Fan report: Ngozi at the OMGCP talk and book signing at Books, Inc. in Campbell, CA!
I went to a really fun fan event on 9/20/2018 that was part of Ngozi’s book tour for #Hockey with a couple friends, and I have some notes from the Q&A that I wanted to share. ^_^
Here’s the website link for the event, for the interested: https://www.booksinc.net/event/nymbc-presents-ngozi-ukazu-books-inc-campbell
Bullet points!
Wasn’t a ginormous crowd, but fairly sizable (maybe ~50 people?? I’m bad at estimating)
Lots of folks came early, so there was a lot of chatting, hockey gossip, commiserating about commutes, introductions, etc. I go to so few fan events that it was exciting to be in brickspace with other fans :D :D :D
Ngozi was hosted by Not Your Mother’s Book Club, and the event was a three-parter: the moderator had a number of questions prepared for Ngozi, which went on for about 25 minutes, and then opened it up for audience questions for another 20 minutes or so, and then finally the book signing.
Ngozi! Is! So! Beautiful! *___* And so friendly, she seems like she would be so rad and fun to be friends with.
More notes on the Q&A under the read more!
Notes from the Q&A (I just wrote down what was interesting to me, so I didn’t get everything….
Question about whether the OMGCP characters are based on real people
There is a real Chris Chow, and Ngozi just went to his wedding. She told a story about how he was the captain of the intramural hockey team she was on, and how they made it all the way to the finals and lost the last game (ouch!). And she decided to immortalize him as a goalie.
Bitty’s character and personality is based on several of Ngozi’s grad school suitemates who were Southern and loved baking
Question about professional sports and the research Ngozi did on hockey for her screenplay on hockey and then turning it for the purpose of creating OMGCP
Ngozi did this hilarious thing where she dropped her voice super deep to imitate super masc hockey bros, and then went into a discussion of toxic masculinity and how, when she was developing Bitty, it was like wondering what it would be like to drop a character like that into the “really bro, really masculine” environment of high-level athletics.
A really neat discussion on queerness and allyship! For example, there’s plenty of queer folks in the WNBA, and the NBA has demonstrated allyship in a number of ways (cross-promoting, other things? I need to look it up) for women and queer women/folks who play in the WNBA. But the NHL, with all its stuff with pride tape and We Can Play, is all just lip service because they don’t demonstrate any allyship with the WNHL and all the queer folks who play in the WNHL.
Squeeing about Julie Chu and Caroline Ouellette and their baby
Squeeing about Harrison Browne
Ngozi said she has experienced the full character arc of being a hockey fan, lol. There was an attempted and quickly dropped metaphor of staring at a new fandom across the bar and being all star-struck by it, lololol. And then she talked about how she loved learning new things about hockey like slang, plays, facts, etc. And then she was disillusioned by a lot of crap that went down.
Kind of derailment, but hilarious. While talking about loving to learn new facts, revealed that she was into a book series about ships and adventure where the author put in a LOT of detail about ships and sailing and she loved learning those facts. Cue me and one of my friends perking up ears and wondering if Ngozi was talking about the Aubrey-Maturin series, lol. Ngozi ended up talking about it for a couple minutes :P
Ngozi shared a fact: currently only 23 black men in the ENTIRE NHL. O.o
A quote worth remembering: Do the people that I root for on the ice, would they root for me?
Question about most interesting thing she learned during her hockey research: when she shook hands with the collegiate hockey player she met, the first thing she noticed were the calluses on his hands from holding the stick. She felt like it signified how hockey players really intensely put their whole bodies on the line for their sport.
Question about Ngozi’s favorite pie!
Pecan pie (I don’t remember how she pronounced it, I have no horse in the race on the proper way to say pecan)
Shoofly pie! Ngozi had it when she was in Pennsylvania. I was all lolwhut, and then an audience member said that shoofly pie is basically molasses and is the goo that is in pecan pie, and Ngozi responded that oh, of course that’s why she liked it so much. @ageorwizardry was with me and mentioned that she should try it, since the pecan part of pecan pie was the part she liked the least compared to the goo, lolololol
A series of questions in the theme of Kiss Marry Kill
One set included Sidney Crosby and I forget who else, I think the captain of the Sharks? Ngozi’s first answer right out the gate was kill Sidney Crosby (lolololol) and then she revised her answer to Marry Sidney Crosby. Why? To get all his secrets! Like what’s his secret skin care routine to have such nice skin, and Ngozi joked about it being a long con. We were all shrieking with laughter XD
Audience questions from here on out!
What is Shitty’s first name! (we all went “oooooooooohhhhhhhh”) Ngozi said that we will learn it by the end of the comics. Promises, promises :P
What was Ngozi’s favorite parts of the comic to make/write? She really liked writing the Parse trilogy, she did it while listening to “that one Lady Gaga song about being skinny and a bitch on repeat” lolololololol (I have no idea what song that might be, reblog or reply if you know and I can edit the post haha). She also liked getting to draw some cool doors for that arc.
How do you come up with new characters? The audience member who asked was adorable about it, they were all like, even with newly introduced characters, they loved them immediately.
Ngozi mentioned that she learned from other writer friends that “specificity is important.”
That makes sense to me. It’s when characters have a strong sense of specific place/time/culture/personality/etc. that they are most relatable to me, not when they’re trying to be some kind of “everyman” who is meant to be generically appealing.
Hilarious question about how all her characters have different eyebrows. XDDD To which Ngozi briefly scanned through the copy of #Hockey in front of her and pointed out all the characters that shared eyebrow styles. XD And she mentioned how she was still working on differentiating her character designs, and tried to figure out some exaggerated features to do so.
Follow up comment: so the characters with similar eyebrows (like Lardo and Shitty) will get together? XDDDD
One of my other friends who came with me asked about whether an illustrated recipe book would come out.
Ngozi laughed and said that while a pie zine may be in the works, she felt it would be disingenuous for her to put out any kind of cooking book when she’s just an okay cook. But who knows?
Fun fact about Tater: he’s in love with Vanessa Channel 7, who appears in a strip that has Bad Bob in it
Question about how you keep your interest in a long-running, ongoing project when new, shiny things come up
Ngozi’s first reaction: “Is this a callout post?” XDDDDD the audience died laughing
She mentioned being on a panel, and talking about how a lot of creators don’t think when they start that they’re going to be working on a project for a long long time, and one panelist was all, actually yeah I went in thinking that lol. And there’s apparently a long-running comic called Serialized that’s been going for 20 years???!!!
Question about how/why Ngozi created and managed not only the content of the comics, but also the blog and extras and twitter, and also how did she manage to pare it down for publication
Re: publication, the publisher helped by saying, okay, you only have room for 300 tweets. :P
Ngozi really likes all the ancillary parts to her storytelling, that’s part of her process and what she enjoys doing. She wrote her thesis on transmedia storytelling (and I shouted out that I would love to read that. For real the topic sounds cool!)
She started Bitty’s twitter account on a whim. Basically, “drawing takes too long and I want to tell this joke right now!” lolololololol
Question about which BTS (Kpop) group member is her bias
Apparently Rap Monster! Ngozi then went into an explanation of how she’s Army and the names for fans of different groups
During the line-up for book signing:
One (1) instance of two fans thinking they recognize each other from a previous event or con, asking questions to confirm, and yelling in triumph and hugging when they do confirm. It was adorable
A fan brought some AMAZEBALLS jerseys that she had customized from blanks, including a CCM Canadiens jersey that she appliqued numbers and letters to to make it a Bad Bob Zimmermann jersey. She also had a black blank jersey that she added Parson’s name and number to, though she was still working on the Ace on the front. She also mentioned she was working on a Falconer’s jersey, but that would take like 3 different jerseys to deal with the colors and the angled stripes since no other teams currently have a design like that??? I’m super impressed at her dedication and skills, wow. *___*
Ngozi confirmed my friend’s guess that when she was talking about a book series about ships, she was talking about the Aubrey-Maturin series. They got into this cute convo about it and took turns telling me about some instance in the story where one character was in a bear suit for.... weeks or something. (!!!.... I have no idea. But my friend’s been trying to get me to read this series for a while. We’ll see.)
When it was my turn, I got a photo (it me!) and Ngozi drew Nursey in my copy of #Hockey, since I told her he was one of my favorite characters. I also asked, for podfic reasons (since I searched through Tumblr and couldn’t find any definitive accent info for Lardo), whether Lardo was from Boston and what her accent was like. Ngozi said, in a Lardo voice, that “she doesn’t really have a Boston accent, but talks low with vocal fry, and think Raven from Teen Titans.”
My friends and I talked about starting up a fannish brunch or meetup or something like that for the South Bay, to chill and squee in brickspace. I would love to meet more fans, since I’m so bad at making friends online. Interest?
Photos! (It me)
Overall thoughts? Super casual and super fun, I liked that it wasn’t too too crowded, the energy of the audience was great, the Q&A was full of laughter and it really felt like a conversation with friends. Loved it! Thanks to @booksinc for hosting (the rep mentioned running a tumblr and I sure hope this is the right one!) such a lovely event. ^_^
