WonderCon 2012 Report with MiraiBaby

Hello and welcome to GeekCaster Radio. This is

a special episode starring the brand new GCRnZone

con girl, Mirai Baby. Hello. Hi -yo! And I am

of course DFJ and Mike. And basically what con

girl is going to be is Mirai Baby has not offered,

I actually enlisted her to do this. She's going

to multiple conventions throughout 2012. She's

going to BotCon, she's going to, you're going

to Slyacon aren't you? Uh, no, not Slagacon.

I'm going to, um, SavCon. Oh, Sav, okay, Sav,

that's Sav, Slag, it's all the same. Yeah, it's

a new convention out in Savannah, Georgia. Right.

Uh, she's going to BotCon, she's going to SavCon,

she goes to San Diego Comic Con every year. Um,

so, for us to have some sort of convention coverage,

what she's going to be doing is, uh, at each

of these conventions, she's going to... take

as many notes as she possibly can. And then afterwards,

when she gets back from the conventions, we'll

record one of these episodes where she kind of

breaks down her experience at these conventions.

And this past weekend, she spent two days in

Anaheim at WonderCon 2012. That I did. Yes, you

did. So... Was this your first time at WonderCon?

Yeah, it was. Usually WonderCon is stationed

up in San Francisco, and living down here in

San Diego, that's like a seven hour drive. So

I'm not entirely sure why it ended up down here

in Anaheim, but I jumped on the opportunity.

I always go to Comic Con, it's run by the same

exact people, so I figured it'd be around the

same exact kind of show. Right. It was a lot

of fun. Lot like it was a lot like comic -con

which you know I mean run by the same people

that's kind of expected But all in all I did

have a lot of fun. I hope that it stays in Anaheim

though. It probably won't Yeah Yeah All right,

so you were there what Friday and Saturday this

past weekend? Yeah, I was I had to work in the

morning, so I didn't get to leave until Right

about three o 'clock in the afternoon and then

So by the time I got up there was like six and

the hall closed at seven So I didn't actually

get to do anything on Friday Other than meet

up with a friend of mine that I was staying at

her house and then Saturday was my big day Okay,

so walk us through what happened on Saturday

then um Saturday was Interesting It's always

interesting. Saturdays are usually the big days

of the convention. If you go to Comic Con, if

you go to Bot Con, any of those days. Usually

Saturdays are the big days for cosplayers, for

the big panels, for big names to be at these

conventions. So the hall was pretty packed for

a Saturday. It was what I understand from one

of my friends. was that it wasn't all that terribly

busy on Friday, but then because of Saturday,

I guess, you know, everybody's out of school,

nobody's in work, they all go, hey, let's go

to WonderCon, and then they all show up. The

hall was nowhere near as packed as Comic Con

because it was so much smaller. Right. But yet

it was still relatively packed. I mean, I wasn't

being sandwiched between a couple of stinky dudes

the whole time. It was it was quite airy and

open and the hallways between the booths were

were fairly large Which is always a welcoming

relief Yeah, especially when I'm trying to get

away from people Now how did the what kind of

feel did wonder con portray to you as far as

like Were there many rude people? Were there

too many people where you're just elbowing everybody

to get out of your way? What was the overall

feel of Saturday? To be honest, as far as I understand,

the entirety of WonderCon is a very laid -back

convention. It runs a lot like Comic -Con does,

but there isn't that much to see. I mean, Comic

-Con is... is a mile of convention stuff in that

exhibit hall. For San Diego Comic -Con it's huge.

But this was nowhere near as big and generally

if I stood in the middle I could see everything.

So there was no real big rush to go and get something

or to go and see something. There were always

panels going on no matter what you did. So you

couldn't see everything, but there was no real

big feel of, Oh my God, I have to be here in

like five minutes. I'm going to be late. I won't

get into this panel because I didn't line up

an hour ahead of time, you know, things like

that. Yeah. Yeah. So what kind of stuff did you

see on Saturday? There wasn't all that much for

me as, as a Transformers fan or as like a fan

of many things, because it was more centered

around Marvel comics and cartoons that I didn't

necessarily watch. Right. So like I enjoyed what

I got out of it, but generally I saw mostly hung

around the IDW booth because one of my friends

was working there. So. I entertained her, she

entertained me as we just kind of hung around

and she helped people out. Occasionally I'd wander

away and go check out some booths and buy some

meaningless toy that I didn't need. So what were

some of the meaningless toys you bought that

you didn't need? Oh my god. I bought a set of

drinking glasses that they only sold in Japan.

And their little Transformers animated glasses

with Bumblebee and Optimus Prime on them. Little

chibi style. Yeah. They're the only ones that

they ever made with those two characters. And

dude was like, yeah, whatever. You know, have

them. I'm like, OK. So I bought those ones. Toy

Arena was there, which kind of surprised me,

but made me happy at the same time, because they

had third party toys, which BotCon is not going

to have. But that's a totally different conversation.

I have now a Rosanna perfect effect. I think

she's 09. Ninja. Yeah, PEO9 Ninja in my in my

possession, which makes me a happy camper because

I've kind of been wanting. I wanted her last

year and never got her. So I was pleased to finally

pick her up now. I bought a couple of My Little

Pony t -shirts. from this one awesome store that

also has a huge selection online called WeLoveFine

.com but mostly I wanted the bag that they were

giving away and you could only get the bag if

you bought something from them and it's this

gigantic steampunk Rainbow Dash bag. That's the

only reason I bought two shirts, I got three

bags. Wow. Oh, that's funny. You told me a story

off -air about a douchebag. Do you want to tell

the douchebag story? If this guy's at BotCon,

I'm gonna cry, but this I wandered over to a

booth just to kind of check it out and I noticed

they did a bunch of toys laid out and I was like

I looked through the box of toys and figure out

what heís got and tucked in the back of his booth

is this setup of these 1984 Transformers. He

had tracks and jazz and a Prowl and it was original

1984 and he had a bunch of little mini bots.

So I pick up this little tiny mini bot Cosmos

to kind of mess around with him and play with

him and I was going to buy him. I wanted to transform

him just to make sure that he wasn't broken and

make sure that everything looked to be there.

It was just a mini -bot. Hey, they're not hard

to transform. I'm kind of fiddling with it and

dude taps me on the shoulder and was just like,

ìOh, don't do that. I've already had someone

who's broken one of my toys by transforming them

.î I'm like, ìOkay, sorry .î I was working on

then transforming him back and I was being gentle

about it and I know how to transform cosmos I've

done it before and The dude just like snatched

him out of my hand and went I'll do it and walked

away and I was like, okay You know what? You

can have your damn toy cuz you obviously don't

need my money anyway so I Did not purchase anything

from his table and I really wanted that cosmos

but dude was mean so he didn't get my money Why

does there have to be douchebags at conventions?

That's just the way that it works. They think

hey, they have they have the thing you want so

they can be dicks to you and Try and get money

from you, even though they're being a dick to

you, and it's like okay never mind I'm gonna

take my business Yeah, that's kind of nuts I

I know you said you didn't attend any panels,

but just looking over the guest list for WonderCon

this year, they had comic book writers Marv Wolfman,

Mark Wade, J. Michael Straczynski. Let's see,

who else do I recognize off here? Mike Mignola,

Jim Lee, Mark Avenir, who's an animation writer.

Very, very awesome. Will Wheaton was there. Greg

Berger was there too, wasn't he? Yeah, he was.

He was at a table and I said hi to him. And then

he looked at me funny because he didn't recognize

me. Oops. Yeah, well, hey, I'm not at all expecting

him to remember me. I'm just, hi, Greg. And then

he looked at me like I was crazy. And he's like,

you need to remind me where you saw me from.

And then I rattled off all the places that I

saw him at. And he's like, OK, I kind of recognize

your eyes. I'm like, oh, that's a plus. Oh, that's

funny. I've seen him every single year for the

past five years. It's totally fine that he doesn't

remember me though, because of all the people

he meets. I'm not not at all hurt by it. Oh yeah,

I mean, you know, millions upon millions of people

meet Vermlock every year or so. I'm not at all

but hurt by the fact that he doesn't remember

me. No. One thing people need to know about Mariah

is she's huge into plushies. Yes. And she has

a plushie that S. Chung made her. Moosha168 on

Twitter. Skywarp. And it seems to me that Skywarp

was more excited to see the convention stuff

than you were. He was! He is two and one quarters

years old now. since I bought him from, since

I adopted him from Moosha. And this is his very

first convention. I feel really bad because for

the past like two years since I've had him, I've

left him at home during bot cons. I was totally

going to bring him to 2011 bot con and then he

was on my couch when I left the house and I didn't

notice that he was missing until we were halfway

up there. So I didn't, I wasn't able to turn

around and go get him. Right, right. No, he enjoyed

it though. What else do you have to report for

WonderCon? One of the things that I that I'm

actually kind of happy about was the the Nintendo

booth was there Nintendo and Pokemon usually

have a very strong presence at Comic -Con for

the past few I mean for the past few years Nintendo

has dropped off the map and it's just been Pokemon

I was super happy to see a Nintendo 3ds booth

at WonderCon because that just generally doesn't

happen anymore with the with for whatever reason

for San Diego Comic Con just doesn't not really

seen all that well. Yeah. There was a big like

like card card table area, I guess, for like

tabletop gaming. Oh, cool. I never I never checked

it out, but I saw them. They were like I passed

by them a couple of times like they were like

rattling off names and giving out prizes and

stuff. So must have been for one of the tournaments

they were having. But yeah, that was kind of

cool. I never actually. Popped in there though

because the tabletop gaining doesn't really interest

me. Yeah, very cool. Very cool Were there any

costumers up there? There were quite a lot of

costumers. Actually, the one that caught my attention

was my friend and I were going to get lunch and

we were walking into Anaheim Convention Center

has it's like right next to this food food court

itself isn't all that big but the one that really

caught my attention was poor old dude in what

looked like half of Optimus Prime. He's got his

chest, the head, the arms, and dude is just like

walking with them out of the food court. Scared

the crap out of both my friend and I. We just

like kind of freaked out about him because he

was like coming at us. I had the most fun watching

the poor guy duck and crouch down and like try

to waddle through the doorway because he was

so tall. And then later on we saw him in in costume,

like fully in costume. I've got a few pictures

of him. He's I want to say probably about eight

feet tall. Wow. Pretty pretty tall, very large

movie Optimus Prime. He lit up his his his optics

lit up. And I'm assuming that that he probably

had some sort of strut hooked up to his head,

like from the Optimus Prime head to his head,

because Optimus Prime would turn his head sometimes.

Oh, that's very cool. That's that's very unique

for a costume. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's especially

very intricate, especially for a tall costume

like that. Yeah, that's a little harder to accomplish.

And would you say it was a good experience? I

felt it was a fantastic experience, except for

whatever the hell reason. When WonderCon came

down here, it also brought San Francisco rain.

So we have been having this horrible rainy storm

the last like three to four days now. Yeah It

was very rainy and wet and I was going to wear

half of The costume I'm working on now because

I just wanted to give it a test run But I was

nervous because of all the water and really didn't

want to get him wet. So I decided against that

idea But that's okay because I'll be able to

test him out at Bakon. Oh, yeah If you can finish

him in time, I will I know I don't have a lot

of time left I have 20 days to complete him and

I'm not happy so Essentially what Mariah as I

said earlier what she's gonna be doing as as

our con girl for geek cast radio network She's

going to be reporting in and you know she only

get to go to one day to wonder con so the future

episodes of of con girl will will be probably

very lengthier very more more lengthy as as we

go along especially with bot con and sdcc i have

a feeling that sdcc is going to be fantastically

gigantic let's hope so and yeah y 'all might

want to start planning your snacks now because

i think it's going to be a long one So yes, for

the GeekCast Radio Network, I am TF2 and Mike

and you are? Narai Baby. And this has been GCRN's

Con Girl. I'm sure we'll come up with a better

title at some point, I don't know. And we will

catch you probably after BotCon. Late April,

early May is when the next episode of Con Girl

will be, so. Mm -hmm. Yep. We will see you then.

See ya. I cannot believe Ratchet capable of such

horrors. Yes, and I think the Doctor of Doom's

mad quest for power continues.