Board Thread:Off-Topic Fun/@comment-1916997-20160715020448/@comment-31564770-20170518132432

Disclaimer this is mostly a totally random story about me and who I'm gonna take to the convention. Don't read if you don't wanna. I am a wall of text person so it's long. This is me semi-ranting semi-storytelling semi-excited screaming. Yep.

So, idk if I mentioned this, but my tickets were Christmas presents from my parents. And they are awesome parents who got me not one but two gold package tickets plus a photo op with Lana. I was shocked when I opened their envelope they hid in the tree and it said 2 tickets instead of one, I literally almost cried I was so happy. They said I could take a friend, or if I couldn't find one to go, I could take one of them.

I instantly texted my first choice, but turns out he'll be in Spain then. Now I had a problem- when I picked up Once again back in October and got fully obsessed, as is classic behavior of me, I tried to get other people to watch with me. Basically I don't like to be obsessed alone cuz I wanna talk to people about it and if they aren't interested that makes it hard. So I got a few of my friends to watch with me, but all of them dropped it after a few eps cuz we're in high school and none of us have time unless you're me and wing it with deliberately doing as little work as humanly possible. So I text the friend who was most into it, but he can't go. I go back to school after break, ask a bunch of people, and finally land on this other guy who watched a couple episodes and enjoyed it but didn't have enough time to watch often cuz he plays trombone and band at my school is super demanding plus he wants to make it his career. He said he would go, and assured me that "if it's anything nerdy I'll have fun" so he'd like going. Problem is, he couldn't watch the episodes cuz his life consists of going to school and practicing trombone with little time for anything else. My plan? He rides the same bus as me. I have a list of my favorite scenes from the whole show on my iPad, and I add new ones after each new episode if any of the scenes are worthy. So I sit him down on the bus every Monday after a new episode and walk him through each scenes. I figured if I'm gonna take him on a gold package ticket he had better know the show or it's kind of a waste. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I start to sense he's getting bored and any love he once had for the show is fading. I tell him if he doesn't wanna go anymore he can just tell me and I won't be mad. He ended up saying that with all his trombone stuff he probably couldn't keep the commitment and didn't wanna let me down right before the con, so I should probably find someone else. I was ok with this.

A few weeks before this, I was talking with a different friend I'd met earlier in the school year. We enjoy each other's company but don't hang out and so the context for this meeting was at one of our mutual friend's birthday parties. I was talking about Once, and this guy goes, "wait- Once Upon A Time? I love that show!" We got to talking and I mentioned the convention. He said he wished he could go and I said that I did have two tickets but that I'd already promised the other one to a different friend- the trombone guy. He was disappointed but understood. Now, when trombone guy said he couldn't go, I of course turned around and offered it to this guy. He took me up on it, and so now he's coming with me.

There's just one problem. Even though he loves Once, he hasn't been able to watch season 6. Like, at all. And once again, if I'm taking someone on a gold ticket, I think it would be more enjoyable for them and for me if they knew the show. And with the best tickets, enjoyment is a must. I was just doing the math. 22 days to the convention. 22 episodes in season 6, plus preferably the last 3 episodes of season 5 because setup and I like them. That totals 18.75 hours of watching assuming each episode is 45 minutes. Just under 6 hours a week of watching, in other words. So I Skype him. I tell him that we can do this one of two ways. Either he watches an episode a night starting with 5x19 and the week before the con we watch the last couple together, or he can come to my house every weekend before the con and binge watch for 6 hours. Of course, there is no penalty for not watching, I won't not take him or anything, but I feel like not knowing what's going on degrades the experience.

Yep, I did just literally tell the entire story of my involvement in this convention. I don't know why. Probably cuz 6 hours a weekend every weekend is a lot of time and I'm freaking out a bit cuz the convention is in less than a month and I'm beyond excited. Yeah.