought of being surrounded by so many fellow Star Wars nerds was electrifying.

“And don’t forget that panel tomorrow, when we finally meet Mando!” Ria exclaimed. “I’m sure he’s going to fall in love with me at first sight.”

“In your dreams, Ria,” You rolled your eyes playfully. “Goodnight, see you bright and early in the morning.”

“Goodnight bestie, I need to get my beauty sleep for Mando,” Ria added with a wink.

You shook your head with a grin on your face as you made your way into your bedroom, still utterly bemused by Ria’s utter conviction that the two of you were somehow going to encounter the man who was sworn to complete secrecy. You kind of admired Ria’s utterly unshakable confidence in the matter, even if it was a little delusional. At the end of the day, though, you knew it was all lighthearted. She wasn’t the type of person to try to hack into CCTV cameras or bribe the doctors and nurses at the hospital where a suspiciously-realistic cosplayer had surprised sick children. Ria loved The Mandalorian a great deal, but she also had other hobbies and interests.

As you tried your best to convince your body that it really needed to sleep before the Con tomorrow, you were struck by how surreal this all felt. Tomorrow, you would travel to what would become, for the next few days, the nerd centre of the world. It was an event that you had dreamt of going to for years, where all of the latest Star Wars projects were announced. Yet, you had never imagined it would be possible to attend, due to how expensive a trip abroad would be. Luckily though, ForceCon travelled around regularly and the stars had aligned to make this possible for you. When it had been announced that the next one would be held in London, you knew you had to do whatever it took to be there.

After almost an entire year of anticipation, you knew that in just a few short hours you would be there, at the event where everyone who was anyone in the Star Wars world and the people who admired them were to be found.

There was just one exception, though. Mando would never get to see how much the fans appreciated him. Keeping his identity a secret meant that he would never be able to feel the amount of love that fans held for him. Your heart constricted as you thought about it. Even though you had tried in vain to convince yourself that you didn’t really care that much about not knowing who he was, you thought it sad that the man, who was so beloved by people young and old, might never know how truly appreciated he was. You just hoped that one day, on his own terms, he would allow himself to feel some of it.

It was a thought that lulled you off into sleep, underneath the large poster of Season One that hung above your single bed.

The familiar sound of the opening theme to The Mandalorian jolted you awake. With its rhythmic drum beat and melodic bass recorder, it was really the perfect alarm. What wasn’t so perfect, however, was the ungodly hour at which it had interrupted the peaceful slumber you were enjoying. You fumbled around, bleary-eyed in the early-morning light as your hand felt around the nightstand to turn it off, frustrated at being awoken. Until you remembered precisely why you were awake at five in the morning.

For a second you lay there and closed your eyes, attempting to compose yourself and stop the fluttering in your stomach as the realisation dawned upon you: It was ForceCon day!

Finally, after months and months of anticipation, you would finally get to have one of the best weekends of your life. The big day was finally here and you and Ria did not want to miss a single second of time there, hence the early start. The venue for the Con, the Dockside Convention Centre, was a considerable distance from the outskirts of the city where you lived in your rented flat, which somehow fell within your budget despite how close it was to the tube station.

The journey to the convention centre was even further than your daily commute to the museum where you worked. The thought of a journey that would take upwards of an hour to start your day, before you had even contended with the crowds at the convention, was slightly distressing to you. But you knew that with Ria by your side, there was no doubt that you would be able to get through it.

Getting up at five meant that you had ample time to get ready for the event. Your outfit was comfortable and practical but still showed your nerdy side. It had been somewhat of a project for you in the run up to the convention, with a denim jacket that you had walked past in a shop window and fell in love with, decorated with various iron-on patches that were a nod to your favourite characters. You coupled it with a comfortable pair of black jeans that weren’t too tight – a must when doing as much walking as you were about to do this weekend – and your trusty favourite pair of shoes.

You wandered into the main room of your flat, quietly watching as Ria sat on the small couch and expertly applied the finishing touches to her make-up. Suddenly, she snapped the handheld mirror shut and turned to face you.

“Are you ready for the greatest weekend of our lives?!” Ria asked enthusiastically.

“Yes… but no… but yes!” You exclaimed, still unsure how to process the rush of emotions that you were feeling about the day ahead.

“Let me just fill my water bottle up and then I’m ready,” Ria said as she jumped up from the couch and grabbed the titanium bottle that was covered with various Star Wars characters.You chuckled at that. Despite how effortlessly cool your friend seemed to most people, even you, it was reassuring to know that at heart, Ria was still a nerd.

After one last check that you both had your passes for the event, you grabbed the backpacks you had carefully packed the previous evening, between episodes of The Mandalorian, and headed out, to where a weekend of nerd heaven awaited.

Waking up so early had meant that the two of you could take your time getting ready and then head out to the convention before the main rush hour began on the tube. Much as you loved your sleep and wanted to feel well-rested, being able to avoid the worst of the crowds was a deeply appealing prospect. Plus, you would have a chance to stop for breakfast closer to the convention hall and eat food that wasn’t horrendously overpriced.

But as you sat there, staring at the sandwich you had ordered and barely taken a few bites of, you seemed to have a mental block when it came to actually finishing the thing. You wanted to, you knew you needed to get some food in your body to give yourself the fuel for contending with the crowds at the convention. Try as you might, though, your mind was not onboard.

“Too nervous?” Ria asked with a knowing smirk as she munched on some fruit.

“I guess,” You shrugged, feeling as though your stomach had tied itself into knots and was attempting to strangle itself.

“You can always bring it with you. We’ll probably have to get in line and wait around for a while before we go inside. Perhaps you’ll feel like eating then,” Ria suggested.

“Yeah, good idea,” You smiled, suddenly feeling immensely relieved that you had someone else here with you. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you, Ria. Thank you.”

The two of you left the cafe with your takeout coffee cups and finally headed towards the convention centre. As you made your way towards the crowds of people, your stomach dropped as you noticed just how busy things were going to be. For the first few hundred feet, things weren’t too bad as you were sent down what appeared to be a wide, service road, built into the side of the convention centre with the masses of people who were all heading in the same direction as you.

You stuck to the side of the walkway, where you could see the roads and city below, and feel the fresh air on your face over the barrier that bordered one side of the walkway. As long as you could still see daylight and the crowds were moving, you were fine. Slightly stressed, but you could cope.

However, the sight that greeted you at the end of the walkway was like something from your worst nightmares. It was your first glimpse inside the packed convention hall, where you had been so certain that you would have the greatest weekend of your life. But if it involved walking into something as stressful as the sight before you, you were not so sure that it would be the incredible experience you had built it up to be in your head.

As far as you could see, in the biggest room you had ever stepped foot in, there was an endless sea of people. The space was enormous and industrial, with a black floor and white sliding doors at the far left end that opened sporadically to let attendees into the main hall. You felt sick as you looked at it, you couldn’t survive more than a few minutes in that space, especially without knowing how long you would be there for. But no one you encountered appeared to have any idea as to how long you would be in this space. You were just glad that you had arrived a little before the doors to the con opened.

You had expected that, given that ForceCon was officially endorsed by Lucasfilm, it would at least be professionally organised. Instead, though, it seemed as though there were a small number of stressed out volunteers responsible for herding the attendees into a series of pens, with no security or leadership in sight. The poor workers looked incredibly stressed and overwhelmed by the influx of people.

“Ria, I don’t know if I can do this.” You mumbled when you noticed the crowd of people that you were being swept towards as the volunteers motioned for you to fill one of the pens. It seemed as though it would never end, as far as your eyes could see there were people. You felt panic rising in your chest, how were you ever going to get out of here?

“Just breathe, bestie. Breathe.” Ria said, placing her hand upon your back soothingly. “This won’t last forever, it’ll all be worth it. Think about the Mando cosplays! Look, there’s one over there!”

But it was no use. Not even the greatest Mandalorian cosplay in the galaxy would be able to comfort you now. Panic was rising in your chest, you felt overwhelmed by being stuck between two metal barriers in a pen full of people.

You tried your best to focus on her words as you took a seat on the cold, hard floor of the hall. The buzzing in your head was back, it grew louder and louder. You shut your eyes and stared at the floor, hands covering your ears as you willed time to go faster.

“Won’t be long now. I promise,” Ria said reassuringly.

How was she always so calm and composed when you felt as though the world was ending over a few people in a room together? It seemed almost unfair. But you knew that Ria would not want you to feel bad, she just wanted to make sure that you were going to be alright.

Mercifully, before too long, the con opened and you eventually began to move out of the enormous room. At that moment, you felt excitement bubbling up in the pit of your stomach as it dawned on you that you were about to enter Star Wars heaven. You glanced for the first time at the various incredible cosplays that surrounded you, in awe of the hours each person had dedicated to their craft.

Any relief you felt was short-lived, though. The main hallway was not much better. You couldn’t move, or stop to think. The crowd continued plodding down the hall towards a destination unknown. You were sure it was the busiest place you had ever been in your entire life.

“Just keep swimming, swimming,” You chanted to yourself under your breath as a way to soothe yourself.

You took deep breaths and concentrated on the rhythmic thudding of your feet as you stared up the ceiling and continued on your way. You instantly felt lighter, the beginnings of a smile traced across your features when you looked up and saw a giant poster of Mando hanging from the ceiling. If you could just make it to him, you would be most of the way down the corridor and then you would almost be at your destination: the main hall.

Focusing on the Mando poster helped and before you knew it, you were there, surrounded by a dizzying variety of stalls selling more Star Wars merch than you had ever seen gathered together in one place in your entire life. You thought you had a pretty impressive collection yourself – having a proper, adult salary had made it easier to give into your whims and purchase a variety of collectibles – but this was really something else.

You were like a kid in a candy shop, mouth open as you wandered from stall to stall, taking in the wares of the various vendors. You felt like Mando the first time he visited Tatooine. He had wandered around just like you were, amazed by the variety of produce on display. Unlike Mando, though, you were unable to get even remotely close to the stalls. There was a throng of people gathered at each one. You were not the least bit assertive in crowds, you had no desire to engage in a battle with your elbows through a gaggle of fellow nerds for some slightly-overpriced collectibles.

“Shall we find somewhere to sit and catch our breath before the panel?” Ria asked, sensing your discomfort. For someone that you had only met face-to-face the previous evening, she was more perceptive than some people who had known you for years.

You headed out of the main hall, desperate to find any relief from the overwhelming noises and sounds that the thousands of people crammed inside the Dockside Convention Centre were currently creating. The first place that you noticed was a staircase. You ducked under the metal bar that surrounded the bottom of it and flopped down unceremoniously on the floor, finally feeling your nerves begin to settle as there was a physical barrier between you and the rest of humanity for the time being. Things suddenly felt a lot quieter and more manageable as the buzzing in your head began to subside. Ria sat opposite you, her blue eyes looking into yours concernedly.

“Ria, I’m sorry I’m such a nervous wreck. It’s just… it’s so much busier than I was expecting.” You admitted.

“Girl, shut up. This place is crazy. Like, the craziest place I have ever been in my entire life. I suffer with this shit too.” Ria admitted. “I think I’m just running on, like, the adrenaline of thinking about Mando being at that panel.”

“Ria, he’s not going to be at the panel!” You laughed. “Please stop being delusional!”

“Sure, there he is right now!” Ria giggled breathlessly as she pointed towards the main hallway, which had emptied somewhat since you had fought your way through it just a few minutes ago.

You had fully intended to make another jibe about Ria being delusional, but when you turned your head, the sight caused all coherent thoughts to leave your brain. You were transfixed at the sight before you. It was as though you had suddenly been transported a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away. The most incredible cosplay you had ever laid eyes upon was heading straight towards you. The armour itself was immaculate, the details on it really looked as if they were forged out of Beskar by a Mandalorian armourer. Of course you knew that screen realistic cosplays existed, you had obviously seen the viral footage of a Mando cosplayer visiting a children’s hospital a few months ago. But it was more than the armour that made your entire world pause on its axis. It was the way this cosplayer carried himself: the self-assured, confident swagger that you would recognise anywhere. The way his hands were held at his side, somewhere between relaxed and tensed, ready to put his finger on the trigger at a moment’s notice. For one brief, fleeting second: you could have sworn that the real Mando was actually walking towards you.

“Wow… that’s…” You stuttered, failing to find words that could capture your feelings towards the sight before you.

“Um, excuse me! I’m the one who gets called delusional and obsessed with Mando, but look at you!” Ria said with a knowing smirk, clearly where words had failed… your face had betrayed you. “You’re getting flustered over a cosplay!”

You couldn’t even deny it. You were feeling more than a little flustered. It was the first time you had ever seen a Mandalorian in real life. Nothing could have prepared you for it, the presence that the man had, even from this distance. Watching the way he carried himself as he had swaggered down the main hallway had been intoxicating to behold. It was also the way with his T-visor, that you never knew exactly where his eyes were trained. They could be right on you or they could be looking right past you, you would never know. As far as you were concerned, he had picked you out from the crowd, his eyes focusing on you and only you as he walked down the hall. It was an electrifying thought, you felt little bolts of electricity all over your skin. You had half a mind to run up to him and beg him to bring you in warm or cold, he could decide, you really weren’t fussy.

“Hellooooooo, bestie!” Ria said sarcastically, waving her hand in front of your eye line, which was still trailed off into the distance where the cosplayer had disappeared into the crowd. “Anyone home?”

“Sorry.” You said, shyly. Now that the Mando cosplay had walked past, you had sadly realised that he was not making a bee-line for you to sweep you off your feet, you felt a little embarrassed. “I just couldn’t stop staring. That was an amazing cosplay.”

“It was. Or maybe… it was really him!” Ria said, throwing her arms like a conspiracy theorist gif that your groupchat had sent one too many times.

You both collapsed into full belly laughter at that. Ria was so devoted to the bit at this point that you just went along with it. You silently called a truce: you would stop calling her delusional, it was a fun joke that had distracted your anxious brain from the throngs of people that surrounded you, just beyond the metal railing of your refuge under the stairs. Despite the distraction, they had not magically disappeared.

“The Mando panel isn’t for a couple hours yet. Is there anything you want to do beforehand?” Ria asked, once the two of you had finally stopped laughing.

“Uh. I don’t know. We could go and have a look around, find where the stages are maybe and then have lunch?” You suggested, not feeling like working your way through the hordes of people by the stalls again.

So Ria and you did exactly that, getting your bearings and orienting yourself in the massive convention hall. There seemed to be so much to see and do, you were so grateful in that moment that you had splurged on four day passes. It would probably take you four days to walk around the entire thing! Your exploration of the centre meant that by the time the panel came around, you were grateful that you would be able to sit down, you were more than ready to rest your tired, achy legs.

As you made your way into the room where the panel would be held, you went out of your way to thank the staff on the door. You knew most of the people who worked here were volunteers and a lot of the panel goers were looking straight through them. Manners cost nothing though, a simple “thanks” and a smile and nod were enough to make someone feel valued when they perhaps felt as though they were doing a thankless task. You couldn’t understand why more people wouldn’t take just two seconds to say thank you.

Your heart was thundering as you took a seat in the hall. For a strange moment, you felt as though you were back in a lecture at University. Everyone sizing each other up, wondering where to sit – should they leave a gap or get close to others, maybe strike up a conversation? Personally, you wanted to place as much distance between yourself and others as humanly possible and the thought of speaking to strangers made you freeze up in terror. But Ria, ever the extrovert, was quite happy to strike up a conversation with the guys next to you.

They were fans of Mando, but you could tell pretty quickly that they were casuals. They did not have the deeper love for the show that you and Ria held. After a few minutes of sitting around, the people who were hosting the panel emerged, walking down the gap between the neatly-arranged chairs to take a seat on the long table that sat on a raised platform so everyone in the room was able to get a good view of them. The room was long but narrow and you and Ria were sitting around 10 rows back. As you glanced behind you, you realised that it had filled up rather quickly. You were glad that you had been here well ahead of the scheduled start time to ensure you got a good seat.

The guys running the panel began messing around with their laptops so they could get the powerpoint they had created on the screen. They were certainly not what you were expecting for this panel. You had expected it to be on a bigger stage, with more fanfare. But it was actually just a small panel hidden away at the back of the convention centre, up a flight of stairs that people might have missed. You had wondered, momentarily, whether you should get up and leave… Yet something was telling you to remain seated and stay. Just because it hadn’t been what you were expecting, didn’t necessarily mean it was going to be a bad thing. The audience seemed to be friendly too, a combination of people who you hoped would ask some thought-provoking questions and wouldn’t turn this all into baseless speculation over who the actor behind Mando really was.

When it got started, though, it soon transpired that this was not going to be the discussion you thought it was. The guys running the panel were sharing their views about Mando as though it was one of the online Star Wars podcasts that you avoided like the plague. There was little room for audience participation. The chair of the panel, a man with a backwards baseball cap on, which was slightly cringeworthy considering he must have been pushing fifty, was called Jeff.

Jeff was very American, thrashing his limbs around exaggeratedly, imitating Mando’s fight style as his voice got quicker and higher pitched in enthusiasm for the tough warrior. Jeff and his colleagues were definitely the kind of people who watched The Mandalorian just to see him fight bad guys and kill them in cool, new ways. Obviously you enjoyed that too, but there was really so much more to the show and the character than just fighting. You wished that they could see that too, especially considering they were running a damn panel about it!

You were so utterly tuned out by their incessant ramblings that you turned your head towards the back of the room to indulge in a bit of people watching. Principally, to see if the two guys on your row that Ria had chatted to before the panel began were as bored as you were. It seemed that even they were utterly uninterested in Jeff and his buddies. You found that your relative boredom was mirrored on the expressions of numerous others in the room who were just as unenthused by Jeff and co’s surface-level analysis of the show you all loved. You felt at that moment that if you and Ria had somehow been able to lead a panel it would have been much more exciting.

You would have actually introduced some nuance and character analysis as the title of the panel had suggested would happen. Ria’s wild theory that this would be the place that Mando would reveal himself to the world had soon gone out of the window, too. Out of all the places in the world that he could choose (or not) to finally reveal his identity, a room tucked away in the far corner of the Dockside Convention Centre did not seem the most likely.

But your stomach dropped in the familiar way that it had when you were crouched underneath the staircase, catching your breath after the bedlam of entering the Con.

It was him.

The same cosplayer was back.

He was sitting on the last seat in the row, two rows behind and opposite you, perfectly straight with his shoulders back, hands resting on his knees. It was almost uncanny, the way he held himself… it was so much like the way you had witnessed Mando sit so many times on the show. When he visited cantinas or sat in his ship, Mando held himself in an uncannily similar position.

You shook your head, mentally telling yourself to snap out of it – you were being ridiculous! If Ria was thinking these thoughts, you would tell her to stop being crazy. You were usually the grounded, rational one. For even you to be getting caught up in such delusional thinking, well that was truly concerning. Perhaps it was thanks to the early start and crowds. Either way, it seemed as though you were really losing it.

You blamed it on Mando, all logical thought went straight out of your brain when it came to him. Of course the best Mando cosplayers would be here at this con. It wasn’t really him, but it sure was uncanny how realistic both the cosplay and way he sat was. Extremely uncanny. You didn’t have time to dwell on it, though… because Jeff was asking a question to the audience. One that you were keen to answer honestly and defend the character that you loved so much, with as much ferocity as if he was really listening to your every word.

“So, finally, we wanted to leave a few minutes for discussion about what the character of Mando means to all of you, here. You must be pretty big fans of the show to have found us all the way back up here!” Jeff joked, to a few laughs from the room.

You had gotten the sense since you had walked into this panel that Jeff and his buddies viewed everyone here with a baseline level of contempt. It was something that you couldn’t quite place your finger on, but you felt as though if a person did not entirely agree with his point of view, then he was not impressed by them.It was a shame, really, you loved hearing the opinions of others. Even if you didn’t agree with them, you always found out something new about yourself.

Jeff had only just finished speaking, and already there was a steady stream of people flocking to queue at the microphone positioned in the aisle. There was nothing on earth that could motivate you to go up there, so you sat, with your arms folded, and leaned back into your chair. This would all be over in a few minutes. Then there would be a hopefully much more interesting panel about historical parallels with Star Wars, something you were truly interested in, that you wanted to check out with Ria.

The first few audience comments were pretty dull. You disagreed with all of them almost entirely as they again reduced the concept of understanding a character to things such as seeing a face and knowing a name. Jeff just responded hollowly, thanking the speakers for their thoughts. But it did not provoke any deeper discussions like you had been hoping for.

That was certainly a disappointment, but it was not a reason for you to lose your temper. You just felt slightly numb to the whole experience, wishing it was over as soon as possible and already plotting your route to the next panel. It was dull, but inoffensive.

That was, until the next two speakers boiled your blood with their assumptions and cruel jibes.

“When I first started watching The Mandalorian I loved it. I really thought Star Wars was back!” A man in a Darth Vader hoodie, who was probably in his late thirties, said proudly as he echoed the empty talking points that you had heard over and over since The Mandalorian premiered. You scoffed and rolled your eyes. This guy was clearly someone who thought that Star Wars was all bad now. He probably bought into all the theories that his precious sci-fi franchise had been ruined by women. He continued his tirade: “But now, it’s just the same thing every week. A hollow, emotionless tin can man strutting around from planet to planet, taking guys out. Like, it was cool the first few times but it’s just getting boring now. We need to see his face!”

Your blood was slowly boiling as you heard all of these hollow criticisms of the show you loved so much. It truly upset you that a place you had believed would be full of fellow fans who would be eager to enthuse about the show alongside you and Ria had been nothing of the sort. Instead of the welcoming, open-minded environment you had expected, things had been wildly different, as the next speaker was about to prove once again.

The next man who spoke had long brown hair. He was dressed in a Mando t-shirt and jeans.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the show and all. But I just feel like we don’t know that much about Mando. It’s as if we, as an audience, are being held back from connecting with him fully because of some diva’s selfish demands to keep his identity hidden!” The man exclaimed. Several people laughed and applauded. He was probably around your age but it stunned you how drastically different your opinions on the show could be. Perhaps he spent his time online in different circles than you. In fact, you were almost certain that you had seen these conspiracy theories about Mando’s actor pushed by people who swore it as the gospel truth, even though there was absolutely no proof of it. But he was not done yet, levelling a final cruel jab at the actor who played Mando: “Seriously, the guy who plays him must be such an asshole. Imagine having to work with that guy!”

Your head was burning… that was too much. Once people got personal about the actor too, that did it for you. It was one thing to criticise the show, but to level insults towards the person behind the character, who clearly did not want his business in the public eye, was enough to compel you to speak up.

Before you really knew what you were doing, you had somehow risen from your seat, stumbled over a few bags and outstretched legs and now stood in front of the microphone. Jeff looked at you expectantly, the eyes of everyone in the room were on you. Suddenly the gravity of what you were about to do had dawned on you, you felt your pulse thundering in your ears. But then you remembered what the previous guy had said about Mando, and you opened your mouth to launch into a passionate defence of your favourite fictional character of all time.

“I think tying Mando’s identity to his name and face is a pretty narrow way of viewing how we can understand who someone truly is inside and what exactly motivates them. I mean, I think I’ve connected to his character pretty well without ever seeing his face or knowing his real name. That’s because Mando has proved time and time again what kind of man he is. The way he has risked his life multiple times to rid the galaxy of threats and evil shows that he is committed to securing a brighter future, even if he is not around to see it. This man is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Sure, we don’t know his name or face or a lot about his origins, but I think to us, that should prove that he has nothing but noble intentions. That human side of the man beneath all of the armour allows us to connect to him on a far deeper level than just seeing a face and learning a name ever could.”

Jeff began to thank you for your thoughts, using the same hollow phrases that he had used for every previous speaker, but you were not done yet. For the reason you had stood up to speak was not only motivated by the way people had spoken about Mando, the character. It was not just accusations against the fictional man that you were here to refute, but also the way that they had tried to turn on the man beneath the Beskar.

“Also, I know no one outside this room will probably ever hear what had been said at this panel, but I think attacking the character of the man who portrays Mando, simply because he wants privacy, is unfair. I think we should always talk about people, online and publicly, as though they can read or hear what we say. We don’t know why he won’t say who he is, but I trust that he has his reasons. Even then, he doesn’t need to have a good reason,” You argued passionately, noticing how the trembling in your voice had ceased the more you spoke. “Everyone is entitled to their privacy for the simple fact of wanting to be private. I just think that we see Mando go from planet to planet, connecting with locals and communicating with them respectfully. He leaves every place better than he found it… I wish more people would take those lessons from the show, too, rather than how skilled Mando is at fighting and killing,” You made a pointed effort to look straight at Jeff as you made that last quip about his fighting skills, but he just stayed slumped in his seat, hand resting under his chin, looking utterly bored. Your words had done nothing to get through to him.

You walked back to your seat, head down, trembling. Speaking that much in public had been a lot more than you would ever have expected yourself to be able to handle. Ria was staring at you dumbfounded, her mouth open in shock.

“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” Ria asked, astonished.

“I… uh….” You stuttered.

“Look, I knew you loved Mando, but that was insane!” Ria whispered excitedly, while beaming at you. “You defended him as if he was a real person, like he was actually here in the room! That was awesome, beyond badass! He’d be so proud of you, bestie.”

“Thank you.” You whispered, face suddenly feeling hot. You were sure you were visibly shaking after your public outburst. But it had been worth it, you had meant every word.

A few more people offered their thoughts but your head was still buzzing with the emotional exertion of public speaking, so you did not pay them much mind, even if they still repeated the same old tired arguments about Mando that you had just tried to argue against.

Finally, Jeff drew things to a close and then it was time for everyone to leave. He had invited people to come and speak to him at the front after the panel if they wished to, but you were definitely not going to be taking him up on that offer. You had believed that anyone given such an incredible opportunity to speak about something they loved at an event as prestigious as ForceCon would be nothing less than delighted. But clearly, you were mistaken. Jeff had seemed utterly bored throughout the panel, not least when people he did not agree with had spoken. You were not a fan of him and his backwards baseball cap in the slightest.

As the panel ended and people began to filter out, you glanced around to where the incredible cosplayer had been sitting. But it seemed that while you had been distracted by your emotional state after speaking so publicly, he had already made his way out. You were disappointed, you wanted to compliment him on his cosplay and maybe even get a picture with him.

Just being in his presence twice had been intoxicating, you had been unable to look away from him. When you saw him, it really felt like you were actually in the world of The Mandalorian. You had a strong desire to be near him again, but you were too late. The man was apparently long gone. But you didn’t want to dwell on that and ruin the rest of your experience. You still had three more days here. So it was time to get over your disappointment, even though you were still kicking yourself for not pointing him out to Ria.

As you made your way down to the main hall of the convention centre, you couldn’t help but feel your chest swell with pride when you remembered how you had spoken in such a surprisingly eloquent manner at the panel. It had really been so many steps out of your comfort zone, but you had proved to yourself that you could do it. This entire weekend, really, was out of your comfort zone. But so far, you were matching every hurdle before you.

Perhaps speaking up at the panel would be the start of a new, more confident you. A you that was unafraid to stand up for what she believed in.

But then, the idea of a simple panel at a sci-fi convention being some sort of life changing experience was surely an absurd notion.

Wasn’t it?

Next Chapter

Taglist: @toxic-seduction

#my fics #tbobw #din djarin fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin fanfiction #mando x reader #mando x you #the mandalorian fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #i am also titling chapters now lmao this one was a paramore song

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gamebird · 5 months ago

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The Soonercon Convention Report

I went to Soonercon this last weekend and I wanted to share what it was like in an attempt to encourage others to attend similar local events, for those who don't know what they're missing.

It’s a science fiction/fantasy convention held in Norman, Oklahoma every year. It has what I take as the standard scifi/fantasy convention events including: Dealer’s room where people sell stuff, gaming room where scheduled and pickup games are held at all hours of the convention, art show where you can buy fandom-related paintings, prints, or sculpture (or commission an artist if you have something special in mind), a costume contest, panels by authors, artists, media guests, and other folks, and various socializing events (a dance, a burlesque show, a drag show, a Star Wars parade, a philosophy discussion den, a cartoon watching event, crafting events, etc.)

The only thing Soonercon didn’t/doesn’t have that I’ve seen at other conventions is a con suite where snacks are available either at all hours or specified hours, and a designated media room playing classic shows 24/7. Plenty of other conventions also have party rooms or even a party floor of the hotel. Some will have live action role play events. Some will have a few big-name guests. Soonercon’s guests were smaller names like voice actors or the guy who played the hero of NeverEnding Story. If they had hardcore partying, it was kept well clear of the convention areas. I heard nothing of it.

There's a lot for everybody! I go to attend the panels. My son goes for the gaming room. My nephew goes for the cosplay. My spouse/partner goes to be supportive and present (also he meets up with a friend of his from that city who volunteers at the con or at least likes fandom). My daughter likes the merchandise, the gaming, and cosplay.

It’s a very relaxed vacation for us. We get a hotel room at the convention and all go our separate ways from that safe home base.

I thought I’d go over the various things I went to and some of my thoughts about them, to give a window on what a person might do:

Friday we arrived. I went through the dealer’s room in detail by myself, which was nice to do instead of speeding up or slowing down at someone else’s pace, or having them there calling my attention to whatever they wanted me to see. I bought some delicious pomegranate gummy fruit. I made preliminary arrangements with a leatherworker for some items.

I went through the art show, which I have never been to at the beginning of the show. The previous two years I showed up at the end and rushed through. I took my time again.

I also wandered the halls at liberty, with no agenda. I didn’t think much of the panels available that day, so I did other things. I did attend an author’s reading of horror fic. One of the stories was titled ‘Grindr’ by a gay man, featuring a gay character. As soon as he went over that, two of the six in his audience left. It was a good story. The other author read a bit of theirs (also good). And then we discussed. One of the things discussed was how this was Oklahoma and the very mention of gay sent two people out of the room. It was good and thoughtful conversation.

Later that evening, I attended a comedy panel that was ‘Am I The Asshole?’ with various heroes or villains of popular fan movies discussing if they were the asshole for their role in the plot of their respective media product. It was funny and a light end to the first day.

Saturday, we got up in time for ‘Cartoons with Cereal’ panel where we ate a couple weird over-sugared cereals while watching an 80s cartoon that featured transforming vehicles and masked/helmeted action figure type characters. After that, we went to a better breakfast, complimentary at the hotel plaza.

My first regular panel of the day was ‘Essential Sci-Fi Television’ where I was hoping to see if there were important shows I haven’t seen. Maybe? Maybe not? They talked a lot about the different flavors of Star Trek and the different ways people get into fandom. I didn't add anything new to my list, but I did get more emphasis that I really ought to watch The Expanse.

At 11, I went to a panel titled ‘How do I put THAT on my resume?’ about how to translate fan interests and skills into marketable descriptive terms that can get you hired. I attended not so much for myself, as I hope to never work again after my current job, but for my son and daughter and my attempts to give them advice on how to present themselves in the business world. I’d encouraged my son to go to this panel, but he went to the gaming room. It wasn’t a great panel – I think he made the right choice. But you don’t know these things until you attend them.

I had lunch and then attended a panel titled ‘I ship it!’ thinking it would talk about the range of shipping in fandom circles. And maybe it did, but mostly it was the panelists talking about rare pairs in anime fandoms – both fandom and characters unfamiliar to me. They were excited to talk about it. I managed to steer them into sharing their thoughts about why antagonists are often more interesting to pair with a hero than the designated side kick or another hero, and then a little about what fueled ship wars/fandom drama. It was good to hear, as always, that totally different fandoms have the same problems.

After that was ‘Libraries, Intellectual Freedom, and Book Challenges’ about what books were banned, why, how, and what efforts were going on or the attendees could undertake to oppose book bans. Afterward, I approached one of the panelists for her advice on finding a good Ursula LeGuin book since I hadn’t liked Always Coming Home, but did like Left Hand of Darkness. Turns out she was a core convention organizer. I sent her an email so she could send me a rec later and separately, I filled out a form to volunteer at the next con.

At 3 I went to early dinner with my spouse/partner and his local friend, who was the one who told me the panelist I’d talked to was high up in the convention hierarchy. At 4, I roamed the dealer's room again, finalized things with the leatherworker, and bought a bunch more delicious candy.

At 5 I had a panel titled ‘LGBT+YOU, Discuss the Plus’. Given the conversation the day before with the gay horror author, I was particularly interested. Also, the panel was focusing mainly on the queer identities other than LGBT – asexuals, aromantics, pansexuals, polyamorous, etc. I found it something of a relief to see them stumble and fail to define an aromantic relationship in a way that differentiated it from non-aromantic ones. The panelists varied from early-30s to mid-60s, some partnered, some not. It was lovely to hear people’s experiences with living queer in Oklahoma.

At 6 I attended ‘Fandom Life vs Long-Term Illnesses’ but found it not super helpful. It was mostly about arthritis and diabetes, neither of which are issues I have. But I listened and learned a bit. I enjoy these authentic little windows into other people’s lives.

I attended the costume contest for the rest of the night, which was a big event with a stage show and a music act. My fave costume won! Even cooler, someone I knew was announced as winner of the Fashion Show which was an informal or less formal contest they’d had earlier in the day. I was thrilled for them.

That night at 1:11 am, someone set off the fire alarm, but it was quickly squelched. Still, everyone woke up. Later sleuthing turned up that it was a person attempting to smoke inside their hotel room.

Sunday! We had a nice breakfast again. My first panel of the day was ‘Hollow Humanism?’ talking about utopia, dystopia, and the philosophy of humanism – what were the things that prevented us from making a better world? I had hoped for stuff I could incorporate into my headcanons for Preservation or the Corporation Rim. Not so much.

Then I went to ‘Fandom – The Next Generation’ which was not about Star Trek but instead about the intergenerational fandom experiences of the panelists. I found this not very helpful. Those weren’t my families. It wasn’t about how to interest my kids in fandom (not that I needed that – they’re into it) or how I could better relate to their interests (something I was very interested in). I asked a few questions trying to guide it toward what I wanted, but the panelists really wanted to tell the audience about their lives. So. I listened.

At noon my group packed and checked out of our rooms.

But we hung around as there was a panel at 1 pm I wanted to attend, ‘Neurodivergent Characters in Fantasy and Anime’. Alas, they did not discuss Murderbot. In fact, they didn’t discuss specific characters or genres at all. Instead, they discussed neurodivergent representation in general, mindfulness, coping strategies, dealing with negative social pressures to conform, masking, exhaustion, career intersectionality, disabled rep, and a lot of things I was equally interested to hear about. So that was neat!

At 2, there was a panel about ‘Oklahoma in Fandom Media’ that I attended half of. It was fun to hear the various filming projects and other media mentions Oklahoma featured in. I left halfway through to help our group depart.

And so we drove home. It was a delightful, low-stress vacation. Lots of viewpoints. Lots of experiences. It was lovely seeing people face-to-face and getting such different impressions. It’s a very different experience than Tumblr or discord or streaming. I would very much recommend it to all of you! Get out and meet people in person in your area. Talk to them. Listen to their stories. Find out what they have to share. Share a bit of yourself in turn.

#fandom

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