Baby's First Con Report, Part 3
[ Part 1] [ Part 2]
Part 3: The Actual Con, Day 2
SATURDAY
Honestly, Saturday was one of the worst days of the con for me. Not that there weren't plenty of enjoyable moments, and the best panels and vidshows of the con (IMO) took place on this day. But I woke up in a depressed mood, and it just kept getting worse and worse throughout the day, and I finally realized that if I was going to have any hope of feeling good again before the con was over, I needed to just indulge the sad feelings and wallow in them and get them all out. And I was able to do that at various points on Saturday, and the rest of the con was okay. Better than okay, even; it was fantastic. I just don't really remember much about Saturday other than that I was extremely sad and depressed for most of it. (Yes, the funk I was in was related to breakup issues. No, jarrow didn't do anything wrong or say anything upsetting; he really didn't. It was just one of those things where the loss of something you cherished is bearable for a while and then suddenly hits you hard, and I knew this would be a part of seeing him again in person and I was expecting it; I just wasn't sure when it was going to hit. By chance, for whatever reason, it was Saturday.)
I made it downstairs for breakfast at about 9 am, and found a seat at a table with jarrow, absolutedestiny, sweetestdrain, fan_eunice, possibly vagabondage? and later we were joined by laurashapiro. At one point fan_eunice started describing the Riley vid she wants to make someday, which fills me with glee, because Riley is awesome and deserves many many vids.
Color (panel). I was wavering back and forth on this one for a while, unsure whether to go to this panel or catch the Vids That Push the Envelope vidshow, because they both sounded awesome. (And quite frankly I was skeptical of my own ability to understand everything sockkpuppett has to say about color, because damn that is one insightful and intelligent woman.) But I ended up being very glad that I chose the panel, because her explanations of the meanings of various colors in visual media was absolutely fascinating and made a lot of sense to me, and ever since then I've paid special attention to color in movies and television and vids and it's remarkable how many hidden meanings and clues and references you can pick up! She explained how, for example, orange can indicate creativity and/or insanity; how pale blue usually signifies a lack of power or agency; how purple represents transformation and sometimes death; how yellow can trigger nostalgia, especially for an ideal past that never really existed. And it wasn't just a rundown of "this color has that meaning"; she showed examples from various well-known movies (while people in the audience jokingly complained about spoilers, hee!) and talked about what the prominent colors signified with respect to the plot and characters and message, and how certain combinations of colors worked together. It was very eye-opening, and I'd love to pick her brain sometime about how she's used color in her various vids and how the meanings of colors relate to synesthesia (if at all) and lots of other interesting questions this panel inspired. I sat with jarrow (and sdwolfpup, maybe?) for this one.
Action (vidshow). I think I may have sat next to sdwolfpup again? I can't quite remember. Amazingly, I hadn't seen ANY of the vids in this show before (I know, right? Where have I been?), and I adored almost all of them. This was a fantastically fun show to watch and I enjoyed it immensely, and bradcpu did a hell of a job putting this one together. There was a nice balance of anime and live-action, which I appreciated. Some vids off the top of my head that I really liked: frivolity65's "Cleric", bananainpyjamas' "Wasteland", Adam's "Get Free" (I MUST see this movie, whatever it is; hot semi-naked chicks kicking ass? MORE PLZ), and bop_radar's "Southside" (I was skeptical about whether the song would work with BSG, but this vid impressed me). I definitely want to watch this vidshow all the way through again.
(FYI, since VividCon ended I've barely rewatched any vids from the con, with the exception of last night when I rewatched Premieres and Club Vivid whilst thoroughly sloshed. I do plan on rewatching other stuff [sober] eventually, probably sometime very soon; I was just on vid overload after the weekend was over and needed to take a short break! So all of my vidshow reports and recs at this point are based on a single viewing at VVC.)
For lunch, greensilver was hosting a Veronica Mars party in our room, so I headed upstairs for that. I was planning on helping her set out the food and rearrange furniture, but she'd already done all that by the time I got there! So I fixed myself a turkey sandwich and sat on a coffee table in the back of the room (I figured I'd give the good seats to people who hadn't seen VM yet). jarrow came to join me on the coffee table. We had a pretty good crowd; maybe 10-12 people? I can't remember everyone who was there; I know we had gwyn_r, kuwdora, lierdumoa, and anoel. We watched "The Wrath of Con" followed by about 3-4 awesome VM vids ( go here for the complete list with links). VM is one of those shows that I really enjoy but tend to unintentionally skip over when I list my fandoms; it's like I forget how awesome it is when I'm not watching it. Especially Season 1. Seeing this ep again brought back the VM love, which was really nice. I helped greensilver clean up a bit and then went back downstairs for:
The Tao of Mac (panel). I sat between laurashapiro and merryish, both of whom (if I remember correctly) had very helpful advice and information to contribute during the panel, while I just sat there like a bump on a log and absorbed everything, heh. But I got a lot out of this panel and I'm glad I went. sdwolfpup and gwyn_r, the mods, approached it from the perspective of "Mac Vidding for Newbies"; most of the panel discussion centered around specific tools and hardware requirements that you'd need to vid on a Mac, as well as any particular tips or tricks that they (or anyone in the audience) had picked up along the way. I discovered that pretty much all of the programs they recommended for the various steps in the vidding process were ones I already used: Audacity for audio editing, Mac the Ripper for ripping, MPEG Streamclip for converting/clipping, and Final Cut Pro for vidding. It was still useful, though, because I just picked those programs pretty much at random when I got my Mac and had no idea if they were really the best choices, and it's nice to have that validation. :)
I Suck (panel). laurashapiro and I stayed right where we were in the panel room, and jarrow took over merryish's seat on my right. This was such an entertaining panel, and fan_eunice and sisabet did a fantastic job! They focused on the importance of knowing whether you're in Constructive Suck ("I suck. This vid isn't working. I need someone to look at it and tell me how to fix it.") or Destructive Suck ("I suck. I can't vid and my ideas are awful. Everyone else is better than me. I can't do anything right."), and how to reach out to your friends and ask for either beta or cheerleading, respectively. Getting help and encouragement for one type of suck when you're in another can actually be harmful. They also pointed out that it's okay to not watch anyone else's vids for a while if it's damaging to your self-confidence, and that regular food and bathroom breaks are of the utmost importance. :) And the goodie bags prepared by fan_eunice and vagabondage were awesome! I held onto my little chocolate llama for about a week, because it was just so cute, but eventually I did eat it, hee. The computer-shaped "RENDER!" stress ball and the amazingly cute hug card designed by dualbunny are currently residing on the top of my Mac, yay. Plus sisabet's montage of unfinished vids, "The Final Suckdown", was a thing of beauty. I couldn't read all of her explanatory subtitles clearly at the time since I was sitting kinda far back, but it was hilarious all the same.
Anime Music Videos - A Pre-digital History (vidshow). sweetestdrain and I sat together in the front row, and watched the CUTEST little animations of Cartoon!absolutedestiny in between each vid as his voiceover explained the history of anime vidding and why these particular vids were so pivotal and/or representative of certain styles. Seriously, y'all, his cartoon self is adorable. And if you missed this vidshow, you can still watch all the individual vids, but it just won't be the same without his narration in between. It was kind of awesome. :) I was really really impressed by how many of these vids had fantastic timing, especially considering they were created in the two-VCR days! Especially Corn Pone Vids' "Beat It", Kevin Caldwell's "Chantilly Lace" (the lip-synching was perfect), and Big Big Truck's "Crazy-Ass Violence" which is absolutely stunning to watch. The vid that made the biggest impression on me by far was Fast Food Freedom Fighters' "Nagisa Bonita"; it's set to Madonna's "La Isla Bonita", but the vidder actually recorded herself singing different lyrics to the song (that described the story she was telling in the vid), and laid that audio track over Madonna's vocals. So in essence the vidder was creating her own song. I'm kinda surprised that I've never seen this technique, or anything similar, used in the live-action vidding community. It was very creative, and though it was a little jarring at first, by the end I was completely wrapped up in the vid.
Next was either the Town Hall on Vidding and Visibility, or the Second Bananas vidshow. I probably would have gone to the Town Hall, and I did briefly consider it, but I had started to feel rather broody and anti-social. Looking in the panel room and seeing all the people gathered for Town Hall, I knew I couldn't sit in there for an hour in that large crowd and pretend to be okay, so I decided to go up to my room instead. None of my roommates were there, and I took a nap for about an hour. It was actually good for me to be alone for a bit, I think. Shortly after 5 pm, greensilver came up to get a sandwich, and I realized that the panel would be letting out soon and people would be congregating for dinner, and I didn't want to miss that. So I headed back downstairs, still feeling slightly bummed but wanting to be around people again and not miss out on fun togetherness.
I arrived about 5 minutes before the Town Hall let out, so I just hung around in the alcove for a bit. When the doors opened, three of the first people out of the room were jarrow, sweetestdrain, and renenet. They grabbed me and the four of us headed to Outback so we could beat the dinner rush and get a table, which worked brilliantly. We had a good time at dinner, and at one point sweetestdrain told a joke involving George Washington which was actually a really cute joke, and would totally make you laugh as long as you were not terminally stupid like me and jarrow who just sat there and stared at her and said "what? I don't get it" because apparently we are not intelligent enough to understand puns. HEE. (Ask her to tell you the George Washington joke sometime.) Towards the end of dinner absolutedestiny joined us at the table. He and jarrow left early to go practice their karaoke number (...*kof*) while the rest of us finished our meal.
I walked out of Outback at maybe 6:20, and went up to the alcove to get a good spot in line (hopefully) so that I could grab a good seat for Premieres. Surprisingly, there were already at least a dozen people there. I stood in line anyway, and then sweetestdrain happened along and graciously offered to hold my spot while I went upstairs to change (since I wanted to wear a pink twirly skirt for my karaoke number with heresluck). I barely made it back downstairs before the doors opened.
Premieres. I sat about halfway back with sdwolfpup, renenet and sweetestdrain. (fan_eunice joined us after intermission.) I didn't have the best view ever, but no large sections of the screen were blocked so I consider myself lucky, heh. I'm not gonna go into detail about any of the vids here, because if I did one I'd want to do them all and that would take forever, and also I already participated in Drunken Vid Review last night and I promise you I'm not any more coherent about vids when I'm sober. :) Just my general impressions of Premieres this year: there were a lot of outstanding vids, IMO. There were also a couple that I had very strong negative reactions to, which surprised me, as I usually don't feel harsh dislike for vids (at least not ones of the general quality shown at VVC); most of the time I range from "omgFANTASTIC" to "meh". I was semi-distracted during this year's show by all of the emotional stuff I'd gone through that day, and so I didn't pay nearly as much attention as I would have liked; there were several amazing vids that I zoned out for and felt really bad afterwards. I also felt guilty for just sitting quietly in my seat during intermission (and after the show) instead of tracking down the people whose vids were particularly awesome and telling them so; I just wasn't up for social butterflying or loud squeeing, and it meant I hardly gave any in-person feedback to anybody for their Premieres vid, which is sad. Hopefully I'll be better about that next year. But I did really enjoy the vids overall.
Karaoke! My "volunteer hour" was helping with karaoke setup, so I tested microphones and plugged in cords and such with absolutedestiny. Also, I totally took advantage of my volunteer status by claiming a seat in the front of the room before anyone else was let back in. (Oh, don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same.) ;P jarrow came to sit next to me, except he had to leave his chair right away since his and absolutedestiny's "Falling for the First Time" duet was first on the list. They did a fantastic job on the harmonies, and they killed the room dead with their hot smooch at the end! (I totally knew it was coming so I had my camera at the ready for pictures, hee.) Another highlight was sockkpuppett and sisabet singing "Too Drunk To Fuck" - totally awesome. And of course, I got to sing "Goody Two Shoes" with heresluck, woooo! We had actually practiced harmonies and shit, and she sent me a spreadsheet a couple weeks before the con with the lyrics to the song and notes on who should sing which line and where we should harmonize. A SPREADSHEET. FOR KARAOKE. God I love that woman. ♥ We had talked about twirling each other around during the instrumental parts - hence my twirly skirt - and I was all ready to do that, and then we got up front and picked up the mics and I thought "oh, microphone cords. ...eeep." (Also there was the nervousness factor.) So, no twirling, but it was still a lot of fun and I'm so happy I got to sing with her and also she was unbelievably hot in that leather blazer. Just sayin'. :) The show actually finished a little early, so we were able to have a group sing-along of "Copacabana" (requested by absolutedestiny) and "Jolene" (requested by sherrold).
After karaoke I stopped by laurashapiro's room to rescue my DVD player, and the two of us headed over to absolutedestiny's room where we'd been instructed to meet up with the rest of our gang. We expected to find a full house when we got there; instead we were greeted only by dualbunny and Gerry, who informed us that apparently there was free pizza just down the hall and everyone had gone there instead, and the two of them were staying behind to direct traffic. We kept them company for a while instead of following the crowd, and that ended up being a good thing, because we never left the room and eventually most people drifted back to where we were. Our gang grew slowly, but eventually it consisted of the four of us, absolutedestiny, elynross, fan_eunice, greensilver, heresluck, jarrow, renenet, sisabet, sockkpuppett, sweetestdrain, taraljc, and vagabondage. (OMG, that's a lot of people. How did we all fit?) We mostly sat around and watched mashups and talked. I didn't want to be alone, and I felt so safe and at home among my friends and didn't want to miss any of the fun, but at the same time I was feeling very down and didn't contribute much (if anything) to the conversation. It had been a long day. :( So I was kinda lost in my own world for most of the rest of the night, and don't remember much of what we talked about.
Eventually the crowd dispersed around 1:30 in the morning. I went back to my room and sdwolfpup and greensilver stayed up for a while talking about Premieres while I headed on to bed. I won't lie, Saturday was rough (especially towards the end) and I probably needed more alone time than I had let myself have, and I was really feeling the strain that night. I tried to go to sleep with the hope that the next day would be better. (Spoiler alert! It totally was.) This has been the obligatory Depressing Chapter of the con report; don't worry, all the remaining chapters will be much more fun. I promise. :)
Now to type up Sunday. I'm never gonna finish this damn thing.
Part 3: The Actual Con, Day 2
SATURDAY
Honestly, Saturday was one of the worst days of the con for me. Not that there weren't plenty of enjoyable moments, and the best panels and vidshows of the con (IMO) took place on this day. But I woke up in a depressed mood, and it just kept getting worse and worse throughout the day, and I finally realized that if I was going to have any hope of feeling good again before the con was over, I needed to just indulge the sad feelings and wallow in them and get them all out. And I was able to do that at various points on Saturday, and the rest of the con was okay. Better than okay, even; it was fantastic. I just don't really remember much about Saturday other than that I was extremely sad and depressed for most of it. (Yes, the funk I was in was related to breakup issues. No, jarrow didn't do anything wrong or say anything upsetting; he really didn't. It was just one of those things where the loss of something you cherished is bearable for a while and then suddenly hits you hard, and I knew this would be a part of seeing him again in person and I was expecting it; I just wasn't sure when it was going to hit. By chance, for whatever reason, it was Saturday.)
I made it downstairs for breakfast at about 9 am, and found a seat at a table with jarrow, absolutedestiny, sweetestdrain, fan_eunice, possibly vagabondage? and later we were joined by laurashapiro. At one point fan_eunice started describing the Riley vid she wants to make someday, which fills me with glee, because Riley is awesome and deserves many many vids.
Color (panel). I was wavering back and forth on this one for a while, unsure whether to go to this panel or catch the Vids That Push the Envelope vidshow, because they both sounded awesome. (And quite frankly I was skeptical of my own ability to understand everything sockkpuppett has to say about color, because damn that is one insightful and intelligent woman.) But I ended up being very glad that I chose the panel, because her explanations of the meanings of various colors in visual media was absolutely fascinating and made a lot of sense to me, and ever since then I've paid special attention to color in movies and television and vids and it's remarkable how many hidden meanings and clues and references you can pick up! She explained how, for example, orange can indicate creativity and/or insanity; how pale blue usually signifies a lack of power or agency; how purple represents transformation and sometimes death; how yellow can trigger nostalgia, especially for an ideal past that never really existed. And it wasn't just a rundown of "this color has that meaning"; she showed examples from various well-known movies (while people in the audience jokingly complained about spoilers, hee!) and talked about what the prominent colors signified with respect to the plot and characters and message, and how certain combinations of colors worked together. It was very eye-opening, and I'd love to pick her brain sometime about how she's used color in her various vids and how the meanings of colors relate to synesthesia (if at all) and lots of other interesting questions this panel inspired. I sat with jarrow (and sdwolfpup, maybe?) for this one.
Action (vidshow). I think I may have sat next to sdwolfpup again? I can't quite remember. Amazingly, I hadn't seen ANY of the vids in this show before (I know, right? Where have I been?), and I adored almost all of them. This was a fantastically fun show to watch and I enjoyed it immensely, and bradcpu did a hell of a job putting this one together. There was a nice balance of anime and live-action, which I appreciated. Some vids off the top of my head that I really liked: frivolity65's "Cleric", bananainpyjamas' "Wasteland", Adam's "Get Free" (I MUST see this movie, whatever it is; hot semi-naked chicks kicking ass? MORE PLZ), and bop_radar's "Southside" (I was skeptical about whether the song would work with BSG, but this vid impressed me). I definitely want to watch this vidshow all the way through again.
(FYI, since VividCon ended I've barely rewatched any vids from the con, with the exception of last night when I rewatched Premieres and Club Vivid whilst thoroughly sloshed. I do plan on rewatching other stuff [sober] eventually, probably sometime very soon; I was just on vid overload after the weekend was over and needed to take a short break! So all of my vidshow reports and recs at this point are based on a single viewing at VVC.)
For lunch, greensilver was hosting a Veronica Mars party in our room, so I headed upstairs for that. I was planning on helping her set out the food and rearrange furniture, but she'd already done all that by the time I got there! So I fixed myself a turkey sandwich and sat on a coffee table in the back of the room (I figured I'd give the good seats to people who hadn't seen VM yet). jarrow came to join me on the coffee table. We had a pretty good crowd; maybe 10-12 people? I can't remember everyone who was there; I know we had gwyn_r, kuwdora, lierdumoa, and anoel. We watched "The Wrath of Con" followed by about 3-4 awesome VM vids ( go here for the complete list with links). VM is one of those shows that I really enjoy but tend to unintentionally skip over when I list my fandoms; it's like I forget how awesome it is when I'm not watching it. Especially Season 1. Seeing this ep again brought back the VM love, which was really nice. I helped greensilver clean up a bit and then went back downstairs for:
The Tao of Mac (panel). I sat between laurashapiro and merryish, both of whom (if I remember correctly) had very helpful advice and information to contribute during the panel, while I just sat there like a bump on a log and absorbed everything, heh. But I got a lot out of this panel and I'm glad I went. sdwolfpup and gwyn_r, the mods, approached it from the perspective of "Mac Vidding for Newbies"; most of the panel discussion centered around specific tools and hardware requirements that you'd need to vid on a Mac, as well as any particular tips or tricks that they (or anyone in the audience) had picked up along the way. I discovered that pretty much all of the programs they recommended for the various steps in the vidding process were ones I already used: Audacity for audio editing, Mac the Ripper for ripping, MPEG Streamclip for converting/clipping, and Final Cut Pro for vidding. It was still useful, though, because I just picked those programs pretty much at random when I got my Mac and had no idea if they were really the best choices, and it's nice to have that validation. :)
I Suck (panel). laurashapiro and I stayed right where we were in the panel room, and jarrow took over merryish's seat on my right. This was such an entertaining panel, and fan_eunice and sisabet did a fantastic job! They focused on the importance of knowing whether you're in Constructive Suck ("I suck. This vid isn't working. I need someone to look at it and tell me how to fix it.") or Destructive Suck ("I suck. I can't vid and my ideas are awful. Everyone else is better than me. I can't do anything right."), and how to reach out to your friends and ask for either beta or cheerleading, respectively. Getting help and encouragement for one type of suck when you're in another can actually be harmful. They also pointed out that it's okay to not watch anyone else's vids for a while if it's damaging to your self-confidence, and that regular food and bathroom breaks are of the utmost importance. :) And the goodie bags prepared by fan_eunice and vagabondage were awesome! I held onto my little chocolate llama for about a week, because it was just so cute, but eventually I did eat it, hee. The computer-shaped "RENDER!" stress ball and the amazingly cute hug card designed by dualbunny are currently residing on the top of my Mac, yay. Plus sisabet's montage of unfinished vids, "The Final Suckdown", was a thing of beauty. I couldn't read all of her explanatory subtitles clearly at the time since I was sitting kinda far back, but it was hilarious all the same.
Anime Music Videos - A Pre-digital History (vidshow). sweetestdrain and I sat together in the front row, and watched the CUTEST little animations of Cartoon!absolutedestiny in between each vid as his voiceover explained the history of anime vidding and why these particular vids were so pivotal and/or representative of certain styles. Seriously, y'all, his cartoon self is adorable. And if you missed this vidshow, you can still watch all the individual vids, but it just won't be the same without his narration in between. It was kind of awesome. :) I was really really impressed by how many of these vids had fantastic timing, especially considering they were created in the two-VCR days! Especially Corn Pone Vids' "Beat It", Kevin Caldwell's "Chantilly Lace" (the lip-synching was perfect), and Big Big Truck's "Crazy-Ass Violence" which is absolutely stunning to watch. The vid that made the biggest impression on me by far was Fast Food Freedom Fighters' "Nagisa Bonita"; it's set to Madonna's "La Isla Bonita", but the vidder actually recorded herself singing different lyrics to the song (that described the story she was telling in the vid), and laid that audio track over Madonna's vocals. So in essence the vidder was creating her own song. I'm kinda surprised that I've never seen this technique, or anything similar, used in the live-action vidding community. It was very creative, and though it was a little jarring at first, by the end I was completely wrapped up in the vid.
Next was either the Town Hall on Vidding and Visibility, or the Second Bananas vidshow. I probably would have gone to the Town Hall, and I did briefly consider it, but I had started to feel rather broody and anti-social. Looking in the panel room and seeing all the people gathered for Town Hall, I knew I couldn't sit in there for an hour in that large crowd and pretend to be okay, so I decided to go up to my room instead. None of my roommates were there, and I took a nap for about an hour. It was actually good for me to be alone for a bit, I think. Shortly after 5 pm, greensilver came up to get a sandwich, and I realized that the panel would be letting out soon and people would be congregating for dinner, and I didn't want to miss that. So I headed back downstairs, still feeling slightly bummed but wanting to be around people again and not miss out on fun togetherness.
I arrived about 5 minutes before the Town Hall let out, so I just hung around in the alcove for a bit. When the doors opened, three of the first people out of the room were jarrow, sweetestdrain, and renenet. They grabbed me and the four of us headed to Outback so we could beat the dinner rush and get a table, which worked brilliantly. We had a good time at dinner, and at one point sweetestdrain told a joke involving George Washington which was actually a really cute joke, and would totally make you laugh as long as you were not terminally stupid like me and jarrow who just sat there and stared at her and said "what? I don't get it" because apparently we are not intelligent enough to understand puns. HEE. (Ask her to tell you the George Washington joke sometime.) Towards the end of dinner absolutedestiny joined us at the table. He and jarrow left early to go practice their karaoke number (...*kof*) while the rest of us finished our meal.
I walked out of Outback at maybe 6:20, and went up to the alcove to get a good spot in line (hopefully) so that I could grab a good seat for Premieres. Surprisingly, there were already at least a dozen people there. I stood in line anyway, and then sweetestdrain happened along and graciously offered to hold my spot while I went upstairs to change (since I wanted to wear a pink twirly skirt for my karaoke number with heresluck). I barely made it back downstairs before the doors opened.
Premieres. I sat about halfway back with sdwolfpup, renenet and sweetestdrain. (fan_eunice joined us after intermission.) I didn't have the best view ever, but no large sections of the screen were blocked so I consider myself lucky, heh. I'm not gonna go into detail about any of the vids here, because if I did one I'd want to do them all and that would take forever, and also I already participated in Drunken Vid Review last night and I promise you I'm not any more coherent about vids when I'm sober. :) Just my general impressions of Premieres this year: there were a lot of outstanding vids, IMO. There were also a couple that I had very strong negative reactions to, which surprised me, as I usually don't feel harsh dislike for vids (at least not ones of the general quality shown at VVC); most of the time I range from "omgFANTASTIC" to "meh". I was semi-distracted during this year's show by all of the emotional stuff I'd gone through that day, and so I didn't pay nearly as much attention as I would have liked; there were several amazing vids that I zoned out for and felt really bad afterwards. I also felt guilty for just sitting quietly in my seat during intermission (and after the show) instead of tracking down the people whose vids were particularly awesome and telling them so; I just wasn't up for social butterflying or loud squeeing, and it meant I hardly gave any in-person feedback to anybody for their Premieres vid, which is sad. Hopefully I'll be better about that next year. But I did really enjoy the vids overall.
Karaoke! My "volunteer hour" was helping with karaoke setup, so I tested microphones and plugged in cords and such with absolutedestiny. Also, I totally took advantage of my volunteer status by claiming a seat in the front of the room before anyone else was let back in. (Oh, don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same.) ;P jarrow came to sit next to me, except he had to leave his chair right away since his and absolutedestiny's "Falling for the First Time" duet was first on the list. They did a fantastic job on the harmonies, and they killed the room dead with their hot smooch at the end! (I totally knew it was coming so I had my camera at the ready for pictures, hee.) Another highlight was sockkpuppett and sisabet singing "Too Drunk To Fuck" - totally awesome. And of course, I got to sing "Goody Two Shoes" with heresluck, woooo! We had actually practiced harmonies and shit, and she sent me a spreadsheet a couple weeks before the con with the lyrics to the song and notes on who should sing which line and where we should harmonize. A SPREADSHEET. FOR KARAOKE. God I love that woman. ♥ We had talked about twirling each other around during the instrumental parts - hence my twirly skirt - and I was all ready to do that, and then we got up front and picked up the mics and I thought "oh, microphone cords. ...eeep." (Also there was the nervousness factor.) So, no twirling, but it was still a lot of fun and I'm so happy I got to sing with her and also she was unbelievably hot in that leather blazer. Just sayin'. :) The show actually finished a little early, so we were able to have a group sing-along of "Copacabana" (requested by absolutedestiny) and "Jolene" (requested by sherrold).
After karaoke I stopped by laurashapiro's room to rescue my DVD player, and the two of us headed over to absolutedestiny's room where we'd been instructed to meet up with the rest of our gang. We expected to find a full house when we got there; instead we were greeted only by dualbunny and Gerry, who informed us that apparently there was free pizza just down the hall and everyone had gone there instead, and the two of them were staying behind to direct traffic. We kept them company for a while instead of following the crowd, and that ended up being a good thing, because we never left the room and eventually most people drifted back to where we were. Our gang grew slowly, but eventually it consisted of the four of us, absolutedestiny, elynross, fan_eunice, greensilver, heresluck, jarrow, renenet, sisabet, sockkpuppett, sweetestdrain, taraljc, and vagabondage. (OMG, that's a lot of people. How did we all fit?) We mostly sat around and watched mashups and talked. I didn't want to be alone, and I felt so safe and at home among my friends and didn't want to miss any of the fun, but at the same time I was feeling very down and didn't contribute much (if anything) to the conversation. It had been a long day. :( So I was kinda lost in my own world for most of the rest of the night, and don't remember much of what we talked about.
Eventually the crowd dispersed around 1:30 in the morning. I went back to my room and sdwolfpup and greensilver stayed up for a while talking about Premieres while I headed on to bed. I won't lie, Saturday was rough (especially towards the end) and I probably needed more alone time than I had let myself have, and I was really feeling the strain that night. I tried to go to sleep with the hope that the next day would be better. (Spoiler alert! It totally was.) This has been the obligatory Depressing Chapter of the con report; don't worry, all the remaining chapters will be much more fun. I promise. :)
Now to type up Sunday. I'm never gonna finish this damn thing.