Toronto in Life in General

Something pretty cool/interesting happened to me recently. My favorite game is Overwatch and while I don’t have as much time to play these days, there is a poster of the game visible on my walls in a lot of my tiktok videos so it’s kind of known among the overwatch community that I’m a player.

Well since Covid, the overwatch league has been hosting their games over the internet, but recently a few in person tournaments have popped up and the Toronto team hosted one this past weekend and invited me! It was all last minute, but they offered to pay for my flight and hotel and everything.

The airport“

So last time I flew to Canada (for a wedding) I missed my flight because I didn’t get to the airport more than an hour early. I didn’t realize that you had to be earlier for international flights, as it was my first one. So I had to reschedule the flight for later that same day, but I was able to get there no problem.

Well, funnily enough, a similar thing happened this time around. I get to the airport and when I was trying to check in, they said I needed my vaccination records. I read online that you only needed a recent negative test to get into Canada, but then I get to the airport and learn that you have to register with some Canadian website and prove your vaccination status. I didn’t know where my vaccination card was or anything, so I told the people at the front desk to reschedule me for the next flight (which luckily was only a few hours later, thank God I live near DFW and there are so many flights in and out of there). I didn’t know how I was going to find my vaccination card but I had to go ahead and schedule the flight to be sure I got a seat, so I went home on a whim and a prayer that I’d find my vaccination card and be able to register with this dumb website.

No luck, must have lost it during the move. CRAP. Well I remember that I got my vaccinations at Walgreens so I go on their website and BOOM, turns out you can just look it up and they’ll show you vaccination status. And it also turns out that you can just screenshot that and send it to the website. Basically… I could have easily done that in 10 minutes at the airport and made the first flight.... oops. Well since I had a few extra hours I decided to just go to Walgreens and get them to make me a new physical copy of my vaccination card just in case I got back to the airport and there was any weirdness. But nope, everything went smooth as butter through there and I was on my flight and still there before the evening.

Toronto

When I landed in Toronto, the uber I ordered showed up and just drove past me and left and then I got a notification on my phone that I was being rescheduled. It was super odd (until later, when it made total sense) Weirdly enough, the hotel was only like 15 miles from the airport, but the uber trip took over an hour. The traffic was SO BAD there, we hit like 100 traffic lights and each one was backed up. So NOW it makes sense why that other driver cancelled on me. That dude saw where I was going and was like “NOPE, I ain’t driving downtown.” Annoying… but probably the right call haha.

So after finally getting to the hotel, I instantly throw my bags down and just go straight to the venue. Luckily the team was nice enough to book me a room right next to the venue, like literally I walked out of the hotel lobby, and it was 20 feet to my left. Really cool of them, bc I’ve had plenty of people book me hotels like 20 miles from where I’m supposed to be just to save a buck.

I get there and meet a bunch of other creators they invited. I only knew one of them from tiktok, but we had been friends for a while so it was actually really cool to meet him in person (Corey Tongue). He had his girlfriend Dessy there (another big creator) and there was a few cosplayers as well. I don’t really follow cosplay all that closely but it was cool to meet everyone.

I got to watch the final game of the night and the home Toronto team ended up winning and moving on to the next round. The Toronto team is known for being very middle of the pack in terms of skill so everyone was nervous they could be kicked early from the tournament they were hosting. That would suck super bad, to host a tournament and then get kicked on the first or second day. (spoiler alert, they made it all the way to the last day and got third! Pretty great actually).

Filming

I woke up early the second day and headed over the venue to shoot some footage with Corey and holy crap did we knock out a lot of stuff. We only had the arena to ourselves for an hour so we had to move super fast. The lighting and stage people were super nice to us and turned on all the cool lights and such, it ended up looking super epic. Unfortunately, I missed a really crucial shot for the first video and we had to end up asking to use the venue again the next morning to do the pick up shot, which they were super cool with! However, on the second day of filming I did something dumb with the drone that caused it to fly off SIDEWAYS. It was heading directly for some camera operators and I didn’t even have time to yell at them to duck or anything, but THANK GOD it went down and hit some empty chairs first. It broke the fuck out of the drone, but I didn’t care at all, much better than it hitting a person. Learned my lesson, never try to take the drone off from your hands. Just set it down and take it off from the ground like a normal person....

Anyway, yeah the drone was broken and we still needed some shots but it was working just well enough to get the final shot, it was just a little shaky (the gimble the holds the camera steady was the part that broke, but worked barely enough to not be super noticeable) If you watch the video, right at the end you’ll see the footage is a tiny bit shaky. Oh well! I’ve broken so many of those drones at this point haha. But DJI promised to fix my drones as much as I need since I basically do free promo for them, so that’s cool!

So yeah the rest of the time we just walked around taking photos with everyone. But I tell you something, I often forget how recognizable I am in my tiktok outfit. Like every 30 seconds I was getting asked for photos, I got recognized in every restaurant we went to (which kind of suck sometimes bc then you gotta leave a fat tip or you’ll end up on buzzfeed haha). But yeah I hadn’t been to a public event in a long time but this was a big confidence boost for me. I had been kind of feeling like has-been but I got a lot of love and positivity from everyone at the event!

Oh and a little drama happened while we were there. There was this cosplayer Elise who brought this youtuber dude with her. He does animal crossing videos for the internet but doesn’t show his face, but she knew him from twitch. Well anyway they had been low key acting super flirty the whole time we were there and I actually thought they were already dating. But then on my last day there we were all about to head to dinner and Corey pulls me aside and says “yo we’re ditching that dude who came with Elise so just pretend like you’re going back to your room after this”. I had no idea what was happening but I figured they’d explain it to me at dinner.

Now here is the thing, when I’m devoting 100% of my brainpower to a lie, I’m excellent at it. I can keep my cool, come up with details…what not. But I’m also dumb as fuck and forge things instantly, so I 2 minutes later I forgot all about this lie and asked everyone loudly what the dinner plans were and instantly in my head was like “SHIT” and said “Oh uh sorry nvm I’m tired....” hahah I’m awful at keeping things straight.

Anyway, during dinner it turns out that someone in our group found out he had a girlfriend and was lowkey hiding it from everyone. Like he was hiding his phone while texting her and then also was inviting Elise to things that he definitely should be inviting his gf to… etc.

Kind of scummy yeah....

Anyway so it was super awkward though because he’s in some of the videos I’m going to post (uncredited obviously lol) Oh well it happens.

Anyway on my way back to the airport I stopped off at a Starbucks and met Mark, the guy who animated the Mario collab I did! The dude is a fucking legend and when I remembered he lived in Toronto I had to try and meet up with him for coffee and luckily he was available. Very cool dude in person too, kind of shy actually.

Anyway the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful actually. So I’ll end things here! Be good y’all!