Botcon 2006: Miss Special's Botcon Report of Awesome

Venue: Hyatt Regency convention centre, Lexington, Kentucky

Dates: 28th September - 1st October, 2006

 

Wednesday, September 27

After getting up at the crack of dawn (4:45 am Pacific time), I got to the airport and did the whole air travel thing. It wasn't terribly interesting, so I won't go into detail.

I met up with Hacker and VampyerBA at the airport in Louisville. We intended to wait there for Sapph to arrive, but the moment I saw the mostly-filled trunk of Hacker's car, we realized there'd be no room for Sapph's stuff, so we made a quick trip to Hacker's house to drop off our stuff. We got back to the airport about five minutes late, so we made a mad dash for the terminal, only to find Sapph's plane was very, very delayed.

Since we had a couple hours to blow, Hacker drove us around Louisville and showed us neat things like Churchill Downs and pretty city lights, which looked neat against the black sky and heavy downpour of rain that decided to visit us. And the lightning. There was a lot of lightning. Honestly, I kind of liked the storm. California doesn't get any weather in the summer months (this is no exaggeration-- I'm talking sunny skies for six months straight, which can get old after awhile), so a little (or a lot of) rain was nice.

When we got back to the airport, Sapph's plane had arrived, so we picked her up and went to Hacker's house. We talked and hung out in general for a bit, then went to sleep because it was getting late.

Thursday, September 28

We woke up and hung out until about 2, when we decided to get our show on the road. The drive to Lexington was pretty nice. When we got to the hotel, there was a weather news truck and camera crew outside it, which didn't bode well (though I can't recall anything terribly dangerous, weather-wise). While we were checking in, Sinead came up and glomped us, then introduced us to Aaron and Charade.

By the time we'd gotten settled into our hotel room, it was time to head over to the convention center so we could wait in line for awhile. I made a makeshift Beast Wars International sign on the way there. You could tell I made it in the car. But anyways, I held it up for all to see while we stood in line. Until my arm got tired, anyways. After that, I gave it to someone else.

Eventually, the doors (floodgates?) were opened and all us TF fans were let in, where most of us got in line to pick up our packages. Sinead and myself had to wait awhile to get ours because we had measly blue letters, while most people had green letters. We tried getting through with our blue letters, but we got kicked out of line.
While waiting, various other convention-exclusive goodies were shown to us, like the Tigatron toy everyone would be getting along with the stuff we already knew about, and a Megatron and Waspinator package you could get if you were willing to shell out $95. Why do the awesome things have to cost so much? D:
There was also this really neat giant Autobot hand statue thing that held a timer counting down to the premiere of the movie.

After a long while, most of us had our packages and such. We decided to use the hour and a half or so we had before MSTF (think Mystery Science Theater 3000 with TFs and skits in between episodes), so we went in search of food. Intel said there was a pizza joint nearby, so we headed out on an adventure. A bit of jaywalking, running down a steep hill, and several blocks later, we gave up and looted a gas station. It decided to rain on us a bit, but we headed back towards the convention anyways. The fabled pizza joint decided to appear to us, so some of us took advantage of the however belated finding, while others took the opportunity to just sit.

We got back to the convention about half an hour before MSTF, so we did some more sitting. I was sitting quite merrily when someone walked over and the atmosphere changed slightly. The person started talking with some of us who weren't sitting, and it took a bit for it to fully dawn on me who exactly was talking to us. In my defense, he was wearing a cap and had his hair tied back. But Scott McNeil is Scott McNeil, so I decided not to sit anymore.

We introduced ourselves one by one, until it was Sapph's turn. I didn't think there would be a better moment at the whole convention. (I was wrong, but I'll get to that.) I'll leave the details of the encounter to Sapph, but she's waited a long, long time to meet him. We chatted with him a bit-- he'd been up since really early and hadn't eaten anything all day until he was taken out to dinner, where he ate a cow and was therefore quite satisfied, albeit tired. MSTF was about to start, and Scott wanted to sleep, so we parted ways. (Although I wouldn't be surprised at all if Scott got waylaid by another bunch of fans before he got to his room.)

We packed into the MSTF room and waited for it to start. I wonder if those guys have ever been on schedule. In any case, it started out parodying 24, then they launched into an episode of Go-Bots. Go-Bots was painful to watch, even with the comments provided by the MSTF guys. Thankfully, the episodes were only 15 minutes each and they only showed two of them. Then we were subjected to the G1 episodes "B.O.T." which was also fairly hard to watch. In between, the MSTF guys goofed around, one skit involving a guitar (I hope the guitar wasn't hurt), another being an attempt to do a skit that would fall under a G rating. The latter was about as painful as Go-Bots until the punchline, which went something like: "What's a Transformer's favorite ride at the fair?" "YOUR MOTHER." Several of us agreed that it was the best use of a "Your Mom" joke we've heard.
Then they MSTFed both episodes of the Beast Wars pilot. They picked on Cheetor mercilessly, but he left himself open for it. The recap at the beginning of the second episodes was a riot because of the music they played over the voices.
Then MSTF wound up and it was time to head to the hotel for some downtime.

Friday, September 29

I'm not sure if I slept that night. The only evidence that I might have slept is that the time passed fairly quickly, though it was only about four or five hours anyways. In any case, Sapph, VampyerBA, and myself readied ourselves for the day by watching Sapph eat breakfast. BA and I share similar opinions on eating in the morning.

A whole bunch of us trooped over to the convention, where we sat in on the first panel, namely the VA panel starring Scott, Richard Newman (Rhinox), Pauline Newstone (Airazor), and Blu Mankuma (Tigerhawk... and Tigatron). Richard is a lot smaller than you'd think the guy who played Rhinox would be. Blu was awesome to hear, and Pauline sounds exactly like Airazor. It was really cool to see the people behind the voices as well as hear about things that went on behind the scenes.

After the VA panel was the Transformer Design Decisions panel, which basically showed a few concept designs for toys and then entertained a bunch of questions, none of which I personally found very interesting, which explains why I can't remember the panel very well. After that panel, we headed to the food court to eat.

Sapph, BA, and myself went to the Simon Furman panel after lunch. He mostly talked about how he got into writing for comics and the like. He talked about and answered questions pertaining to G1 comic storylines, which I know pretty much nothing about. However, someone did ask him about the final episodes of Beast Wars. Apparently, he was writing the Nemesis episodes with the intention that they were the season finale. About halfway through writing the first episode, he was told they would be the series finale, hence the quick and merciless wrap-up.

After that, it was time to stand in line for the dealer room. And stand we did. The line was really, really long, but thanks to the inherent awesomeness of having connections nearer to the front of the line, we, ah, took advantage of having friends in farther up places.

Pretty soon, the dealer room opened to much fanfare-- literally. A small marching band (who were apparently from a school that rivals Hacker's, though I still cheered on the lone clarinetist) had been provided as live music, which I thought was pretty darn cool. Some people got in line to get voice actors' autographs (although none of them were there at that moment), but most of us filed into the dealer room, which was absolutely massive. If you're a Transformer fan and have never been to a dealer room, you don't know what your missing. It's like coming home. Transformers everywhere you turn. Walls of Transformers, boxes of Transformers, bins of Transformers. Transformers Transformers Transformers.

Our large group decided to split up, or rather, we all splintered as a result of "OH, LOOK AT THIS!!!" syndrome. Sapph, me, BA, and The Crab (who didn't quite know what to do with himself) stuck together. We wandered around and ogled a bit, and when Sapph and I saw a toy that we thought looked a little fishy, we said to each other, "Hey, let's find Ben and ask him!"

See, Sapph and I made friends with Benson Yee at Botcon last year, and asking him about a potentially fishy figure was a great excuse to track him down and say hi.

So we did. :D

Ben was looking for toys to either give to the VAs or get them to sign them (I'm not sure), so we helped him, and he showed us around. BA found some BW coloring books (ZOMG.), but had to wait in a very, very long like to buy them, as they were being sold along with the rest of one of the largest TF collections on the continent.

After cruising the dealer room for a bit, we got in line for autographs. We were restricted to only two autographs at a time (as in, you could get two and then you had to get back in line), and I chose to go to Blu Mankuma first.

Now, Blu is almost solely responsible for me being obsessed with Beast Wars. Tigatron was my original favorite character, mostly because he was a tiger. I made a point of watching the show so I could see the robot tiger. (If you're unfamiliar with my odd taste, my favorite character is Inferno, followed extremely closely by Tigerhawk.)

Being possibly Tigerhawk's biggest fan and strongest supporter, it was a big thing for me to be meeting Blu face to face. I'd drawn him a picture of Tigerhawk so he could take it home and look at and think, "Someone likes Tigerhawk!" So I went up to Blu, and with shaking hands and an equally shaky voice, I gave him the picture and attempted to explain how I really, really liked Tigerhawk. He liked the picture and commented on the bright colors, and then decided I deserved a hug for it.

It was at that moment that I became a Blu fangirl.

I also had him sign some Tigerhawk lineart I'd drawn for a comic.

The next few minutes are a blur, but I think I filmed BA's moment with Blu for her. Sorry if the cinematography isn't very good, BA, my hands were still shaking.

We got back in line, this time for Scott. Scott was a hoot, but I'm sure all of you already. I gave him the picture of Silverbolt I'd drawn, and he had me autograph it. XD

The BWInt group (I referred to us as a fleet) met back up, and we decided to break up and then get back together so we could go to dinner. We also decided to ask the VAs and Ben if they'd like to come to dinner with us.

A Hacker, Sapph, BA and I left the convention center so we could print out a thing or two at a Kinko's. Several sheets of paper later, we had what we wanted, were running a little late, and headed back to the 'con. On the way, were contacted by one of our People (intentionally capitalized) that some VAs had agreed to come to dinner to us.

In the privacy of Hacker's car, we screamed like fangirls.

When we met back up with our People, we were told that Pauline and Blu weren't coming (both had good excuses), but Richard and Scott would love to come. Ben also joined us. We figured out the logistics of moving 20+ people from one side of town to the other, crammed ourselves in cars, and caravaned our way to the Cracker Barrel.

They didn't know what hit 'em.

I sat at a table with Sapph, Ben, Crab, Baron, Beastbot, and BA. Beastbot and Ben did a lot of talking about Transformers and such things, Ben shared a few anecdotes, and much fun was had by all. BA went to thank Scott and Richard for their parts in Beast Wars, and Scott was so touched that he shed a tear or two. Sapph said her piece, and I tried to say mine (whether or not I was successful is for someone else to decide), and I think they realized just how big Beast Wars is to us.

Dinner broke up and we milled outside for awhile, taking pictures and the like, until it started to rain. Some people packed back into cars to go back to the 'con, some of us walked back to our hotel, which was less than a stone's throw away. If we'd thrown stones, we'd be paying to fix windows.

And so the bunch of us who were staying at cheaper digs than the Hyatt (the official Botcon hotel) got together to have a fic reading. Unfortunately, most of us weren't doing too well in the energy category, and so even though we were fine when we were moving, the moment we sat down, we started shutting down, so BA got to read Mr. Crowley to us and we gave up and turned in for the night.

Saturday, September 30

Some of us went to the convention particularly early for a surprise, while some of us were lazy and only got there in time to see the first panel of the day, Cartoon Creation. It was mostly about the Cybertron/Galaxy Force show, so I didn't find it terribly interesting, though it did provide some insight into the process behind storyboarding/original scripts/the weird things that the Japanese end of the show threw in.

After the panel, Peter Cullen was signing autographs, but so were Blu and Pauline, and I like them better. Pauline was amazed at the warm response she'd been getting from everyone. So good job, everyone who was at Botcon, for making Pauline feel welcome at her first convention. :)

The dealer room line for the people who didn't buy a 'con package was HUGE. It just kept going. I almost felt sorry for the people who were waiting, but I was gloating more than anything.

We decided a bit of food was in order, so we made a brief run to the food court before going to the Saturday VA panel. By then, the people preparing for the "surprise" were out in force. Five of our people had their faces painted to look like Beast Warriors. It took Scott a bit to notice, but when he did, he stopped talking mid-sentence and had them stand up so he could see them better.

This time around, I had a question prepared. I asked them what it was like having Susan Blu (the voice director) on the other side of the microphone when she voiced Transmutate. It turns out that she probably recorded her lines after everyone else (in seclusion), but the VAs did talk about Susan for a bit. I was grinning for at least half the entire panel.

Afterwards, Sapph, Charade, and BA went to do some important shopping, so I hung around for the food court for a bit, then solo-ed in the dealer room until I found some bwinters skulking around. We went around the dealer room a few times, I bought a few things I didn't know I wanted, and then the dealer room started closing and we got kicked out. (Not quite, but it's a lot more fun to type than, "We left in due time.")

After a bit of waiting, I was reunited with Sapph and we went to our hotel to get ready for the awards dinner.

Once we were sufficiently dolled up (or at least as close as we could get to it, as I've been living in a college dorm room and didn't want to use precious space on slightly fancy clothes), we went to the awards dinner and stood in a very, very long line. The line shuffled its way into the dining area, which was far too small for the event. We filed by buffet tables, grabbing food along the way. The line ended at the dessert table.

Now, if there's one thing I love in life, it's cake. Especially chocolate cake. And what would you know, they had an absolutely lovely chocolate cake sitting out. The problem was, they also had a very nice pie right beside it. Now, most people would just pick one and go with it. Others would take one and come back for the other. But I, in a stroke of genius, took a slice of cake and a slice of pie and claimed them as my own. I had two plates in one hand and a plate of normal food in the other, and I was going to carry my fork in my mouth until Sinead kindly offered her assistance.

Instead of staying in the dining room and risk getting smothered, we went out to the food court, where Scott was eating with a few people. He danced for us. :D Ben came by to see how we were doing, too. The cake and pie were very good.

Having eaten, we went to play Bingo. I've never won at Bingo, and that night was no exception. Congrats to Hacker, though, because she beat the Bingo curse. After a few rounds of Bingo, we gathered 'round the stage in anticipation of the big announcement we were promised at the beginning of dinner. Crab played Blackjack to pass the time. I don't understand more than the basic idea of it, but Crab was playing it all pro-style and would've made a killing had the people not collected all the chips just as he scored big time.

The winners of various contests were announced-- if anyone is wondering why BWInt didn't participate in the Board Wars tournament, it's because most of us, including Sapph and myself, don't know nearly enough about anything besides Beast Wars to participate in it without getting beaten quite badly-- but all of us were a little outraged that Dragonsflayme's Tigatron painting didn't even place. (But it's my understanding that things are turning out for the better in that regard.)

After the awards were finished, the next Botcon venue was announced: Providence, Rhode Island, where Hasbro has its HQ. It's going to take place the weekend before the Transformer movie premieres. Plans began immediately.

When the crowd had pretty much left the dining room, there were a few of us left. I spotted Blu over at a table and proposed that we go over to hug him. Blu gives awesome hugs.

We talked to Ben a lot more, then decided it was time to head to the hotel for night. Once everyone wound down a bit from the dinner, we attempted another fic reading, this time being Zucca's Death Shall Never Part Us. The fic reading suffered the same problems as the previous night, so we abandoned hope of other people getting a chance to a crowd that would stay awake.

Thus, we deemed it time to sleep.

Sunday, October 1

We got off to a late start, but I think we did pretty well considering. We packed our belongings, which was no easy task. I managed to cram everything safely into two bags (although one box was crushed in transit, but the figure inside was unharmed), then went to the last day of the convention. We didn't do much there besides wander around the dealer room a bit (where I was had by an impulse buy), and then I had to go homewards.

I wasn't ready to leave. I mean, I had all my possessions in order, but I wasn't ready to give up the euphoria. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my friends. I wasn't ready to leave the atmosphere. I wasn't quite finished there yet.

But I had a plane to catch and a test to take the next day, so I didn't really have much of a choice. Thus, I said goodbye to my friends, asked Sapph to say goodbye to those I didn't have the chance to (especially Ben, Scott, Richard, and Blu), and went to the airport.

Final Thoughts

There's a bunch of people I'd like to thank (and if sappiness makes you ill, you can just stop reading now):

-Scott, Richard, Blu, Pauline, and everyone else who worked on Beast Wars: Thank you. I know I'd be someone even if Beast Wars hadn't existed, but I wouldn't be who I am, and I'm pretty happy with being me. Beast Wars has given me so many opportunities over the years, and without you guys, none of it would have been possible. You have accomplished a truly great thing, and for that I am eternally grateful.

-Ben, because of the time and effort you took to make sure Botcon was as good as it was for everyone, especially Sapph and myself. I had a blast spending time with you, and I hope we can do it again next year.

-Hacker, for being such a good sport about everything. Four trips to the airport in one day, having to shuttle from hotel to convention to her house an hour and a half away, and keeping good spirits about it. If you hadn't been so nice, Botcon wouldn't have been as good as it was.

-VampyerBA, the Crab, Charade, Sinead, Zucca, Beastbot, Baron, and everyone else, because I am generally a shy, timid little person around most people, but all of you were so nice that I opened up almost immediately, which I haven't done in years. The me you saw is as me as I get, which most people in real life don't know exist. So, for better or worse, you got to witness the true Miss Special.

-Sapphire, because as far as I'm concerned, there will always be a "Till next time." You were one of the few who took the time to look past the shy, quiet individual that is myself, and then you went farther and saw past even the curmudgeon that exists not far under the exterior. And there's a lot of curmudgeon to get through. Awww. You're even understanding when you give me a compliment and patiently wait while I mentally flail because I don't know how to take a compliment.

I shall end my report here, because if I continue, it might get really sappy.

Until next time!