Dragon*Con Saturday
Sep. 23rd, 2009 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jainaMoving right along, here's D*C Saturday!
The short short version:
- The parade—so nice I did it twice! H-A-R-P-I-E-S, Harpies Harpies are the best! Goooooo Harpies!
- Patrick Stewart panel: “Everything’s going to be okay now. Patrick Stewart is here.”
- The Guild: watching the series, Felicia Day Q&A, meetup with the other costumed people, meeting Felicia in costume, getting our picture taken with Felicia in costume which she immediately Tweeted…OMG.
- Debuting Yvaine at long last!
Saturday was parade day! Rob, Jen, and I got up bright and early (defined here as 8 am) because we were all marching as cheerleaders/groupies for the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch team, wearing the awesome shirts that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zaphod_groupie had ordered. This was my first time in the parade and it was SO much fun! I was kind of flabbergasted by how many people were there, both as marchers and spectators! I mean, it was a *real* parade! There was even a marching band! A weird costumed marching band, sure, but still! (WHY is there not one of these bands in San Diego? I NEED THIS TO EXIST SO I CAN JOIN IT. MY FLAG SKILLS ARE ATROPHYING, PEOPLE.)
So yeah that was RIDICULOUSLY fun. We ran up and down, did cheers and a fan tunnel, and tried our damndest to get the crowd cheering along. Rob was a madman-- he even got some sections of the crowd doing the wave—and Lauren totally rescued one of the cheers I failed miserably at. ;-) HARPIES RULE! After getting water at the end of the route, we went into the Marriott and filmed some more Thriller footage. Then I ran back up along the parade route, pulling off my Harpies shirt to reveal my Rebel cheer outfit underneath and untying my pom-poms from the back of my skirt. Since the Star Wars group was the very last to march, I was able to join my fellow cheerleaders for the last couple blocks, which made me very happy. I hated having to choose between the two groups, so I was very glad to be able to do both, at least a little.
I met up with Maggie and Michelle again afterward as they were getting in line for the Patrick Stewart panel. Michelle stayed in line to hold our place while Maggie and I went to get food (Chick-Fil-A, of course). We had planned to sit down in line and eat when we got back, but there was absolutely no room to do it; they had snaked the line back and forth in the Atrium lobby and we were packed in like sardines, so we just ate standing. I think right about then was when “clusterfuck” became the official word of the D*C 2009, since Maggie’s iPhone was now auto-completing the word as she was making a post about the line. Rogue came by in his Grail Knight costume to get his lunch from me, but he was going off to do other things (autographs, I think).
Amazingly, once they finally let us in (well past the supposed 1 pm start time), the line went smoothly, due entirely to the one security dude who managed to police howevermany thousand people all by his lonesome, with no ropes or stanchions or anything. That dude was my hero. We got pretty nice seats about a third of the way back, on the left. They tried to put us right behind the camera so our view would’ve been blocked, but Maggie wasn’t having any of that! You go, girl!
And then Patrick Stewart walked out. And I said, “Oh, everything’s going to be okay now. Patrick Stewart is here.” Which is RIDICULOUS because he is an ACTOR, which I KNOW but WHATEVER. (If you’re reading this, Mom, this is all your fault for watching TNG when I was young and impressionable.) I really enjoyed the panel; he was very sweet and genuine and very patient with all the questions. And his bashful face is the cutest thing ever. My favorite exchange:
Moderator guy: “What was it like to work with legends like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy?”
PS: “Hmm, can you be legendary if you’re still alive?”
Audience: “RAAAAAA!!!” *roaring approval*
PS, curiously: “Am *I* legendary?”
Audience: “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!” *wild applause and hollering that does not stop*
PS: *bashful face*
It was so cute, you guys. SO CUTE.
So yeah, the only thing wrong with the panel was how short it was, because of how long it took to load the room. Boo.
I went back up to our room to close my eyes for a little while before the Guild panel at 4; I’d entertained thoughts of going to the Star Wars costume contest, now that it’s under new management, but I was just too freaking tired. Did anyone go? How was it?
Right, so then Rogue came up to the room, having successfully gotten almost all of his autographs, including Patrick Stewart which means his TNG cast photo is finally finished! It only took…eight years? According to the Guild cosplay group we’d been corresponding with, they were going to be in costume at the 4 pm panel, so Rogue got geared up in his Bladezz costume and I wore my “Bladezz groupie” outfit, which was mostly just repurposed Renaissance fair stuff. We got over to the room right at 4 to find that they’d already started the screening, and the room was dark and completely packed, with several dozen people standing in the back. Yikes. We found seats up front, right next to a girl dressed as Tink, and settled in to watch seasons 1 and 2.
After the screening ended, Felicia came on stage-- I guess she was up there at the beginning too, but we missed it-- and did Q&A for an hour. That was fun, very informal; it felt more like she was having a conversation with all of us. When the panel finished we went and found the rest of the cosplay group to meet them and take some pictures. (Backstory: their Codex posted on cosplay.com looking for more people for their “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” group, Rogue responded but she didn’t see it, and by the time they finally got in contact, she’d already found a Bladezz. But Rogue had already started on his costume so they very graciously invited him to join anyway. I tagged along as one of the Bladezz groupies from the video.)
They were planning to go to the Walk of Fame to see Felicia after and invited us to come along. When we got to the head of the line, it was almost seven o’clock and the Walk would be closing soon, and she said she really wanted to take a picture with us, if we didn’t mind waiting till the rest of her line had got through. Well of course we didn’t, so we hung out for a bit and admired each others’ costumes (Rogue and the other Bladezz had found the same skull for their cloak pin—the stopper off a decorative Halloween bottle at Michael’s!). Felicia came and took a picture with us, which she immediately Tweeted, and she was very sweet and complimentary about everyone’s costumes, and she signed Codex’s and Vork’s weapons for them. Rogue and I got her autograph on a Guild 8x10 that had all the characters in costume, and she took a picture with the two of us. So, y’know, that was pretty exciting.
The rest of the group was going to hang around the rest of the night in costume, but Rogue and I wanted food and we needed to change into our Stardust costumes, so we said goodbye to them. As we were walking over to the food court, we ran into Rob and Ed (and someone else?) going the other way with a stack of pizza boxes, and they said, “10th floor! Follow us!” So we had a really great informal group dinner with about a dozen of us, very chill, good company. We should totally do that again! And take pictures next time!
Back to the room with Rob and Jenni to get ready for all the evening walking-around, and I tried on my complete Yvaine costume for the first time. Luckily everything fit fine. :D The wig doesn’t look quite right—I can’t put my finger on why, but I’ll figure it out eventually. But it worked fine, the color was great, and it looks pretty nice in pictures, without that “hello I am a cheapass wig” shine.
Downstairs, it was CRAZY ASS CROWDED. Since there are no photos allowed in the Hyatt in the evenings now, everyone packs the Marriott and the Hyatt’s a ghost town. We escaped up to the Pulse loft for a bit to people-watch; on the way back down the stairs, I slipped and managed to break both my boots. In my boots’ defense, they *are* nine years old and I got them from Payless. So, y’know, all things considered. I was still able to walk (very carefully) in them.
Saturday’s kind of a big jumble in my mind (and I don’t even drink at D*C!), but we were definitely hanging with Maggie and Michelle and Rob and Jen, we met up with Kathy and Cassandra and Sam, and I once again completely missed Dawn even though she was apparently standing about THREE FEET away from me. S-M-R-T. At some point Rogue and I went off on our own and I ran intomandymitchell, and then we had finally managed to coordinate to meet with Derek and he showed up around the same time. He spent his whole D*C gaming! We saw the Guild group again and said hi, took pictures of lots of costumes, saw laughingmagpie and rajsmith and the rest of the Jew Man Group, ran into Ashlee (luminousbeing) and her husband while getting ice cream, went running after AJ, Judy, Aimee, and Cheryll to say hi and take a picture, and finally took refuge on one of the lower levels with Maggie and Michelle and Ed.
While we were sitting there, a group came down the stairs, and I heard one of them say, “Oh look, it’s a Tristan!” and Rogue replied, “I have my Yvaine here with me too,” and the other person saw me, and said, “Oh, you—OH MY GOSH ARE YOU CAITLIN!?” It waspirate_lass! We meet at last! YAY! That made me happy.
At another point during the evening, we wound up sitting in a circle on the bottom level of the Marriott, along withmacbeemer and jigglykat in their gorgeous steampunk outfits, and a guy came up to Kathy, who was in her Slave Leia, and asked if she would “make a picture” with “Stabb-o the Clown,” which was this really creepy large doll that he and his friends had. Oh, Dragon*Con. So then we decided that our new band, Mustache Meltdown, would release the hit single “Get Your Picture Made” off our debut album, “Stabb-o the Clown.” It’ll sell a million copies. Or downloads, I guess.
We people-watched some more, and I forget if it was Saturday or Sunday—I think Saturday—but we were walking by the Atrium ballroom when a breakdancing competition broke out between Spider-man and Yoshi. We were almost immediately muscled out of our prime spectating spots by a couple of really tall guys, so we couldn’t see anything after a minute or so, but it was awesome while it lasted. Yet another “only at Dragon*Con” moment. We very briefly ran intoanariazar_rel and her Matt—yay, so great to meet them! We finally dragged ourselves upstairs a little before 2 am and collapsed.
The short short version:
- The parade—so nice I did it twice! H-A-R-P-I-E-S, Harpies Harpies are the best! Goooooo Harpies!
- Patrick Stewart panel: “Everything’s going to be okay now. Patrick Stewart is here.”
- The Guild: watching the series, Felicia Day Q&A, meetup with the other costumed people, meeting Felicia in costume, getting our picture taken with Felicia in costume which she immediately Tweeted…OMG.
- Debuting Yvaine at long last!
Saturday was parade day! Rob, Jen, and I got up bright and early (defined here as 8 am) because we were all marching as cheerleaders/groupies for the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch team, wearing the awesome shirts that
zaphod_groupie had ordered. This was my first time in the parade and it was SO much fun! I was kind of flabbergasted by how many people were there, both as marchers and spectators! I mean, it was a *real* parade! There was even a marching band! A weird costumed marching band, sure, but still! (WHY is there not one of these bands in San Diego? I NEED THIS TO EXIST SO I CAN JOIN IT. MY FLAG SKILLS ARE ATROPHYING, PEOPLE.)So yeah that was RIDICULOUSLY fun. We ran up and down, did cheers and a fan tunnel, and tried our damndest to get the crowd cheering along. Rob was a madman-- he even got some sections of the crowd doing the wave—and Lauren totally rescued one of the cheers I failed miserably at. ;-) HARPIES RULE! After getting water at the end of the route, we went into the Marriott and filmed some more Thriller footage. Then I ran back up along the parade route, pulling off my Harpies shirt to reveal my Rebel cheer outfit underneath and untying my pom-poms from the back of my skirt. Since the Star Wars group was the very last to march, I was able to join my fellow cheerleaders for the last couple blocks, which made me very happy. I hated having to choose between the two groups, so I was very glad to be able to do both, at least a little.
I met up with Maggie and Michelle again afterward as they were getting in line for the Patrick Stewart panel. Michelle stayed in line to hold our place while Maggie and I went to get food (Chick-Fil-A, of course). We had planned to sit down in line and eat when we got back, but there was absolutely no room to do it; they had snaked the line back and forth in the Atrium lobby and we were packed in like sardines, so we just ate standing. I think right about then was when “clusterfuck” became the official word of the D*C 2009, since Maggie’s iPhone was now auto-completing the word as she was making a post about the line. Rogue came by in his Grail Knight costume to get his lunch from me, but he was going off to do other things (autographs, I think).
Amazingly, once they finally let us in (well past the supposed 1 pm start time), the line went smoothly, due entirely to the one security dude who managed to police howevermany thousand people all by his lonesome, with no ropes or stanchions or anything. That dude was my hero. We got pretty nice seats about a third of the way back, on the left. They tried to put us right behind the camera so our view would’ve been blocked, but Maggie wasn’t having any of that! You go, girl!
And then Patrick Stewart walked out. And I said, “Oh, everything’s going to be okay now. Patrick Stewart is here.” Which is RIDICULOUS because he is an ACTOR, which I KNOW but WHATEVER. (If you’re reading this, Mom, this is all your fault for watching TNG when I was young and impressionable.) I really enjoyed the panel; he was very sweet and genuine and very patient with all the questions. And his bashful face is the cutest thing ever. My favorite exchange:
Moderator guy: “What was it like to work with legends like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy?”
PS: “Hmm, can you be legendary if you’re still alive?”
Audience: “RAAAAAA!!!” *roaring approval*
PS, curiously: “Am *I* legendary?”
Audience: “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!” *wild applause and hollering that does not stop*
PS: *bashful face*
It was so cute, you guys. SO CUTE.
So yeah, the only thing wrong with the panel was how short it was, because of how long it took to load the room. Boo.
I went back up to our room to close my eyes for a little while before the Guild panel at 4; I’d entertained thoughts of going to the Star Wars costume contest, now that it’s under new management, but I was just too freaking tired. Did anyone go? How was it?
Right, so then Rogue came up to the room, having successfully gotten almost all of his autographs, including Patrick Stewart which means his TNG cast photo is finally finished! It only took…eight years? According to the Guild cosplay group we’d been corresponding with, they were going to be in costume at the 4 pm panel, so Rogue got geared up in his Bladezz costume and I wore my “Bladezz groupie” outfit, which was mostly just repurposed Renaissance fair stuff. We got over to the room right at 4 to find that they’d already started the screening, and the room was dark and completely packed, with several dozen people standing in the back. Yikes. We found seats up front, right next to a girl dressed as Tink, and settled in to watch seasons 1 and 2.
After the screening ended, Felicia came on stage-- I guess she was up there at the beginning too, but we missed it-- and did Q&A for an hour. That was fun, very informal; it felt more like she was having a conversation with all of us. When the panel finished we went and found the rest of the cosplay group to meet them and take some pictures. (Backstory: their Codex posted on cosplay.com looking for more people for their “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” group, Rogue responded but she didn’t see it, and by the time they finally got in contact, she’d already found a Bladezz. But Rogue had already started on his costume so they very graciously invited him to join anyway. I tagged along as one of the Bladezz groupies from the video.)
They were planning to go to the Walk of Fame to see Felicia after and invited us to come along. When we got to the head of the line, it was almost seven o’clock and the Walk would be closing soon, and she said she really wanted to take a picture with us, if we didn’t mind waiting till the rest of her line had got through. Well of course we didn’t, so we hung out for a bit and admired each others’ costumes (Rogue and the other Bladezz had found the same skull for their cloak pin—the stopper off a decorative Halloween bottle at Michael’s!). Felicia came and took a picture with us, which she immediately Tweeted, and she was very sweet and complimentary about everyone’s costumes, and she signed Codex’s and Vork’s weapons for them. Rogue and I got her autograph on a Guild 8x10 that had all the characters in costume, and she took a picture with the two of us. So, y’know, that was pretty exciting.
The rest of the group was going to hang around the rest of the night in costume, but Rogue and I wanted food and we needed to change into our Stardust costumes, so we said goodbye to them. As we were walking over to the food court, we ran into Rob and Ed (and someone else?) going the other way with a stack of pizza boxes, and they said, “10th floor! Follow us!” So we had a really great informal group dinner with about a dozen of us, very chill, good company. We should totally do that again! And take pictures next time!
Back to the room with Rob and Jenni to get ready for all the evening walking-around, and I tried on my complete Yvaine costume for the first time. Luckily everything fit fine. :D The wig doesn’t look quite right—I can’t put my finger on why, but I’ll figure it out eventually. But it worked fine, the color was great, and it looks pretty nice in pictures, without that “hello I am a cheapass wig” shine.
Downstairs, it was CRAZY ASS CROWDED. Since there are no photos allowed in the Hyatt in the evenings now, everyone packs the Marriott and the Hyatt’s a ghost town. We escaped up to the Pulse loft for a bit to people-watch; on the way back down the stairs, I slipped and managed to break both my boots. In my boots’ defense, they *are* nine years old and I got them from Payless. So, y’know, all things considered. I was still able to walk (very carefully) in them.
Saturday’s kind of a big jumble in my mind (and I don’t even drink at D*C!), but we were definitely hanging with Maggie and Michelle and Rob and Jen, we met up with Kathy and Cassandra and Sam, and I once again completely missed Dawn even though she was apparently standing about THREE FEET away from me. S-M-R-T. At some point Rogue and I went off on our own and I ran into
mandymitchell, and then we had finally managed to coordinate to meet with Derek and he showed up around the same time. He spent his whole D*C gaming! We saw the Guild group again and said hi, took pictures of lots of costumes, saw laughingmagpie and rajsmith and the rest of the Jew Man Group, ran into Ashlee (luminousbeing) and her husband while getting ice cream, went running after AJ, Judy, Aimee, and Cheryll to say hi and take a picture, and finally took refuge on one of the lower levels with Maggie and Michelle and Ed.While we were sitting there, a group came down the stairs, and I heard one of them say, “Oh look, it’s a Tristan!” and Rogue replied, “I have my Yvaine here with me too,” and the other person saw me, and said, “Oh, you—OH MY GOSH ARE YOU CAITLIN!?” It was
pirate_lass! We meet at last! YAY! That made me happy.At another point during the evening, we wound up sitting in a circle on the bottom level of the Marriott, along with
macbeemer and jigglykat in their gorgeous steampunk outfits, and a guy came up to Kathy, who was in her Slave Leia, and asked if she would “make a picture” with “Stabb-o the Clown,” which was this really creepy large doll that he and his friends had. Oh, Dragon*Con. So then we decided that our new band, Mustache Meltdown, would release the hit single “Get Your Picture Made” off our debut album, “Stabb-o the Clown.” It’ll sell a million copies. Or downloads, I guess.We people-watched some more, and I forget if it was Saturday or Sunday—I think Saturday—but we were walking by the Atrium ballroom when a breakdancing competition broke out between Spider-man and Yoshi. We were almost immediately muscled out of our prime spectating spots by a couple of really tall guys, so we couldn’t see anything after a minute or so, but it was awesome while it lasted. Yet another “only at Dragon*Con” moment. We very briefly ran into
anariazar_rel and her Matt—yay, so great to meet them! We finally dragged ourselves upstairs a little before 2 am and collapsed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:20 am (UTC)IT'S THE MUSTACHE MELTDOWN!! :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 07:18 pm (UTC)so strange!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-24 07:49 pm (UTC)(Sorry if the IRLnameshout was weird-- I always remember it because I've got a sister named Caitlin. So... yeah. XD)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-26 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-26 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 12:28 pm (UTC)Love reading your write ups, so much fun hearing other tales from DragonCon :)