Supernatural Vancouver Con 2010
:x You didn't know I was going to a Con this weekend, did you? ^^;; It's a Supernatural Con in Vancouver BC, so I didn't mention it before.
Still, it was awesome, so I wanted to share with everyone~
So we were supposed to leave on Thursday afternoon originally, but it's me and nothing ever goes according to plan (as you may have noticed if you've seen any of my previous con reports). I ended up scheduled til 6pm and my Con-buddy, kenaressa had a lecture even later than that, so we ended up staying at my place on Thursday night and heading out in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, since I'd planned the trip expecting traffic, we hit none and got to Vancouver hoooooours before registration for either the con or the hostel we're staying at opened up.
However, we did get here late enough for the weird "no turns during these hours" traffic laws to kick in, which our directions hadn't taken into account. We ended up making many a box, trying to find where we were staying... and then many a more boxes trying to find someplace to park. I thought parking in Seattle was ridiculous, but it's got nothing on Vancouver. Eventually we found a parking garage... this tiny little 9 story box. :x Her van just barely fit into a space.
Registration for the Con was fairly lowkey and easy, despite the obnoxious guy standing behind us.
The vendor's room is a bit of a misnomer. It is a room where the con Sponsor - Creation Entertainment - is selling official merchandise. That's it. There are photos (for autographs), t-shirts, travel mugs, and calendars. That's pretty much it. :x not that that makes it any less dangerous. I snagged a 2010 S&D calendar for the boys to sign as well as a Castiel t-shirt for me and a birthday present for kenaressa (because it's her birthday, see?), and a couple of photos for actors whose autographs I wanted to add to my wall (at the time that was Misha, Jared, Jensen, Richard, and Aldis - I ended going back for Matt and Katherine after they're Q&A's cuz they were just that awesome). It's definitely not a "dealer's room" as I'm used to the term.
This is the first small, single-subject dedicated convention I've ever been to. I've been to lots of anime cons - Shoujo Con (once), Yaoi Con(3 times), Sakura Con (8 times) - and music festivals/events - Peanut Festival(once), Dogwood Days(every year growing up), KMF(twice), a couple of others who's names are escaping me right now. They're all a little different, but this is ... definitely unique. For one thing, you don't have to worry about missing anything. It's all largely in one large auditorium. It's very strictly scheduled. (one of the staff ladies actually chased Aldis Hodge off stage after he said she had to if she wanted him to get off) Your registration (whether you got the expensive packages or the general admission) comes with assigned seating. Whether you're there or not, you have a chair that is your chair and no one else's. No need to worry about losing your spot if you're late.
(Completely randomly, there was this Japanese variety host filming random attendees in the registration hall... kenaressa recognized him from her time in the JET program in Japan. In retrospect, I think he must have been there because of the anime release of the show)
The first guest speaker on the schedule was Katherine Boecher, who played the adult version of Lilith. I didn't particularly like Lilith, so I wasn't really expecting much, but Katherine Boecher is fucking awesome. And from Texas. ^^;; I didn't realize that before. When she mentioned it I sort of whooped a little and drew her attention. Totally hadn't meant to do that. Trying to shrink back and pretend it wasn't me was kind of hard considering I was - as per usual - in neon, day-glo orange. I think it amused her that I tried.
Afterwards there was a SPN trivia game. I eventually got up to try my hand at it, though I knew there was no chance in hell that I'd win. (I love the show, but I save my hardcore fan-ishness for KPop). I was not the first person eliminated and the question I went out on actually ended up taking out all but like... 4 of the group of 25-30, so it was all good.
Matt Cohen (Young John Winchester/Temp. Arch Angel Micheal) was the next speaker. Again. We weren't expecting much, but he was awesome. He's also a lot hotter with a crew cut than with 'young john winchester' hair.
I wish I could give more in-depth commentary about the time when the actors were up on the stage, but mostly I remember laughing... a lot. Because they were all so amazingly funny, each in their own way.
After Matt left there was an intermission, so we took the opportunity to run down to grab the van from the parking garage and head down to the hostel. We got parked and registered, grabbed some food and headed back in time to see Aldis Hodge.
Aldis Hodge plays the geek, Hardison, in Leverage. He is fucking awesome. Age of the geek, baby. Again with the awesomeness on stage. Most of the questions directed at him were about Leverage (he pretty much confirmed that Hardison and Parker will be 'getting busy' by the end of the show). He also admitted to listening to sClub7 back in the day because one of the females was 'fine', though that disclosure came back to haunt him at karaoke later.
Next up was Richard Speight who plays one of my favorite SPN supporting characters, Trickster/Loki/Archangel Gabriel. I already loved him. He really didn't need to do anything to add to that, but he was... amazing. ^^;; He went out among the crowd asking some people how far they'd come and why they'd come. lol. He kept pointing out the very few guys in the audience. One of the most memorable moments of his time was definitely when someone asked him what he'd do if he actually had the powers of his character. LOL~ he didn't even hesitate. "I'd make that Jared guy short." After which he proceeded to give a scene demo of 'little Jared' trying to get his attention, complete with ruffling of 'little jared's' hair. And then "Then I'd make that Jensen guy a New York Jew." *snerk* Apparently that'd take away Jensen's swagger. His scene demo of this included impersonating Jensen with an Elvis accent to accompany the swagger.
Jason Manns was adorable. He has that down home good ole boy charm about him and he's an amazing singer. We'd been debating whether or not we were going to make the concert later that night or get some sleep since we'd been up since insane o'clock in the morning, but he played a song or two during his segment that were amazing and we decided right then that we were going.
Autographs were all nice and orderly. They called us up by our assigned rows. All four of the guest were nice and friendly and easily amenable to personalizing the autographs (which I'd been afraid they wouldn't be since the schedule warned that personalization was subject to actor discretion and mood and most of the autographs I'd seen were just their names). I made sure to tell them all it was kenaressa's birthday, so all of her autographs say 'Happy Birthday'. ^_____^ Also, Richard gave us some of his chocolate since it was her birthday. ^^;; He gave me a hard time about being a UT fan since he's apparently a UMC fan and we beat them in the playoffs. My personalizations are from Katherine "Texas Rules!", Matt "You've Been Warned~<3" (a joke from his Q&A), and Aldis "Age of the Geek, baby!" (he put "Happy birthday, mama!" on kenaressa's) :x I couldn't think of anything specific for Richard, so it's just my name and regular stuffs.
Afterwards they chased us out so they could set up and do the sound check for the concert.
The concert itself was awesome. Jason Manns has a gorgeous voice and a very beautiful style of singing, IMO. The only bad thing was that one of the attendees had a medical emergency and things ground to a halt in the middle. There's a hospital and emergency response center right across the way from the hotel the Con is in, but it took something like 20 minutes or more before a response team actually got there. luckily, it apparently wasn't fatally serious, because if she'd been having a heart attack or an asthma attach, she'd have been dead before they got there. He did pick the concert back up after they took her away, but he had to cut a good chunk out and even then we ran over time-wise.
Which cut into the time we had for karaoke. Could have been a good thing, since it meant that even though we’d signed up, I didn't have to get up and sing after all.
But all four of the guests were back out on the stage providing back up and comedic relief for whoever was onstage singing. They were like... the best Rockettes ever. lol. Minus Matt who obviously suffers from White-Man-Gots-No-Rhythm syndrome. Also, I'm pretty sure he's tone deaf. :x just saying. The hotel staff wanted us out by 1am apparently. *sad face* Matt and Aldis were definitely all for pushing that limit as far as they could, though. ^^;; An actual halt to the festivities weren't called until a quarter after. By then we'd managed to get Jason's autographs (on our badges because they'd run out of cds *sad face*) as well as pictures on my phone with him and one of kenaressa with Aldis. Hey, I am not above being pushy to get my friend a birthday picture with the present actor of her choice. ^_~ It helped that he was amazingly sweet about the whole thing. Since they sell photo ops, I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to actually be letting fans take pictures with them, but he and Matt both were.
Eventually, though, the hotel staff were quite insistent that we all leave and close down for the night.
The hostel is a pretty decent place. We had a private room and the beds were comfortable. We opted to sleep in saturday morning even though we kind of wanted to see Fred Lehne (Azazeal), we wanted sleep more. We did get back in time to actually catch the last half of his time. lol. He's funny. and honest about things like how he doesn't know the answer to half the questions he gets asked or how he just doesn't really have any great spectacular reason for wanting this character or that other than "yay, paycheck!". He also gave us the secret of working with Jared. Apple boxes. ^^;;
Rob Benedict aka Chuck aka maybe-God-maybe-not was actually very similar onstage as his character was during the fan con episode. A little awkward, a little shy and a lot cute in that manner. And in what is apparently his kind of luck, he was informed his time was up right after an embarrassing story about being seen in the seedy part of a Vancouver park and being mistaken for being there to pick up a male hooker. lol.
After he left the stage, we hustled down to this Book Off we'd seen between the Con hotel and the parking garage from the first morning. ^_^ I picked up a few Glay albums, a w-inds single, and a WaT album for like... $10 total. It was awesome.
We stopped to eat at a little Thai place on the way back to the hotel. It was excellent food and the staff was friendly. I did start to get a little irate, though when a pair of customers showed up and were complete tools. >_< I wanted to stab them with my fork for all of the hassle they were giving the poor thai hostess. I really, really did. I hate customers like that. At my place of employment, I would go out and tell them to stop badgering my cashiers, it just pisses me off. And only idiots piss off the people in control of your food.
On the way back to the hotel, we completely randomly ran across Richard Speight walking down the street. ^^;; I had to take off my shades to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Lol. When he said hi, I thought to myself “oh hey, he knows we’re from the con because of my badge!” lol. No. My badge was turned around and on my back. ^^;; But after we’d passed (and I’d realized my badge wasn’t where it was supposed to be) I decided the Castiel t-shirt I was wearing may have been the giveaway. Just a guess.
We hung around in the registration hallway during the intermission and and a couple of small things we didn’t care enough to go see.
Eventually we headed back down for the auction. There were some banners and things that I’d have loved to have - two awesome Castiel banners in particular - but my maximum remaining splurge money of $50 is way below what these crazy people are tossing around. :X one Misha banner went for $535. A Jensen one went for $475.
They’re awesome… they’re not that awesome, even with an autograph ticket included.
So… Misha Collins….
Yeah….
What to say, what to say….
As anyone can tell you, Castiel is one of my two favorite characters and Misha is my favorite among the actors. So … do I count it as a plus or a minus that I was completely embarrassed by Misha Collins or not? I suppose, as he liked my recovery, I will count it as a plus.
I’ve always heard that Misha is quirky. I’ve been curious about why since I hadn’t seen a whole lot outside of SPN and the outtakes. :X so I found out why today.
His time started with him coming out and offering an autographed bandaid with his blood on it up for auction to help pay for the girl’s medical issues from the night before. Apparently we’re a social experiment to him. His conclusions are that we’re sick, sick people who are by and large slightly smarter than average. :X considering someone actually paid $50 for his bandaid… I can’t disagree with that, actually.
He never answers any questions seriously. He’s a giant child with a sarcastic, wry wit that he likes to use on anyone brave enough to take their lives in their hands and put themselves in front of him. His story about being mistaken for a lesbian and being put into a girls dorm because of his college photo and name were hilarious. He also chose in shag/marry/kill with Cas/Sam/Dean as the options, to fuck himself (because apparently he’s always wanted to do that), marry Dean (tho he said Jensen), and kill Sam (again, said Jared instead). ^^;;
I’d thought hard on a question and only finally came up with one over lunch. I wanted his opinion on the Chuck/God issue and Castiel’s thoughts on it. But I know myself and I get nervous whenever anyone is really staring at me so I wrote the question down so that I would have a reference to steady myself.
I was shaking before it was even my turn to speak and when he turned and focused on me, I - as per usual - clammed up. I did manage to stutter out that I was nervous because he was my favorite (to which he took great relish in making me even more nervous by calling more and more attention to it). Consequently I pulled out my paper. :X And he yelled at me for cheating. Well, not yelled specifically, but it felt like being severely scolded by a teacher. He insisted that I improvise if I couldn’t remember my question. And each time I stumbled, he poked more and more holes into my ability to speak in front of people. My question came out completely incoherent - which he called me on and I blustered (squeaked according to kenaressa) about not being allowed to use my notes. I’m not sure during which part of his gleefully ripping apart my question (my lack of question, in fact, I think he was asking me to repeat what I’d said because it was too confusing for him to remember what part of a triple hypothetical he was supposed to be answering - kenaressa says the real reason was because “you were adorably flustered and there was no way in hell he was going to answer the question”) I finally just said the first thing that came to my mind - “What was your favorite scene to film?” *snort* He immediately shifted gears - far more quickly than me or anyone else I’ve ever known - “Oh hey, good recovery! Excellent, well umm..” And launched into a few of his favorite scenes. It was probably the only straight answer he gave all day long.
:X I did get a round of applause for dealing with it and recovering more or less gracefully.
I wasn’t the only person he embarrassed, I was just the worst (or the one who showed it the most, at least).
The good/bad news is that apparently Misha Collins has an amazing memory for the people who come to the cons. The girls around me while I was waiting to ask were going on about how they’d seen him at convention so and so back a year or more ago and then when they’d done the photo op earlier and he’d remembered who they were, where they were from, and what they’d said to him the first time around. Which means…. :X he’s likely going to remember my humiliation.
So on the one hand, Misha Collins may remember me for more than five minutes.
And on the other hand…. Misha Collins may remember me for more than five minutes.
^^;; He wasn’t having a perfect day himself, though, which is some vindication. He had his jacket on backwards and didn’t realize it until the Q&A was halfway over - this is after his photo ops and his VIP meet&greet. And he didn’t screw the cap onto his water bottle fully and sat on it so he had a giant wet spot on his pants for the rest of his session. ^_^
I was much happier to be sitting and watching him put everyone else on the spot.
Demore Barnes (Raphael) was, to quote someone else, “ridiculously adorable”. And flamingly gay, but that’s beside the point. His character only has one episode… maybe two? I can’t remember, so he mostly talked about his other show, The Unit. It was fine, though because he was great. Apparently this was his first Con appearance ever. He handled it well, I think. LOL~ He kept going on about Raphael’s undying love for Castiel and called the ring of holy fire, the ring of inspirational fire and love… or something. And recited poetry (slightly altered version of Wonderful World) from Raphael to Castiel. He really was quite cute.
The location manager was humorous and this time, kenaressa got up to ask a question. ^^ She made an impression too with her bracers. She’s a costume designer. Lol~ he asked her if he could get a set and she said she did commissions. :X If I’d been paying attention, I would have stood up and let him know that if he promised it’d be on the show, she’d definitely make him a set. Alas, I wasn’t. I was still a little flustered from my experience with Misha. :X
After that, there was a long wait while they set up and started the autographs with Misha, Rob Bededict, and Samantha _ (Mary Winchester). It took forever. We were in row G and we didn’t get up to them until 9. Sadly, I didn’t have anything for Rob or Samantha to sign except my badge. ^^;; The spelling of my name became a bit of an issue. Jason had signed my badge the night before and he’d spelt it Renee’, the lady who was writing out tags so that the actors could see how to spell it wrote ReNe’e. Neither is accurate. My name is actually spelt ReNee’. Lol~ we ended up in a discussion about spellings and explanations. French vs. Other and the fact that my mother - who is cajun - is the reason my name is spelt peculiarly. Samantha’s autograph actually says ReNe’e’, I need to speak to your mother about spelling. ^^;; She’d put the accent in the wrong place before I could stop her. She wrote over it with a silver pen and put it in the right spot. Since Rob was in on that discussion, he went the safe route and put it all in capitals. Lol~ Then, since we were waiting on the people in front of us to be done with Misha, we had a discussion about Misha. ^^;; All about how I’d been one of his victims and no one had warned me. And that while Castiel was still my favorite character, I might be re-evaluating my position on his actor. Which was when I realized that Misha wasn’t that far away. Luckily, he was distracted, so I’m sure he didn’t notice.
(Samantha expressed surprise that no one had warned me about Misha and Rob said “Friends don’t put friends in front of Misha” which my friend had to explain she’d never met him before either, so there was no one to warn us)
Once I got up to Misha, things went smoother than expected at first. He signed my picture - also with all capitals and the accent in the right place - and did all the typical hi, thanks, bai, stuff… Then he looked up and his expression changed entirely.
“Oh… it’s you.”
Cue instant fluster. I’d hoped I’d gotten lucky and he hadn’t remembered after all.
I don’t want to say his tone and expression were… gleeful… exactly… but certainly that’s how it seemed to me (kenaressa: it was completely gleeful, no question). I’m a little lost on what was said right after, something about my question, and (according to kenaressa I started fidgeting with the picture bag which is what I’d written my ‘cheats’ on) he reached out and snatched the bag away to look at my ‘cheat sheet’. I, of course, tried to fend him off, but not very hard. :X I’d already taken the precaution of scribbling it out. (I expected him to do something of the sort although kenaressa insisted I was being paranoid) I will admit to taking a small amount of vindictive pleasure out of the fact that he was trying to read it upside down through the scribbles for a long few moments before turning it right side up and trying some more.
In the end, he gave up. (There is some minor debate in my head over whether he ‘gave up’ because he was having a rare merciful moment or because he actually couldn’t read it. I can still read it through the scribbles, but I know what it says.)
kenaressa said it had been a good question, but he just sighed dramatically and let me have my paper back saying “Ah well, I guess now I’ll never know.”
It wasn’t nearly as flustering as being in front of the entire audience, but it was still… yeah... Something. :X
They weren’t even halfway through the line and they were talking about calling a halt so that the actors could have a break and we could do the dessert meet thingie that was scheduled for the night. We were so glad we managed to get through the line before that. We were both ready to head back to the hostel for a break of our own.
The dessert thing, it turns out, was a lot like speed dating… apparently. Lol. That’s what Rob called it, anyways, and Samantha and Matt agreed. Basically we all scattered around various tables set up in a room and the actors were moved from table to table for two minutes each.
Our table only had one other person, but she was very nice and pleasant company. We got Demore pretty early on… I think we were his second or third table. None of us really had any idea what to say, though eventually Clare managed to come up with a fairly decent question about whether or not he’d consider doing a non-specific con (like Comicon or Nor’West Con) if he got the invite. He would, apparently.
There was a long lull after that where we just sat around and chitchatted with Alexus. There was talk about the day and the night before and such. :X There was talk about Misha, of course.
Eventually we got Rob and Samantha (they were going around the tables as a pair). They were very relaxing and steered the conversation and we didn’t have to think much at all. That’s when Rob compared it to speed dating, actually.
When they moved on, we started talking about speed dating, which led to speed dating misha, which led to dating misha, which led to killing misha. :S I decided that he’s hot and I’d totally do the one-night stand thing, but his wife must be a saint because I’d kill him if I was dating him. I can’t imagine living with that kind of snark day in and day out.
And because it’s me, of course that’s when Matt sits down next to me for his turn at our table.
I lost it. Which of got his curiosity… and we spent most of his time explaining (minus the one night stand part) about what we’d been saying. :X which meant we spent all of his time, plus some extra talking about misha. We all agreed (especially Matt) that we as a fandom needed to come together and find a way to just… get back at him. We needed to just, warn everyone and spend some time coming up with a way to get him good. Apparently he’s just as good at getting them as he is his fans.
^_^
I did manage to turn the very last seconds of Matt’s time back to Matt, for which I’m happy.
We left afterwards because there wasn’t really anything else interesting happening. It was on the way back to the hostel that I realized that I do in fact know one person that might actually be able to go toe to toe with Misha Collins in a Snark-For-All Royal Rumble. >D shinigamitabris. I can’t honestly say who’d come out the victor, but neither would escape unscathed.
Sunday dawned bright and early and we hopped up and headed out for the breakfast part of our package. I was starving. Which is weird. I’m not normally hungry until almost noon, at least. ^^ My stomach usually needs to wake up. Unfortunately, since we got there around 8 and they didn’t let us in until 8:30, we had to stand around and wait for a bit. And then they were going around letting people get up to use the buffet table by table and we were pretty far back. Our table was directly center, though, so I’m glad it’s the one we were in.
Got up, got food, was sitting down and preparing to gorge myself when they let Jared and Jensen into the room.
First off, the microphone stands they were using? Yeah, the staff people were all regular sized people and the microphones were above their heads… They were the perfect height for Jensen. When Jared came out… He had to raise his microphone up so that he could use it without bending over. The man must be a giant for real.
They told some funny stories, asked us if we were having fun… Usual stuff. Told us about some of the pranks. ^^;; Honestly, I was too busy eating to pay that much attention. Ah well. Jared did give us the real story about a text prank he pulled on Misha which was awesome and doubly hilarious because it turned out he half pranked himself accidentally too. (It involved stealing Misha’s phone and sending himself a lot of one character txt messages with it. Apparently he forgot that it costs to receive as well as to send)
After breakfast we headed back to the hostel to pack all of our things and check out. We’d gotten the parking for the rest of the day as well, so we just put everything in the van that we didn’t need and headed back to the hotel. kenaressa had misplaced her business cards so we went around trying to find them and asking if anyone else had seen them, but alas, no such luck.
Lines were still going for Jensen and Jared’s photo ops, so we settled into the lobby to wait until we could go back to our seats and wait for the boys Q&A. That took a while, but eventually we headed back down.
Jared and Jensen are, no surprise, hilarious. They also love to pick on/mess with/poke at Misha and do it so very well. :X I have to admit that Jared has never been one of my favorites on the show and I can’t stand Sam most of the time. Jared totally won me over though with the skill with which he gets to Misha. Most of the questions were good to decent questions. Only one douche (a guy even) got up and asked about their feelings about slash fic. Lol. The audience boo’d him down. kenaressa had a question she’d wanted to ask, but the lines for questioning were so long and they didn’t get to everyone so she opted to stay in her seat and watch instead. Our seats really were perfect. Slightly off center, not too far back (as you’ll see once I post my pictures). She’ll ask her costume designer’s question should the opportunity ever arise again.
LMAO~ I love them so much. When they were leaving the stage, they were asked to sign the banners on the sides (everyone was) and after they signed, both defaced the pictures of Misha’s that were on them. :X Jared also wrote “I’m Dumb” on one and “I’m Ugly” on the other. It was hilarious.
After their Q&A, they started lining up to do autographs. The lines went much more quickly than for any of the other actors because they were basically trying to push everyone through as quickly as possible, no personalizations, little conversation, that sort of thing. Completely understandable, really.
The thing is that since we’d had more time with everyone else, kenaressa and I had mostly been approaching as a unit and both chatting equally with each one… well, more or less equally. I’m a little more chatty, I think? I’m not sure. More obsessive, for sure. ^^;; More apt to ask for personalizations and the like.
So when we got up to Jensen I sort of.. How did she put it? “Stole her thunder”? I think that was it. ^^;; He looked up at her, but only briefly. There was a moment of “whoa, bright orange, oh hello UT hat”. ^^ He said he liked my hat and said it was cool that I was from Texas. At that moment, I misspoke, largely because of the fact that I was still obsessing over Misha, I think. I told him thanks and that Misha hadn’t liked it. (I remembered afterwards that Richard was the UMC fan) In a totally automatic, kneejerk response, he made a face and called Misha dumb. (“Yeah, well that’s because Misha’s dumb.”)
Clif (he played Tiny in the prison episode, I think) who was standing behind Jensen commented on the lovely Team Free Will shirts that my friend had made. I quickly let them know that she’d made them as I’m nowhere near that creative. He asked about them because the other people wearing similar shirts were all white and ours were black and off gray. I didn’t really hear her response because that’s about when Jensen looked up and smiled at me and quite frankly, all thought fled out of my head entirely. The man has a beautiful smile.
Anyways…
Then we were being shuffled out and off to Jared’s line.
The girl in front of us had brought her photo op picture with Misha to show Jared that Misha had in fact been wearing his coat inside out. Lol~ I expect he’ll be hearing about that a lot.
This time I sheepishly let my friend in front of me to prevent another thunder-stealing. She didn’t say much, but at least he really looked at her and there was hi, thanks, bye kind of things. Once it was my turn, the first thing I did was thank him for giving Misha a hard time because he’d (Misha) given me such a hard time the day before. I think he really got a kick out of that. He asked me what Misha had done and promised retaliation. I didn’t really answer because I didn’t think I had enough time to actually make sense. Mostly I just giggled a little. And was all “Just… just thanks. And keep up the good work.” Then it all went back to my hat again. He thanked me for being a UT fan with a big grin and a Hook’em Horns sign, which I returned and mentioned that I was from Texas which got me another “Awesome”. The boys do like their Texans. ^_^
There was a long gap before the next speaker, so we went out to grab some subway.
Afterwards, we headed back down to see Brock Kelley (one of the young Dean’s). He was cute and shy and adorably bad at answering questions, though apparently no one had told him that he didn’t actually have to answer them all. :S He’s from New Orleans and someone asked him about Hurricane Katrina and how it effected his family and even though it was obviously highly personal and still quite a painful thing to talk about, he answered it fully and completely.
He kept holding his mic down too low for us to always hear some of the things he was saying.
Even though he’s kenaressa’s least favorite young Winchester (frankly, I thought the first Sam was the worst young Winchester…she says he didn’t even register for her, so he doesn’t count), he was still very cute and nervous and blushed a lot.
She wanted to stay for the set design and technical people, so we did. Honestly, I read fic through it. :X I’m sure there were lots of interesting things being said, but… I couldn’t tell you any of it. (kenaressa: The talk wasn’t very good, but the pictures of all different types of sets were quite interesting.)
Afterwards, we hung out for a little bit so that she could schmooze with the location manager. It was interesting. We met fun and interesting people.
Eventually, though, we decided we really needed to go.
Getting back through the Canadian/American border was relatively quick and painless. There wasn’t much of a line, thankfully.
So… back in the states. Back from the Con.
I have to say that this was a lot of fun and even though it was also really expensive and I wouldn’t have gone if we hadn’t made that one rash, impulsive decision a year ago…. I’m glad we did.
It’s the most fun I’ve had a convention in ages.
I can almost understand the crazies who ‘con jump’ and go to all of them. Well… no, not really. But still!
So long Vancouver. May we meet again.
PS. You may have noticed some random interspersed notes in here that are not from me. :x my beta actually has it so ingrained into her brain that she's supposed to beta anything I write that she just... did. ^^;; So some of the side notes are actually hers.
Still, it was awesome, so I wanted to share with everyone~
So we were supposed to leave on Thursday afternoon originally, but it's me and nothing ever goes according to plan (as you may have noticed if you've seen any of my previous con reports). I ended up scheduled til 6pm and my Con-buddy, kenaressa had a lecture even later than that, so we ended up staying at my place on Thursday night and heading out in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, since I'd planned the trip expecting traffic, we hit none and got to Vancouver hoooooours before registration for either the con or the hostel we're staying at opened up.
However, we did get here late enough for the weird "no turns during these hours" traffic laws to kick in, which our directions hadn't taken into account. We ended up making many a box, trying to find where we were staying... and then many a more boxes trying to find someplace to park. I thought parking in Seattle was ridiculous, but it's got nothing on Vancouver. Eventually we found a parking garage... this tiny little 9 story box. :x Her van just barely fit into a space.
Registration for the Con was fairly lowkey and easy, despite the obnoxious guy standing behind us.
The vendor's room is a bit of a misnomer. It is a room where the con Sponsor - Creation Entertainment - is selling official merchandise. That's it. There are photos (for autographs), t-shirts, travel mugs, and calendars. That's pretty much it. :x not that that makes it any less dangerous. I snagged a 2010 S&D calendar for the boys to sign as well as a Castiel t-shirt for me and a birthday present for kenaressa (because it's her birthday, see?), and a couple of photos for actors whose autographs I wanted to add to my wall (at the time that was Misha, Jared, Jensen, Richard, and Aldis - I ended going back for Matt and Katherine after they're Q&A's cuz they were just that awesome). It's definitely not a "dealer's room" as I'm used to the term.
This is the first small, single-subject dedicated convention I've ever been to. I've been to lots of anime cons - Shoujo Con (once), Yaoi Con(3 times), Sakura Con (8 times) - and music festivals/events - Peanut Festival(once), Dogwood Days(every year growing up), KMF(twice), a couple of others who's names are escaping me right now. They're all a little different, but this is ... definitely unique. For one thing, you don't have to worry about missing anything. It's all largely in one large auditorium. It's very strictly scheduled. (one of the staff ladies actually chased Aldis Hodge off stage after he said she had to if she wanted him to get off) Your registration (whether you got the expensive packages or the general admission) comes with assigned seating. Whether you're there or not, you have a chair that is your chair and no one else's. No need to worry about losing your spot if you're late.
(Completely randomly, there was this Japanese variety host filming random attendees in the registration hall... kenaressa recognized him from her time in the JET program in Japan. In retrospect, I think he must have been there because of the anime release of the show)
The first guest speaker on the schedule was Katherine Boecher, who played the adult version of Lilith. I didn't particularly like Lilith, so I wasn't really expecting much, but Katherine Boecher is fucking awesome. And from Texas. ^^;; I didn't realize that before. When she mentioned it I sort of whooped a little and drew her attention. Totally hadn't meant to do that. Trying to shrink back and pretend it wasn't me was kind of hard considering I was - as per usual - in neon, day-glo orange. I think it amused her that I tried.
Afterwards there was a SPN trivia game. I eventually got up to try my hand at it, though I knew there was no chance in hell that I'd win. (I love the show, but I save my hardcore fan-ishness for KPop). I was not the first person eliminated and the question I went out on actually ended up taking out all but like... 4 of the group of 25-30, so it was all good.
Matt Cohen (Young John Winchester/Temp. Arch Angel Micheal) was the next speaker. Again. We weren't expecting much, but he was awesome. He's also a lot hotter with a crew cut than with 'young john winchester' hair.
I wish I could give more in-depth commentary about the time when the actors were up on the stage, but mostly I remember laughing... a lot. Because they were all so amazingly funny, each in their own way.
After Matt left there was an intermission, so we took the opportunity to run down to grab the van from the parking garage and head down to the hostel. We got parked and registered, grabbed some food and headed back in time to see Aldis Hodge.
Aldis Hodge plays the geek, Hardison, in Leverage. He is fucking awesome. Age of the geek, baby. Again with the awesomeness on stage. Most of the questions directed at him were about Leverage (he pretty much confirmed that Hardison and Parker will be 'getting busy' by the end of the show). He also admitted to listening to sClub7 back in the day because one of the females was 'fine', though that disclosure came back to haunt him at karaoke later.
Next up was Richard Speight who plays one of my favorite SPN supporting characters, Trickster/Loki/Archangel Gabriel. I already loved him. He really didn't need to do anything to add to that, but he was... amazing. ^^;; He went out among the crowd asking some people how far they'd come and why they'd come. lol. He kept pointing out the very few guys in the audience. One of the most memorable moments of his time was definitely when someone asked him what he'd do if he actually had the powers of his character. LOL~ he didn't even hesitate. "I'd make that Jared guy short." After which he proceeded to give a scene demo of 'little Jared' trying to get his attention, complete with ruffling of 'little jared's' hair. And then "Then I'd make that Jensen guy a New York Jew." *snerk* Apparently that'd take away Jensen's swagger. His scene demo of this included impersonating Jensen with an Elvis accent to accompany the swagger.
Jason Manns was adorable. He has that down home good ole boy charm about him and he's an amazing singer. We'd been debating whether or not we were going to make the concert later that night or get some sleep since we'd been up since insane o'clock in the morning, but he played a song or two during his segment that were amazing and we decided right then that we were going.
Autographs were all nice and orderly. They called us up by our assigned rows. All four of the guest were nice and friendly and easily amenable to personalizing the autographs (which I'd been afraid they wouldn't be since the schedule warned that personalization was subject to actor discretion and mood and most of the autographs I'd seen were just their names). I made sure to tell them all it was kenaressa's birthday, so all of her autographs say 'Happy Birthday'. ^_____^ Also, Richard gave us some of his chocolate since it was her birthday. ^^;; He gave me a hard time about being a UT fan since he's apparently a UMC fan and we beat them in the playoffs. My personalizations are from Katherine "Texas Rules!", Matt "You've Been Warned~<3" (a joke from his Q&A), and Aldis "Age of the Geek, baby!" (he put "Happy birthday, mama!" on kenaressa's) :x I couldn't think of anything specific for Richard, so it's just my name and regular stuffs.
Afterwards they chased us out so they could set up and do the sound check for the concert.
The concert itself was awesome. Jason Manns has a gorgeous voice and a very beautiful style of singing, IMO. The only bad thing was that one of the attendees had a medical emergency and things ground to a halt in the middle. There's a hospital and emergency response center right across the way from the hotel the Con is in, but it took something like 20 minutes or more before a response team actually got there. luckily, it apparently wasn't fatally serious, because if she'd been having a heart attack or an asthma attach, she'd have been dead before they got there. He did pick the concert back up after they took her away, but he had to cut a good chunk out and even then we ran over time-wise.
Which cut into the time we had for karaoke. Could have been a good thing, since it meant that even though we’d signed up, I didn't have to get up and sing after all.
But all four of the guests were back out on the stage providing back up and comedic relief for whoever was onstage singing. They were like... the best Rockettes ever. lol. Minus Matt who obviously suffers from White-Man-Gots-No-Rhythm syndrome. Also, I'm pretty sure he's tone deaf. :x just saying. The hotel staff wanted us out by 1am apparently. *sad face* Matt and Aldis were definitely all for pushing that limit as far as they could, though. ^^;; An actual halt to the festivities weren't called until a quarter after. By then we'd managed to get Jason's autographs (on our badges because they'd run out of cds *sad face*) as well as pictures on my phone with him and one of kenaressa with Aldis. Hey, I am not above being pushy to get my friend a birthday picture with the present actor of her choice. ^_~ It helped that he was amazingly sweet about the whole thing. Since they sell photo ops, I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to actually be letting fans take pictures with them, but he and Matt both were.
Eventually, though, the hotel staff were quite insistent that we all leave and close down for the night.
The hostel is a pretty decent place. We had a private room and the beds were comfortable. We opted to sleep in saturday morning even though we kind of wanted to see Fred Lehne (Azazeal), we wanted sleep more. We did get back in time to actually catch the last half of his time. lol. He's funny. and honest about things like how he doesn't know the answer to half the questions he gets asked or how he just doesn't really have any great spectacular reason for wanting this character or that other than "yay, paycheck!". He also gave us the secret of working with Jared. Apple boxes. ^^;;
Rob Benedict aka Chuck aka maybe-God-maybe-not was actually very similar onstage as his character was during the fan con episode. A little awkward, a little shy and a lot cute in that manner. And in what is apparently his kind of luck, he was informed his time was up right after an embarrassing story about being seen in the seedy part of a Vancouver park and being mistaken for being there to pick up a male hooker. lol.
After he left the stage, we hustled down to this Book Off we'd seen between the Con hotel and the parking garage from the first morning. ^_^ I picked up a few Glay albums, a w-inds single, and a WaT album for like... $10 total. It was awesome.
We stopped to eat at a little Thai place on the way back to the hotel. It was excellent food and the staff was friendly. I did start to get a little irate, though when a pair of customers showed up and were complete tools. >_< I wanted to stab them with my fork for all of the hassle they were giving the poor thai hostess. I really, really did. I hate customers like that. At my place of employment, I would go out and tell them to stop badgering my cashiers, it just pisses me off. And only idiots piss off the people in control of your food.
On the way back to the hotel, we completely randomly ran across Richard Speight walking down the street. ^^;; I had to take off my shades to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Lol. When he said hi, I thought to myself “oh hey, he knows we’re from the con because of my badge!” lol. No. My badge was turned around and on my back. ^^;; But after we’d passed (and I’d realized my badge wasn’t where it was supposed to be) I decided the Castiel t-shirt I was wearing may have been the giveaway. Just a guess.
We hung around in the registration hallway during the intermission and and a couple of small things we didn’t care enough to go see.
Eventually we headed back down for the auction. There were some banners and things that I’d have loved to have - two awesome Castiel banners in particular - but my maximum remaining splurge money of $50 is way below what these crazy people are tossing around. :X one Misha banner went for $535. A Jensen one went for $475.
They’re awesome… they’re not that awesome, even with an autograph ticket included.
So… Misha Collins….
Yeah….
What to say, what to say….
As anyone can tell you, Castiel is one of my two favorite characters and Misha is my favorite among the actors. So … do I count it as a plus or a minus that I was completely embarrassed by Misha Collins or not? I suppose, as he liked my recovery, I will count it as a plus.
I’ve always heard that Misha is quirky. I’ve been curious about why since I hadn’t seen a whole lot outside of SPN and the outtakes. :X so I found out why today.
His time started with him coming out and offering an autographed bandaid with his blood on it up for auction to help pay for the girl’s medical issues from the night before. Apparently we’re a social experiment to him. His conclusions are that we’re sick, sick people who are by and large slightly smarter than average. :X considering someone actually paid $50 for his bandaid… I can’t disagree with that, actually.
He never answers any questions seriously. He’s a giant child with a sarcastic, wry wit that he likes to use on anyone brave enough to take their lives in their hands and put themselves in front of him. His story about being mistaken for a lesbian and being put into a girls dorm because of his college photo and name were hilarious. He also chose in shag/marry/kill with Cas/Sam/Dean as the options, to fuck himself (because apparently he’s always wanted to do that), marry Dean (tho he said Jensen), and kill Sam (again, said Jared instead). ^^;;
I’d thought hard on a question and only finally came up with one over lunch. I wanted his opinion on the Chuck/God issue and Castiel’s thoughts on it. But I know myself and I get nervous whenever anyone is really staring at me so I wrote the question down so that I would have a reference to steady myself.
I was shaking before it was even my turn to speak and when he turned and focused on me, I - as per usual - clammed up. I did manage to stutter out that I was nervous because he was my favorite (to which he took great relish in making me even more nervous by calling more and more attention to it). Consequently I pulled out my paper. :X And he yelled at me for cheating. Well, not yelled specifically, but it felt like being severely scolded by a teacher. He insisted that I improvise if I couldn’t remember my question. And each time I stumbled, he poked more and more holes into my ability to speak in front of people. My question came out completely incoherent - which he called me on and I blustered (squeaked according to kenaressa) about not being allowed to use my notes. I’m not sure during which part of his gleefully ripping apart my question (my lack of question, in fact, I think he was asking me to repeat what I’d said because it was too confusing for him to remember what part of a triple hypothetical he was supposed to be answering - kenaressa says the real reason was because “you were adorably flustered and there was no way in hell he was going to answer the question”) I finally just said the first thing that came to my mind - “What was your favorite scene to film?” *snort* He immediately shifted gears - far more quickly than me or anyone else I’ve ever known - “Oh hey, good recovery! Excellent, well umm..” And launched into a few of his favorite scenes. It was probably the only straight answer he gave all day long.
:X I did get a round of applause for dealing with it and recovering more or less gracefully.
I wasn’t the only person he embarrassed, I was just the worst (or the one who showed it the most, at least).
The good/bad news is that apparently Misha Collins has an amazing memory for the people who come to the cons. The girls around me while I was waiting to ask were going on about how they’d seen him at convention so and so back a year or more ago and then when they’d done the photo op earlier and he’d remembered who they were, where they were from, and what they’d said to him the first time around. Which means…. :X he’s likely going to remember my humiliation.
So on the one hand, Misha Collins may remember me for more than five minutes.
And on the other hand…. Misha Collins may remember me for more than five minutes.
^^;; He wasn’t having a perfect day himself, though, which is some vindication. He had his jacket on backwards and didn’t realize it until the Q&A was halfway over - this is after his photo ops and his VIP meet&greet. And he didn’t screw the cap onto his water bottle fully and sat on it so he had a giant wet spot on his pants for the rest of his session. ^_^
I was much happier to be sitting and watching him put everyone else on the spot.
Demore Barnes (Raphael) was, to quote someone else, “ridiculously adorable”. And flamingly gay, but that’s beside the point. His character only has one episode… maybe two? I can’t remember, so he mostly talked about his other show, The Unit. It was fine, though because he was great. Apparently this was his first Con appearance ever. He handled it well, I think. LOL~ He kept going on about Raphael’s undying love for Castiel and called the ring of holy fire, the ring of inspirational fire and love… or something. And recited poetry (slightly altered version of Wonderful World) from Raphael to Castiel. He really was quite cute.
The location manager was humorous and this time, kenaressa got up to ask a question. ^^ She made an impression too with her bracers. She’s a costume designer. Lol~ he asked her if he could get a set and she said she did commissions. :X If I’d been paying attention, I would have stood up and let him know that if he promised it’d be on the show, she’d definitely make him a set. Alas, I wasn’t. I was still a little flustered from my experience with Misha. :X
After that, there was a long wait while they set up and started the autographs with Misha, Rob Bededict, and Samantha _ (Mary Winchester). It took forever. We were in row G and we didn’t get up to them until 9. Sadly, I didn’t have anything for Rob or Samantha to sign except my badge. ^^;; The spelling of my name became a bit of an issue. Jason had signed my badge the night before and he’d spelt it Renee’, the lady who was writing out tags so that the actors could see how to spell it wrote ReNe’e. Neither is accurate. My name is actually spelt ReNee’. Lol~ we ended up in a discussion about spellings and explanations. French vs. Other and the fact that my mother - who is cajun - is the reason my name is spelt peculiarly. Samantha’s autograph actually says ReNe’e’, I need to speak to your mother about spelling. ^^;; She’d put the accent in the wrong place before I could stop her. She wrote over it with a silver pen and put it in the right spot. Since Rob was in on that discussion, he went the safe route and put it all in capitals. Lol~ Then, since we were waiting on the people in front of us to be done with Misha, we had a discussion about Misha. ^^;; All about how I’d been one of his victims and no one had warned me. And that while Castiel was still my favorite character, I might be re-evaluating my position on his actor. Which was when I realized that Misha wasn’t that far away. Luckily, he was distracted, so I’m sure he didn’t notice.
(Samantha expressed surprise that no one had warned me about Misha and Rob said “Friends don’t put friends in front of Misha” which my friend had to explain she’d never met him before either, so there was no one to warn us)
Once I got up to Misha, things went smoother than expected at first. He signed my picture - also with all capitals and the accent in the right place - and did all the typical hi, thanks, bai, stuff… Then he looked up and his expression changed entirely.
“Oh… it’s you.”
Cue instant fluster. I’d hoped I’d gotten lucky and he hadn’t remembered after all.
I don’t want to say his tone and expression were… gleeful… exactly… but certainly that’s how it seemed to me (kenaressa: it was completely gleeful, no question). I’m a little lost on what was said right after, something about my question, and (according to kenaressa I started fidgeting with the picture bag which is what I’d written my ‘cheats’ on) he reached out and snatched the bag away to look at my ‘cheat sheet’. I, of course, tried to fend him off, but not very hard. :X I’d already taken the precaution of scribbling it out. (I expected him to do something of the sort although kenaressa insisted I was being paranoid) I will admit to taking a small amount of vindictive pleasure out of the fact that he was trying to read it upside down through the scribbles for a long few moments before turning it right side up and trying some more.
In the end, he gave up. (There is some minor debate in my head over whether he ‘gave up’ because he was having a rare merciful moment or because he actually couldn’t read it. I can still read it through the scribbles, but I know what it says.)
kenaressa said it had been a good question, but he just sighed dramatically and let me have my paper back saying “Ah well, I guess now I’ll never know.”
It wasn’t nearly as flustering as being in front of the entire audience, but it was still… yeah... Something. :X
They weren’t even halfway through the line and they were talking about calling a halt so that the actors could have a break and we could do the dessert meet thingie that was scheduled for the night. We were so glad we managed to get through the line before that. We were both ready to head back to the hostel for a break of our own.
The dessert thing, it turns out, was a lot like speed dating… apparently. Lol. That’s what Rob called it, anyways, and Samantha and Matt agreed. Basically we all scattered around various tables set up in a room and the actors were moved from table to table for two minutes each.
Our table only had one other person, but she was very nice and pleasant company. We got Demore pretty early on… I think we were his second or third table. None of us really had any idea what to say, though eventually Clare managed to come up with a fairly decent question about whether or not he’d consider doing a non-specific con (like Comicon or Nor’West Con) if he got the invite. He would, apparently.
There was a long lull after that where we just sat around and chitchatted with Alexus. There was talk about the day and the night before and such. :X There was talk about Misha, of course.
Eventually we got Rob and Samantha (they were going around the tables as a pair). They were very relaxing and steered the conversation and we didn’t have to think much at all. That’s when Rob compared it to speed dating, actually.
When they moved on, we started talking about speed dating, which led to speed dating misha, which led to dating misha, which led to killing misha. :S I decided that he’s hot and I’d totally do the one-night stand thing, but his wife must be a saint because I’d kill him if I was dating him. I can’t imagine living with that kind of snark day in and day out.
And because it’s me, of course that’s when Matt sits down next to me for his turn at our table.
I lost it. Which of got his curiosity… and we spent most of his time explaining (minus the one night stand part) about what we’d been saying. :X which meant we spent all of his time, plus some extra talking about misha. We all agreed (especially Matt) that we as a fandom needed to come together and find a way to just… get back at him. We needed to just, warn everyone and spend some time coming up with a way to get him good. Apparently he’s just as good at getting them as he is his fans.
^_^
I did manage to turn the very last seconds of Matt’s time back to Matt, for which I’m happy.
We left afterwards because there wasn’t really anything else interesting happening. It was on the way back to the hostel that I realized that I do in fact know one person that might actually be able to go toe to toe with Misha Collins in a Snark-For-All Royal Rumble. >D shinigamitabris. I can’t honestly say who’d come out the victor, but neither would escape unscathed.
Sunday dawned bright and early and we hopped up and headed out for the breakfast part of our package. I was starving. Which is weird. I’m not normally hungry until almost noon, at least. ^^ My stomach usually needs to wake up. Unfortunately, since we got there around 8 and they didn’t let us in until 8:30, we had to stand around and wait for a bit. And then they were going around letting people get up to use the buffet table by table and we were pretty far back. Our table was directly center, though, so I’m glad it’s the one we were in.
Got up, got food, was sitting down and preparing to gorge myself when they let Jared and Jensen into the room.
First off, the microphone stands they were using? Yeah, the staff people were all regular sized people and the microphones were above their heads… They were the perfect height for Jensen. When Jared came out… He had to raise his microphone up so that he could use it without bending over. The man must be a giant for real.
They told some funny stories, asked us if we were having fun… Usual stuff. Told us about some of the pranks. ^^;; Honestly, I was too busy eating to pay that much attention. Ah well. Jared did give us the real story about a text prank he pulled on Misha which was awesome and doubly hilarious because it turned out he half pranked himself accidentally too. (It involved stealing Misha’s phone and sending himself a lot of one character txt messages with it. Apparently he forgot that it costs to receive as well as to send)
After breakfast we headed back to the hostel to pack all of our things and check out. We’d gotten the parking for the rest of the day as well, so we just put everything in the van that we didn’t need and headed back to the hotel. kenaressa had misplaced her business cards so we went around trying to find them and asking if anyone else had seen them, but alas, no such luck.
Lines were still going for Jensen and Jared’s photo ops, so we settled into the lobby to wait until we could go back to our seats and wait for the boys Q&A. That took a while, but eventually we headed back down.
Jared and Jensen are, no surprise, hilarious. They also love to pick on/mess with/poke at Misha and do it so very well. :X I have to admit that Jared has never been one of my favorites on the show and I can’t stand Sam most of the time. Jared totally won me over though with the skill with which he gets to Misha. Most of the questions were good to decent questions. Only one douche (a guy even) got up and asked about their feelings about slash fic. Lol. The audience boo’d him down. kenaressa had a question she’d wanted to ask, but the lines for questioning were so long and they didn’t get to everyone so she opted to stay in her seat and watch instead. Our seats really were perfect. Slightly off center, not too far back (as you’ll see once I post my pictures). She’ll ask her costume designer’s question should the opportunity ever arise again.
LMAO~ I love them so much. When they were leaving the stage, they were asked to sign the banners on the sides (everyone was) and after they signed, both defaced the pictures of Misha’s that were on them. :X Jared also wrote “I’m Dumb” on one and “I’m Ugly” on the other. It was hilarious.
After their Q&A, they started lining up to do autographs. The lines went much more quickly than for any of the other actors because they were basically trying to push everyone through as quickly as possible, no personalizations, little conversation, that sort of thing. Completely understandable, really.
The thing is that since we’d had more time with everyone else, kenaressa and I had mostly been approaching as a unit and both chatting equally with each one… well, more or less equally. I’m a little more chatty, I think? I’m not sure. More obsessive, for sure. ^^;; More apt to ask for personalizations and the like.
So when we got up to Jensen I sort of.. How did she put it? “Stole her thunder”? I think that was it. ^^;; He looked up at her, but only briefly. There was a moment of “whoa, bright orange, oh hello UT hat”. ^^ He said he liked my hat and said it was cool that I was from Texas. At that moment, I misspoke, largely because of the fact that I was still obsessing over Misha, I think. I told him thanks and that Misha hadn’t liked it. (I remembered afterwards that Richard was the UMC fan) In a totally automatic, kneejerk response, he made a face and called Misha dumb. (“Yeah, well that’s because Misha’s dumb.”)
Clif (he played Tiny in the prison episode, I think) who was standing behind Jensen commented on the lovely Team Free Will shirts that my friend had made. I quickly let them know that she’d made them as I’m nowhere near that creative. He asked about them because the other people wearing similar shirts were all white and ours were black and off gray. I didn’t really hear her response because that’s about when Jensen looked up and smiled at me and quite frankly, all thought fled out of my head entirely. The man has a beautiful smile.
Anyways…
Then we were being shuffled out and off to Jared’s line.
The girl in front of us had brought her photo op picture with Misha to show Jared that Misha had in fact been wearing his coat inside out. Lol~ I expect he’ll be hearing about that a lot.
This time I sheepishly let my friend in front of me to prevent another thunder-stealing. She didn’t say much, but at least he really looked at her and there was hi, thanks, bye kind of things. Once it was my turn, the first thing I did was thank him for giving Misha a hard time because he’d (Misha) given me such a hard time the day before. I think he really got a kick out of that. He asked me what Misha had done and promised retaliation. I didn’t really answer because I didn’t think I had enough time to actually make sense. Mostly I just giggled a little. And was all “Just… just thanks. And keep up the good work.” Then it all went back to my hat again. He thanked me for being a UT fan with a big grin and a Hook’em Horns sign, which I returned and mentioned that I was from Texas which got me another “Awesome”. The boys do like their Texans. ^_^
There was a long gap before the next speaker, so we went out to grab some subway.
Afterwards, we headed back down to see Brock Kelley (one of the young Dean’s). He was cute and shy and adorably bad at answering questions, though apparently no one had told him that he didn’t actually have to answer them all. :S He’s from New Orleans and someone asked him about Hurricane Katrina and how it effected his family and even though it was obviously highly personal and still quite a painful thing to talk about, he answered it fully and completely.
He kept holding his mic down too low for us to always hear some of the things he was saying.
Even though he’s kenaressa’s least favorite young Winchester (frankly, I thought the first Sam was the worst young Winchester…she says he didn’t even register for her, so he doesn’t count), he was still very cute and nervous and blushed a lot.
She wanted to stay for the set design and technical people, so we did. Honestly, I read fic through it. :X I’m sure there were lots of interesting things being said, but… I couldn’t tell you any of it. (kenaressa: The talk wasn’t very good, but the pictures of all different types of sets were quite interesting.)
Afterwards, we hung out for a little bit so that she could schmooze with the location manager. It was interesting. We met fun and interesting people.
Eventually, though, we decided we really needed to go.
Getting back through the Canadian/American border was relatively quick and painless. There wasn’t much of a line, thankfully.
So… back in the states. Back from the Con.
I have to say that this was a lot of fun and even though it was also really expensive and I wouldn’t have gone if we hadn’t made that one rash, impulsive decision a year ago…. I’m glad we did.
It’s the most fun I’ve had a convention in ages.
I can almost understand the crazies who ‘con jump’ and go to all of them. Well… no, not really. But still!
So long Vancouver. May we meet again.
PS. You may have noticed some random interspersed notes in here that are not from me. :x my beta actually has it so ingrained into her brain that she's supposed to beta anything I write that she just... did. ^^;; So some of the side notes are actually hers.