naushika | phoenix comicon 2014

Wooooo Phoenix Comicon was awesome! And yes it ended two days ago but then I had to jump back into real life and I had some work stuff I really needed to catch up on, and I'm only finally now getting time to really sit down and talk about the con. :D

Favorite panels:

- John Barrowman. (Duh? haha) He's always funny and entertaining, and this year was no different. Also I'm glad I became a huge fan of Arrow since last year cause he had stories about working on Arrow and working with Stephen Amell (like tweaking Stephen's nipples in the scene where Malcolm Merlyn has Ollie chained up looool). He only got like one or two Doctor Who-related questions, it was actually great to hear him talk about things not entirely revolving around DW.

These panel photos are terrible because I didn't bother bringing my good camera and just used my cell phone. But I'm posting them anyway for posterity and proof, haha.

- Cary Elwes. I didn't know what I was expecting, I guess, (I don't really know anything about Cary Elwes other than he's been in a lot of things I like) but he was so super sweet to the crowd and people who came to ask him questions. He had some really funny stories from Princess Bride, Men in Tights, and Psych, among other things. One time, while shooting a racing movie with Randy Quaid, Randy asked to drive his car (which was a Corvette) and he drove them onto the Indy 500 track, and cops chased them around the track and then pulled guns on them. (I promise the way he told it it was actually quite funny, lol.) Also he's got a book coming out in October and he pimped it out quite a bit, haha.

Yeah he's basically Despereaux, lol.

- Stephen Amell. Lovely, lovely Stephen Amell. *bites fist* Ahem. Anyway, he had lots of hints about Arrow season 3. Said if you love Batman villains, you will enjoy season 3. So I guess some more comics characters will be coming to Arrow! He also said that the Oliver/Felicity stuff will be addressed early on in season 3. Which I thought was interesting because I totally thought that it was fully addressed in the finale, with the convo between Oliver and Felicity on the island. (He also said, when asked if his "I love you" to Felicity was at all based in truth, that when Oliver told Felicity he couldn't date someone he truly cared about (early on in s2) it was the most accurate statement Oliver had made.) He also had endless praise for John Barrowman. Early on in the show he would go to John a lot with questions and looking for advice on being the leading man in a tv show. He said JB's advice was indispensable. *~friendships JB and Stephen now~*

- PBS Digital Studios/PBS Idea Channel/Mike Rugnetta. The PBS Idea Channel is one of my favorite YouTube channels; I've been a subscriber for a while. Mike is the host of the show and every week he puts out a thoughtful and interesting (and funny, using the power of GIFS) video about various topics like culture or fandom or identity or w/e. The panel was like really specifically interesting just on the topic of this channel and general PBS Digital Studios shows, haha. But Mike shared a lot about the process of coming up with ideas, and he said some topics take him a long time to fully research and put together what it is he wants to say. He says the most controversial video he made was the one about Bronies, followed closely by the one about Ms Marvel and representation in media. THE BEST PART WAS GETTING TO MEET HIM AFTER THE PANEL THOUGH!

There weren't many of us at his panel (which made me sad!), like 20 people, but afterwards we ALL wanted to talk to him. They ended up kicking us out of the room cause the next panel needed it, so we all lined up in the hallway haha. I talked to him about the Ms Marvel video; he had said in the panel he was very nervous about that one in particular because he wanted to make sure he did it right. I told him it's my fave Idea Channel video, and he said that made him feel so much better, haha. He also told me that whenever he replies to comments on his videos, he has a personal policy of letting negative comments sit for a few days so he can cool down, but for that video he couldn't help himself but to reply right away to a bunch of people, lol. And I said it just makes sense, if someone is wrong on the internet, you have to correct them, and he laughed.

I MADE SOMEONE I FANGIRL OVER LAUGH. AHhhhhhhhhhh *dies* :D

I think meeting Mike was probably this year's highlight. <3

- Princess, Prostitute, Priestess, Pirate: Women of A Game of Thrones. This was my friend's panel, and I totally missed the Richard Dean Anderson panel for it. I'M SUCH A GOOD FRIEND YOU GUYS. But my friend (who runs my comic book club) is always so super prepared and she researches everything, and it was definitely the best fan-run panel I went to. (Lol they really let just about anyone run a panel at PHXCC, and it shows sometimes, but that's ok.) It was some interesting comparing and contrasting between some of the different women of GoT, in ways I hadn't considered before. About who has power, who doesn't, what kind of power they have, etc. Also we talked about the portrayal of women in the GoT setting in general. There were many dude feminists in the audience giving their thoughts and being all pro-lady and it made my man-hating heart melt just a little. ;)

They provided house sigil nametags so we could all pick a house. There's not really any house I just OMG LOVE but house Stark has my gurl Sansa so I had to pick it. Three people picked house Bolton. What is wrong with them?!

My Swag

I didn't spend a ton of money this year. But what I did get:

This is the most amazing print ever and nobody can tell me otherwise. The artist, Jenny Parks, signed it for me! I also bought a cat!Spock button but I forgot to take a photo and I'm too lazy to now, sorry, haha. But you can see it on her website.

Tony Moore, artist for the first 6 issues of The Walking Dead (and for I think like.. the first 20 covers?) was there, doing signings and selling some prints which he said once they were sold he wouldn't be selling them ever again. Chris is a bigger fan of TWD dead comics than I am (I'm only on like volume 8 ok) but he was all nervous to talk to Tony Moore so I had to do the talking ahaha. Chris wanted a print and then he got talked into buying two, lol. But we also got him to sign our TWD #1 which is awesome. I asked him if he'd ever work on TWD again, and he said he would never say never, but, it's really unlikely. Womp. I do really prefer his art but oh well. He said he's going to be working on his own original comic so that's cool.

SHIELDDDDDD. I saw this shirt and had to have it. All twenty-two dollars of it, lol. But I had no SHIELD shirts and now I have one. Yay!

Other Photos of meeeeee:

I saw the most AMAZING Garrus cosplay, y'all. THE MOUTH OPENED/MOVED. And guess what, dat's a lady under there.

Me at Mos Eisley XD Sadly you can't read the signs really in this photo but they say amusing things like "Mos Eisley Spaceport Chamber of Commerce" and such.

Other Photos of stuuuuuuuuff:

nananana batmannnn

So one Friday a month the baseball stadium has a fireworks night. I can see the fireworks from my house but at the convention center we were literally only a block away so the view was great. We got outside just as the show was starting and everyone on the street stopped to watch. :D It was fun!

WHO YOU GONNA CALLLLllllll

If you are on my facebook you saw me gushing about this already (I posted a video there if you want to see it in action). It's a 3D printer! SO COOL. The guy told us all about how it worked. And he said the local library has a machine that you can use for free. (You just have to reserve time of course since it takes literally hours to print even a project of this size.) It was seriously the neatest thing on the floor.

This was just the hallways outside the exhibitor hall.. SO CROWDED. We actually didn't go on the floor at ALL on Saturday, since last year Saturday was so packed you could barely move. I decided to skip on that this year haha.

Dunno what this is from. Just thought it looked cool. And I wanted to test the lens blur feature on my camera. :D

ugh blurry. But Crow T Robot and Tom Servo! Yasss! Especially relevant as I have been watching a LOT of MST3k lately. I miss that show.

A lot of the downtown businesses got really into the con, with window paintings, signs, and so on. It was nice to see downtown embracing it :D

This year the con was able to get one of the streets between buildings blocked off from traffic and have a lot of things going on outside. Food trucks, roller derby, lots of other events. There was also the local larping group doing demonstrations of sword fighting and stuff. It was something to watch while waiting THIRTY MINUTES for food at the food trucks. (I planned on bringing my own food. I really did. And then procrastination snuck up on me and I had nothing. Womp.)

And capping it all off.. the Balrog! This was here last year. I think it's here every year. But it moves and roars and makes me jump every time haha.

ALL IN ALL, it was a great con!! I'm sad it's over, but I already can't wait for next year. (Also, Toronto FanExpo in Aug/Sept! Ahh! I can really see how people get addicted to cons and spend all their lifes savings going around to a bunch. Fortunately(?) I don't have any life savings to waste on that, lol.)