In the meantime, here’s people who talked about us that a quick and dirty Google search turned up:

• Janaiblog gave us a quick write-up in his Otakon coverage. Whoot.
• Out of Time Productions featured us (twice!) in their Otakon 2010 in Retrospect video. (watch us draw a penis on Ernie’s shirt – Eat your heart out, Ed Hardy.)
• And someone else beat us to getting our own shit up on our own youtube channel, so here’s our Spoiler presentation in 6 parts.

For now, sleepings.

Courtesy of: The Pants Are Optional Topic

We’re all for having fun, but honestly it seems like every year people come up with just crazy stuff that is NEVER going to be allowable in public or in polite company.

Just because you’re at a con, that doesn’t mean the rules of everyday life are completely suspended.

Okay … wait what? Is taking off your pants at a convention really that offensive? Is it really a rule of everyday life that you can’t take your pants off in a room with a bunch of people that say it is OK to? I understand their original argument, that the BCC had policies against that sort of thing. THAT makes total sense. However, is taking off your pants NEVER allowable in public or polite company. Geez I can remember a spoiler rehearsal we did totally pantsless, and everyone there seemed to be polite. I can also remember more than one comedian who has been known to take his pants off on stage.

So, is taking off your pants really past the limit of things that a convention will allow? This is a convention that allows girls to cosplay characters that wear next to nothing. Look at the Felicia cosplayers out there. Look at the Yoko (from Gurren Lagann) cosplayers. Geebus I can’t wait to see what girls decide to cosplay Makoto from BlazBlue. So female nudity is not offensive but male nudity is? Or perhaps they are just saying that nudity is OK if it is part of a costume but otherwise isn’t OK. It sure as hell can’t be a problem with being revealing, cause boxer shorts hide way more than these costumes do. Is it simply the case that it is only OK to take off your pants if you are attractive? That’s demeaning isn’t it?

Not to mention, I can think of PLENTY of things that should be way more offensive than some geeks sitting around in their underwear. The full frontal nudity shown in the hardcore hentai in hentai panels doesn’t count as more offensive? The extreme violence shown in the mature screenings doesn’t count as more offensive? Hell, the numerous amounts of trolls and no-shows in non 18+ panels don’t count as more offensive? Also, geez I can remember topless models in a “how to draw hentai” panel, and anime burlesques that were practically strip shows, and a dozen and one masquerade skits that end with someone pantsless. When did panels become a “pants only” zone?

Honestly, I just don’t get this morality. The idea was to just have a little fun and let the audience take off their pants “cause they can” because we were put into an 18+ slot and it soon erupted into something way more. I’m sure the Otakon staff looks down on us as “trying to cause trouble” now, but really all we wanted to do was have some consensual adult pantsless fun, and as soon as we were told not to, we said OK, but I get the feeling they are getting sick of the fact that we like to make waves, and would probably prefer to stick with someone “inside the box”. God forbid we do something more interesting than the flatly delivered cookie-cutter discussion panels everyone is used to. I guess I just have to be happy that we have such a strong fan following that has been built up over these years. It’s probably the only thing that lets us act the way we do.

All bureaucratic things with Otakon aside, what do YOU guys think? Is offering people a chance to take off their pants in a panel room really that offensive? Is it any more offensive than anything else you can see at a convention? What is the fan’s opinion on an 18+ panel being “pants optional”?

This sure has snowballed. I mean geez, we were kidding from the get go anyway … probably.

What really sucks is how hard it is get across that we really are trying to be professional about all this. All we really want to know are the policies that Otakon has about panels, and we aren’t trying to troll Otakon, or cause problems. Still, I can’t help but think the couple of issues we have had this year is starting to paint us as something of an undesirable element.

Anyway John Con was interesting. It was a small little affair, probably the smallest show we have ever done. It felt kind of like pre-gaming for Otakon considering that it was in the same area. There was something quaint about how small it was. Perhaps it was the fact that its small nature made it very flexible when all was said and done. DO XIII was basically able to walk right in and… do whatever they wanted, and that always makes for a cool convention.

Here is just some of the awesome we supplied Johncon with.

1. Brawl+
2. BlazBlue Continuum Shift
3. Magic the Gathering Cube Draft
4. Full Anime Room takeover with Durarara and Summer Wars
5. Fanfiction: From Mary Sue to Shakespeare
6. Spoiler
7. Broken Sky
8. Much Much More

However, the coolest thing was by far was the fan-fiction contest. We got six entries of pure, high-grade, mock-worthy fanfiction, and the judging was a hoot! Me, Rob, and Mike took point but everyone contributed. It was amazing, and we had people laughing on the floor. We would love to do this again. Not only was it majorly funny, but it gave good concrete examples of what NOT to do in fanfiction. Hopefully, we can strike a deal with some cons to let us do this again.

Anyway, it was a good, but exhausting weekend. Hopefully next time we will be set up in a hotel closer to the con.

I leave you, oh wonderful fans who may or may not like the Insane Clown Possie, with this image.

Hahaha, they are dropouts.

My first anime con was Shoujocon in 2001.  It was a small affair, and I was all pink and shiny and new to this anime thing, and I think I spent under $200 total for the entire trip.^[1] I followed that up the next year with another smallish con, Animazement, before going to my first Otakon.

It was huge!  The Baltimore Convention Center is somewhere you can actually get lost in for days, doing nothing but watching anime and checking out crazy costumes and meeting people you thought only existed on the internet and perhaps people you wanted to continue to exist only on the internet! ^[3] It was huge and amazing and I wanted to come again and again.^[4] And – dare I imagine it – maybe one day I would be cool enough to actually have a panel or draw a crowd and actually WORK Otakon.

Seven years later, I was privileged to be a part of Disorganization XIII’s magical Otakon presentation of Spoiler: the Panel: the Sequel: the Panel.  Whoot.

We left Thursday night, stopping only once at the Clara Barton^[5] rest stop on the drive down to our Ota-lodgings.  At said lodgings, NGLO and Baalesh invented the newest sleeping sensation, TeeterBed.  It’s an air mattress precariously balanced on top of a smaller air mattress.^[6] This was effective in not only keeping cats from scratching and deflating the air mattresses, but also making for exciting fun anytime someone had to roll over.  If you buy an official DO XIII TeeterBed now for the low, low price of $19.95, you get 3 free Sham-Wows!

Friday was the first day of attacking the con.  It’s been a few years since the last time I went to Otakon, and I had forgotten how massive it gets.  The lines!  YOU CAN’T BEGIN TO IMAGINE THE LINES.  They’re inside the building and around the building and I think wormholes are involved.  We were performing Spoiler: the Panel: the Sequel: the Panel that night, so our first course of action was to find our panel room, before it got too late and we were cold and hungry and lost and eaten by bears.  Otakon has expanded into the attached hotel, and our panel room was there.  We were worried – were we so far from the con that no one would come?  Would anyone be able to find us?  Part of our audience draw is that passerby hear laughter and pop in to see our show.  We were in Panel 6, which was the room farthest from the main convention area – you had to be determined to go to Panel 6, there was nothing else out there.  We worried that we had been relegated to a crap room, and then we looked inside.  Panel 6 was one of the largest panel rooms they had.

Oh.

The rest of the day went by in a blur.  We took pics of cosplayers, went to the Dealer’s Room, and ate at a Quiznos.  Felt a little let down that we were scheduled opposite of the “Philosophy of Bleach” panel, as I had hoped we could crash their party, since we’ve watched Bleach and have philosophers among us.  Felt better after hearing how the “Philosophy of Bleach” panel went down.  We saw Whose Line Is It Anime and what we could hear sounded funny.  We survived on granola bars and spite until 8:15pm EST.  We got on stage, I plugged my laptop into the projector and fired it up, and everything worked perfectly!  The audience who had already collected booed my RPattz desktop wallpaper when it came up on the screen. ^[7] But we were ahead of schedule!  And things worked!  HUZZAH!!!

Show went well and everyone who came out to see us was awesome.  Thank you, everyone!  Without you, we are just four nerds saying funny things to ourselves,^[8] and hell, we do that in the living room every week already.^[9] And thank you to everyone who came up and said hello after the show!^[10] We had one woman who came up and complained about a joke we had made.  She started by saying, “I thought you were funny, but the one joke of yours that I thought crossed the line was…” No, I won’t tell you what joke it was.  Try to figure it out!  Make a game!  Here’s a hint: it was definitely something I in no way expected anyone to ever complain about.

Saturday we woke up early, but not earlier than NGLO, for Anime Parlaiment, which was fabulous and just as good as caffeine at 8am.  We wandered about the con more, and ventured into the Artists Alley, where I unexpectedly spent a lot of money.  I couldn’t help it – people had cute magnets of kitties and jewelry made of dice and posters of the bands from Nana!  Eeee!  Sometimes I think about hunkering down with my crafting and creating a bunch of stuff and selling it in the Artists’ Alley at a con.  But then I get distracted by tin foil or vikings and my own personal laziness kicks in.  Maybe someday y’all will be lucky enough to have your own personal arts and crafts by me.  SOMEDAY.

Saturday afternoon featured Anime Press Your Luck led by Brian and Koshi, which went awesomely.  Had some lunchdinner at the Nest, and then back to the con for Video Games that Push Our Buttons. Video Rooms: Diebuster, Fan Parodies, then OMG WTF it’s 2am and we’ve been here since 8am time for go to bed.

Sunday we didn’t even go to the con.  We stayed in and slept in our own filth and played games with the friends who were gracious enough to let us crash at their apartment for the weekend.  On the way home, we stopped at almost every rest stop so that we could mark our territory along the Eastern Seaboard. Or because we drank a lot of soda, whichever.

In the end, Otakon is like Otaku Mecca and it is glorious.  For three days, I got to be around some of my favorite people and got to forget that sometimes in the world, I have to describe my fandom as, “*sigh* Anime.  You know.  …Pokemon,” and if I had ever gone through with getting that Trigun tattoo, I would not be judged here.  I definitely had a religious experience. ^[12]

———–

^[1] To be honest, the only anime I was really into were Sailor Moon and Tenchi.  I did say I was pink and shiny and new.  Also, at the time, I didn’t know much about the items that would eventually become my main money-suck, doujinshi.  What I did think about doujinshi was that they were *gasp!* ...dirty books. Why would I want to buy those?^[2]

^[2] So remind me to tell you sometime about the doujinshi I have where Wolfwood is a prostitute and Vash, Meryl, and Milly all have sex with him for money.

^[3] And find a shower!

^[4] That’s what she said.

^[5] I think Clara Barton is the woman who marries Doc Brown in Back to the Future 3.  Surely some sort of awesome time-travel-related adventure must’ve taken place here for New Jersey to name a rest stop after her.

^[6] And then you put a pea under the smaller mattress.  Also learned on this trip: NGLO and Baalesh are not secretly princesses, and pea is just terrible to clean out of carpet.

^[7] Really? REALLY? And I don’t like to break this one out for just anything, but if you remain unconvinced, HERE.

^[8] Please come see us do Spoiler 3: [insert title here] at NYAF 2009 and Anime USA 2009!

^[9] You are not invited to come see Spoiler 3: [insert title here] in Kirk and Casey’s Living Room 2009.

^[10] Like the girl who came up and thanked me for doing Lupin III!  Thank you for liking the show!  I’m sorry I didn’t get to say much else, but I was trying to get my stuff together and my friend and I were gonna grab a drink and I had 15 things I was trying to process in addition to my natural inability to talk to new people and personal shynesss, ^[11] but you rocked!

^[11] It’s hard for shy people to do Spoiler in front of a massive audience.  Know that I stay calm by picturing all of you naked.

^[12] If you, like me, define “religious experience” as, “They took all my money and now I feel ashamed and a little dirty,” that is.