Large Nerdron ColliderAriel and Jonathan chat about their experiences attending various conventions like Dragon Con!
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Large ner Droun Collider podcast, the podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in the world around us, what we can talk about, and how excited we are to talk about it. I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always, is the ever handsome Jonathan Strickland.
I can see you.
You can't see me. I'm sorry. If I had known we were going to keep our cameras on, I would have made myself look presentable.
Oh you look fine.
Yeah, So, first of all, welcome everybody to the Large Nerdron Collider.
But yeah, we typically when we record this, we.
Often were using an online web studio called riverside to do it. We're not obviously, we're not in the same space, which is unfortunate because I think that would make the conversations a lot more lively.
If we could do that.
It's just geography is a pain in the butt. But riverside, let's you use your video camera, your webcam so that you can stay in visual contact with the person you're talking with. But over the last several recordings, we were having issues or not even the last several, but way back we were having issues with lots of lag, and I would finish talking and then there'd be like two seconds of silence, and then Ariel would say something because there was this lag, and we figured that the cameras were contributing to that. And today, as a lark, I just said, let's just keep the cameras on and see if it works.
Yeah, so we'll see if that works. How much lag was there then, Shonathan.
About two seconds? Okay, so.
We're gonna see how it goes. But this is gonna be more conversational. As you're all aware, the strikes both sag AFTRA and WGA are continuing, and as such, we are going to continue our moratorium on talking about Struck material.
Yes, however, Warner Brothers did just come out with the fact that they are losing money because they're not putting out new material. So you know, that's something hopefully that will encourage producers to Yeah.
It's Warner Brothers. Of course, they're losing money. Like I mean, they were losing money. They were losing money before the merger would Discovery. They're continuing to lose money. Now. I got a lot of opinions on that that I will just keep to myself.
Look, I can be hopeful that some of it is the fact that they don't have writers or actors producing anything.
So yeah, well I'm sure.
I mean that's a major contributing factor, right, Like the stuff that they are releasing hasn't been knocks out of the park. We won't talk about specific ones, although Ariel, I understand you saw one of them recently, one of the ones that was released a couple months ago, very a very speedy movie, long but speedy, if that's any indication. But yeah, like those those movies haven't been getting a whole lot of positive reactions, and that's obviously part of it. But that also means that they don't have any anything in the chamber where they've got like the next amazing picture lined up, because these strikes have been going on for a while, and that's really gonna hurt not just Warner Brothers Discovery obviously, but all the major studios that are you know, looking now at a pretty big gap in their production schedules and thus their release schedules, and that's gonna have some massive hits to those quarterly returns, and shareholders are going to be very unhappy. There's gonna be more and more pressure on the studios to do something about this.
Yeah, And like so fran Tresher the other day said, producers don't like people are these streaming services are losing money. We've talked about it before, and I knew that was going to be an argument. We don't want to pay a bunch more money when we aren't when we're trying to figure out how to cut our budget. Right. But at the same time, franchisious like you're making seventy eight thousand dollars a day. You can't cry for it, me just do the right thing.
Yeah.
Well, and to that end, like the companies are still making lots of money through other avenues, right, It's not like streaming is the one and only outlet, and so you still have all the people who are creating the stuff, and they're like, well, yeah, but we're.
The ones.
A lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck and scrambling between gigs so that we can continue to cover the bills. We're in a much more precarious position than any studio is.
Yeah, but I think the studios expected people to like break by labor day, but writers and actors, again, they've struggled to pay their bills for years now. They're used to it, right, Yeah.
Which is terrible, But at the same time, it means that they are prepared to continue the fight and not just capitulate and give in.
And the like. The sad thing for me is it means that we are going to lose wonderful people in the industry who write good things and who do great work in like AYATSI because they're not working because nobody else is working, you know. And we've had that happen in the past, because they're going to they're going to find other jobs during the strike and then they're going to stay out of the business. We have mutual friends who have done that in the past. Yeah, uh, And so that's sad. I do know that there is the hope that once the strikes are over, like the floodgates are going to open, because there was a bunch of stuff in the works that just got put on pause. You know, I had like two auditions the week the strike, right the week the strike happened. Before the strike, I didn't I didn't break strike rules. But you know, some of those things will get canceled because people are losing money. But even the stuff that does pick up all the stuff that they want to get back roll again. It's going to take a little bit to gather the people, gather the resources and get that going again.
So yeah, and also like.
Yeah, but there's also going to be independent productions that are not that are going to be allowed to go on. We've heard about some of those, like a twenty four I think was a twenty four or am I getting that wrong? It might have been a different studio, but there was like Oh, it's just like there was like a smaller studio that's that's not being struck because they are actually making.
The attempt to.
Meet the criteria that the WGA and sag AFTRA are asking for. And so there are some projects that are allowed to continue because they're actually independent of these big studio systems. So part of what I hope, and you know, we've already started seeing some of this play out with some of the smaller studios, But part of what I hope is that we also get some truly incre credible independent films. They get more attention than they normally would because there's no real competition out there, and it means that they'll get far more support. Like there are there are some movies that came out that were incredible but didn't really get very wide distribution or much notice because they were from these smaller studios. But you know, there's going to be a time where that's essentially all that's going to be out, and maybe that means that we'll actually start to see perhaps a move toward these smaller to medium budget movies that are not as grandiose and scope. They're not as big and spectacle, but they're still very high quality and really good stories. And I, again, as a child of like the seventies and eighties, I would love to see that because I don't need every movie to be like a Michael Bay explosion on.
Yeah. Yeah, it's actually been really interesting to fall because I know that this is a couple of weeks ago now, But the SAG after said that they were going to stop giving interim agreements to projects that had WGA written scripts in support to the WGA, because if the WGA is striking but their work is still getting done, then that hurts their position. So there's that, But if you're an independent company, like you said, not connected to the AMPTP and not using and not WGA, or you've written your own script or whatnot, then you can still proceed. If you're using SAG actors, then you have to abide by the SAG, the SAG contract that they're trying to get past, and it is very tactical because if you are if you're a small company with not a lot of money, and you're able to successfully make and distribute a movie using their new standards, then there's no excuse for the big producers. Right. But non union has also been going on, like because the union actors can't work in non union stuff without special permissions. Commercials are still going on, so there's some stuff, but it's been very interesting. It's been like this huge educational, like deep dive for me this year.
So yeah, yeah, for a lot of people who are just getting their careers started in the industry, I think it's been like that, and I mean it's a valuable one. I think there's obviously an allure to show business. There always has been, and there's this desire to be part of it, and I think events like this are important because it resets your expectations so that you have a more realistic understanding of what's going on, so that way you can actually make those calls, right, you can make an educated call about the direction of your career. Is this something you want to For a lot of people, I think they might end up saying, you know what, maybe this isn't the right one for me. It's too high risk and it's not there's not enough stability, which is that's a totally legit decision for people to make, and then they can go and do whatever it is they would rather do. And then some people would say, all right, I understand that there is a very high level of risk and there's very low stability, but this is my passion and I'm going to continue to pursue it, And that's also totally legit. But I think it's good to have that realistic understanding so that you have your expectations set properly and you're not setting yourself up for failure. I think if you have inflated expectations, then every time you run into a hurdle or an obstacle or a challenge, you're going to have that kind of disappointment that could be really devastating.
Yeah. Yeah, which reminds me I need to send some love to my representation because they've been working their butts off to get everything they can during the strike, and I love them.
So yeah, this is this is why I no longer audition for shows because I got asked to do shows too much, Like I was asked to be in a show, and by too much, I mean it. It made it very easy for me to be in stage shows, so that when I would go to auditions and not land something, I'd be like, oh right, that's how it's supposed to work. I've just been coddled and maybe this isn't the right approach for me because I don't take rejection.
Well well, and that's that's why you create your own content.
I mean, yeah, you're I mean it sounds like a burn, but it's the truth.
Yeah, yeah, which, like I'm gonna be real honest. I talked to Jonathan. I don't know if we told you all this, but I talked with him briefly before the strike happened about I miss doing our videos and I want to figure out how to do them. Maybe there's a way, Like even if we can't because we don't have a camera guy right now, uh, and nor do we have an amazing budget for a camera guy, we could probably eat something out if we want it, but uh, you know, to pro do some sort of video content, maybe a hybrid of our mashups so that it was more like talking hints, but get together and do some stuff again because I missed that. We obviously can't do that right now because of the strike. But yeah, like this is everybody, everybody. I don't care where you are, either in the entertainment industry, if you're in the entertainment or created industry. It's all about creating your own content, That's what everybody says. Because then you can cast who you want, you can have it the way you want mostly, Yeah, and you get your you get to enter, you get to entertain people and bring people joy, and that's the whole point.
So yeah, and you have a lot more control, I mean over things like how you distribute your content that sort of stuff. And I mean that's that's really what what the strikes come down to, right, is that these big production companies they have the they have the first of all, they have the pockets to fund productions, and two they have the channels to distribute work.
And for people who just want to.
Tell stories, those are big hurdles and it puts a lot of power into these companies, and that's really what it boils down to, is that when you've got the power consolidated in a few really big studios, you get to the point where the individual has very little leverage and very little control over their careers and over the way they can earn money, which is why it's important to unionize. So anyway, we've had that discussion many times. What we're going to do now, I think is we're going to have a conversation about conventions, specific specifically fan conventions, not industry conventions. For multiple reasons, industry conventions are less interesting and two that would be treading on st material too. But yeah, both Ariel and I have been going to conventions for many years. I've been going longer than Ariel has because I started going to conventions when she was a bebe.
But she's been.
Going probably two more events because I kind of stopped going about five years ago. So we're going to talk a bit about about our experiences convention wise, and I guess to get started, Ariel, do you remember, like what your first convention was.
Yes, it was I don't even know if it could be called a convention. I think it was. It was the Festival of Dreams. It was like the place where I first larped, too. It was a bunch of different LARPs running one shot, so you could figure out what LARPs you wanted to go to. It was tiny. A lot of conventions, so like dragon Con and Comic Con and all these others, they get really a lot of press, right, But there are a lot of tiny, tiny conventions. I learned how many, and probably you did too, between going and author panels and dragon Artsy and stuff like that the Atlanta Reader Theater Company. But yeah, the first one was a little arp one because I wanted to larp. That was my first yours.
It's an excellent question. I'd like to say it's Fantasy Fair, which is sort of Fantasy Fair was kind of the predecessor to dragon Con in many ways. It was a very It was one of the larger science fiction fantasy themed conventions in the Southeast, but it hasn't existed for decades at this point. But I think that might have been my first one. But it's hard for me to say, because the reason I started going to conventions is that both of my parents, but primarily my father, are authors, and Dad had published his first novel and I want to say it was nineteen eighty four when it came out. It's called to Stand Beneath the Sun's Long Sense out of print. But being an author meant that you would often get invitations to participate in conventions, because conventions needed guests, and the guests would sit on panels and talk about their work and their process and interact with fans of the genre, sometimes fans of the actual guest, because you know, keep in mind, these are smaller conventions. So we're talking about authors who are local but not necessarily really well known at this point, A few of them were. They would usually get one or two very notable guests to come in, but that would be it like Dragon Con. You would look at the who's attending list, you know, like two months out, you'd be like, it would just be a who's who in science fiction, fantasy and horror and comics and that kind of thing. But these smaller conventions would be much more modest in size and scope, so you might get like George ta Kay might be like the guest of honor, right, or sometimes it might be an author who is pretty well known. And Dad would often be invited to these. So I went to things like Fantasy Fair Phoenix Con, which was another smaller convention here in Atlanta. There was one that would kind of move around in the Southeast. I seem to recall it being in Tennessee, but it was called Dixie Trek, and then there were a few others later on, after Fantasy Fair went away and dragon Con started to become a thing. My dad was the first master of ceremonies of the very first dragon Con. We also got a convention called magnum Opus Cohn, which for a while was competing with dragon Con. It became like this rivalry between the two conventions.
So that was kind of my.
Wheelhouse as I was growing up. I was going to conventions a lot as a kid, so my experience was different from the average congoers experience because I was always a guest, because my dad was a guest, like as in I would have a little ribbon on my badge that would give you like access to everything, and as a kid, I didn't understand that everybody else didn't have that.
Yeah, yeah, I am. I have a similar remembrance about like my first theater. I think my mom listens so she'll correct me if I'm wrong, But I think like the first play that I had any sort of like contact with was Pippen because my parents were working on it. This could be a fever dream, but I feel like when I was very very young, my parents worked on Pippin and then on Golden Pond, and I couldn't tell you anything about the shows from that time because they're not really you know, little kid shows. But that's like my remembrance, So I feel like that's I can almost vaguely relate to you here. I'm not sure which was my first con entirely? Yeah, but yeah, my second con was dragon Con.
Oh wow, Yeah, dragon CON's a big, a big second one. I mean, was it a was it already a pretty big convention at that point?
I mean, you tell me it was when you guys did Guards Guards with John hys Davies.
It was that was a fairly yeah, by then it was a fairly large convention. So the first dragon Con had just a couple of thousand attendees, like maybe maybe as many as three thousand total.
Uh.
And to give you some perspective, more recent dragon cons are in like the sixty thousand range something like that, so you know, twenty times larger, but yeah, the so I was going to dragon Con when it was a much smaller convention. I was also obviously going because I was in guards guards for that one when you when you were at that convention. So it's interesting because like by the time dragon Con was growing up, the these smaller to medium size cons were starting to die out. They there were still were a few, but some of them were just there just wasn't enough support anymore, and they kind of like it was like all the energy was getting sapped into dragon Con, and that dragon Con kept getting bigger and bigger, and these smaller to medium size conventions, which happened, you know, throughout the year, just weren't able to get the traction because more and more people were like, well, I'm just gonna do the one. I'll do dragon Con. But what's interesting to me is that, like when I was growing up and I was going to these conventions, they served a very particular purpose because you have to remember that when I was going to these conventions as a kid, it was before the World Wide Web, Like there was no easy way to connect with fellow fans of the stuff you loved. Because if you were from a small town like I was, there was a good chance that no one else in that small town gave a crap about the stuff you loved, and so you'd just be like, well, I love this thing, and I wish I could talk about it, but there ain't no one here who wants to talk about it. But a convention was a place where you could do that. And that's where things like panels and even just panels that were run by fans that had no celebrities whatsoever in them. Those became really lively because it was people who were passionate about something and they had the opportunity to come into a real physical space and have conversations about the stuff they loved with other people who also love that stuff. And obviously that would change with the introduction of the World Wide Web, and you suddenly started having like message groups and fan pages and subreddits and all this kind of stuff that would grow up around the web and allow people to have those conversations no matter where you were. Like it broad in that dramatically, But when I was a kid, the way you had these conversations was that you would to a convention and you got into lively discussions with other fans of the stuff you loved. And that's what made those conventions really really special, and that still happens today, but it feels a little different because there's so many other ways you can also have those conversations.
Yeah, I guess before I did conventions, I did have a couple of meetups. So I used to be a part of BBS's because, like my parents were at computers since I was very very little, you know, my grandpa worked for IBM back like towards the inception, So I had been on like BBS's bulletin board systems for those who don't know, which are like message centers, like chat forms.
And.
We would occasionally have meetups. It's not really a convention, that's more just the social gathering. I will say. My first Dragon Con I went. I bought a one day ticket because I just want to see what it is, and then I really enjoyed it, so I bought a second day ticket, and then I bought the third day ticket, and that was way more money than buying a full weekend pass. But I also realized at the end of that I spent most of the time talking to people I knew from LARPing and the Renaissance Festival and all these other venues in theater, and I attended very few panels. And so the next year I worked it, and I worked it for many many years, and then I stopped working it and now I really only go if I'm performing.
So yeah, yeah, it's interesting because you've had a very different kind of journey than I did. Like you, you volunteered and would work staff at the con so you would do all sorts of different duties. Can you talk a bit about some of the roles you performed as you worked at Dragon Gon.
Yeah, so the first year, I actually after the first year, the second year, I was offered a position in information services, which is, you know, you sit at the desk, can you tell in one of the hotels and you tell people where they can go? And I worked that and how to get to the places they want to get to.
Where I can go.
Yeah, yeah, truth and and so I did that for a couple of years, and I usually tried to frontload my convention. I believe I want to work all of the hours in like one and a half days and then be done. But I quickly lost that desire to be done working because I found out that's what I really enjoyed. So I worked information services. That's how I got a voice actor. Oh my god, I can't remember his name and I can't say what he's from. Oh gosh, I think it's George.
Low Okay, oh oh okay, yeah, yeah, yah yeah.
I was working information amuson like cartoon network type stuff.
Yeah. George Lowe came up to the information booth one day and brought us donuts and was like, who's your daddy? Because we were helpful to him. It was very nice. It wasn't for me, but I'd happened to be there and it was delightful. He seemed very nice. And then after information.
You're telling me, George low was literally a sugar.
Daddy kind of he was being he was being friendly. Again, could be a fever dream like eventually all these things start melting together, but I'm pretty sure that happened, Okay. And then I started in my you know, normal boring day life working for a mutual friend of ours who also worked at the Renaissance Festival, and he also headed up technical operations for some of the hotels, and so I switched over to tech ops to help him. And that was like bringing different equipment to different rooms, setting it up eventually I ran the small ballroom in the marriotte A one o two five one five two, I don't remember, it's been quite a few years. And I would run tech for that, and then I would fill in by like moving tech from rooms to room and troubleshooting and all that. It was a really great community and lots of fun people, and I enjoyed doing it. But the thing that I enjoyed doing most with that was that small ballroom had a lot of like older actors, so people who had been in things that maybe even aired before I was born, or maybe they were still doing things, but they had a longer history. They weren't like the super new hit people that fill you know, ten thousand seats per se. And I really enjoyed listen listening to them talk about industry and but I also kind of proved that I could be around well known people and beachill about it. And I also had this immense wealth of knowledge of how dragon Con worked between tech ops and information services and you know, kind of helping out the people as they came in my ballroom if they needed extra help, and knowing where to get answers and how to get answers, so Eventually I moved to backstage security and access and I did that for quite a few years, and you know, basically making sure like the guests of the convention had the things they needed before and after their panel, that people weren't coming back and bugging them, that they knew how to get to the next place they wanted to go. It's all part of a giant call. And most of the time I stood in a corner and was invisible and just there if people needed me and to troubleshoot problems. But it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, Ariel would do things like help coordinate pathways so that you know, could find a fairly low traffic or sometimes behind the scenes route that they could go so that they could get to their next appointment, or be able to retreat back to their VIP space or go to their room without being mobbed by fans, which can be a thing. Like we have had some very very high profile guests at Dragon Con in literature and film and music. I mean, you know, we've had incredible directors. Terry Gilliam, one of the founding members of Monty Python, who has obviously directed many amazing films that I won't mention by name, but are they're phenomenal?
Uh.
He was a guest at Dragon Con and like he was very like, very friendly and very willing to engage with guests, to the point where he famously and his panel, got up from behind his table, walked over in front of the table and sat down so that there wouldn't be a barrier between him and the audience and he could have his conversations with them. And that's amazing. But obviously there are other guests who are less comfortable with that, or who are just so in the spotlight at the moment that they can't walk three feet without being stopped, and if they stop, then a huge group will form around them immediately because everyone wants to have their moment with this person. So it's important for people in the guest services and area like that they're able to be they're able to help them navigate the con so that their experience is just as positive as the fans experience and that they will want to come back and that they don't have like that really negative kind of connotation with fan conventions that can happen if people get a little too excited and forget to be courteous.
Yeah, and what I will say is usually I worked the backstage of a ballroom or multiple ballrooms. We kind of switched around throughout the day. Dragon con does have a dedicated group that is transportation and then security detail between appointments and also if you want to go out into the convention, so we worked with them a lot. Occasionally I would have to fill in if somebody if like an emergency happened and someone wasn't able to get there in time, but the person needed to leave or whatnot. You know, we had a large group of people who were able to help basically put out fires, which is what you want to do when you know a lot of the workings of a convention. So yeah, so lots of people, but it was lots of fun. There are still guests who will like they are famous enough that I'm surprised that they just walk around the convention by themselves. There was one that a mutual friend told us. So I went to Dragon this year only briefly, only for my performances, which I'm glad because a bunch of people have been catching COVID and you know, thankfully I am not one of them. Uh you know, I tried to be really safe, and I tried to only be there a limited amount of time. And now I feel better about that decision because you know, when you're there, you're you're kind of like, oh, man, do I want to stay longer? Do I want to come on my day off? Because like this is this could be fun. But a mutual uh, a mutual friend of ours told us told me about a celebrity that had just like gone to gaming in the dealer's room by themselves, and I was surprised the level of that celebrity would be able to do that without harassment, but apparently they have. They had done it a couple.
Of times and enjoying it out of curiosity. Can you name the celebrity because.
I mean the events over Ethan Peck.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with Ethan Peck, but then I am I am old and out of touch and say what they're from.
Yeah, I'll tell you afterwards. Also, just you know, she might have been with security detail I couldn't tell, but just walking between the hotels Jewel State just walked by.
So that's cool.
Yeah, I've had some celebrity encounters at these conventions beyond the fact, like I mean, I could go into the like the the con suite for VIP. There's typically a con suite for general attendees at a lot of these conventions, and that's a place where you can go and get a drink or get some snacks and hang out and chill and be out of the general like traffic area. Not every convention has them, but a lot of them do, especially when the ones I went to when I was a kid. And then some conventions also have a separate con suite that's just for the guests and stuff, so that they have a place that they can go and just like zone out or chat with you know, their peers, or get a snack or get a little bit of rest and meditation time before they have to go and inter face with the crowd again. Uh So I've had experience with both, but yeah, I would run into folks occasionally. I try not to make it a big thing because obviously if you make it a big thing, then lots of other people could make it a big thing, and then it just maybe some celebrities feed off that, but I think a lot of them don't. So I was just like, all right, just be cool, just be cool. So like I was gone an escalator and realized that the guy in front of me was Billy West, a voice actor whom I am very familiar with his work, and I was just like, I'll just be cool. I'm not gonna bring any attention to it, but it is neat, And there there have been other cases where you know, I just look up and I think, oh.
Wow, that's Lucy Lawless.
She looks amazing, and so yeah, there's there's a I've had a few of those experiences, but not nearly as many because obviously, like like most of the stuff I did when I was when I was a guest, later on, once I got old enough where I no longer was cute and so I couldn't fall under my dad's badge anymore. You're still oh you're sweet, but not like I was when I was, you know, a preteen. So like when I was attending Dragon Con as a guest in like the you know, like twenty sixteen kind of range, it was through my work as a writer and podcaster, and so I was on the podcast track and I would get either a guest badge or sometimes it was a participant badge. The designation was essentially to say, guests are people folks want to come to the convention to see participants are people who are also there, so at least that's how I always felt. But it was fine because I was like, I never had the illusion that people are coming to any of the panels just for me, except for when I would do a panel specifically as a live text stuff recording, because there's no reason you would go to that unless you knew who I was. So but yeah, it was a lot of fun. I saw some great panels over the years. I didn't go to tons either, because again, and I think a lot of people don't. I think they might go to one or two, and then the rest of the time they're spending socializing looking at costumes or being in costumes, or going maybe to an event like the Masquerade, which is the big costume contest, or they're going to parties and dances and that kind of stuff. So the panels I remember distinctly. I saw one of a group of people who would.
Test folklore.
They were folklore testers, and they would tell you at the end of their experiment whether the folklore was possible or not.
One of them was a dry on this year, and the yeah, before they shaved it was made them unrecognizable.
Yeah, they look like they could have been one of Gandalf's drinking buddies. Yes, you're talking about Adam Adam Savage. Adam Savage, But Adam Savage also he's famous for coming up with like costumes that let him hide his identity to a certain extent so that he can wander the floor because he loves to do that. He loves to see all the creations and all the creativity, and he's got a long history of doing that where he would create a costume. I mean, the dude's a master prop maker, so he would make it a phenomenal costume that would comfortably hide his identity and then just wander the floor and see everybody out there, and no one would know that this was a celebrity who was walking by. He's not the only one who's done that either. There are other celebrities who have done similar things, which I just think is cool because to me, that tells me that it's someone who still has a foot in the fan part of the experience. They're not just you know, the object of fan adoration. They themselves have some of that fandom in them as well.
Yeah, Yeah, and I mean that's what it's what it's really all about. You know. It's one of my favorite things to do. I don't cause play really anymore, but not saying I wouldn't, but I just generally am like, I want to spend my money and time on other things. But I love watching other people's cause plays because they're just it comes from a place of love for the for the thing that they're portraying so much that they put all this time and energy and care into it, and it's just really amazing to watch and see and the creativity and the mashups. I just love it.
Well yeah, yeah, Like the mashups are the costume equivalent of what we would do in our mashups, right, Like we would take two or more properties and combine them and say, what would happen if you if these two were to collide and all the script pages got mixed up? This is what I think would happen. Well, there a lot of the cosplays out there take that same concept, but they put it into physical form with those costumes, and some of them, some of them I look at and I'm like, that was really creative and really clever, and I love how you pulled it off. Some of them I look at and think, I know there's connective tissue in your mind between these two properties, but I don't see it, and I don't understand. I mean, I understand where where the ideas came from, I don't understand how they combined. And of course some people will just create like frame perfect costumes based off of stuff that they've seen in film or television or anime. I always love it when I get a chance to chat with folks who actually work in costume in the industry, because they'll talk about how, yeah, the stuff you see on the floor is better than the costumes you would see on a production floor because they only have to be so good, right like the camera, especially if you're talking about like classic science fiction and fantasy films, like you would be shocked at how low quality some of that stuff can appear when you're really up close to it. And meanwhile, you would go to dragon Con and see someone who has created a replica of that costume. But because you're actually going to be in that physical space, they have made it to look the way it looked on screen, not the way it looks in real life. And that is phenomenal.
I mean that is super phenomenal. It's crazy impressive. I'm always jealous because I want to be able to do that. I also appreciate the people who are not great craftsman's but still really try.
Yeah.
Yeah, We've got a friend who has his own convention called Cardboard Con, and the whole gimmick behind it is all the costumes and props are made out of cardboard boxes. And even with that, the creativity is phenomenal.
Yeah, this this friend is amazing at creating things. It's one of our friends who jumped out of the industry during the last strike, but is a professional property like props maker, So really phenomenal, you know. And then I always feel bad for the people who have obviously put a lot of effort into their costume and I have no idea what it is, and they're hanging out in like again, this is largely DragonCon, but I guess it happens at smaller cons too. They're kind of hanging out in the public area hoping people will take pictures of them, and no one's really I'm sure they have people take pictures of them. But there was an entire thread this year on Facebook of did you have a cause play costume that no one got except for like one person post it here because we want to celebrate it.
You know, I think it all.
I think it all falls on what you're hoping to get out of the cosplay experience, right, Like, if you are hoping to get a lot of attention and a lot of compliments on your your craft or your your clever approach to the costume, you're taking a risk, right because there is the chance that no one's going to really understand it, or get it or appreciate it. If you're doing it because you have this genuine love for this thing and you're expressing your love, then obviously that's a lower risk. I mean, it's always nice to get recognition and acknowledgment. That's always going to be nice. But if you're if your main purpose is because no, I love this thing and that's why I needed to do it, then you're going to get some satisfaction no matter what. But I mean I always feel that way too, Like I see people who you know. It's also it also can be frustrated when you see someone who's in a costume that you know you don't even know how much time they put into it, Like some costumes. You might sit there and just assume, oh, they went thrifting and they found, you know, a few different pieces and through it all together, and you don't realize, no, they hand sewed every element of that costume. And sometimes the effort isn't isn't obvious right in the costume, but that doesn't mean that the person didn't pour countless hours into it. Meanwhile, you might have someone else who has an off the rack costume and maybe they are really attractive, right, They could be a really attractive person who's wearing a bought off the rack costume piece and they're getting lots of attention, which definitely happens. And I'm not being gender specific, because I've seen dudes and I've seen women, and I've seen people who do not identify with either gender get tons of attention because they happen to be smoking hot. But they're wearing a costume that obviously wasn't like a handmade kind of cosplay thing, and they're getting a lot of attention. So I mean, like it could be really disheartening then too, if you've poured a lot of work into something and haven't received that same kind of attention.
Yeah, yeah, I had another point I was going to make, and it's completely slipped my mind. I do like, so Dragon Con kind of is this way, but I think it's almost gotten too big. It was really nice in twenty twenty one when they capped attendance and it wasn't crowded again. You could actually move around and breathe again. I was only there for my performance, but it was it was everybody was kind of like, this is really chill. But like the smaller conventions that happened, I love them because they are just there's that community energy there. I haven't been to an industry convention yet, but yeah, the community is what you know with like like the people who we talk with who listen to our show. The community is what makes it right.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Yeah, there's when it gets too big, not too big. When it gets at a certain size, you start to lose that community because you've got it's just it's too large to be able to have that communal feeling. You know, you are all you are all gathered there because of your love of the thing. In some cases with Dragon Con, now it's the love of the con. It's not the love of something else that the con taps into. It's the con itself, like it's become meta. But in other cases, like you have sub communities within dragon Con where you know, you like the filters filk Filk singing is like folks singing, but all the songs typically tie into geek properties, so you'll have like a song that is a parody of an actual song, but the lyrics have all changed, and now it's about like some you know, famous science fiction or fantasy show or or movie or something, but that would have its own community. The gamers would have their own community. And there are a lot of jokes about the gaming community because there are a lot of jokes about if you're going to go into the gaming room, do it early in the con because they won't leave that room and it will get a little rank. I don't think that's a fair thing to say, but sometimes it's accurate.
Also, I think gaming has moved to the America's mark now for dragon Con, which is a convention center kind of so you can't just spend twenty four hours a day there.
Yeah.
Well, and you know a lot of conventions also have dealer's rooms. Dragon Con is no exception. And dragon Con has reached the size where I was reading about people being in line to get into the dealer's room because you know, obviously the capacity is capped because otherwise it would be a fire hazard, and they would be They'd say, yeah, I had to wait for like two or three hours before I was able to go into the dealer's room. At the smaller conventions, that was never an issue. The nice thing about the dealer's rooms again from my childhood, because again the Internet was not a thing yet, at least not a thing that was publicly accessible. It meant that that's how I got introduced to a lot of stuff, like a lot of like gaming systems, for example, I had. I grew up in a town that didn't have a hobby store that had like role playing game systems and stuff. The closest comic book store to me was a forty five minute drive away, so it wasn't something that I could easily visit, And conventions were places where I found out about things like the Paranoia RPG or other RPGs that like the Call of Cthulhu RPG, stuff that I had heard of Dragon Dragon con Dungeons and Dragons, but I hadn't heard about any of these. And it's also places where you could do things like discover that yes you two have and a session with collecting dice. My name is Jonathan Strickland. I've been sober for about fifteen years now, but I've had a real hard time with dice in the past. But yeah, like like that's that to me was another one of those magical things.
Yeah, you're gonna start an RPG soon, so hopefully you can stay sober. I'll help you.
I've got I've got two bags of dice in front of me, so I think I should be good. So because even though I haven't I haven't set pencil to paper in an RPG in so long, but I kept my dice. So yeah, like so many little special things about these conventions that the smaller ones, I think it's easier to discover a lot of those magical things the larger ones, I mean, the scope and spectacle are off the chain, like It's Dragon con is like nothing else I've ever experienced. But I think there's value in both the smaller conventions and the really really like big celebrations too.
I think so too. And this is a little bit hypocritical because like the smaller conventions, usually I only go to if I'm performing again. It's just a time and money management thing. But I almost get sad when they get bigger, because they lose something the bigger they get. But I'm also very happy that they're successful and people are that excited about what they're covering.
When they're smaller, you can do more right like you can you can go to more things at the con, like you don't have to worry about, well, I'm gonna have to get in line two hours before this panel or I'm not going to make it into the room because it'll be too full, which means for those two hours I don't get to do anything else, and probably for the next two hours I won't get to do anything either because I would have had to have already been in line to see the next big panel. And dragon Con does something that some other conventions. Some do and some don't, And I honestly I don't know if they did it this past year, but they had been doing room clears where at the end of a panel you had to leave the room so that way you couldn't just scope out a spot in a ballroom, for example, sit down and park it for five hours so that you could see the one panel you were interested in and then just sit through everything else that was in that room. That was not something you were able to do. You would have to leave the room at the end of the panel, and the whole purpose of that was to prevent that kind of camping.
I think they still do that, but I'm not sure because I I, for instance, our Guards Guards performance with the Atlanta Radio Theater Company hint capacity Every seat was full, which is fantastic, but they cleared the room. But there also wasn't an anything in that room for quite a while, so it wasn't the same rush as you'd get in like a giant ballroom of like everybody needs to be out in the next ten minutes. But yeah, So I have a question for you, and you may not have an answer because I don't even know if I have an answer, but I'm going to ask it anyhow. Is there a topic that you wish there were a convention on that you have not seen a convention on yet, or if you were going to start a convention.
Yeah, that's interesting, an interesting question because a lot of the things I would be into, obviously there are already cons that cover it. Right, Like if you say video games, then you're talking about, like Packs is like the con to go to, or really just any games in general, not just video games, board games, tabletop games. Packs is the place you want to be. If I were to say, like just specifically fantasy or science fiction literature, then that would obviously be something like World Con, which really focuses on the literature side and less so on the media side. So yeah, that's really interesting.
Maybe you know what.
I saw a video about a big Halloween centered convention in California where it was a bunch of haunts that were throughout the state of California. They came together and put out a sample of their haunts, and then they had vendors who were selling you Halloween themed stuff, horror themed stuff. They had horror guests, they showed horror movies. I would love to see something like that in the Southeast where it's not specifically a horror convention, but more like a Halloween themed convention, so that you could get that itch scratched and maybe get ideas for things like whether you wanted to find a haunt that you wanted to attend, Like, oh, I got to go to that haunted house. I saw a sample. It was phenomenal. I gotta see the big scale version, or if it's something like, hey, you know, I was thinking about getting into this myself, and now I can talk to professionals who do this or amateurs who do this and understand some of the pros and cons and tips and things to avoid. I think that'd be really cool. But on a really late a note of this, and I know this is a very long answer, I would love to see the same sort of thing for Renaissance festivals.
Yeah, yeah, truthfully, yes, so a Halloween slash Renaissance festival convention, which is awesome. Actually, I don't even know if there are any Renaissance festival conventions. They're kind of like their own similar sort of a creature.
Yeah, I would love to be able to go to something that was like you get to see acts that are local to specific festivals that don't necessarily travel the circuit. I mean, there could be circuit acts there too that I would not want to deny that. But like I've I've never been to the Maryland Festival, which great things about, but I've never been there and I don't even know what their local acts are. Like I've been to Georgia Carolina, Pennsylvania, and one of the New York festivals, I think the Sterling one, and that's it. Like I haven't been to any of the other ones, and I would love to just kind of get a taste for some of the other stuff. It's obviously a huge lift because these festivals all have their seasons at different times of year, so you would have to pick a time where you would have the most participation, probably outside of their normal seasons. But then you'd also have to handle things like how do I cover their travel costs and everything, because they're scattered across the entire nation.
Yeah, yeah, February perfect timing for it. I actually don't know. I just I don't hear about a lot of festivals happening in February, nor haunted houses. Most have wrapped up by that time for me, and there might be something like this already. But I would love a convention that's all about like the cooking competition shows that you get that's like half educational and half like challenge and fun, like you know, nailed it and is it cake and things like that, so panels talking about it, workshops where you can try your hand at it, you know, like during the pandemic. I did a nailed It challenge at home that was intense and very difficult. Like I'm a good baker, not well on that challenge, you know, so I don't. Maybe what I'm describing is more like community college, so I can learn how to cook better, but more fun.
I mean, there's there's so much entertainment out there that is centered around cooking and baking, right Like, whether it's web series or actual like streaming series or TV series, there's tons of it. So I think that's a legit thing. Yeah, Like now for me, you win me over just by it being about food, Like I've definitely gone to like the Atlanta Food Festival, but that's not that's nothing like what you're talking about, because that's really just more of It's kind of like what I was talking about with the Halloween stuff, except it's about Atlanta restaurants, right Like you go there and all these different restaurants are there with samples of some of the stuff that they make, and for you know, a certain price, you get to go in and try as much of the stuff as you want to, or or it's like a limited amount, like you've got a wristband that gives you like ten samples, so you've got to pick where you're going.
To go or whatever.
But it's a great way to sample different restaurants in Atlanta without you know, dedicating an entire night to trapesing across the city and hoping that you like the place. And so I'm totally down with that. But what you're talking about being more of an immersive, participatory, integrated experience, I think that sounds incredible, like because that you could still have that promotional element an event like that, but you also have this inner active element that something like the Food Festival doesn't have. It's it's more of a glorified like food truck gathering than anything else. Yeah.
Well, and like you can do like the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. And I don't know about their other food related festivals, but the Food and Wine Festival, I do know that sometimes they will have like workshops on food or mixology or whatever, and you can cook something, but it's so expensive and it's just a one off, like that's that's one extra cost for one thing.
Yeah with it, and you've already spent You've already spent a good amount of money just to get into the park, and so you always have that weighing on you where you're thinking, I need to get the value out of what I've spent or I'm going to regret this. And then on top of that, you have to spend more to take a class which is going to take up time in the park and you and you're sitting there thinking like I could have written test track.
Yeah yeah, and you have to pay for all the food, like your ticket doesn't include the food.
So I am totally cool just walking.
Yeah me too, Me too. I I loved it a couple of times that I've been able to do it. Before I switched to my current job, I still could, but now I'm a little bit more stingy. Uh frugal, but frugal, that's that's the right word. Yeah, yeah, not that I have to be, but I choose to be. You know, it's a smart way to live. Uh, I don't mind. I don't mind going around and paying for that. And a lot of like conventions that do have workshops that are laid led by professionals you do pay extra for. But I I feel like you could find a better balance if the entire convention was focused on that. You could find a good way to do fan versus educational versus interactive, workshop versus fun. Everybody bring your own ingredients and we're just gonna have a blast with this kind of a thing.
You know, Yeah, totally.
Well, I think that was a fun discussion about convention stuff. And you know, while I haven't been to Dragon Con in the last several years, I'll never say never, like there might. I think if I were to go back, it would probably be for a day because it's just so overwhelming that I would probably do a day and just kind.
Of do the people watch.
Seeing folks that I don't see that frequently would be nice that kind of thing, Although it does then you start asking yourself the question, do I really need to pay that much money to see people I know? But sometimes the answer is yes, because sometimes they're traveling from across the country. So but I think it would be more for a day thing, unless I'm there as a guest, you know, to do panels and stuff, in which case that would be different. But I don't pursue that typically because I think there are other people who probably make better guests, and I would rather they take that slot then I take the slot.
I think you make an amazing guest, Jonathan. But you know that's very generous of you.
Well, and again, like I want to make sure being the host of a solo podcast for my main job. I just I'm very hyper aware that there's a limited utility for that in a live setting, Like if I were part of a conversational podcast like this one, that if that was my main thing, Like if I were mostly known for that, then that would be different because the two or three or however many of us could go and be part of those panels, and that I think would be far more entertaining than just a bald, white dude talking about how he has a technology podcast. I just don't think that that's like some people might find that interesting. I just have a low expectation of that.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I understand, I understand. Well, yeah, I do think this is I agree with you. I think this has been a fun conversation, you know, not super structured, kind of went all over the place, largely my fault, but yeah, a lot of fun.
Yeah, So I guess we're wrapping up.
Yeah, if you want to share if you were at any conventions recently, you want to share about your experiences or have ideas for conventions that you would throw or anything else you want to chat with us about, Jonathan, how can they get in touch with us?
So you're gonna at the end of August next year, you're gonna go to downtown Atlanta and you're gonna go to the Sheraton Hotel downtown. Now you're gonna have to try and find a door into the Sheraton.
What'd you say, I said, good choice, that one's usually a little less crowded.
Yeah, But the see, that's the problem is that the Sheraton's where all the badges are gonna be this year in that's August, this particular August. So you're gonna try the first stoor you're gonna go into, You're gonna look for where the registration is uh, and you've gotta probably wander around for about forty five minutes before you finally track down someone who explains that it's actually.
Two floors below.
But because of the way the building's designed, you can't actually get there from the floor you're on. So you're gonna have to leave the building and walk around to a different door, and that's where you're gonna find stairs that lead down. You're gonna go down those stairs until you go down two floors, But then you're gonna find that the door that goes into the sheridan there, that one's actually locked. You can't open it from that side. You're gonna need to go back up those two stairs, walk around again, find another door. This is gonna take you to like what looks like a freight elevator. It's clearly the elevator where you know housekeeping wheels their big carts on. It's gonna be the only one you can find that actually goes down to that floor that you need to go to. The doors are gonna open up, and you're gonna clearly be like in a maintenance hallway type thing, a place where guests are not supposed to be. You're gonna wander around that for probably about twenty five minutes until you can actually feel humidity, which is telling you that something in this part of the hotel is not working properly. Gonna turn back around. That's where you're gonna actually see a door that you already passed. You're gonna open that up and you're gonna peek your head out. You're gonna be looking right in the middle of a long line right like you're opening the door and the line is stretching from the right to the left immediately in front of you, and people are gonna look at you crazy like and say like, why are you coming in this way? You don't have time for that. You just gotta go and make your way to the end of that line. You're gonna wait there, and you're going to have to wait for another probably about hour fifteen minutes, and finally gonna be at the front of the line. You're gonna step forward at the desk. They're gonna inform you that that's preregistration and what you actually wanted was registration, which unfortunately is in a totally different hotel. So you're going to have to leave the Sheridan. You've gotta walk south two blocks to the Hyatt Regency. You're gonna walk in there, and then as you walk in there, you're gonna see me. I'm gonna be there holding your badge saying sorry for the inconvenience.
What's your question?
And he won't really be sorry for the inconvenience. If that just if that just is so many steps that you've kind of glazed over. You can also reach us on social media on Twitter where llenc Underscore podcast on Facebook, Instagram threads which I've been really derelict about posting on and discord. We're large Nerdron Collider. If you want to shoot us an email, We're large Nerdron Pod at gmail dot com. Yeah, and if you want to check out show notes, I will eventually have them up on our website. I'm really bad about getting those up in time, you know, like last week we didn't have a show because Dragoncom, but also I didn't post our LARP conversation notes until today. Anyhow, you can reach us all those ways. We love hearing from you. You know, if you've got suggestions for shows, we still have some suggestions that we want to get to. You know. We just we love goofing off with you, and uh, you know, uh we appreciate you. So I'm gonna stop, uh completely, just abloviating and sign off until next time. I've been Ariel. I haven't had to pick up my own badge in many, many years.
Caston and I am Jonathan. I'm not kidding. That's how registration works. Strickland The Large Nerdron Collider was created by Ariel Caston and produced, edited, published deleted, undeleted, published again. Curse That by Jonathan Strickland, music by Kevin McLeod of incomptech dot Com
