Getting Social – The Kitacon Hype Train
3 Days Remaining
It’s been four years since that fateful Ayacon where Tim and I first met and this bizarre experience, this weird GeekOut journey that has changed me for the “better”. Last year I hosted a panel on how to build confidence at Amecon, and one of the best pieces of advice I had to offer was to simply go to places where like minded people are and introduce yourself, because I can personally attest to the fact that it works. After so many conventions in a fairly short space of time it has become less about meeting new people, and more about catching up with those people who I see nowhere else.
Kita and it’s contemporaries are well aware that they are a social engine, a driving force behind many people’s interpersonal experiences that brings them out of their comfort zone and immerses them in a melting pot of ideas and attitudes on a platform of common ground… they may not have thought it in those words but I’m sure they’d probably say “Yeah, that sounds about right.” They put effort into making sure that people who are nervous have the best experience possible by ensuring a convention that is enjoyable, accessible and most importantly, safe.
Something popped up on the Kitacon Official Social Group (and shortly thereafter the official page) courtesy of chairman Phil Hutchinson that can go some way to help break the ice:
The “I’m new” badge will be available at a meet and greet for new people shortly after the opening ceremony, and the “Dance” badges will be available on the door to the ball. Sadly my request for “Will Talk To Anyone” badges was declined on the assumption that I’d have done that anyway, how very presumptuous! How terribly accurate. Let this be a warning to you, I am liable to engage in excesses of social interaction.
So what advice is best for people new to conventions?
We don’t know you. Really think about it. We don’t have a clue about all the things that are making you nervous, all we see is someone who likes the same things as we do, which means you’re welcome to join us in a conversation or play a game. You can leave your fears behind, and greet us as a fresh start.
Join in. It sounds daft, because you’re already there, but if you’re at a panel that’s asking for volunteers then go for it. If there’s a board game you’re interested in playing, ask. Ask cosplayers for pictures, trust me, they’ll love you for it. Get up and dance if you feel so inclined… I don’t, but that’s who I am.
Strike out alone. You came with friends, that’s a good thing because they’ll look after you when you need it, just make sure you don’t spend the whole weekend trailing after them. If there’s a panel that you want to see but they’re going to something else, do your thing and meet up later. Or if you’re really not into the party but they want to stay, why not come chill in the games rooms?
Come back next year. During the closing ceremonies there’s almost always an announcement for other conventions on the scene, and usually that’ll include the next big summer con. Or get chatting with the regulars, there’s always more conventions because the demand is enormous.
You’ll get back whatever you put into a convention and so much more. No matter how terrified you may be, if you’re new to the game or old hat, come and say hi to us.
Don’t Forget the DMing 101 panel at 20:00 Saturday in Chancellors 2 hosted by yours truly. I’ll be dishing out advice for those who have never been a DM, GM, Story Teller, Keeper or any other form of role-play master, but as always there’ll be something for those who are longer in the tooth, and will doubtless degrade into hilarious anecdote swapping long into the night.
See you at Kitacon.
Pokethulhu – The Kitacon Hypetrain
This coming Kitacon I will be arriving a day early to socialise, get some work done, and to get some gaming in before the convention comes in and cruelly steps on my chances to play, there are still some Magic rematches I owe but I never seem to get the chance because of panels and the like. Damn you Kitacon, getting in the way of me enjoying a perfectly good convention!
Anyway, first item on my docket is a one-shot role play in a system I’ve never run before. It’s an opportunity for me to learn something new, get experimental with something other than Dungeons & Dragons. I chose Pokethulhu because it combines my greatest strength – horror – with an important component of any one-shot where no one is planning on getting emotionally invested with their characters – completely stupid comedy. (more…)
Kitacon Quest: 1 Month To Go
Kitacon is well on it’s way to coming round once again, so I sit here and think to myself ‘Damn, I really need to get on with my costumes’. Fortunately, I have been working on my cosplays (slowly), as I make my pieces in preparation for this year’s convention. But cosplay isn’t the only thing we’re all looking forward to. Here’s a look at what activities are on at the party convention of the summer.
Kitacon Quest – DMing 101 The Panel
On Saturday the 19th of August at 20:00 I will be giving my second panel ever. Considerably less interesting than doing my first, but still kind of a huge deal from where I’m sat. I fully intended to bring back my confidence building panel with some rather necessary improvements, I can’t claim to have been all that organised, but sadly someone seems to have beaten me to the punch as I was declined on the grounds that someone had submitted a very similar panel before I got to it. Not to worry, I always have a fallback: (more…)
Top 10 Things To Look Forward To In 2017
This year has been quite a crazy one, full of lots of interesting decisions and a political vitriol abound. It’s been a year where we’ve seen legends disappear in the blink of an eye, as well as the year we’ve seen VR become more mainstream than ever. Honestly, just watch Ronnie O’Sullivan here. It’s excellent!
Ahem, laughing at people who can’t get the concept of Virtual Reality in their heads is fun, but we’ve got a strong year ahead of us in 2017. Whilst we could be fearful for what’s to come, we could also be happy to see that we’ve got a lot of great and interesting releases and general stuff to look forward to. This is our Top 10 list of Things To Look Forward To in 2017. A year that’s basically 2016, but one more.
Top 10
10) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Image Credit: Flickr
“Yeah, one time the police were like “Dude, who killed you?” Brother never even ratted me out. He’s cool now, we’re good.” – Joel Smith 2016
Other than having a bit of a giggle at the title, about how dead men (apparently) tell no tales, this should be an excellent addition to what has been a truly spectacular series of films. I mean, all of these films were great fun. They might not have been very intelligent films, but they really didn’t need it. Disney did good with the first bunch of these, so I’m sure bringing people back for the latest instalment will be great fun as well.
Now, this ends up at only number 10 because, well, I don’t think anyone necessarily needed another Pirates of the Caribbean in their lives. We’re all gonna be thoroughly entertained once more with the antics of Jack Sparrow, but honestly, we didn’t need this. Not like some of the items in our list this week.
9) Rick and Morty Season 3
The creator of Community and a prolific actor of weird voices came together to inject a cartoon straight into the “cult classic” sensibilities with a mash-up of improvisation, parody, and messed up comedy. Rick and Morty slapped us hard with two seasons that whipped up a drooling fanbase demanding plush Meeseeks and spawning lunatic (but oddly convincing) theories and crying out for a third season…
What do you mean “A year and a half”?
Ok, so to tide us over this year we’ve had a series of claymation shorts and a fully animated Rick and Morty version of the State of Georgia vs Denver Felton Allen transcript which you should not read here because you will never hear anything else that so elegantly combines bad language and stupidity. Season 3 will be released 2017.
8) Gaming Reboots
Okay, so unlike basically everything else in the list, this is an incredibly niche audience we’re talking to here. If you were a gamer on the Sega MegaDrive, there’s no doubt you would at least be aware of the hugely popular title: ToeJam & Earl. It’s a game where you play as two funky aliens who go about their business by crashing into Earth, realising they need to fix their ship and get back to their planet. Groovy. They’re coming back for a release in 2017 as well! Looking forward to this one.
But that’s not all. There’s also the wildly popular PlayStation franchise Crash Bandicoot on the verge of a reboot too. In fact, I mentioned a bunch of the games coming around in 2017 in yesterday’s article. I’m excited to see them make a return, so here we go – Let’s get our game on this year!
7) South Park: The Fractured But Whole
It took a few tries for South Park to produce a decent computer game, but when they finally nailed the formula with the fantasy inspired “Stick of Truth” they really knocked it out of the proverbial park, and I for one am sincerely looking forward to seeing their super-heroic spin. Drawing from the adventures of Mysterion and the Coon to parody the recent cinematic slugfest, Superman vs Batman vs Civil War vs all of our wallets.
I haven’t finished Stick of Truth yet to be entirely honest, but I’ve played more than enough to know that I need to play The Fractured But Whole, and sincerely hoping that there’ll be a third addition to the series because I think it has a lot of possibility. And the way things are going in the TV series there’s a lot of material to play around with.
6) Spiderman Homecoming
You know this makes sense – It’s about bloody time we get a reboot of Spiderman. It’s about time we get one that mimics the comics better too. No more odd dancing Peter Parker like during Spider Man 3 in 2007, no, no, much better. We’re about to get the Spiderman that showed up during the Captain America: Civil War film that happened during the early half of the year. You know, the younger Spiderman who basically acted like spidey should?
The joy of Spiderman Homecoming is that we’ve had a taste of what to expect from our new Spidey and it’s excellent. The actor, Tom Holland, was an absolute joy to watch during Civil War and couple this with the now cinematic cannon that we’re used to with Tony Stark, this is going to be amusing, but yet at the same time a downright excellent cinematic experience. Watch out for this one – It might be one of the year’s best.
5) Logan
Old Man Logan as we’re calling this one, is one of those films that when you say it out loud, doesn’t sound like an appealing title. Knowing that Logan is all about the titular character Logan, AKA Wolverine, you realise that having an “Old Man Logan” theme is a lot more intriguing to begin with. Sitting neatly halfway down our list, Logan we feel could be one of the best films of 2017.
If you’ve not watched all of the other Logan films, you likely will not need to – However you certainly will get more out of it if you catch up with the rest of the series. This is going to be the last film in the Logan arc, so it’s worth checking out, even if it’s to see the end of a pretty long era of films.
4) Dark Tower Series
Stephen King usually brings gold to the screen, big or small. With the sheer volume of material he’s produced across his prolific writing career under his own name and a collection of pseudonyms, there’s plenty to pick and choose from, dozens of highlights, a few minor flops but overall some amazing stories to make real. This year we’ll not only see a remake of the eponymous clown horror IT, but 2017s big summer blockbuster looks set to be the start of his fantasy/western epic, the Dark Tower.
Idris Elba will be stepping into the shoes of gunslinger of a knightly order, Roland Deschain on a quest to rebuild his world, and he alone would be enough to drag me to the cinema. I’m no huge fan of Stephen King, but he’s got some indisputable works of art in his catalogue, and I believe the Dark Tower is amongst them. Perhaps once the films are well under way I’ll pick up the books; don’t want to ruin anything by being the guy saying “They missed that bit” like I did for all of the Discworld films.
3) Star Wars Episode VIII
Star Wars episode VIII (or 8 for those who hate Roman Numerals). This is a huge one for cinema, as we’ll get back that scrolling wall of text that we’re oh so used to at this point. We’ll be getting back the major characters in more than just cameo appearances and we’ll continue Ray’s story. Perhaps most tragically this might be the last time we see Carrie Fisher, (as Princess Leia,) make an appearance on screen, due to her sudden departure earlier this week. Our thoughts go out to the family of those affected most by this.
You know that this one deserved a top three slot, although we relegated it from the mass importance it should have had on this list, down to ‘only’ third place. I know, third place isn’t exactly a bad spot to be in, but it’s still only third place compared to how we would have rated 2015’s The Force Awakens. But that’s simply because we knew this was coming… As there’s going to be a Star Wars film every year for the next few more years as well. It’s nice, we should still be hyped for it… But we kind of expect it now.
2) Baby Groot – Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Ok, while we love the look of all of Guardians of the Galaxy’s greatly anticipated sequel, and once again Drax the Destroyer looks like he may have some real show-stealing moments, there will be one thing and one thing only that puts geeky butts into cinema seats. It is Groot.
Now I may have my little rant about how the saplings of Groot’s species actually have softer, more supple cell structures that form their larynges and can therefor talk comparatively normally, until they mature and are reduced to limited vocal ranges that can be differentiated by little subtleties only. But he’s SO CUTE with his little button and angry adorable killing spree! Plus you have to respect exactly how much can be conveyed three little words and tone of voice.
But seriously does anyone have any tape?
1) Nintendo Switch
The number one slot on our list today is the Nintendo Switch, a games console that, let’s be frankly honest, could end up being the next Wii… Or the next Wii U. Whilst the Wii U certainly was a damn good console in it’s own right, it really didn’t meet the same praise as the Wii and quite understandably so. It was effectively just the Wii with a weird tablet controller to connect to it as well. It’s strange it wasn’t released as a backwards compatible tablet peripheral, which granted you’d need to slot into your Wii controller via the jack, same as the Nunchucks, but nevermind that…
The Switch has turned a lot of heads – I bet you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t, the interesting concept behind this console is the fact that the controller can effectively be a console in it’s own right: a handheld one. So you can take your gaming from your living room, then get told by your ol’ gran that she needs TV for her TV time and you can take your gaming from the TV down to your hand… You don’t lose out, she doesn’t lose out. With rumours circulating that Pokemon might make the Switch as well, this could be a massive boon for Nintendo and this could even be another major success. Watch this space is all I can say here.
Mentions Honourable
Have we got you excited for 2017 yet? Good, because we’re excited for two relatively selfish reasons as well. We love to do things here on GeekOut South-West, as I’m sure you’re well aware… However, it’s time to reveal what we personally are really, really excited to be doing next year:
Revamped GeekOut Website
It’s frustrating that this hasn’t happened sooner, as I’ve been working my butt off on this. As I was developing the new website this month, I stumbled into a problem, where the hosts seemingly dropped off all links that weren’t brand new to the site. This meant that I had to do a lot of backtracking and trying to fix anything. Having not heard from the hosts for a while, I assumed the worst – That I’d have to port everything over… But fortunately, I’m a good developer me – I kept backups.
After restoring everything, the website came back to normal and I was able to continue development. I was amazed – But hey, it’s all back and it’s all going ahead smoothly again. It’s late – Very late for my initial plan of having it released by the end of November, but I suspect it’s going to not be too much longer. The wait really will have been worth it. Forums; A ‘Geek Events Calendar’ which can be edited; Unlockable profile badges; Our usual wit and much more.
Kitacon Quest
Around half past six on Tuesday we’ll be glued to our computer screens awaiting our chance to return to the Warwick Arts Centre, desperate to get our names down in that ever narrowing window, despite the promise of more spaces than ever we will still be desperately clinging to keyboards and hope.
And why not? Between Kita and Amecon we have two incredible teams to bring us some of the biggest, loveliest, geekyest events in the country. Your average comic convention these days is a big marketplace that you have to pay to enter, and gaming conventions are halls filled with demos you can queue to watch people play. At Kita and Ame we are one leviathan family, getting drunk and nerdy until the small hours, launching ourselves out of bed, through breakfast and away to do it all again.
If we don’t get in, 2017 will officially be a bigger let down than Duke Nukem Forever.
That’s it, we’re finished now until 2017. We’re done writing, but hey, if you’re out and about today and you’re in Bristol, why not come and celebrate it with us? We’re going to be in the Old Market Tavern from 6pm until 1am, celebrating the new year in, with competitions and games and amazing people. Come along – but wait, why not help us with 2017 in a different way? Give us your vote for next week’s Top 10, the first in a new and important year for us all!
To everyone who has stuck with us through thick and thin, through better and worse, in sickness and in health – We do… Solemnly declare that we’ll be up to no good next year as we’re going to be better than ever. In the meantime, what did you think of this list? Have we got you looking forward to some great media next year? What did you think of the Nintendo Switch being our number one choice? As always, comments below, or over on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
Amecon 2016 – Joel
It has been a long time since I experienced a weekend go by so fast.
Amecon returned, but in a new and improved venue, and it’s a place that means a lot to us here because the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry is where Tim and I first met three years ago at Ayacon Apocalypse, the end of an era that left a vacuum of power for the other titans of the community to occupy, and occupy they have. (more…)
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