Emptyeye

Yes, I know it’s December 26th. Just consider this a Happy Boxing Day message if you want to tie it to a specific holiday.

-EE

Last weekend was the second-annual Gobble-Con, a small convention that this year took place at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, eventually to be renamed the Stamford Crown Plaza. I arrived at noon and got my badge. Unfortunately, my hotel room wasn’t ready yet, so I left to go get some food. Something I didn’t realize: Summer Street, that the hotel is located on, is one-way. And I had pretty much no navigational aids with me whatsoever (Other than, I realize as I type this a week after the fact, possibly an atlas in the back of my car. Doh!).

After stopping at the “Wedge Inn” (A wedge, in Stamford, sounds like what I know as a “grinder”) for some chicken tenders and curly fries, I attempted to navigate my way back to the hotel. Essentially, I knew I had to take a left off of Summer Street, then another left until I was going back the way I came. Luckily for me, I found a street name that looked familiar–the other option when leaving the hotel’s parking lot. I pull in said lot right as the epic part of Yes’s “Close to the Edge” kicked in, which struck me as fitting.

Returning to the hotel, I decided to use my laptop for a bit before I went off to the Opening Ceremonies. This lasted all of about 10 minutes before the battery gave out. No joke. And my room still wasn’t ready yet (It was between 1:30 and 2:00 PM on Friday at this point). Back in the car the computer went, and off to opening Ceremonies I went. Generally speaking, I’m not big on Opening Ceremonies at conventions, ever since MAGFest 4, where I felt vaguely talked down to by the fact that the ceremonies consisted mostly of “MAGFest staff read most of the program to you, apparently under the impression that you’re too stupid to do this yourself”. But it’s not like I was doing anything else–I went on my own, a lot of my friends wouldn’t be arriving until Saturday, and my room wasn’t ready.

Fortunately, this opening ceremonies wasn’t as patronizing, due in part to the fact that, being a second-year convention on a shoestring budget (More on this a bit later), there was no program to speak of to read from. I learned about the convention’s special guests, Robert Axelrod (Best known, James Earl Jones-as-Darth Vader-style, as the voice of Lord Zedd in various early Power Rangers incarnations) and Tiffany Grant (Best known as the voice of Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion).

After finally checking into my room a little after 3PM (I couldn’t be too mad, as that’s when the official check-in time was), the rest of my Friday consisted mainly of going to halves of a couple panels, including the second half of the Cosplaying on a Budget panel, as well as the Gobble Tonight Show panel, a convention-related spoof of the late show (Think Letterman, etc) paradigm. This featured the alter-egos of two of the main characters of Gobble-Con, Cobra Commander and A Count Named Slickbrass. Or more accurately, Toga Commander and A Count Named Silkbrass. This was funny stuff, and the person who ran the panel wants to do it more “properly” at other conventions, which is something I’d like to see.

Other things I did on Friday included going to the dealers’ room/artist alley, where I bought a Mega Man X perler, and a How to Draw Manga book. I’m an interesting case in the convention fandom in that, while I really like the art style of manga/anime, I don’t actually watch or read a lot of it. My knowledge of Sailor Moon, for instance, is based pretty much entirely on the binging of The Abridged Series I did for the last month or so (Although it was weird to watch The Abridged Series and somehow recall random fragments of the “proper” episodes, since I hadn’t seen them in about 15 years, and even then only bits and pieces.).

Saturday came around, and I went down to purchase a couple more pieces of art from the dealer’s room. One was a piece of art showing a dark angel in the moonlight, and the other depicts Link shouting “HEY LISTEN!” at Navi…whom he’s taped to a lit bomb, which is something pretty much everyone who has played Ocarina of Time has wanted to do at some time.

Also Saturday, I went down to registration to find out that my panel’s time had been moved again, from 4:30 to 6:30PM. In theory, this was good, as a later start time would mean a bigger audience. In theory. In practice, I looked at the schedule…and saw I was now competing directly with the second half of the Cosplay Masquerade.

If you’ve never been to a pop-culture convention before, the Cosplay Masquerade is almost invariably one of the biggest events. In other words, pretty much everyone would be there.

I felt like shouting DOOOOOOOOOON!! William Shatner-style at this point.

The good news was that the panel had now been expanded by a half hour, to an hour and a half. With the hour I had been given, I was more or less going to put what I did in the panel up to popular vote (Option 1: lecture Power-Point style like I did at Gobble-Con 2010. Option 2: Attempt to talk about speedrunning in general while running live through Mega Man X); with the extra half-hour, I was fairly sure I could fit both parts in under the wire (Turning the MMX section into talking speedrunning strategies on the game specifically) if I did the lecture part quickly enough, knowing how long it look me to run through MMX (Generally 43-45 minutes). The first part was going to be the question mark, since I’ll admit I wasn’t nearly as prepared this year as I was last year.

Last year was my first time doing a panel for a convention, and this year would bring another first–my first time cosplaying. As I wrote on a Facebook update,
“I’m pretty sure there are very few places on Earth where a quest to procure batteries for a Rock Band 2 drum kit can end in agreeing to be Tuxedo Mask as part of a Sailor Moon cosplay group….ladies and gentlemen, my October 2011 Connecticon Member Appreciation Day.”
That’s the short story of how I got roped into it. Basically, I got asked, figured “I have most of the parts already, how hard can it really be?” and said “Okay, sure.”

As it turns out, the answer to “How hard can it be?” is “Actually, pretty hard”. There’s a lot of detail that goes into making a costume that you don’t tend to think about. The gold buttons on Tuxedo Mask’s suit were something that I had to add myself. Additionally, while I owned a cape, I didn’t own one with red lining, so I had to head to Joann Fabric, buy two sheets of fabric (One black, one red), and make the cape myself using fabric glue, allowing me to cheat the process of stitching them together. Further, I had to attach the cape to the suit by poking a couple holes in it and pushing the shoulder buttons through the holes. While this actually worked, I was convinced that it looked terrible–compared to how he looks in the anime, the cape was way too wide at the shoulders, or so I thought. It was probably also a bit short, but honestly, this was a relief after a year-plus of going to events wearing a cape that hit the ground with four inches to spare.

My friend Katie, who was one of the ringleaders of the whole thing (And, I’m pretty sure, the person who originally asked “Are you going to Gobble-Con?” and kicked the train into motion), and everyone else in the group was supposed to get there at about 12:30PM Saturday, which was actually the original, original time for my panel. As 12:30 became 1:00, which became 1:30, which became 2:00, I was becoming vaguely concerned that the whole thing was some elaborate practical joke played on me to get me to dress up as Tuxedo Mask for no particular reason…in which case, I would’ve had to applaud everyone for the sheer scope of it (This, if it had been a practical joke, would’ve involved multiple pictures posted to Facebook of the cohorts sewing stuff, plus my friend Cels actually bringing the bows for the Sailor Scout costumes to one of the Connecticon Member Appreciation Days.). But finally, at around 2:45, I looked down at the lobby from the third floor hallway and saw a huge group of Sailor Scouts. I headed down, minus the suit/cape (Because I was still convinced it looked awful.). After taking a few pictures, I went back to my room, basically waiting for Cels to come up and make the alterations to the cape that I thought were necessary. While I knew on a theoretical level what I thought was wrong, I was afraid to actually make the alterations myself, knowing that I didn’t have another chance or a plan B if I screwed up and cut off more than I meant to. Cels, on the other hand, basically does costume stuff for a living, so I expected her to look at it and cut off the excess perfectly in about three seconds.

At 4:30, I more or less got impatient and said “forget it” and went down with the cape and suit. And…Cels thought it looked fine, as did everyone else. Had I known that was going to be the outcome, I wouldn’t have hid in my room for an hour-plus before coming down with it. Either way, though, after about a half hour of picture-taking, I headed back to my room to get ready for my 6:30 panel. Packing up stuff and heading down to the panel room, my worst fear attendance-wise was realized: I was, at that point, the only person besides one volunteer in the room. One person eventually showed up. To spin this into a positive, it was a very intimate, low-pressure environment in which to do the panel. And I got through both parts of it with about five minutes to spare. The people who did watch it seemed to like it, and the volunteer did his best to try and get the few people not at the masquerade into the panel room, largely without success. The Mega Man X run went fine, as I finished in 44:01. There was a time when I would have killed for that time, but now I can pull off a sub-45 run pretty consistently, which is nice.

At some point early afternoon Saturday, I also went to most of the Best of Robert Axelrod panel, where he showed some of his favorite clips from various voice-acting he’s done, discussed behind-the-scenes stuff (The reason for three of the original Power Rangers leaving the show boiled down to “They wanted more money”.), talked about some techniques he used in achieving voices (Lord Zedd is a lot of diaphragm), and so on. Pretty good stuff, worth my time despite my honestly not being interested in the guests specifically beforehand.

Late on Saturday, after not-insignificant quantities of rum, I went down to the 18+ Cosplay Court Case, where (amongst other things) Sailor Saturn was accused of being a prostitute, and a Vocaloid was accused of ear rape. Also, I was a bailiff, which basically meant I stood around and looked cool up front. This was fun, and a little chaotic (For the Vocaloid case, the prosecution and defense had to switch, because neither one played their appointed role very well), probably helped by the fact that I was far from the only inebriated person there.

On Sunday morning, I got up, checked out of my room, and went down to the registration desk, where to my surprise, there was a “Pre-Reg for Gobble-Con 2012″ sign out. The reason this was a surprise is that, long story short, attendance for Gobble-Con 2011 was not what was expected, and large quantities were owed to the hotel to the point that the convention was actually extended with some impromptu panels, from 1PM to 6PM. Sunday highlights included a panel run by Robert Axelrod concerning doing voice-overs for commercials. I actually tried my hand at a Chili’s commercial circa 2000, and I guess I did okay. This, too, is fun stuff, and something I could see myself doing part-time, if I could figure out how to get into it. There are apparently some sites out there dedicated to this, but I’d be spending a lot more than I think I’d stand to make were I to join one of those sites.

Another Sunday highlight was seeing how much the convention meant to the attendees. Despite the pre-registration sign, there was no guarantee of a third Gobble-Con actually happening, the financial situation was so dire. Luckily, just before I left, there was confirmation that it’s taking place next year, and indeed, preliminary work on guests has already started. Also, I really could have used one of the extended panels on Saturday, as one of the things I learned about cosplay was essentially “Don’t halfass it, but it’s okay if you’re not 100% accurate to the character, and in fact, your own spin on it can actually improve the costume.” Still, it’s good to know for the future. I just consider the cape and mask my own personal spin on it now.

In short, it was a lot of fun, and the lack of size of the convention makes it easy to meet and talk with people. It’s a lot of fun, and you should check it out next time if you’re in the Connecticut area.

-EE

Links!

• My photos. Note that I commented in proper chronological order. For a “proper” narrative, start here and keep clicking “Previous” until you get back to the “first” picture. Otherwise, it’s going to be like watching Memento.
• Pre-register for 2012 here. Just click on the “order now” button (Make sure any script blockers are off). I already pre-registered, and you should too!
• Steam-Funk’s website. The aforementioned A Count Named Slickbrass, who basically got his start (So to speak) at Gobble 2010, runs the group.
• Royal Nerd’s site. They’re the people in the picture here.
• Eric LaCore Photography, who took a bunch of other pictures at the convention.

Sharp-eyed viewers will notice the link to my uStream account is gone. This is actually kind of a sign of how badly neglected this place is, since I had been using Twitch/Justin.tv to stream for the past several months.

But I decided earlier today that I was done. Done with streaming. Done with watching streams. And done, as much as I can be (The fact that Mrs. Emptyeye really likes streaming LEGO games means I pretty much can’t completely stop), with appearing on other people’s streams.

There are a couple reasons for this. Part of it is related to me and “how I am”. I have an addictive personality. When I go into something, I go into it full bore, to the detriment of pretty much everything else. This happens until I get bored with it–this entire site is a monument to failed ideas–or my neuroses kick in and I just give up.

See, all my life, I was academically gifted. School–or more accurately, the scholarly parts of school–came easy to me. I was always among the best in my class. And so when it comes to anything else–music, Dance Dance Revolution, running, whatever–I get really into something, almost addicted to it, until I immerse myself into the top tiers of whatever community is associated with that thing, realize “I’ll never be that good, what’s the point?”, and give up. Looking back, it’s amazing I stuck with the DDR as long as I did, and was enthusiastic about Rock band for long enough to win Connecticon‘s Best Vocalist Award three times running, and basically ran the fourth tournament.

And the thing is that this streaming, or more specifically, the watching of streaming, is a passive activity. Even when I was immersed in video games as a kid, as opposed to actually working on social skills (Skills which would have helped me in high school and college), at least I was actively participating in them, manipulating them. With the stream watching, I’m just sinking my time away, time that could be spent coming up with more projects that I’ll never finish (Or, more optimistically, more short stories that I’ll submit to people).

The third piece was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Frankly, every streaming service out there is crap. Justin/Twitch is generally regarded as the best one. It’s what SDA will be using in their upcoming marathon. And even that has all sorts of problems. For one, the chat likes to randomly take forever to load, or not load at all (This, unlike my issues with Steam, is not exclusive to me–it seems like at least once a week, someone will say “Oh thank god, chat finally loaded after a half hour”). For another, the chat’s flood control is extremely overzealous; typing even two lines in close enough succession can be enough to trigger it. Finally, Justin.tv and Twitch.tv are two sites, with Twitch basically being the “gaming arm” of Justin. Creating a Justin account and setting it to “video games” will redirect your viewers to Twitch.tv/yourstream when they access the Justin URL. Only the settings on one don’t carry over to the other–you have to set the options on both sides, especially as regards the “censor common banned words” option (Which has some bizarre choices, like “Link” and “Mother”).

And that’s the best option out there. The rest are even worse. UStream had a phase for awhile where it seemed like every move they made was designed to hemorrhage viewers toward Justin.tv–the silly “Chat from the bottom up” thing was especially boneheaded. Yet somehow, the streaming community as a whole just accepts this as the status quo. “Terrible” is fine, because it’s less bad than all the alternatives.

Well, no more. I’m not being an accomplice to this state of events. I’m not broadcasting on my own. I’m not watching other streams. I’m aware of the hypocrisy of continuing to show up on my wife’s stream, but at least same, I don’t want to punish her for my own, admittedly, not entirely rational crusade against the state of things. But other than that, I’m done, as much as possible.

-EE

But apparently I did.

I’ve had a couple ideas for stories that I’ll probably start working on next month. One is basically Golgo 13 meets Sailor Moon, and another centers around a kidnapper/psychologist who helps his targets realize that they’re better off without the person who comes to rescue them (As of course, in fiction, “leave this to the cops” is not an option).
We’ll see where these ideas go, both creatively and literally.

-EE

So I’m about a month away from Gobble-Con 2.0, where I’ll be giving the So You Want to be a Speedrunner panel again. This time, I have a bunch of new videos to show, and I asked for a second hour to do a live run of Mega Man X, even though the game play won’t take a full hour. With setup and the like, an hour sounds reasonable. My current best time through the game getting everything is 41 minutes and 46 seconds (Which is actually only about 20 seconds slower than my time not getting everything, even though the two should be about 4 minutes apart if I were a top-tier player at either of them).

I’ve been keeping up on the writing thing as well, although I’ve failed to get anything published as yet. That’s fine, because I’m still pretty new at the whole thing. As long as the ideas keep flowing, I’ll break through eventually.

-EE

Yeah, that works.

I’m currently sitting in the living room of my friend Emily, watching another one of my friends playing Final Fantasy VII. Considering what it took to get here (It took about three times as long as it should have), I’m quite glad to be here.

My writing career has begun the same way that of a lot of writers does, with a string of rejections. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to revise a story, do some further revisions on another story, or start writing yet something new. I also have three stories currently submitted–one to the Machine of Death anthology, one to The Spirit of Poe, and a third out to Comets and Criminals. With any luck, one of them will accept my submissions, and I’ll try and get more stories out there as well.

-EE

Although not for the best reason. I got my first rejection of a story yesterday, from 10 Flash Quarterly. I’m pretty sure this makes me a real writer, since it will be the first of many rejections to come. Heck, Ray Bradbury says that he got a rejection a week for 50-plus years. I’m not Ray Bradbury, in either sheer output or skill, so I fully expect more “Sorry, we’re passing on this” letters in the future.

As for the story I had written for 10 Flash, I quickly sent it out to Abyss & Apex. I don’t have high hopes for acceptance here, since Duotrope (Which is an awesome website for finding short story markets, as well as tracking what you’ve sent where) reports an acceptance rate of just over 1%, versus about 15% for 10 Flash. But I figure that’s still better than the 0% chance I have if I don’t submit it, and the more stories I have out in the wild, the better the chance that one of them eventually gets accepted somewhere.

Onward!

-EE

Awhile back, one of my friends noted that he was editing his book, and implied that he hated the process. It makes sense, in a way; in On Writing, Stephen King mentions that cutting out words from your story is akin in some way to killing your children. He goes on to mention that, whether you like it or not, it’s something you have to do to make your story the best it can be.

It probably says something about me that I actually like the process of revision and editing. It sounds strange, but I look forward to taking words out of a story, knowing that what’s left will be tighter and faster-paced as a result of it. To be fair, it probably also helps that I don’t have the attention span/dedication to write a full novel, choosing instead to write and submit short stories to various markets (I’m currently attempting to participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1). I like the stories I write, but I don’t spend enough time to be able to get emotionally attached to any of them, or the words within them, to the point that I struggle with cutting stuff most of the time.

How about you? If you’re a writer, or a musician, or some other creative profession, so you enjoy deletion as much as creation?

-EE

Later on today, Speed Demos Archive will be starting their summer marathon, creatively titled Summer Games Done Quick. It’ll start at 2PM EST today, and tentatively go until about midnight on Saturday. Check out the full slate of games to be played here. I’m not participating in this one (Utah is a little far from Connecticut for my taste), although I did begin a game facts cheat sheet to help out potential commentators with some of the games they may not know very well, which the runners of the games then filled in with even more cool stuff.

This time around, they’re playing for the Organization for Autism Research. So make sure to check it out and donate if you can.

-EE

Just been busy with stuff–gaming, short story writing, and so on.