Back from Archon! The weekend turned out great; the con was a lot more fun than I expected.

Thanks to Josh and Nick, my badge was ready by the time Josh and Ken and I met up Thursday night to go over our panels. So I didn't have to put any money down for my badge, which was nice since I didn't have any cash the whole weekend xP At con, our own convention had a fan table, which I manned almost the whole weekend. This kind of table is akin to an Artist's Alley table, minus the selling of anything. And it was free ;3 So basically I sat at a table with fliers and cookies all day for three days. Of course, we had some panels. On Friday, we did a panel on Separating Anime from Japan, which had a lot of fun discussion, except that this annoying guy kept trying to talk. Now, in his defense, the annoying guy is probably autistic with any number of other mental and physical disorders, but everytime we brought up an interesting, valid discussion point, he would interrupt someone and ask a stupid fucking question about something entirely unrelated. And I could probably handle that to some extent, but nearly every single time he opened his mouth, it was about Gatchaman. After the umpteenth time he brought it up, I specifically asked him not to mention it again during the panel, and not five minutes later, he brought it up. ARGH! Most annoying guy ever. Thankfully he didn't make it into any of my other panels. On Saturday we did panels on: Anime 101, Anime vs Manga, Pirates vs Ninja, and Naruto, with a final panel on Suzumiya Haruhi on Sunday.

I have to say, I've run a number of panels in the past year, but I have never been so thrilled or proud of panel as the Anime vs Manga panel. It was AMAZING! We structured it like a *very* informal debate. We asked two people from the audience to defend each side, Anime and Manga. The audience divided themselves up on either side. Then we posed a debate question, and let the representatives talk to their 'team' for a few minutes. Then we flipped a coin, and one of the reps started the debate, raising points and issues that makes their side better. I have to say, we picked really great people to be the reps, because they were so incredible, debating back and forth in such a calm and professional manner. Those of us running the panel were just floored at how well everything went, how intense the discussions became, how into it everyone got. One of the debaters looked like Vince Vaughn, he took notes and wrote down little statements. I swear, he must have been on his school debate team. I took a video of some of the debate I was so impressed.

You would think that with on a few hours a day being dedicated to panels, that I would get bored being at the table for so long. On the contrary, since Ashely was there, things were quite entertaining. I love Ashley, she is so crazy and easily entertained that keeping each other company while sitting all day was fun. It was mostly a lot of chatting with strangers, making friends, talking about con issues, getting flirted with by drunk guys. While on the subject, let me just say, I haven't been so blatantly hit on by that many guys for a looong time. Like, that one all day Latin music festival in Columbia, MD that I worked at. Yeah, it was like that, just less Hispanics. Same amount of drinking though... Now, getting hit on that much is flattering, but I still would have liked it if the staring was a little less obvious.

I did have nice (and at times awkward) conversations with a guy called Magi, who reminded so much of Kricket that every time he flirted with me it felt reeeeally awkward. Kricket is like an older brother to me, so much so that we might as well be related. So anyone who reminds me of Kricket gets thrown into "Older Brotheresque" category. Aki from the bar at Kandai-mae reminded me of Kricket, and so does this guy Magi. He looks a whole lot like him too. So he was fun to talk with, but it was a little awkward (which thankfully he picked up on).

Needless to say, I got to talk to a lot of people over the weekend, and I feel really good about it. Since I started working for Anime St. Louis, I haven't felt as though I've been really able to connect to the attendees. I know a lot of usernames and a little bit of some personalities, but with one exception, I wouldn't know anyone on sight. But after this weekend, I feel like I'm really starting to get into the fandom community in this area. Even if I can't remember real names, I'll know some faces and remember what we talked about, what our common interests are, etc. It's nice to finally feel like I'm fitting in the community.

So, this weekend was yay. Except that my voice is halfway gone. My throat doesn't even hurt that much, so that's kind of annoying.

Oh, and I'm now watching Reborn since I caught up on reading it. I'm interested to see how much was changed in transition. What I've seen so far has been kind of disappointing. For example, they didn't really set up Yamamoto's character the same way. In the anime, they completely leave out the part where he tried to kill himself and Tsuna savs him. It's the whole foundation of their friendship and the anime throws some BS in there because suicide is too touchy a subject. And they introduce characters too early, too quickly. They show Hibari and Sasagawa in the first episode, which lessens the impact of their eventual entrances into the show. It helps develop the characters a little, but it still annoys me.