In every subculture, there're darker elements...
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Posted in: /r/askfens
Posted by: Gunbunny_Chicago92
Subj: RE: Congoers of the Fenspace convention. What's your creepiest con experience?
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Cyber Freaks.
Creepers happen, I get it. Everytime I've gone to a con, there's always been someone who hasn't learned the concept of personal space. It comes with the territory I know how to deal with them.
But this one takes the biscuit.
So, to set the scene, I'm there selling on my stand and I have a good business going for the day. I've sold a few plasma guns and taken a few orders for custom work. Minnie's just finished off another pleased customer and I'm trying to get the books in order for the Patrol while the rest of the hall bustles by, when he appears.
I think the first warning is that knockoff t-shirt he had on. There's only one reason members of that fan-club want anything to do with me and most of 'em are fairly decent like, but he just gives me the wrong impression, straight off the bat.
This one doesn't even look at my eyes, he just zooms in on my arm – like, completely.
“Oh wow, that's one of Peter's earliest, isn't it?”
And I'm thinking, now that's a goddamn first. I'm more amused than annoyed, so I just say 'well yeah', then ask him if he's interested in getting any custom work done.
What happened next just caught me completely offguard. He reaches over the table and grabs my arm, almost like he's trying to pull it off?
“How much for the this?”
The next thing I know, he's on the floor with blood trailing from his nose while I'm standing with a pain in my knuckles. He just gets this painful look in his face like a scalded brat who's been told he can't play with his toys for being naughty and just goes off on a screamer.
“That thing's a collectable! One of our Lady's works from before she was even a Lady. Why would anyone even want to live with something that old?”
No shit, there I was, he actually said that.
I've been groped and grabbed and you-name it, but this is the first time someone's actually tried to buy me. Not a piece of hardware, but a piece of me. I probably shouldn't have drawn my Gunzerker on him on the Convention floor, but I had no idea what he'd do to get what he wanted and he already had a hand in his pocket.
I shot him straight in the head before he could stand up, then called for Con-Sec.
This isn't come goddamned fashion accessory, like so many chrome-fiends these days. I mean, fuck. I had a car-lift drop on me years ago. I remember what it felt like to have my arm and pelvis crushed and pinched off by three tons of metal. I remember lying there for hours trying to reach for the phone in my pocket and how much that hurt. I remember feeling pathetic in a wheelchair, and taking the offer on a long-shot of being able to walk and work again, back when such things really were a longshot. I remember the pain of surgery and healing, and learning to walk again with a leg that felt completely empty and alien. And then he comes along and tries to buy that off me like it's some kind of object, a collectable.
I get it, you can't fire off a gun on the Convention floor without getting asked to leave, but maybe someone could understand. Shooting that asshole cost me my biggest weekend of the year.
Of course, my partner knew him as a collector of old cyberware – and as one of the people who'd bought some of her wreckage that'd been stolen from the tunnel after the Motorcon accident. It's just the dark side of the cyber subculture, she tells me, without too much concern. Of course, they only really bother the people who actually need prosthetics, rather than the full conversions because, hey, why bother antagonising someone who can actually rip your arms off.
Look, I'm not into the cyberculture stuff, even if my partner is. I don't really want to be either, but I really don't know how often stuff like that happens to others. But how can anyone sane be a collector of people parts?
That's just fucked up. And of all the things that've happened to me at cons, that's the only one that's ever made me actually draw a gun on someone.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Posted in: /r/askfens
Posted by: Gunbunny_Chicago92
Subj: RE: Congoers of the Fenspace convention. What's your creepiest con experience?
-----------
Cyber Freaks.
Creepers happen, I get it. Everytime I've gone to a con, there's always been someone who hasn't learned the concept of personal space. It comes with the territory I know how to deal with them.
But this one takes the biscuit.
So, to set the scene, I'm there selling on my stand and I have a good business going for the day. I've sold a few plasma guns and taken a few orders for custom work. Minnie's just finished off another pleased customer and I'm trying to get the books in order for the Patrol while the rest of the hall bustles by, when he appears.
I think the first warning is that knockoff t-shirt he had on. There's only one reason members of that fan-club want anything to do with me and most of 'em are fairly decent like, but he just gives me the wrong impression, straight off the bat.
This one doesn't even look at my eyes, he just zooms in on my arm – like, completely.
“Oh wow, that's one of Peter's earliest, isn't it?”
And I'm thinking, now that's a goddamn first. I'm more amused than annoyed, so I just say 'well yeah', then ask him if he's interested in getting any custom work done.
What happened next just caught me completely offguard. He reaches over the table and grabs my arm, almost like he's trying to pull it off?
“How much for the this?”
The next thing I know, he's on the floor with blood trailing from his nose while I'm standing with a pain in my knuckles. He just gets this painful look in his face like a scalded brat who's been told he can't play with his toys for being naughty and just goes off on a screamer.
“That thing's a collectable! One of our Lady's works from before she was even a Lady. Why would anyone even want to live with something that old?”
No shit, there I was, he actually said that.
I've been groped and grabbed and you-name it, but this is the first time someone's actually tried to buy me. Not a piece of hardware, but a piece of me. I probably shouldn't have drawn my Gunzerker on him on the Convention floor, but I had no idea what he'd do to get what he wanted and he already had a hand in his pocket.
I shot him straight in the head before he could stand up, then called for Con-Sec.
This isn't come goddamned fashion accessory, like so many chrome-fiends these days. I mean, fuck. I had a car-lift drop on me years ago. I remember what it felt like to have my arm and pelvis crushed and pinched off by three tons of metal. I remember lying there for hours trying to reach for the phone in my pocket and how much that hurt. I remember feeling pathetic in a wheelchair, and taking the offer on a long-shot of being able to walk and work again, back when such things really were a longshot. I remember the pain of surgery and healing, and learning to walk again with a leg that felt completely empty and alien. And then he comes along and tries to buy that off me like it's some kind of object, a collectable.
I get it, you can't fire off a gun on the Convention floor without getting asked to leave, but maybe someone could understand. Shooting that asshole cost me my biggest weekend of the year.
Of course, my partner knew him as a collector of old cyberware – and as one of the people who'd bought some of her wreckage that'd been stolen from the tunnel after the Motorcon accident. It's just the dark side of the cyber subculture, she tells me, without too much concern. Of course, they only really bother the people who actually need prosthetics, rather than the full conversions because, hey, why bother antagonising someone who can actually rip your arms off.
Look, I'm not into the cyberculture stuff, even if my partner is. I don't really want to be either, but I really don't know how often stuff like that happens to others. But how can anyone sane be a collector of people parts?
That's just fucked up. And of all the things that've happened to me at cons, that's the only one that's ever made me actually draw a gun on someone.
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________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?