Pokes and Cons
Well, it's only about three weeks late, no big deal. Time to talk about the panels.
The convention's basic premise was that it was "a convention for anime fans for anything but anime," meaning for anime kids who wanted to branch out or stimulate other interests without sacrificing in-jokes and intimacy of the people they've grown to know through cons.
ACP hosted four panels throughout the weekend:
"Introduction to Critical Film Analysis: You Have An Opinion, Now What?"
"Star Trek and Feminism"
"The Necessary Use of Loss In Gaming"
"Homestuck"
...or something like that. I really should have written this when it happened. Miss Davis also collaborated with a TRON panel, and that was probably one of the better received ones.
Originally, I had planned on only participating in one panel and helping out with all the others, but I ended up working on three due to other ACP staff members dropping out of the con or arriving late. This meant I had one panel that was particularly polished, with a slide show and everything, and two that were heavily BSed but ultimately went pretty well.
The biggest BS of the night was by far the Homestuck one, whose name was cryptically vague for one reason: I have never once read Homestuck in my life. Originally, another one of my writers planned on leading that one, but the schedules got pushed all around and she ultimately couldn't make it. And, as luck would have it, this was the highest attended panel we had all weekend. But, not wanting to give up too early, I sat everyone down and led with this:
"Okay. It's Saturday night. 10 p.m. You've all heard a ton of panels by this point, and your weekend is almost over. If I were in your shoes, then by now I'd be tired of people I don't know telling me what to think about my favorite things. So, instead of having one more of those, we decided to have an audience-driven dialogue where we throw out some discussion starters, then sit back and moderate."
This, surprisingly, went really well. We actually went well over our allotted time, and had to be kicked out by the next panel. Afterwards, I had two guys come up to me and thank me, saying this was a great idea and it meant a lot to get their opinions out. That, I'd say, meant it went pretty well.
Little did I know until I got there, but there was actually a pokemon tournament going on that weekend. The players would face off against Gym Leaders, hiding throughout the con, and only those who beat eight of them (I think I heard there were twelve in total?) could play in the big tournament Sunday morning. It was basically VGC rules, only singles instead of doubles (though I discovered many gym leaders had their own rules), so I threw together a quickly BSed team from goodstuffs I had used in Magma tournaments all preseason. It went like this:
Tornadus
Politoed
Toxicroak
Zapdos
Scizor
Ludicolo
For the most part, I didn't really put a lot of thought into this team because my priority was the panels - and it showed, since I turned down battling a few just to get to all five panels in time. But I've used all of these pokemon this season, and with exception to Scizor I've used all of these in a previous VGC, so I had a somewhat intimate affinity for all of these. This is also the first team I can remember constructing that had something from every generation, which was also kind of cool.
Here's a basic summary of the gym leaders I faced:
1. Charlie, the Water Gym Leader: A known VGCer who qualified for the National Championship in 2009. He gave me a run for my money, running a fellow rain team in Single Flat Battle rules. This was a furious prediction war from the get go, as any sort of set up/sweep combinations were thwarted by the fact that both of us got what we wanted from rain and had nothing to turn the rain off.
2. Ricky, the "fake Dragon" Gym Leader: A team consisting of all those dragon pokemon that aren't Dragon Type: Aerodactyl, Gyarados, Charizard, to name a few, and then Emboar for some reason. I asked him about that one, and he just sort of said "Because I really fucking love Emboar, that's why." This guy greatly intimidated me for two reasons, so I didn't really push the matter. The first reason was that he was well over two hundred and fifty pounds, mostly muscle, and the other reason was that he was playing in a Street Fighter tournament during our battle, selecting his moves with his elbow on the touch screen while his hands controlled an Arcade-Stick controller for the 360. I was a little ashamed to admit that this battle was remarkably close given how little attention he was paying to me. He won the Street Fighter tournament, from what I remember - or he at least didn't lose the entire time we were playing.
3. Ben, the Rock Gym Leader: This guy challenged me to a six on six battle, singles with no restrictions, which put my team at a significant disadvantage because only three of them were level 100, the rest were 50s due to the originally intended "Flat Battle" rules (which autolevel). Fortunately, Politoed and Ludicolo were level 100, so I pretty much used the level 50s as meat shields whenever he switched to Tyranitar to get the weather back. Politoed killed five of the six, and Ludicolo killed one. Scizor took a lot of hits like a champ and almost killed Tyranitar, so that was good enough for me.
4. Jon, the Grass Gym Leader: The only VGC doubles rules in the Gym Leader rounds. At first I thought "Alright, I have two pokemon and can really do my normal strategies now!" But then I remembered that this was an all grass team, and that he had Parasect, Breloom, and Amoonguss - all Spore users. This was the trolliest troll that ever trolled, and I barely squeaked by this one.
5. Kristen, the "real Dragon" Gym Leader: Multiscale Dragonite, Dragon Gem Draco Meteor Hydreigon, and Swift Swim Kingdra. Kingdra was probably the biggest problem here because it also exploited rain and I didn't quite have any dragon moves to shut it down, though all of this was kind of a headache. I won with my final pokemon having 1 HP, and not because of Focus Sash.
6. Kurt, the Dark Gym Leader: This guy was a pain in the ass to track down. When you saw him in the hallway, he would actually run away. Friday night, around 2:00 a.m., I found him at the bar, and he said "Nothing good happens after 2:00 a.m., and I am stumbling drunk. If you have any honor to your name, you will fight me at another time." Deciding I wanted to do the honorable thing (and because he quoted HIMYM), I decided to leave him alone. The next day, he walked by Nathan's panel about six times while I was sitting and watching it, which was a little torturous. I finally snapped and chased him down the hall again as soon as Nathan's panel ended, challenging him in front of a panel he was leading. Scizor and Zapdos made quick work of everyone on the team. He never saw my third pokemon.
7. Drakie, the Electric Gym Leader: This gym terrified me conceptually given my rain team, and sure enough a few of them had Thunder (100% accurate in the rain). I led Zapdos against his Zapdos and, predicting the Zebstrika Lightning Rod switch, I Heat Waved to get him down. Zebstrika went down a turn later, and I swapped in Politoed. Wacan meant it lived longer than Drakie planned, so I got a few hits in before Ludicolo finished the team off slowly with Leech Seed/Giga Drain/Leftovers/Rain Dish.
8. Nicole, the Poison Gym Leader: I was supposed to fight the Psychic gym last, but given my panel schedule I never actually got a chance to battle the guy (Calm Mind Soul Dew Latias is something I didn't really care to deal with anyway). The Poison Gym Leader spammed entry hazards and Toxic, so I pretty much resorted to setting up rain and then never looking back after the sweep. I ran Politoed/Zapdos/Thundurus, since after rain set up I could just spam 100% accurate Hurricane and Thunder and get the most damage per turn possible. Any switching would have just wasted time and precious energy.
Following the Gym Leaders, I faced off in the actual tournament Sunday morning. As everything went back to Doubles, I was far more in my element and the last few battles were a bit of a blur. All I remember is that the finals match had a Speed Boost Blaziken and some sort of Skuntank strategy he had supposedly used against most of the gym leaders. The guy was particularly arrogant and not kind to the other trainers, so I didn't really talk to him much. I won in a Sudden Death match (tied with him in the finals due to four fully paralyzed turns in a row when I just had to finish off his last pokemon).
My prizes consisted of a convention t-shirt, a pint glass with the con's name on it, and free pass and hotel to the next anime con they were hosting (an actual anime con). Since I didn't really have interest in going, I took the shirt and pint glass, and gave the free trip to the guy who won 3rd. The 2nd place guy complained, and I told the staff that, as the winner, I chose to delegate my prize to the person who was the better sport. 3rd place guy loved me, 2nd place guy hated me.
3rd place guy informed me that he and 2nd place guy cheated and used different pokemon for each gym leader, making me the only one in the top three who not only never lost a gym leader match but also never swapped pokemon the entire time (except for Sudden Death, where I was told to and I used Gastrodon). So that's pretty cool.
Once all the action was over, I took the entire ACP staff to Steak and Shake, where I treated them all to dinner to thank them for their hard work. We took a few group pictures, partied that night, and then went our separate ways.
I'm both a little disappointed and also not at all surprised that I remember more about the pokemon tournament than I do about the ACP panels. But still, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. I spent the last few weeks networking with a few other publications, and I think I might have a guest piece going into another publication soon. We left the con with a handful of new fans, and a ton of new ideas for articles, so things are looking up.
-Didroy
The convention's basic premise was that it was "a convention for anime fans for anything but anime," meaning for anime kids who wanted to branch out or stimulate other interests without sacrificing in-jokes and intimacy of the people they've grown to know through cons.
ACP hosted four panels throughout the weekend:
"Introduction to Critical Film Analysis: You Have An Opinion, Now What?"
"Star Trek and Feminism"
"The Necessary Use of Loss In Gaming"
"Homestuck"
...or something like that. I really should have written this when it happened. Miss Davis also collaborated with a TRON panel, and that was probably one of the better received ones.
Originally, I had planned on only participating in one panel and helping out with all the others, but I ended up working on three due to other ACP staff members dropping out of the con or arriving late. This meant I had one panel that was particularly polished, with a slide show and everything, and two that were heavily BSed but ultimately went pretty well.
The biggest BS of the night was by far the Homestuck one, whose name was cryptically vague for one reason: I have never once read Homestuck in my life. Originally, another one of my writers planned on leading that one, but the schedules got pushed all around and she ultimately couldn't make it. And, as luck would have it, this was the highest attended panel we had all weekend. But, not wanting to give up too early, I sat everyone down and led with this:
"Okay. It's Saturday night. 10 p.m. You've all heard a ton of panels by this point, and your weekend is almost over. If I were in your shoes, then by now I'd be tired of people I don't know telling me what to think about my favorite things. So, instead of having one more of those, we decided to have an audience-driven dialogue where we throw out some discussion starters, then sit back and moderate."
This, surprisingly, went really well. We actually went well over our allotted time, and had to be kicked out by the next panel. Afterwards, I had two guys come up to me and thank me, saying this was a great idea and it meant a lot to get their opinions out. That, I'd say, meant it went pretty well.
Little did I know until I got there, but there was actually a pokemon tournament going on that weekend. The players would face off against Gym Leaders, hiding throughout the con, and only those who beat eight of them (I think I heard there were twelve in total?) could play in the big tournament Sunday morning. It was basically VGC rules, only singles instead of doubles (though I discovered many gym leaders had their own rules), so I threw together a quickly BSed team from goodstuffs I had used in Magma tournaments all preseason. It went like this:
Tornadus
Politoed
Toxicroak
Zapdos
Scizor
Ludicolo
For the most part, I didn't really put a lot of thought into this team because my priority was the panels - and it showed, since I turned down battling a few just to get to all five panels in time. But I've used all of these pokemon this season, and with exception to Scizor I've used all of these in a previous VGC, so I had a somewhat intimate affinity for all of these. This is also the first team I can remember constructing that had something from every generation, which was also kind of cool.
Here's a basic summary of the gym leaders I faced:
1. Charlie, the Water Gym Leader: A known VGCer who qualified for the National Championship in 2009. He gave me a run for my money, running a fellow rain team in Single Flat Battle rules. This was a furious prediction war from the get go, as any sort of set up/sweep combinations were thwarted by the fact that both of us got what we wanted from rain and had nothing to turn the rain off.
2. Ricky, the "fake Dragon" Gym Leader: A team consisting of all those dragon pokemon that aren't Dragon Type: Aerodactyl, Gyarados, Charizard, to name a few, and then Emboar for some reason. I asked him about that one, and he just sort of said "Because I really fucking love Emboar, that's why." This guy greatly intimidated me for two reasons, so I didn't really push the matter. The first reason was that he was well over two hundred and fifty pounds, mostly muscle, and the other reason was that he was playing in a Street Fighter tournament during our battle, selecting his moves with his elbow on the touch screen while his hands controlled an Arcade-Stick controller for the 360. I was a little ashamed to admit that this battle was remarkably close given how little attention he was paying to me. He won the Street Fighter tournament, from what I remember - or he at least didn't lose the entire time we were playing.
3. Ben, the Rock Gym Leader: This guy challenged me to a six on six battle, singles with no restrictions, which put my team at a significant disadvantage because only three of them were level 100, the rest were 50s due to the originally intended "Flat Battle" rules (which autolevel). Fortunately, Politoed and Ludicolo were level 100, so I pretty much used the level 50s as meat shields whenever he switched to Tyranitar to get the weather back. Politoed killed five of the six, and Ludicolo killed one. Scizor took a lot of hits like a champ and almost killed Tyranitar, so that was good enough for me.
4. Jon, the Grass Gym Leader: The only VGC doubles rules in the Gym Leader rounds. At first I thought "Alright, I have two pokemon and can really do my normal strategies now!" But then I remembered that this was an all grass team, and that he had Parasect, Breloom, and Amoonguss - all Spore users. This was the trolliest troll that ever trolled, and I barely squeaked by this one.
5. Kristen, the "real Dragon" Gym Leader: Multiscale Dragonite, Dragon Gem Draco Meteor Hydreigon, and Swift Swim Kingdra. Kingdra was probably the biggest problem here because it also exploited rain and I didn't quite have any dragon moves to shut it down, though all of this was kind of a headache. I won with my final pokemon having 1 HP, and not because of Focus Sash.
6. Kurt, the Dark Gym Leader: This guy was a pain in the ass to track down. When you saw him in the hallway, he would actually run away. Friday night, around 2:00 a.m., I found him at the bar, and he said "Nothing good happens after 2:00 a.m., and I am stumbling drunk. If you have any honor to your name, you will fight me at another time." Deciding I wanted to do the honorable thing (and because he quoted HIMYM), I decided to leave him alone. The next day, he walked by Nathan's panel about six times while I was sitting and watching it, which was a little torturous. I finally snapped and chased him down the hall again as soon as Nathan's panel ended, challenging him in front of a panel he was leading. Scizor and Zapdos made quick work of everyone on the team. He never saw my third pokemon.
7. Drakie, the Electric Gym Leader: This gym terrified me conceptually given my rain team, and sure enough a few of them had Thunder (100% accurate in the rain). I led Zapdos against his Zapdos and, predicting the Zebstrika Lightning Rod switch, I Heat Waved to get him down. Zebstrika went down a turn later, and I swapped in Politoed. Wacan meant it lived longer than Drakie planned, so I got a few hits in before Ludicolo finished the team off slowly with Leech Seed/Giga Drain/Leftovers/Rain Dish.
8. Nicole, the Poison Gym Leader: I was supposed to fight the Psychic gym last, but given my panel schedule I never actually got a chance to battle the guy (Calm Mind Soul Dew Latias is something I didn't really care to deal with anyway). The Poison Gym Leader spammed entry hazards and Toxic, so I pretty much resorted to setting up rain and then never looking back after the sweep. I ran Politoed/Zapdos/Thundurus, since after rain set up I could just spam 100% accurate Hurricane and Thunder and get the most damage per turn possible. Any switching would have just wasted time and precious energy.
Following the Gym Leaders, I faced off in the actual tournament Sunday morning. As everything went back to Doubles, I was far more in my element and the last few battles were a bit of a blur. All I remember is that the finals match had a Speed Boost Blaziken and some sort of Skuntank strategy he had supposedly used against most of the gym leaders. The guy was particularly arrogant and not kind to the other trainers, so I didn't really talk to him much. I won in a Sudden Death match (tied with him in the finals due to four fully paralyzed turns in a row when I just had to finish off his last pokemon).
My prizes consisted of a convention t-shirt, a pint glass with the con's name on it, and free pass and hotel to the next anime con they were hosting (an actual anime con). Since I didn't really have interest in going, I took the shirt and pint glass, and gave the free trip to the guy who won 3rd. The 2nd place guy complained, and I told the staff that, as the winner, I chose to delegate my prize to the person who was the better sport. 3rd place guy loved me, 2nd place guy hated me.
3rd place guy informed me that he and 2nd place guy cheated and used different pokemon for each gym leader, making me the only one in the top three who not only never lost a gym leader match but also never swapped pokemon the entire time (except for Sudden Death, where I was told to and I used Gastrodon). So that's pretty cool.
Once all the action was over, I took the entire ACP staff to Steak and Shake, where I treated them all to dinner to thank them for their hard work. We took a few group pictures, partied that night, and then went our separate ways.
I'm both a little disappointed and also not at all surprised that I remember more about the pokemon tournament than I do about the ACP panels. But still, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. I spent the last few weeks networking with a few other publications, and I think I might have a guest piece going into another publication soon. We left the con with a handful of new fans, and a ton of new ideas for articles, so things are looking up.
-Didroy