Back in August 4, I had nothing else to do and I needed to test my DSLR as a vlogging rig. So, I just swung by Lucky Chinatown Mall, which is a 10-minute walk from my place, and filmed whatever I could in RetroCon 2019 at the lobby for just over an hour. The resulting vlog was interesting in a number of ways, and I’d like to talk about it here.
This was just a week after we held MWF 10: Republika in the same venue, and both RetroCon 2019 and Megaworld Lifestyle Malls are our sponsors for this year. That meant I shouldn’t swear in this vlog, which is something I’ve been trying to do anyway.
What I saw there was certainly interesting, and it made for a fairly interesting vlog. Perhaps I didn’t sound that enthusiastic, but that was just me being the usual grouch I am. Don’t worry too much about that, I just don’t have the battery to fake excitement for more than five minutes.
What I Saw in RetroCon 2019 in Lucky Chinatown Mall
There were six major things in this RetroCon from my perspective—toys, memorabilia, paraphernalia, lemons, vinyl, and not-so-retro stuff.
Most of the toys were either genuine from long ago or bootlegs made within the last ten years. There was a lot of Kamen Rider, which may be seen as nostalgic in some way due to the influence of Kamen Rider Black in the Philippines.
Memorabilia like photographs, posters, paintings, postcards, stamps, and so on. That includes the vintage porno pictures I found from that tray.
Paraphernalia like those heavy non-electric irons in the vlog, other old appliances, and previously useful implements.
Lemons in this case are basically decorations that you know will fall apart or are useless when used for their original purpose, like that sword paired up with that bamboo sword in the vlog. You can tell they’re not the genuine article.
Not-so-retro stuff as in anything being sold that you know are not old at all. Unless there are Funko Pops from ancient times, they’re not retro. However, you can say they have the potential to become retro in the future.
There are also the merchandise in the artist section, which I count as its own separate event. I wanted to buy everything, but could only get Pugad Baboy 31 since I was still short on cash at the moment. (I spent most of my budget for the next two months on equipment.)
I still regret not being able to buy one of those 3D-esque Street Fighter II win screen frames. Those were pretty rad, especially the one with Guile.
Trying Not to Swear in This Vlog
You may have noticed that early in the vlog, I mentioned that I shouldn’t curse. That’s because I figured out that since I’m a staff member of Manila Wrestling Federation, and both RetroCon and Megaworld Lifestyle Malls are our sponsors for this year, I
Manila Wrestling Federation is a mostly PG-rated wrestling company, so cursing is discouraged. Children make up a good percentage of our target audience, so we have to make our act as clean as possible while still being hard-hitting in more ways than one.
While we have no cursing or rude gestures, we directly tackle socio-political issues in our storylines. You can say we’re a different kind of edgy—”woke edgy.”
With that said, I count this vlog as a failure in that regard. At least two curse words got through as I wasn’t able to proof it thoroughly enough during editing. As far as that level of self-censorship goes, I messed up.
Mind you, trying not to curse isn’t merely a sellout move for me. I’ve always wanted to work on it since using curse words too much lessens its impact. If I have to curse, I want it to hit like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Despite that, being honest and calling what I see in my vlogs will always be the standard. Just because they’re sponsors of MWF, this is still my vlog. There’s no way I’m putting out a video that doesn’t objectively critique something.
Of course, that’s unless I get paid a whole lot for it, and even that may not be enough as it better make me filthy rich. If I can’t buy a house with that money, I won’t be able to sleep at night. I won’t say I’m incorruptible, but I’ll never say I’m cheap.
Conclusion
Before going to this event, I’ve decided that as far as YouTube goes, my event vlogs from then on are to be uploaded to my personal channel instead of the main Avoiderdragon channel.
Since the Avoiderdragon channel was more for reviews and video essays, I thought it would be better to upload anything that wasn’t in those strict formats to my personal channel, where I can do more fun and random stuff.
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