So this year has been pretty crazy. I would like to blame my lack of new content on that, but it's actually been a combination of laziness, uncertainty, and straight-up fear. Not counting my old LiveJournal, I've never had a real blog before. The idea of writing stuff for anyone to read, not just a select group of my friends, is more daunting than I originally wanted to admit. This ain't the same as posting story excerpts and looking for reviews; it's a whole different game. And that game took a tire iron to the unsuspecting kneecap of my enthusiasm.
But I'm back. And I've decided to mix it up a little. This year has very much been the Year of the Convention for me. In previous years, I counted only GenCon, SugoiCon, and more recently Anime Crossroads among my destinations for geekery in large quantities. For a fellow who didn't experience the full-on concentration of geek culture that is conventions until his mid-20s, that was kind of a big deal. SugoiCon is small and personal, GenCon is big, a little intimidating, but incredibly electrifying, and Anime Crossroads is a nice middle-ground between them. I figured "Hey, I'm running the gamut in terms of attendee numbers in this area of the country, so I'm pretty satisfied." Also very importantly, that fit seamlessly into my budget and vacation schedules, so I didn't really consider trying to do more.
But then my girlfriend's chainmailing business(http://www.bardickitty.com) started to develop, and she started researching other anime, gaming, and otherwise geek-oriented conventions in the surrounding states. Had someone asked me how many events of that type I would expect to find around Kentucky, I could have answered with one hand. But I had vastly underestimated how far the reach of my people had developed. She found events in almost every month of the year, many of them only a few weeks apart. Suddenly, the prospect of immersing myself in vendor rooms, artist alleys, and panels on costuming, writing, and everything fandom multiple times in a month became tangible. Needless to say, I was salivating a little.
So that brings me to...well, here. I feel like I've had a lot of really good experiences this year, and interacted with a lot of stellar folks. I've gotten more deeply interested in cosplay, including learning how to make costumes myself. And while I enjoy attending just to hang out with other geeks, I've also started learning about what goes into putting these shows on. Obviously, conventions, like any big event, don't just happen - a lot of folks bust their tails for months on end so the rest of us can have a few days of glorious mutual slacking-off. All of that is really just a complicated way of saying the following: now that I've learned what kinds of things are out there, I want to help other people - whether dedicated geeks like myself, newbies just discovering their inner nerd, or folks who are just curious about what this whole "convention" thing is about - see what I've started to see, and share in the fun. And I'm a writer at my core, so what better way of doing that than writing about my experiences?
As such, I'm going to be bringing a new element to the hallowed halls of Almost Certainly Ninja. Going forward, I'll be devoting much of my new content to talking about the various conventions I attend. Expect to see some basic information about the venues, some of the neat things I run across while out and about on the con floor, occasional fanboy-ing over voice actors and other media guests, and the odd video of me fighting other ninjas(or cyborgs, or bees, or Lovecraftian nightmares from another dimension - there's always fightin' to be done) for fun and profit. But since that will really only cover at most one or two entries a month, I'll also be broadening my focus to include related topics, such as thoughts on my costuming experience, from research and works-in-progress to tips I find on the vast expanse of the Interwebz. I don't plan on entirely supplanting the previous direction of ACN, but I expect that this new addition will really breathe some life into it, as well as jump-starting my writing bug in a serious way.
So stay tuned! Or tune in, if you never have before! I've got a good feeling about this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment