Con Report Amnesty: Dragon*Con 2008
Aug. 24th, 2009 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jainaHere's the (hopefully) final entry in my Con Report Amnesty series. ;-) When I wrote this last year, I started with Friday night, and now I've completely forgotten what happened during Friday day, so-- I'm recording it as-is. ETA: I later found a couple pages where I'd hand-written some of Friday day, which I've added below. So, with D*C 2009 a week and a half away (not enough time OMG OMG), here's Dragon*Con 2008!
We flew American this year, because that’s where we found a cheap fare, and they were still allowing one checked bag free at that point. We managed to limit ourselves to one checked bag each- -mine was 49.5 pounds! We got in pretty late Thursday night, just catching the last MART into the city. We found the Residence Inn without too much trouble—it’s not really that far from the other hotels—and installed ourselves in Becky’s room.
Friday day: civvies
Friday night: Robin Sparkles
Friday, we slept till we woke up, then headed over to the Hyatt to pick up our badges. There was hardly any line, but the guy manning our section of the alphabet had a broken wrist or arm or something, so it took him awhile. Then we headed over to the mall for food, and Rogue wanted tot ry a nd meet up with his fellow Bad Horsemen. I started to text Maggie and suddenly Rogue said, “Hey, there’s Maggie right there.” So that was easy.
We all wound up in line for our first panel of the day—Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk—after a long walk to find the end of the line, which wrapped all the way around the Hyatt. I think it was us, Maggie, Doug, Ed, Michelle, Rob, and Jenni who were all together. They were really packing the room—they just marched everyone in single-file down a row and filled every seat, then moved on to the next row. Our seats were pretty decent, about halfway back.
The panel was freaking hilarious. Rogue got most of the best bits in his post here, and of course there was the bit with Alan saying he wanted to be a Bad Horseman. Also, I forget if this was Friday’s or Sunday’s panel, but Alan told a hilarious story about feeding Nathan’s cats while he was gone for a few weeks, and on the last day, he finally picked up this pen that had been sitting on the coffee table the whole time, to write Nathan a note, and it was a shock pen! Also, Nathan told one about how he got hold of all these childhood pictures of Alan, from a calendar that Alan had left at his house, and he made copies of a bunch of them and hung them all over the Maidenhead bar set on Alan’s birthday when they were filming Serenity.
(other stuff happened Friday day that I don't remember)
Rushed over from changing into Robin Sparkles to get to the Dr. Horrible singalong- got there just as Rob and Jenni were reaching the door to the inside! phew! On the way, a guy asked for a picture and told me that his friend also had a Robin Sparkles costume and would be wearing it on Saturday. We got quite nice seats in the middle of the room, fairly close to the front. Rob realized he had lost his cell phone, yikes! He went to retrace his steps, Rogue started calling the number over and over, and we got the room staff to make an announcement about it. It turned up almost right away, a few rows behind us. Yay fans!
The singalong was super fun, and the shadow cast was also quite excellent. It was pretty funny how they handled certain things, like the "truck," and the transitions between Billy and Dr. Horrible. The people in front of us had clearly never seen it before and were having a grand time. There was a Buffy singalong following, but we've been to one before and wanted to go see the Sergeant Pepper group, and that way there'd be room for four more people (it was packed in there!). Outside, Rogue, Rob, and Jenni, dressed as the Bad Horsemen, sang to a few more Dr. Horribles although there weren't as many as we thought there'd be.
We caught up to the Sgt Pepper group in time to see them take their "album cover" photo on one of the staircases in the Marriott. Too funny. We spent most of the night wandering between the Marriott and the Hyatt with various clusters of friends, taking pictures and getting our pictures taken. Rob and Jenni had changed into their Temeraire-inspired costumes by this point and Rogue was now Captain Hammer. We went to the skywalks and the mall to do a bit of a Robin Sparkles photoshoot. On the skywalk to the Hyatt we ran into an amazingly done Singapore-pirate Elizabeth and AWE Will, and I was squealing over her costume while she was squealing about Robin Sparkles! And that is how we met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashleyrains and hattermercury. :) They mentioned they were going to be Giselle and Edward on Saturday, and I was like oh, my friend made the Nancy dress, and they were like oh, is it Courtney? and I was like yeah! and they were like oh, she's part of our group tonight too! Costuming is a small small world, folks.
So anyway, we saw some fun stuff in the Hyatt lobby, which was not *too* too crowded, and spent some time sitting at a table in the lounge-bar area, and then we went back over to the Marriott and saw Ashley and Joe and Courtney with their whole POTC-AWE group, which included a totally awesome Davy Jones WITH HIS BUKKIT of course. Ran intobenaequee (in her cancan) and Will on the way to the Marriott, and one of my danged necklaces broke, spilling beads allllll over the super shiny floor...that was fun. Everyone around was really nice and helped me pick up the beads, and luckily my jacket had about a zillion pockets to put them in! :P
And about midnight we were like "we're exhausted! Let's go back!" which is how you know you're old, when you punk out of the first night of D*C at midnight. So we walked back to the Residence Inn, which honestly is not that bad of a walk, and chatted with Becky for awhile about the day.
Saturday Day: Robin Sparkles
Saturday Evening: Sith Cheerleader (very briefly), Una
Ugh, I lost my badge on the way over that morning. Boy did that ever suck! I had just walked up to a group of my friends in the Marriott lobby when I discovered I didn't have it, so I had to run away as soon as I said hi! I walked all the way back to the hotel looking for it, couldn't find it, went to Lost and Found, they didn't have it, and finally had to go back to Registration to get a new one. Many tears were shed, but it all worked out, and they laminated my new badge so it would be harder to lose. Except I lost my Party Vader Vator badge too, boo. :( :( :(
Courtney texted me but I was in a panel, and then once I texted her I was out, she replied that her group had decided to do Enchanted earlier instead of later, so she was up changing. forget what I did after that...anyway, I found them later when they had all gathered in the Marriott, and Ashley (as Giselle) and I grooved to "Let's Go to the Mall" and took more pictures.
At one point we were walking over to the Hyatt through the mall, and I am absolutely dead serious here, we were in the food court and THERE WAS THE OTHER ROBIN SPARKLES. WE MET AT THE MALL. NO SERIOUSLY. We both shrieked and ran at each other and jumped up and down and were basically Woo Girls. We immediately started comparing where we'd gotten various pieces of our costumes; we had the same Wal-Mart shoes and I recognized some of her jewelry. And then we took a bunch of pictures. Random people were taking pictures of us too and one lady was like "My daughter loves Hannah Montana!" and Other Robin and I looked at each other and were like "...we're not Hannah Montana."
Then there was a big long stretch where I didn't have anything to go to, so I went back to our room and started pinning up the Una dress that Kimmerie had lent me. I don't know if it's a stunt version, or if Kate Magowan is just a giant, but that thing was long. Like crazy long. I used pretty much all my safety pins to kilt it up all the way down the skirt; I thought it ended up looking pretty cool.
Then I had to hurry to get my Sith Cheerleader outfit on; I had agreed to meetkay_dee70 and David over at the Marriott and we would walk over to the photoshoot location (the 501st mixer) together. I left my hair down and wore the ankle boots I was planning to wear for Una (the ones I originally bought for my Nav Officer costume when we did Planet, see this is why I keep things!). This was the only costume where I used my real hair all weekend.
We got over to the mixer and it was supercrowded in the restaurant; they weren't letting anyone else in. Which was fine, because we were just there for the photoshoot anyway, and there was definitely no room to do a photoshoot inside! There didn't seem to be a firm plan like there was at SDCC...no one was quite sure when we should start it, if we should wait for more people to show up, and then people just started taking pictures so we were like okay! guess we're having the photoshoot now! Eventually the pictures stopped, so Kathy and I left because we had other costumes to change into, and I know other people left too. Apparently there was a whole nother round of pictures later that we missed when more people showed up later. Oh well.
Somewhere in here I ran into Courtney outside the hotel, still in her Nancy dress. They were doing a photoshoot and I have seen some of the pictures and they are stupendous.
Aaaanywho. Rob and Jenni had offered me their room to change in, which was really super of them, so I didn't have to go all the way back to the Residence Inn. Luckily Una was really easy to get into, as long as I had a helper to lace up the back. (I have no memory of who my helper was. Anyone?) So. Once properly attired, we all went downstairs and found THE HOLYHEAD HARPIES!!! WOO! Man, they looked awesome, and the whole groupie idea just cracked me up. Mostly we went up and down the levels of the Marriott lobby, seeing more people. We ran into Cassandra and Dawn and Holly, hooray, who I hadn't seen yet! They were all in Marie Antoinette-era attire, and omg. gorgeous. Cassandra gave us a little card telling about their room party later that night. She said there'd be cake. Sold.
Let's see, we ran into Joe and Ashley again, and took more pictures. Maggie and a few others got up close and personal with my dress and took a lot of pictures; we all did sort of an informal costume study together. That was fun. I finally got formally introduced to J-9 and Ron!
We all went up to Cassandra's party at some point. It was actually a party for Dawn and they had gotten a cake that looked just like her dress! It was super super tasty too, mmmmm. We basically all sat down on the beds facing each other, and on the floor too, and we chatted and laughed for ages and caused the Herpes joke to come into existence. (The Holyhead groupies all had shirts that said "Harpies," but the beads and lanyards tended to cover up the "a" and the "i," causing more than one person to ask, "Does your shirt say "herpes"? Then, the phone rang while we were all sitting around, and we didn't know who should answer it, and someone put their finger on their nose, so of course then everybody touched their nose (because the last one to do it is It!). And somehow those two got conflated so that every time someone said "herpes," you had to touch your nose.) Pretty sure this was when I formally met Amber and Jess, too. Then my head was itching so I took off my wig and shook out my hair, which was apparently hilarious, and I think Maggie has video footage of it. And we referenced lots of bizarre YouTube videos. (Numa Numa!)
Anyway, we stayed up way later than Friday, until our sides were aching and our voices were disappearing. And amazingly, very few of us had had anything at all to drink. As the party wound down, we decided it was time for a Party Vader Vator ride!!! Yeah!!! We managed to go up and down a couple times but it was harder than usual to get the car to ourselves. Crowded in the Marriott these days.
Sunday Daytime and most of the evening: Hairspray
Sunday Late Night, very briefly: T'Posh
Today was the day I *finally* met up with Courtney! She andmandymitchell were heading over to prejudging for the YA Lit costume contest (Yule Ball Hermione and Cho Chang, respectively), so I tagged along. Even though I'd seen Angela a ton of times over the years, this was the first time we had ever actually met each other. Yay! They got judged, and I said hi to Ecila/Alice, who was one of the Hogwarts cancan-skirt girls (that was the only time I saw her all con). Then Courtney and Angela and I hung out for awhile; it was super fun to chat with them! We took pictures with a lot of the other contest entrants. At that point I wasn't sure if I was going to the Yule Ball that night or not, but basically everyone else in the group said they were going, so I said why not?
As we were walking over, the cutest cutest thing happened. There was a tug on my arm from a little girl-- maybe 8 or so? Her father said, "She wants to know if you're *mumblemumble*" and I said, "Oh, I'm a character from the movie Hairspray." He replied, "Right, she wants to know if you're dressed as Doreen. It's her favorite movie; she watches it all the time." DUDE. Not only did she get the movie, which is rare enough, she got the actual character I based my dress on, *and* she knew which twin was which! Hell, I didn't even know that! So I told her no, I wasn't being Doreen specifically, but I had used her dress as my inspiration, and thanked her profusely for noticing. We took a picture together; her dad said I'd made her day. That was really fun.
Okay, I am SO GLAD I decided to go to the Yule Ball, because it was an absolute blast. It was a big geeky dance party, which there just aren't enough of in the world. They did a super cool thing-- instead of just playing music, they played fanvids! So you had the music going, and you could also watch the accompanying fanvid on the screen if you wanted. They played the one Ferd made of all the dancing scenes from movies, plus that 300 "Vogue" video. Basically everyone came, and most people were wearing HP costumes-- J-9 and Ron were Yule Ball Hermione and Viktor, Jenni and Ron were Tonks and Bill Weasley, Kathy was school robes Hermione, Maggie was casual PoA Hermione, Amber was Moaning Myrtle (in a toilet!!!), Jess was...I'm forgetting, the other Jess was Yule Ball Fleur. And there was me and Rogue in Hairspray and Londo. ;-) I think Courtney and Angela decided I was Young Petunia!
Somewhere in the middle they announced the costume contest winners, and Courtney won an award for all her amazing dye work on her Hermione gown! Wooohoooo! Other award-winning costumes included a Tonks with a fabulous coat, a Mad-Eye Moody with an eye that spun around, two people dressed in Cullen vampire baseball uniforms, and a Potter Puppet Pals Snape, who I think won the whole thing. ("Snape, Snape, Severus Snape...")
After the Yule Ball was over (sadness) we decided to go snark the Masquerade rebroadcast on D*CTV. I honestly forget whose room we went to, but we had some good times. Courtney came and joined us partway through, and she was like, "you guys. You don't understand. You haven't seen an anime convention masquerade. Every single one of these would win best in show." So that became another running joke. We did love the Iron Man who was an actual iron. And I appreciate that they send the stormtroopers in to break up bad, endless skits, but seriously, how about just not letting those skits onstage to begin with? Hard time limits, think about it. (Although sometimes that goes awry at SDCC too-- *coughendlessVikingsongcough*)
When that was over, I changed into Posh, and Rogue and I took a turn around each floor of the Marriott dressed as Posh and Londo. We were really tired though, so we beat feet back to our room right afterward.
Monday- no costume, just my Star Wars curtain skirt and Roslin '08 shirt (two great tastes that taste great together!)
We finally ventured to the dealer floor! Maggie, Kathy, Cassandra, Jenni and Rob (?), Rogue, and I...who else? We all spent a lot of time at the Museum Replicas (or whatever their name is) booth, looking at the Padme packing dress. The guy there was very very friendly and helpful, explained a lot of the issues and reasons why things were the way they were, described what resources they'd been given, assured us that they knew all the things that were wrong with it. Very interesting and informative. (Summer 2009 update-- I saw it at Comic-Con and it looked pretty much the same as last year to me, although the guy at the booth told me they'd updated. Eh.)
Then we all sat down in the Marriott lobby and just chilled and chatted for awhile. That was really fun, a nice cooldown from the frenzy of the con. I bought one of those pomegranate ice cream bars that other people had gotten, because I had been wanting one all weekend, and it was taaaasty. Actually I don't remember if it was that day or a different day, but regardless-- taaaasty.
And that was pretty much it. We went back to our room to get our suitcases and said goodbye and many many thank yous to Becky, since she was staying another day, and MARTAed back to the airport and flew home! Man, what an awesome con.
We flew American this year, because that’s where we found a cheap fare, and they were still allowing one checked bag free at that point. We managed to limit ourselves to one checked bag each- -mine was 49.5 pounds! We got in pretty late Thursday night, just catching the last MART into the city. We found the Residence Inn without too much trouble—it’s not really that far from the other hotels—and installed ourselves in Becky’s room.
Friday day: civvies
Friday night: Robin Sparkles
Friday, we slept till we woke up, then headed over to the Hyatt to pick up our badges. There was hardly any line, but the guy manning our section of the alphabet had a broken wrist or arm or something, so it took him awhile. Then we headed over to the mall for food, and Rogue wanted tot ry a nd meet up with his fellow Bad Horsemen. I started to text Maggie and suddenly Rogue said, “Hey, there’s Maggie right there.” So that was easy.
We all wound up in line for our first panel of the day—Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk—after a long walk to find the end of the line, which wrapped all the way around the Hyatt. I think it was us, Maggie, Doug, Ed, Michelle, Rob, and Jenni who were all together. They were really packing the room—they just marched everyone in single-file down a row and filled every seat, then moved on to the next row. Our seats were pretty decent, about halfway back.
The panel was freaking hilarious. Rogue got most of the best bits in his post here, and of course there was the bit with Alan saying he wanted to be a Bad Horseman. Also, I forget if this was Friday’s or Sunday’s panel, but Alan told a hilarious story about feeding Nathan’s cats while he was gone for a few weeks, and on the last day, he finally picked up this pen that had been sitting on the coffee table the whole time, to write Nathan a note, and it was a shock pen! Also, Nathan told one about how he got hold of all these childhood pictures of Alan, from a calendar that Alan had left at his house, and he made copies of a bunch of them and hung them all over the Maidenhead bar set on Alan’s birthday when they were filming Serenity.
(other stuff happened Friday day that I don't remember)
Rushed over from changing into Robin Sparkles to get to the Dr. Horrible singalong- got there just as Rob and Jenni were reaching the door to the inside! phew! On the way, a guy asked for a picture and told me that his friend also had a Robin Sparkles costume and would be wearing it on Saturday. We got quite nice seats in the middle of the room, fairly close to the front. Rob realized he had lost his cell phone, yikes! He went to retrace his steps, Rogue started calling the number over and over, and we got the room staff to make an announcement about it. It turned up almost right away, a few rows behind us. Yay fans!
The singalong was super fun, and the shadow cast was also quite excellent. It was pretty funny how they handled certain things, like the "truck," and the transitions between Billy and Dr. Horrible. The people in front of us had clearly never seen it before and were having a grand time. There was a Buffy singalong following, but we've been to one before and wanted to go see the Sergeant Pepper group, and that way there'd be room for four more people (it was packed in there!). Outside, Rogue, Rob, and Jenni, dressed as the Bad Horsemen, sang to a few more Dr. Horribles although there weren't as many as we thought there'd be.
We caught up to the Sgt Pepper group in time to see them take their "album cover" photo on one of the staircases in the Marriott. Too funny. We spent most of the night wandering between the Marriott and the Hyatt with various clusters of friends, taking pictures and getting our pictures taken. Rob and Jenni had changed into their Temeraire-inspired costumes by this point and Rogue was now Captain Hammer. We went to the skywalks and the mall to do a bit of a Robin Sparkles photoshoot. On the skywalk to the Hyatt we ran into an amazingly done Singapore-pirate Elizabeth and AWE Will, and I was squealing over her costume while she was squealing about Robin Sparkles! And that is how we met
ashleyrains and hattermercury. :) They mentioned they were going to be Giselle and Edward on Saturday, and I was like oh, my friend made the Nancy dress, and they were like oh, is it Courtney? and I was like yeah! and they were like oh, she's part of our group tonight too! Costuming is a small small world, folks.So anyway, we saw some fun stuff in the Hyatt lobby, which was not *too* too crowded, and spent some time sitting at a table in the lounge-bar area, and then we went back over to the Marriott and saw Ashley and Joe and Courtney with their whole POTC-AWE group, which included a totally awesome Davy Jones WITH HIS BUKKIT of course. Ran into
benaequee (in her cancan) and Will on the way to the Marriott, and one of my danged necklaces broke, spilling beads allllll over the super shiny floor...that was fun. Everyone around was really nice and helped me pick up the beads, and luckily my jacket had about a zillion pockets to put them in! :PAnd about midnight we were like "we're exhausted! Let's go back!" which is how you know you're old, when you punk out of the first night of D*C at midnight. So we walked back to the Residence Inn, which honestly is not that bad of a walk, and chatted with Becky for awhile about the day.
Saturday Day: Robin Sparkles
Saturday Evening: Sith Cheerleader (very briefly), Una
Ugh, I lost my badge on the way over that morning. Boy did that ever suck! I had just walked up to a group of my friends in the Marriott lobby when I discovered I didn't have it, so I had to run away as soon as I said hi! I walked all the way back to the hotel looking for it, couldn't find it, went to Lost and Found, they didn't have it, and finally had to go back to Registration to get a new one. Many tears were shed, but it all worked out, and they laminated my new badge so it would be harder to lose. Except I lost my Party Vader Vator badge too, boo. :( :( :(
Courtney texted me but I was in a panel, and then once I texted her I was out, she replied that her group had decided to do Enchanted earlier instead of later, so she was up changing. forget what I did after that...anyway, I found them later when they had all gathered in the Marriott, and Ashley (as Giselle) and I grooved to "Let's Go to the Mall" and took more pictures.
At one point we were walking over to the Hyatt through the mall, and I am absolutely dead serious here, we were in the food court and THERE WAS THE OTHER ROBIN SPARKLES. WE MET AT THE MALL. NO SERIOUSLY. We both shrieked and ran at each other and jumped up and down and were basically Woo Girls. We immediately started comparing where we'd gotten various pieces of our costumes; we had the same Wal-Mart shoes and I recognized some of her jewelry. And then we took a bunch of pictures. Random people were taking pictures of us too and one lady was like "My daughter loves Hannah Montana!" and Other Robin and I looked at each other and were like "...we're not Hannah Montana."
Then there was a big long stretch where I didn't have anything to go to, so I went back to our room and started pinning up the Una dress that Kimmerie had lent me. I don't know if it's a stunt version, or if Kate Magowan is just a giant, but that thing was long. Like crazy long. I used pretty much all my safety pins to kilt it up all the way down the skirt; I thought it ended up looking pretty cool.
Then I had to hurry to get my Sith Cheerleader outfit on; I had agreed to meet
kay_dee70 and David over at the Marriott and we would walk over to the photoshoot location (the 501st mixer) together. I left my hair down and wore the ankle boots I was planning to wear for Una (the ones I originally bought for my Nav Officer costume when we did Planet, see this is why I keep things!). This was the only costume where I used my real hair all weekend. We got over to the mixer and it was supercrowded in the restaurant; they weren't letting anyone else in. Which was fine, because we were just there for the photoshoot anyway, and there was definitely no room to do a photoshoot inside! There didn't seem to be a firm plan like there was at SDCC...no one was quite sure when we should start it, if we should wait for more people to show up, and then people just started taking pictures so we were like okay! guess we're having the photoshoot now! Eventually the pictures stopped, so Kathy and I left because we had other costumes to change into, and I know other people left too. Apparently there was a whole nother round of pictures later that we missed when more people showed up later. Oh well.
Somewhere in here I ran into Courtney outside the hotel, still in her Nancy dress. They were doing a photoshoot and I have seen some of the pictures and they are stupendous.
Aaaanywho. Rob and Jenni had offered me their room to change in, which was really super of them, so I didn't have to go all the way back to the Residence Inn. Luckily Una was really easy to get into, as long as I had a helper to lace up the back. (I have no memory of who my helper was. Anyone?) So. Once properly attired, we all went downstairs and found THE HOLYHEAD HARPIES!!! WOO! Man, they looked awesome, and the whole groupie idea just cracked me up. Mostly we went up and down the levels of the Marriott lobby, seeing more people. We ran into Cassandra and Dawn and Holly, hooray, who I hadn't seen yet! They were all in Marie Antoinette-era attire, and omg. gorgeous. Cassandra gave us a little card telling about their room party later that night. She said there'd be cake. Sold.
Let's see, we ran into Joe and Ashley again, and took more pictures. Maggie and a few others got up close and personal with my dress and took a lot of pictures; we all did sort of an informal costume study together. That was fun. I finally got formally introduced to J-9 and Ron!
We all went up to Cassandra's party at some point. It was actually a party for Dawn and they had gotten a cake that looked just like her dress! It was super super tasty too, mmmmm. We basically all sat down on the beds facing each other, and on the floor too, and we chatted and laughed for ages and caused the Herpes joke to come into existence. (The Holyhead groupies all had shirts that said "Harpies," but the beads and lanyards tended to cover up the "a" and the "i," causing more than one person to ask, "Does your shirt say "herpes"? Then, the phone rang while we were all sitting around, and we didn't know who should answer it, and someone put their finger on their nose, so of course then everybody touched their nose (because the last one to do it is It!). And somehow those two got conflated so that every time someone said "herpes," you had to touch your nose.) Pretty sure this was when I formally met Amber and Jess, too. Then my head was itching so I took off my wig and shook out my hair, which was apparently hilarious, and I think Maggie has video footage of it. And we referenced lots of bizarre YouTube videos. (Numa Numa!)
Anyway, we stayed up way later than Friday, until our sides were aching and our voices were disappearing. And amazingly, very few of us had had anything at all to drink. As the party wound down, we decided it was time for a Party Vader Vator ride!!! Yeah!!! We managed to go up and down a couple times but it was harder than usual to get the car to ourselves. Crowded in the Marriott these days.
Sunday Daytime and most of the evening: Hairspray
Sunday Late Night, very briefly: T'Posh
Today was the day I *finally* met up with Courtney! She and
mandymitchell were heading over to prejudging for the YA Lit costume contest (Yule Ball Hermione and Cho Chang, respectively), so I tagged along. Even though I'd seen Angela a ton of times over the years, this was the first time we had ever actually met each other. Yay! They got judged, and I said hi to Ecila/Alice, who was one of the Hogwarts cancan-skirt girls (that was the only time I saw her all con). Then Courtney and Angela and I hung out for awhile; it was super fun to chat with them! We took pictures with a lot of the other contest entrants. At that point I wasn't sure if I was going to the Yule Ball that night or not, but basically everyone else in the group said they were going, so I said why not?As we were walking over, the cutest cutest thing happened. There was a tug on my arm from a little girl-- maybe 8 or so? Her father said, "She wants to know if you're *mumblemumble*" and I said, "Oh, I'm a character from the movie Hairspray." He replied, "Right, she wants to know if you're dressed as Doreen. It's her favorite movie; she watches it all the time." DUDE. Not only did she get the movie, which is rare enough, she got the actual character I based my dress on, *and* she knew which twin was which! Hell, I didn't even know that! So I told her no, I wasn't being Doreen specifically, but I had used her dress as my inspiration, and thanked her profusely for noticing. We took a picture together; her dad said I'd made her day. That was really fun.
Okay, I am SO GLAD I decided to go to the Yule Ball, because it was an absolute blast. It was a big geeky dance party, which there just aren't enough of in the world. They did a super cool thing-- instead of just playing music, they played fanvids! So you had the music going, and you could also watch the accompanying fanvid on the screen if you wanted. They played the one Ferd made of all the dancing scenes from movies, plus that 300 "Vogue" video. Basically everyone came, and most people were wearing HP costumes-- J-9 and Ron were Yule Ball Hermione and Viktor, Jenni and Ron were Tonks and Bill Weasley, Kathy was school robes Hermione, Maggie was casual PoA Hermione, Amber was Moaning Myrtle (in a toilet!!!), Jess was...I'm forgetting, the other Jess was Yule Ball Fleur. And there was me and Rogue in Hairspray and Londo. ;-) I think Courtney and Angela decided I was Young Petunia!
Somewhere in the middle they announced the costume contest winners, and Courtney won an award for all her amazing dye work on her Hermione gown! Wooohoooo! Other award-winning costumes included a Tonks with a fabulous coat, a Mad-Eye Moody with an eye that spun around, two people dressed in Cullen vampire baseball uniforms, and a Potter Puppet Pals Snape, who I think won the whole thing. ("Snape, Snape, Severus Snape...")
After the Yule Ball was over (sadness) we decided to go snark the Masquerade rebroadcast on D*CTV. I honestly forget whose room we went to, but we had some good times. Courtney came and joined us partway through, and she was like, "you guys. You don't understand. You haven't seen an anime convention masquerade. Every single one of these would win best in show." So that became another running joke. We did love the Iron Man who was an actual iron. And I appreciate that they send the stormtroopers in to break up bad, endless skits, but seriously, how about just not letting those skits onstage to begin with? Hard time limits, think about it. (Although sometimes that goes awry at SDCC too-- *coughendlessVikingsongcough*)
When that was over, I changed into Posh, and Rogue and I took a turn around each floor of the Marriott dressed as Posh and Londo. We were really tired though, so we beat feet back to our room right afterward.
Monday- no costume, just my Star Wars curtain skirt and Roslin '08 shirt (two great tastes that taste great together!)
We finally ventured to the dealer floor! Maggie, Kathy, Cassandra, Jenni and Rob (?), Rogue, and I...who else? We all spent a lot of time at the Museum Replicas (or whatever their name is) booth, looking at the Padme packing dress. The guy there was very very friendly and helpful, explained a lot of the issues and reasons why things were the way they were, described what resources they'd been given, assured us that they knew all the things that were wrong with it. Very interesting and informative. (Summer 2009 update-- I saw it at Comic-Con and it looked pretty much the same as last year to me, although the guy at the booth told me they'd updated. Eh.)
Then we all sat down in the Marriott lobby and just chilled and chatted for awhile. That was really fun, a nice cooldown from the frenzy of the con. I bought one of those pomegranate ice cream bars that other people had gotten, because I had been wanting one all weekend, and it was taaaasty. Actually I don't remember if it was that day or a different day, but regardless-- taaaasty.
And that was pretty much it. We went back to our room to get our suitcases and said goodbye and many many thank yous to Becky, since she was staying another day, and MARTAed back to the airport and flew home! Man, what an awesome con.
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Date: 2009-08-25 05:32 am (UTC)Ooooh I hope I can come this year.
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Date: 2009-08-25 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-08-25 10:57 am (UTC)Make room on your dance card for "Party Like It's The Last Day on Alderaan." I saw the music list and it's wondrous. It should be fun in a "Cathy's no longer running the Star Wars track" sorta way.
Your costumes were fantastic. I can't wait to see what you do this year!
Party in the Marriott!!
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-08-25 01:53 pm (UTC)*puts finger on nose*
Oh, and I think it was me and Michelle's room we watched the Masq at and we'll be doing it again!
Disecting the SW costumes was fun too!
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:08 pm (UTC)It was SUCH a blast and this year is going to be just as great! Mwahahaha, Masquerade snarking!
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Date: 2009-08-27 12:02 am (UTC)Dragon*Con, baby! The release of the schedule totally has me re-psyched!
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Date: 2009-08-25 04:08 pm (UTC)9 more days! I'm so excited I'm having a hard time sleeping at night! This year will be even more fun becaue I'll be 'performing' my hoop routine for everyone!
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:10 pm (UTC)I got a hoop earlier this year, but discovered I don't have enough open space anywhere to practice while watching the instructional videos. :-/
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:10 pm (UTC)Did you get the travel hoop? Bring it! I can show you some tricks :-D
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Date: 2009-08-28 12:54 am (UTC)Now I'm super duper excited for D*C this year!
AND HOLY CRAP YOU WERE ROBIN SPARKLES???? And you left to comes see the Beatles??? I feel so honored!
*herpes*
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Date: 2009-08-31 02:15 am (UTC)I was Robin Sparkles! I'm bringing her again this year for the Thriller dance. :D And of course I wanted to come see y'all as the Beatles!