Ret-Con 2023 – page 1
Okay, so this is a really weird note to begin this set of comics on, but I had a bit of an epiphany over the course of this weekend. One of those instances where a bunch of things you already knew individually kind of coalesce into a larger fact that just didn’t dawn on you before. You know how people go to conventions to be around their fellow geeks and celebrate fandom and all that? I don’t. I don’t have “fellow geeks” because, quite honestly, I don’t like being around people. Yes, I sometimes share a common interest with other people, and the mutual participation in events pertaining to that interest can certainly create what LOOKS like a friendly relationship with those people, but the second that activity is removed, whatever connection I might have had with those people goes with it. I started going to conventions because of my interest in certain strains of Japanese animation, and as an entirely secondary detail, there happened to be other people there at the same time as me. Quite frankly, interacting with other humans is a thing I go to cons in SPITE of, not because of. Oh, I’ve been well aware of my own sociopathy for a long time, but for whatever reason, something about how I relate to conventions only just clicked over this weekend.
See, here’s the thing: Ret-Con is not an anime convention, but a science fiction convention, and while a sizable percentage of the things I enjoy are scifi-related in one way or another, there’s still a whole lot of stuff in the broader scifi fandom that does nothing for me. Plenty of other people, sure, but not me. Thus, I walked into this weekend at a major disadvantage. Yeah, I know, I complain about conventions not doing stuff that interests me all the freaking time, including the last time I was at this very hotel. But that’s what the whole rambling preamble up there is about: I’ve not been properly accounting for the fact that I just don’t really enjoy the act of being a room with a bunch of other people in the first place. Or, at the very least, I’ve been kinda spoiled by the number of times where there were enough things that interested me to distract me from that foundational dislike. All that to say, I found myself making a concerted effort this weekend to not hold it against the con that I’M a weird, antisocial misfit who just doesn’t enjoy the presence of others. Or, put another way, to try and be better about separating fair and justified annoyance rising naturally out of a given situation from preexisting annoyance that I brought in the door with me, especially in a situation where there’s fewer things to distract me and prevent the latter from building up.
But the best thing about ALL THAT rambling up there is that there’s a pretty massive exception to just about everything I just said, and certain people aware of how this weekend ENDED already know what it is. The rest of you, though, will just need to read the rest and find out!
I’ve got to say, I can 200% identify with all of this, other than Anime Conventions being the specific thing, I think you may have stolen my life story 😉 Pretty much the only reason I ever participate in anything with people is just like you said.
That aside, it’s my obligation as a nitpicker to point out that that’s not sociopathy at all – sociopaths have no empathy for people, but they generally like being around them, so they can manipulate/dominate/harm them, things that are a lot more difficult to do when you’re alone – if I had to pigeonhole it with a name, which I really don’t like to do, I’d have to think that’s more like schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder (but you don’t really fit those either, and virtually nobody perfectly fits any of the pigeonhole psychological category names 100%, which is why i said i really don’t like them) But either of those is much closer than sociopathy. **takes off nitpicker hat**
Excellent job with the teaser intro though, now I definitely have to check back to see what the punch line to the weekend was 😀
Duly noted, though there’s probably an argument that me going to these social gatherings primarily for the purpose of generating comics out of them counts as manipulating/using the people who hold/attend them purely for the interactions.
Or maybe I should just take the way out that’s been offered and be grateful? 🙂
You aren’t manipulating anything, you are taking advantage of an environment you place yourself into. The blunt, rude & outright insulting version of what Ed8 was saying is that, if you had sociopathic tendencies, you would be more of a social butterfly than you display yourself as. Instead, you display yourself primarily as an introvert who has gotten to the point where even the minor social interaction of shopping is a cause of worry for you.
Now, the recent period health-based worries have also made the line between true troubling levels of social worry and the remaining residual of two-years isolation & fears blurry. And a notable amount of people who make with the internet funny pages about any part of their lives probably have had some level of the second panel in their comics at some point since July 2022.
-Layla – deceased father, estranged mother, fired from her job, impoverished, homeless
-Trigger – parents/guardians sold him off, trapped in a hole for the first decade of his life and brainwashed to be a tool of destruction
-Avatar – memory of childhood wiped, cast into empty space for who knows how long, can’t grow up, can’t eat, drink, etc.
-Jenna – lost her dad, new dad doesn’t want to parent,is constantly tortured nearly to death by sociopathic little brother/monster
-Patty – lost husband, estranged from daughter, horiffic childhood
-Stilez – tortured and tested, etc. by scientists before escaping
-Vengeance – I have no idea what his past is, but it’s surely horrible 😉
-Tabitha – dad went insane
-Ichabod,Mariska,etc – endless list of horrible things happens to them
-not to even mention the whole near-death F.U.S.E. MadSciCon experience,
or the near death arms-dealer-con experience, or the near death
holo-monster-draining ship’s energy experience, etc.
Of course, we can see Blitz isn’t a sociopath, you can see from reading FOT he fully understands Empathy, caring, etc which sociopaths don’t, but if you ask his creations about their creator who put them in all these situations…they may have a different opinion…. 😀
Probably a good thing they didn’t know who he really was at that Christmas Cabin Double Booking Crossover! 😉
(of course, I do realize that, realistically, the same could be said of 99% of authors by their characters, the whole point of most stories is to put the characters into bad situations they have to struggle against)