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How I Co-Saved A GazettE Panel
May. 29th, 2012 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puss_nd_boots[This appeared in a different form on my personal LJ - apologies to those seeing it twice!]
Last weekend, I went to Anime North, a con in Toronto. Things didn't quite go as planned - friends fighting with each other and another friend getting injured - to the point where she had to go to the hospital (she spent the rest of the con in a wheelchair) - kind of put a damper on things. But one very good thing that happened was I ended up co-running the con's GazettE panel - and I didn't even plan to!
I had just come from a My Little Pony photoshoot (I was cosplaying a human Twilight Sparkle) I thought we were going to be late, because I was pushing my friend in the wheelchair and we had mobility issues. (This is making me think about how cons should be more handicapped accessible). We were late, all right - but there were no panelists. So we waited. And waited. And finally, a member of the con staff came in and said he was going to have to cancel the panel because the panelists weren't showing up.
At that point, I stood up and said I'd done panels before and I knew the band, I could run it. A guy a couple of rows behind me said he'd done a GazettE panel at this con before, and he could do it, too. So the staffer told us to go ahead. So, yay, improvised GazettE panel!
We didn't have much to work with, and, of course, no planning. We just had a brief discussion about where we were coming from - my co-panelist said he didn't want just a squeefest, he's a musician himself and he wanted to talk about the music. I said that was fine. Armed with only his Zune loaded with all the band's albums and an ancient laptop that belonged to the con, we soldiered forth.
It actually turned out to be a lot better than one would expect. We started out by talking about how we got into the band and what makes them unique - we talked about their musical versatility (I pointed out how Burial Applicant is sort of a microcosm of what they can do, since it goes from a mellow groove to death metal and back and makes it all sound natural) and their changing style over the years. There was also discussion of the concept that Ruki pulls the band from the front and Kai pushes it from behind (I described the cartoon I'd seen on Tumblr illustrating that concept literally - Ruki dragging along Reita, Kai pushing Aoi carrying a passed-out Uruha).
At one point, we were talking about how Uruha always seems to be lazy when you read interviews with the band, but he more than gets the job done as a songwriter and onstage. And then, an audience member brought up the famous thighs. My co-panelist said, jokingly, "How come every time I get into any kind of discussion with fans about the GazettE, it always ends up with a discussion of Uruha's thighs?" This brought about a lot of laughter.
I tried to get My Devil On The Bed (from Omega) to play from YouTube, since the laptop was connected to a screen, but due to the laptop being ancient with a crappy processor, it kept freezing up right around the time of the initial pelvic thrusting. (GHAAAA!) We ended up not being able to show it.
Around the 45 minute mark, who should stumble in but the person who was supposed to run the panel. She apologized profusely, saying she forgot her own panel because she was talking to one of the guitarists from one of the bands playing at the con. Um, yeah, that's called "not a valid excuse" in most universes.
So that incident ended up redeeming the rest of the con. I really enjoyed it, and I'd like to do another panel along those lines (and an Alice Nine one as well) at another con.
Last weekend, I went to Anime North, a con in Toronto. Things didn't quite go as planned - friends fighting with each other and another friend getting injured - to the point where she had to go to the hospital (she spent the rest of the con in a wheelchair) - kind of put a damper on things. But one very good thing that happened was I ended up co-running the con's GazettE panel - and I didn't even plan to!
I had just come from a My Little Pony photoshoot (I was cosplaying a human Twilight Sparkle) I thought we were going to be late, because I was pushing my friend in the wheelchair and we had mobility issues. (This is making me think about how cons should be more handicapped accessible). We were late, all right - but there were no panelists. So we waited. And waited. And finally, a member of the con staff came in and said he was going to have to cancel the panel because the panelists weren't showing up.
At that point, I stood up and said I'd done panels before and I knew the band, I could run it. A guy a couple of rows behind me said he'd done a GazettE panel at this con before, and he could do it, too. So the staffer told us to go ahead. So, yay, improvised GazettE panel!
We didn't have much to work with, and, of course, no planning. We just had a brief discussion about where we were coming from - my co-panelist said he didn't want just a squeefest, he's a musician himself and he wanted to talk about the music. I said that was fine. Armed with only his Zune loaded with all the band's albums and an ancient laptop that belonged to the con, we soldiered forth.
It actually turned out to be a lot better than one would expect. We started out by talking about how we got into the band and what makes them unique - we talked about their musical versatility (I pointed out how Burial Applicant is sort of a microcosm of what they can do, since it goes from a mellow groove to death metal and back and makes it all sound natural) and their changing style over the years. There was also discussion of the concept that Ruki pulls the band from the front and Kai pushes it from behind (I described the cartoon I'd seen on Tumblr illustrating that concept literally - Ruki dragging along Reita, Kai pushing Aoi carrying a passed-out Uruha).
At one point, we were talking about how Uruha always seems to be lazy when you read interviews with the band, but he more than gets the job done as a songwriter and onstage. And then, an audience member brought up the famous thighs. My co-panelist said, jokingly, "How come every time I get into any kind of discussion with fans about the GazettE, it always ends up with a discussion of Uruha's thighs?" This brought about a lot of laughter.
I tried to get My Devil On The Bed (from Omega) to play from YouTube, since the laptop was connected to a screen, but due to the laptop being ancient with a crappy processor, it kept freezing up right around the time of the initial pelvic thrusting. (GHAAAA!) We ended up not being able to show it.
Around the 45 minute mark, who should stumble in but the person who was supposed to run the panel. She apologized profusely, saying she forgot her own panel because she was talking to one of the guitarists from one of the bands playing at the con. Um, yeah, that's called "not a valid excuse" in most universes.
So that incident ended up redeeming the rest of the con. I really enjoyed it, and I'd like to do another panel along those lines (and an Alice Nine one as well) at another con.