Here are the Johncon detials, with a bit of our own spice added in.

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JohnCon 2010 takes place on April 16th through 18th. There will be a video game room as well as tabletop gaming, Anime, and plenty of other nerdy activities. There will also be a vendor area and Artist Alley in the Glass Pavilion, with tables available for free. To register for a table, please contact Corrine Warren by email at corinneewarren@gmail.com or by phone at 203-414-5888.

General Convention Hours

Friday, April 16th 5pm – Sunday, April 18th 3pm
Video Game Room Confirmed Games

* Rock Band
* DDR
* Super Smash Bros. (Original, Melee, and Brawl)
* Street Fighter
* Disorganization XIII will be bringing Brawl+, the far superior fan patch to Brawl, and BlazBlue … a very special version of BlazBlue

Major Events

* Friday 5pm-6pm, Tabletop Gaming Room: Opening Ceremonies
* Friday 6pm-8pm, Anime Room: Panel by Dr. John Cmar of Sinai Hospital of Baltimore on “H1N1/influenza, issues surrounding the virus itself, media communication, and vaccines”
* Friday 8pm-10pm, Anime Room: Dr. Laura Burns (Dr. Cmar’s wife) will speak about her experience working for the Space Telescope Science Institute and the new James Webb Space Telescope
* Saturday 2pm-4pm, Anime Room: Disorganization XIII Fanfiction Panel (The panel is called Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare)
* Saturday 10pm-12am, Anime Room: Disorganization XIII Spoilers Panel (The panel is called Spoiler: The Panel 3)
* Sunday 12am-3am, Anime Room: Hentai
* Sunday 1pm-3pm, Anime Room: Disorganization XIII Fanfiction Contest Winners Announced (Actually, it’s more like fanfiction contest losers announced. No one actually wins in a fanfiction contest.)

Video Game Room Hours

Friday: 5pm-3am
Saturday: 10am-3am
Sunday: 10am-3pm

Artist Alley/Vending Hours

Friday: 5pm-9pm
Saturday: 10am-9pm
Sunday: 10am-3pm
Registration

Friday: 5pm-10pm
Saturday: 10am-9pm
Sunday: n/a

Other Features and Events:

* 24-hour tabletop gaming (Disorganization XIII members will be running games)
* 24-hour Anime room (Disorganization XIII members will be breaking your brain with anime you haven’t seen and probably should never see)
* 24-hour movie screenings
* Magic: The Gathering tournament
* LARP (Live Action Role Playing)
* Science fiction library

So yeah … it’s gonna be fun.

I was a busy bee this past weekend, and created an official Disorganization XIII Flickr page! (LOOK AT IT. GO.) There’s over a thousand photos there of our adventures at cons since 2008.  If you were a cosplayer, feel free to go and tag yourself or something, because while I’m driven enough to download all the pics and then upload them to Flickr, I am not driven enough to go through every one and caption them yet.

OH NOES IT’S LAMPSHADE HEAD (All this and more, kids, when you visit our Flickr page.)

So JohnCon, over at Johns Hopkins University was nice enough to invite us over to perform for them in our usual screwed up way. So, through the goodness of our hearts (and not at all due to the fact that they are paying us a nice speaking fee) we will be performing both Spoiler: The Panel 3, and Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare at the convention.

Not only that but the convention doubles as a gaming convention of all varieties. So beyond Anime being played in what I am assured is a humongous theater, there will also be videogames played in, what I am assured is a humongous theater (BlazBlue FTW!) Videogames played on a theater screen? Kickass!

Of course when we say gaming we also mean roleplaying, card gaming, and other tabletop affairs of which we are assured there are a shit-ton of. In fact, we were assured this so much that we, ourselves will be running games there! So aside from our panels, be on the lookout for Disorganization XIII productions of Toon, Don’t Rest Your Head, and the Infinity Games Homebrew Production of Broken Sky. Come on, you know you want us to GM for you. You certainly won’t be eaten by a grue!

But perhaps the coolest thing about this convention is that it runs 24/7 (well, 24/3 considering its just one weekend). Yes, all day and all night its non stop anime, gaming, and other cool shit. That’s phenomenal. That’s way more geekery than even some of the big conventions can brag about.

JohnCon is going down the weekend of April 16th-18th. They are expecting a big turnout guys, so let’s give it to them. Check out these sites for more info.

Baltimore Gamer

*sigh* Some day people will learn how to list our panels right.

SPOILER AND FAN-FICTION ARE TWO SEPARATE PANELS CON-STAFF!!!

Geez…

All the other Narita Ryohgo fans out there are on this already, but if you somehow missed Baccano! back in ought-seven then let this be your introduction to anime so awesome that exclamation points are compulsory!  Baccano! was proof that you could have a story about immortals over the course of three years that flows like hot grease, and Durarara! is what we all wanted Persona: Trinity Soul to be.  Brain’s Base does the animation again, and they have Baccano! and Spice and Wolf references in the first episode so we don’t forget.  The animation quality makes those of us watching anime in the 90s weep.  GG is all done with Trapeze and they’ve taken on Durarara!, so you know the fansubs are quality.  Download it off Animesuki now!

Be sure to catch our panels this year.

The Disorganization XIII RPG Panel Now With Chairs — Friday 4:00 – 5:30
Anime Press Your Luck — Friday 5:30 – 7:00
Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare — Saturday 5:30 – 7:00
Spoiler: The Panel 3 — Saturday 7:00 – 8:30
Spoiler: The Aftershow — Saturday 8:30 – 10:00

As well as honorary member Adam Hennesy’s production of…

Anime Parliament — Friday 10:00 – 11:30
Anime Parliament: After Dark — Friday (Saturday) 1:00 AM – 2:30 AM

See you there!

Disorganization XIII will next be appearing at Anime USA, November 20-22, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency, Crystal City Arlington, Virginia.

Couple things about this convention.

1. It is where we got our start. DOXIII first skyrocketed to popularity over a Kingdom Hearts panel given at this convention.

2. We used to consider it our home convention, and then NYAF came around and was… well… closer to home, and waaaay more cooperative. We still consider AUSA a bit of a home base of operations though, and we try to always have totally new stuff for it.

3. It is a small convention, but it is our favorite convention. From gaming, to panels, to programming, they just do everything right. It feels like for one glorious weekend you are transported to a work of geekery and that is how a convention should feel.

So in short, I guess I am telling all Disorganization XIII fans to check this convention out! You will be so happy you did! Check the webstie at www.animeusa.org. They will appreciate it.

As for what we will be doing there.

1. We will be in the opening ceremonies. Sweet!

2. We will be doing our full run of The Disorganization XIII RPG Panel Now With Chairs, Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare, and of course Spoiler: The Panel Part 3.

3. We will also be doing our Disorganization XIII game show Anime Press Your Luck, with new host Scott Kasliner!

4. Friend and honorary DO XIII member Adam Hennessy will be doing not one but two panels of Anime Parliament, which is probably our favorite panel in the world. Expect us to be there with a list of cases to debate!

5. Of course, someone is probably going to flake on their panel, and if they do, we here at DO XIII will be there to pick up the slack.

6. With any luck, we will be bringing a copy of Brawl+ “Screw That, I Want Fun Speed Activate” to the gaming room!

So check it out guys! We hope to see you there!

The plot looks like it’ll take place somewhere mid-series, since it stars Vash, Meryl, Milly, and Wolfwood. (OMG SPOYLERZ).  And there’s a bigtime robber named Gasback (ah, Trigun names) and a female bounty hunter named Ameria (not gonna lie – I hope someone writes pr0nfic with her in it and titles it “In Ameria”.)

Here’s the trailer. Exciting!

Click here to view the embedded video.

(P.S. Seriously they will appreciate the traffic. Right now UFC articles are beating out anime and video game reviews! Show them what geek solidarity can do!)

(P.P.S. Haha I said Pee Pee)

(P. P. P. S. We will post some convention reviews here)

Anyway, let’s have a small recap. Yesterday I told you guys about how we ended up accidentally running Why Anime and Hip Hop Hearts Anime. Well today, lucky enough, we did not have to run any other panels. Of course we already had three scheduled, so it wasn’t like we had any less work. The day started, as most days do, with Fan Fiction, in specific it is a panel we did called Fan Fiction: Mary Sue to Shapespeare. We filled that room quite comfortably, and the audience was more than awesome. Everyone had a serious interest in in the material and they really kept the whole thing flowing. Unfortunately, one of the volunteers there cut us off early by screaming “you’re done” from the back of the panel room. Even though I addressed the audience who said they wanted to see us fill the rest of the time, and even though the rest of the staff agreed with this notion, she still forced us off the stage.

The next few minutes were spent talking to assorted volunteers in an attempt to get to the bottom of this. Luckily, staff at NYAF totally kicks ass! The volunteers went to get someone right away and soon I was talking with Kim Mueller, the nicest programming coordinator at any anime convention I think I have ever met. They assured us this was a big misunderstanding and that what she did was totally inappropriate, especially after we saved 2 panels yesterday. We have been doing NYAF ever since its conception and all of us wanted to keep coming, so it was nice to know that the upper levels of staff gave as much of a damn as we did. I’m sure fans went home disappointed that the Fanfiction panel was cut short, but I assure you it won’t happen again.

We were approached by lots of different people for interviews and soundbites, which was totally awesome. We have been in the professional panel game for a while now, but it always jazzes us when people take notice and ask us to appear on film or in an interview. Most of the time was spent talking with Will Robertson from AnimeLoveU. We talked about a lot of different stuff, including our philosophies, our past convention experiences, the message we try to get across in our panels, and lots more. In fact I feel a little bad because he asked four questions and we talked for about an hour, which really says something about how much we like the sound of our own voice. However, he told us we simply answered all of the questions he was going to ask before he got a chance to answer them. He was a cool guy, you should check out his site, AnimeLoveU.com.

A good portion of time was then spent trying to get the skinny on industry panels. You see, I was also tweeting for 30ninjas.com, my day job, and probably the coolest people in the action world (shameless self promotion). However, since I was spending so much time PERFORMING panels, I had much less time to actually go to them. I have more than enough to do an info round up within the next few days, but it kind of sucked that I couldn’t be there first hand more. Still though, the Bayonetta playable demo was awesome, and there are a lot of upcoming anime releases that I think you will all like, but you’ll have to read my article on 30ninjas for that.

After I successfully made the wrong decision in not having lunch or drinking any water before the next panel, I hurried over with Brian “Sonic Whammy” Sapinski to the panel room again to put on Anime Press Your Luck. For those of you who don’t know, this is in fact a full game show production of the classic Press Your Luck, except it’s Anime themed. Long story short, it is awesome. Before the panel he had his friend rob trying to talk people up and get them excited, and wrangle in a bunch of Whammy cosplayers. He did an OK job but he was noticeably falling flat with the crowd. I decided to step up and give them a hand with my corny announcer voice and it went over pretty well … that is until Koshi realized that he hadn’t practiced with the program AT ALL! I’m totally taking Brian’s side on this one, Koshi had no frackin clue what he was doing up there and half the time was spent with Brian telling him what to do, or covering up for their unfortunate programming errors. In fact at one point someone’s score was NON! That’s not even a number!

Still tough they MORE than packed house. Every seat was taken, there was a decently big crowd waiting to come in, and overall everyone stayed till the end. They worked through their errors quickly and they really kept the crowd enthralled. Also they hit their middle mark when it came to questions. Some questions were easy, some were hard, and some were just right and we had a multitude of different spin totals that really kept the game interesting. Anime Press Your Luck just keeps getting better and I can’t wait for it to continue at other cons as the years go on.

APYL ran a little long, and for a while I was wondering why staff was panicking so much about going over time. Then I checked outside the panel to see a huge unruly mob waiting to come in to our biggest panel of the night Spoiler: The Panel Part 3. I don’t even mean a long line, I mean a mob, a CROWD of people pushing and shoving and practically injuring each other to get into our panel. Hell one guy was screaming something about his ribs, and although this sounds kind of horrible, the idea that a guy could have gotten injured simply due to enormous fan turnout makes me a little giddy. Still I hope he is OK though.

We start up spoiler with … minor technical difficulties. The sound isn’t all that good and the staff couldn’t figure out how to turn up the gain. No problemo though, we still hit a decent stride going in, and people were laughing hysterically. A couple of us flubbed some bits and we got… weird varieties of laughs, but hey, people laughed at a comedy panel, and overall that is what we are going for. My parents showed up to support me, and hey what can I say, that brought a smile to my face. I was actually quite nervous considering they were coming in to a panel where we made jokes about stepping on my genitalia and furries, but they seemed genuinely amused. When I came home later that night, they told me they thought I was awesome even if they didn’t understand me. Now that, that was pretty cool.

Spoiler went down great and we only had enough time for a little bonus material but whatev. We got most of it on tape, and everyone had a good time. Now more than ever I am aware that Spoiler really can’t be confined to an hour. Even with a good start we ended up hitting the hour mark halfway through the panel and we needed more time just to finish up. Perhaps we are always fated to go over, but hell if the fans want to see more of us we will give them what they want. I also want to give a gigantic thank you to all of NYAF staff, specifically Kim Mueller and Pete Tatara (hah remember when we met back when I was interviewing for that position Pete? Well look at me now ^_^). They are two of the coolest people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. They gave us a long time slot, were great with making sure our technical needs were met, were flexible with us running long, and overall are just nice people. Thanks for being eleven flavors of awesome guys, you rock.

There is still way more we want to say about NYAF. We will eventually talk about the other panels we saw, the dealers room, the WCG, the tabletop area, and lots of other stuff that I assure you we have opinions on. All of our members have amusing anecdotes and rants about the convention, and you will hear them all in due time. However, for now I need to shower, and sleep off my massive bout of con fatigue. I hope you liked us this year NYAF and we will see you next year with spoiler 4, and plenty of other panels to bring the insanity and spread the chaos.

P.S. Go go curry is our normal place to eat after NYAF, but today we went to a random Mexican restaurant, and it was awesome! I totally want to go there again but I can’t even remember its name.