Dragon*Con: Friday: In which I flail all over a childhood idol!
***eta: WARNING! The last section of this post, "Gayness in the Whoniverse," includes major spoilerS for Children of Earth!***
ON TO FRIDAY. ONWARDS AND UPWARDS, PEOPLE.
Friday started at 4am, because we are dumb. It was apparently started with me tweeting, "Ugh, morning is already here? That is unfair." but I have absolutely no memory of texting that. That shows how early it was, dudes.
We somehow managed to get our shit together, take showers, get dressed, and get in the car to drive to the airport. I am not sure how it happened, but since we made our flight, I'm assured that it did. Dulles is a ridiculously large airport. The size of this airport is RIDICULOUS. We had to take a shuttle from where we parked our car to the terminal and then take ANOTHER shuttle from the terminal to our actual gate. CRAZY. We checked in and ended up with separate seats, which was lame! The whole point of flying down together was so that we could sit together!
Still, at least we made the plane. There was a moment where I panicked. Once we checked in, you see, we went to Starbucks for "breakfast." There was a long line, and as we walked back to our gate, we were talking about how embarrassing it must be to be the dude who has to be called over the intercom before the plane can take off. Of course, as we got to our gate, it was oddly empty. Turns out, they had boarded the plane in the time it took us to get food. WHOOPS. Luckily, we were still a few minutes from take off, and boarding the plane (nearly) last did have its advantages, such as not have to elbow past people to get to our seats.
I ended up in the last row by the bathrooms. I was next to a random dude, and all around us was a HUGE family of Virginia Tech fans. Actually, most of the flight seemed to be Virginia Tech fans. They were playing some big football game down in Atlanta, and half of the state of Virginia was going to watch them. At least, that's what it felt like. Also, they all thought that Jen and I were dating because I waved at her and said, "Have a good flight! I'll see you when we land!" Apparently that is lesbian code for, "We are having sex!"
We touched down in Atlanta with little fuss and Jen and I reunited to find our way to the MARTA. We walked all the way from Terminal D to the front of the airport because we didn't realize there was a shuttle. Whoops! But, never fear, we were fine and probably needed the exercise. There were only minor issues with getting on the MARTA (such as Jen not realizing that using a $20 bill to pay would result in a purse full of dollar coins and me trying to swipe my card when I had to wave it over a sensor), which was packed with con attendees.
That's called FORESHADOWING.
Because, you see, one of those attendees sat next to us. And guys? In the twenty minutes I sat next to this woman, I learned her ~*life story*~. She did not learn mine, because she did not shut up long enough to let me talk, and when I did get a word in, she talked over me. She was hella crazy, and I will not divulge the exact details of her life here in case any of you happen to know her on teh internets, but Jen and I were frantically texting each other over her craziness. My god. She said things I would have trouble telling my therapist, let alone two strangers on the train. Once she got off, Jen and I spent some time discussing self-aware fans vs. obviously not at all self-aware fans who are hella crazy.
But! We survived that encounter and lived to finish our train ride! krabapple picked us up at the train station and took us to Waffle House!
Waffle House has a very special place in our hearts thanks to everyone's favorite Team Sheppard road trip fic. Seriously, the three of us love that story and we tragically never got to go to Waffle House together last summer, so this summer it was a must!
(Ugh, now I want to read that story instead of continuing with my write-up. Damn you, persuasive powers of internet fanfiction!)
Anyway. Um, we had breakfast and went over to the con to register. I had wanted to go to the panel where James Marsters and GDL made fun of Barrowman, but by the time we registered, we were a bit too late. It's a shame, because I heard it was hysterical, but I'm sure that it will be up on YouTube soon if it isn't already.
Before we go any further, let me explain some Dragon*Con basics to you. The con spans four hotels in downtown Atlanta. Three of these hotels are connected by a skywalk. One of them is down the street. Two of them start with the same letter. And the schedule for all of them is squished into a tiny booklet and grid that confused the hell out of Jen^2 (this is how I am going to refer to inocciduous and krabapple from now on) that is accompanied by poorly photocopied maps of each level of each hotel.
We spent the first half hour after registration trying to figure out where the hell we were and how to get to where we were going. We were all exhausted and lagging, but I had a PURPLE panel at 4pm and we couldn't check into our hotel until 3, so we were stuck at the con for the morning.
We wandered around and went through the art rooms, the dealer's room, and saw a few other things. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up with us and we collapsed on the carpet across from the art show. We watched costumes walk by for a bit until second_batgirl called and, after a few minutes of confusion, we met up with her. She convinced Jen^2 that it was time for a nap, as the room would be ready by the time they got to the hotel, and convinced me that a soda was what I needed to up my energy.
We walked up to the food court, where Margot had lunch and I sucked down a soda. We talked about bookstores and libraries and fandom and porn and self-indulgent fic. I think it's kind of a draw as to who write the most self-indulgent fic, but I think we decided that self-indulgent fic is the best kind by far.
Once Margot was done eating, we went back downstairs to the Hyatt for my 4pm PURPLE panel. See, I marked the three things I HAD to do in purple on my spreadsheet schedule, and the 4pm panel with Bill Corbett from MST3k and Rifftrax was number one on my list. I think I've talked before about how influential MST3k was to me as a kid and how much it's shaped the sense of humor that I have and, really, the person that I am. Meeting these dudes was a big deal to me, and I was over the moon with glee at the prospect of getting to sit in a room with ANY of them.
I was basically the youngest person on the line. It's hard to tell exactly, since there were quite a few people behind me, but the average age seemed to be mid-thirties. I didn't care, clearly. I bonded with the people around me as we watched fans running back and forth in a frenzy trying to find the Babylon 5 panel that had a line stretched around the building and didn't seem to be on the schedule.
We were finally let into the room (Margot departed for her own 4pm panel, followed by comics trivia) and I somehow managed to score a seat in the front row. I am that awesome. I don't think the smile left my face the entire time I was there. Bill was introduced by Ken Plume and talked a little about himself and how he came to find MST3k before reading from an old one-man show of his called "The Heckler." It was hysterical, really. He answered questions afterwards and gave away a bunch of posters and dvds that, sadly, I wasn't quick enough to win. Still, I was just so happy to be in a room with other MiSTies that I didn't care.
After the panel, he had an autograph session. Hilariously, the panel let out at 5:10 at the Hyatt and the autograph session was at 5:30 at the Marriott. I ran over to the Marriott, only to realize that I had no cash monies in my wallet. I didn't know if he'd be charging for autographs, so I went on an epic quest for an ATM, where I stumbled upon a hotel employee taking photos of a guy in a pirate costume using the ATM. There was a hugeass line, but eventually I got my money and by the time I got down to the autograph line, there were only like, four people in it.
A girl came in a little after me and was distressed that she didn't have any money and didn't know if Bill would be charging. I told her that I'd cover her if he was because a) she was the only person I had seen so far who was waiting for Bill and was close to my age (she was a bit younger than me) and b) I was filled with fan love.
Guys. I'm going to do a whole section of my D*Con write up about fan love, but... oh, guys, the love I felt at this con. Constantly.
Anyway, it turned out that Bill wasn't charging and also that he didn't have any pictures or anything to sign. I stupidly forgot to bring, you know, anything, so I had him sign my con spreadsheet. I explained to him, at first, that he was in purple because all the ~*important*~ must-see things were in purple, and then I gushed for a bit about how important the show was to me. He shook my hand and thanked me and told me that hearing people say things like that make him feel good about making his living by being a sarcastic jerk. We fanned over Jonathan Coulton a little while talking about Rifftrax Live (which is being rebroadcast on 10/8 at 8pm!) and he was kind enough to take a picture with me. Here is a shitty picture of that picture while I'm waiting to upload my real photos.
Afterwards, I ran over to the Hyatt again and came in for the end of Marvel vs. DC Family Feud, the comics trivia game that Margot was taking part in. Her team lost, but it seemed pretty close. Also, oh my frigging god, some of the answers were SO wrong. It was family feud style, so they polled 100 fans and asked them comics questions and each team had to try and guess the top six in any given category. In the "Spider-Man villains" category, Venom didn't make the top six! Total bullshit! And there was another one that I can't remember now that actually made me boo! I mean, I'm not even a hardcore comics fan and some of the stuff that was left off blew my mind.
Anyway, I said hi to Margot and talked to her for a few minutes before running over the the Sheraton. Jen^2 were done with their nap and they were going to pick me up for dinner. Gay Themes in the Whoniverse was that night at 10pm and I still had yet to check into the hotel.
Oh, there was really great chalk art all weekend of giant robots. I took this picture. It's now the background of my phone. It's adorable!
Dinner was at a cute little Thai restaurant that I enjoyed, despite my snobby NYC metro attitude. ("Broccoli? Instead of bok choy? Crazy!") We went back to the hotel and crashed and... I can't remember much of went on, except that I checked my e-mail briefly and Jenny decided she was too tired for the Gay Who panel. She gave us directions to downtown and her car keys and let Jen and me out into the wild.
We got stuck in some crazy traffic (there was an ambulance!), but managed to find parking and get to the panel just by the skin of our teeth. Margot and her friend Heather were already there, and there were two seats in front of them. Unfortunately, they were in the front row. Jen and I shared a look of, "Oh man, I hope this panel is good because it would suck if we were in the front row with no chance of escape!" The last fan panel we attended together was horrible. It was at Shore Leave last year and we stupidly got seats in the front corner and couldn't get out once the RAGE started. We took the front row seats for this panel anyway, though, which ended up being a good idea, because the panel was AWESOME.
Really, guys, I think this panel may have been one of the highlights of my con experience. It was a really interesting debate, mostly about Ianto, and I found myself incredibly drawn into the conversation. I even participated in the discussion and was totally bummed when they had to end the panel to clean the room.
We talked a little bit about Jack (the fact that all Jack has to say is that he's from the 51st Century and the Doctor knows that he's more sexually flexible) and the general representation of queers on Who (lots of gushing about how nice it was that there were so many gay background characters whose sexuality was never a big deal), but a lot of the conversation was about Ianto, so clearly I was quite happy XD There was a lot of discussion about his "It's not men, it's just him" comment in CoE, and while I didn't agree with all of the theories, it was so cool to hear them all. Everyone seemed really respectful and intelligent. There was one woman who was a little crazy and filled me with RAGE, but I can ignore her for the sake of the panel as a whole.
(Re: RAGE: At one point, one of the panelists asked how many of us felt emotionally disconnected from the show now that Ianto was gone and nearly the entire room raised their hands. Someone brought up their frustration with RTD and Crazy!Woman went off on how Ianto is RTD's character and he's allowed to do whatever we want and we have to trust him and RTD only has our best interests at heart and basically just worshiped all over him and told us off for being angry with him because of Ianto's death. It was hella annoying and most of the room was ready to throttle her. Thankfully, the panel got out right about then.)
(Oh, also, a different panelist asked for a show of hands to see who WOULDN'T sleep with Jack Harkness and only three or four of us raised our hands. Guys, I really don't get the attractiveness of Jack. Also, I would be afraid of space herpes.)
(Oh, and there was a cool bit of discourse on Torchwood as a "post-gay" situation, in which sexuality doesn't matter and there's no gay visibility because everyone just assumes gender doesn't matter, where as Doctor Who is a "gay" situation because there's gay representation, but it's still considered different from the norm. I'm not summarizing it well, but it was a neat idea that was thrown around.)
Anyway, after the panel, Margot's friend Heather and I ranted at each other for a little while and then Jen and I headed back to the hotel. I ranted at Jen a LOT and basically told her all about CoE and, you know, the history of Ianto Jones. I am so thankful that Jen didn't kill me over the course of this weekend, guys. SO thankful.
My rage had mostly ebbed by the time we got back to the hotel, and we interneted briefly, but mostly climbed into bed for sleep. Gareth David-Lloyd's panel was at 11:30 the next morning and we wanted to get breakfast first, so we needed to get up early.
***
AND SO ENDS FRIDAY. To be continued!
ON TO FRIDAY. ONWARDS AND UPWARDS, PEOPLE.
Friday started at 4am, because we are dumb. It was apparently started with me tweeting, "Ugh, morning is already here? That is unfair." but I have absolutely no memory of texting that. That shows how early it was, dudes.
We somehow managed to get our shit together, take showers, get dressed, and get in the car to drive to the airport. I am not sure how it happened, but since we made our flight, I'm assured that it did. Dulles is a ridiculously large airport. The size of this airport is RIDICULOUS. We had to take a shuttle from where we parked our car to the terminal and then take ANOTHER shuttle from the terminal to our actual gate. CRAZY. We checked in and ended up with separate seats, which was lame! The whole point of flying down together was so that we could sit together!
Still, at least we made the plane. There was a moment where I panicked. Once we checked in, you see, we went to Starbucks for "breakfast." There was a long line, and as we walked back to our gate, we were talking about how embarrassing it must be to be the dude who has to be called over the intercom before the plane can take off. Of course, as we got to our gate, it was oddly empty. Turns out, they had boarded the plane in the time it took us to get food. WHOOPS. Luckily, we were still a few minutes from take off, and boarding the plane (nearly) last did have its advantages, such as not have to elbow past people to get to our seats.
I ended up in the last row by the bathrooms. I was next to a random dude, and all around us was a HUGE family of Virginia Tech fans. Actually, most of the flight seemed to be Virginia Tech fans. They were playing some big football game down in Atlanta, and half of the state of Virginia was going to watch them. At least, that's what it felt like. Also, they all thought that Jen and I were dating because I waved at her and said, "Have a good flight! I'll see you when we land!" Apparently that is lesbian code for, "We are having sex!"
We touched down in Atlanta with little fuss and Jen and I reunited to find our way to the MARTA. We walked all the way from Terminal D to the front of the airport because we didn't realize there was a shuttle. Whoops! But, never fear, we were fine and probably needed the exercise. There were only minor issues with getting on the MARTA (such as Jen not realizing that using a $20 bill to pay would result in a purse full of dollar coins and me trying to swipe my card when I had to wave it over a sensor), which was packed with con attendees.
That's called FORESHADOWING.
Because, you see, one of those attendees sat next to us. And guys? In the twenty minutes I sat next to this woman, I learned her ~*life story*~. She did not learn mine, because she did not shut up long enough to let me talk, and when I did get a word in, she talked over me. She was hella crazy, and I will not divulge the exact details of her life here in case any of you happen to know her on teh internets, but Jen and I were frantically texting each other over her craziness. My god. She said things I would have trouble telling my therapist, let alone two strangers on the train. Once she got off, Jen and I spent some time discussing self-aware fans vs. obviously not at all self-aware fans who are hella crazy.
But! We survived that encounter and lived to finish our train ride! krabapple picked us up at the train station and took us to Waffle House!
Waffle House has a very special place in our hearts thanks to everyone's favorite Team Sheppard road trip fic. Seriously, the three of us love that story and we tragically never got to go to Waffle House together last summer, so this summer it was a must!
(Ugh, now I want to read that story instead of continuing with my write-up. Damn you, persuasive powers of internet fanfiction!)
Anyway. Um, we had breakfast and went over to the con to register. I had wanted to go to the panel where James Marsters and GDL made fun of Barrowman, but by the time we registered, we were a bit too late. It's a shame, because I heard it was hysterical, but I'm sure that it will be up on YouTube soon if it isn't already.
Before we go any further, let me explain some Dragon*Con basics to you. The con spans four hotels in downtown Atlanta. Three of these hotels are connected by a skywalk. One of them is down the street. Two of them start with the same letter. And the schedule for all of them is squished into a tiny booklet and grid that confused the hell out of Jen^2 (this is how I am going to refer to inocciduous and krabapple from now on) that is accompanied by poorly photocopied maps of each level of each hotel.
We spent the first half hour after registration trying to figure out where the hell we were and how to get to where we were going. We were all exhausted and lagging, but I had a PURPLE panel at 4pm and we couldn't check into our hotel until 3, so we were stuck at the con for the morning.
We wandered around and went through the art rooms, the dealer's room, and saw a few other things. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up with us and we collapsed on the carpet across from the art show. We watched costumes walk by for a bit until second_batgirl called and, after a few minutes of confusion, we met up with her. She convinced Jen^2 that it was time for a nap, as the room would be ready by the time they got to the hotel, and convinced me that a soda was what I needed to up my energy.
We walked up to the food court, where Margot had lunch and I sucked down a soda. We talked about bookstores and libraries and fandom and porn and self-indulgent fic. I think it's kind of a draw as to who write the most self-indulgent fic, but I think we decided that self-indulgent fic is the best kind by far.
Once Margot was done eating, we went back downstairs to the Hyatt for my 4pm PURPLE panel. See, I marked the three things I HAD to do in purple on my spreadsheet schedule, and the 4pm panel with Bill Corbett from MST3k and Rifftrax was number one on my list. I think I've talked before about how influential MST3k was to me as a kid and how much it's shaped the sense of humor that I have and, really, the person that I am. Meeting these dudes was a big deal to me, and I was over the moon with glee at the prospect of getting to sit in a room with ANY of them.
I was basically the youngest person on the line. It's hard to tell exactly, since there were quite a few people behind me, but the average age seemed to be mid-thirties. I didn't care, clearly. I bonded with the people around me as we watched fans running back and forth in a frenzy trying to find the Babylon 5 panel that had a line stretched around the building and didn't seem to be on the schedule.
We were finally let into the room (Margot departed for her own 4pm panel, followed by comics trivia) and I somehow managed to score a seat in the front row. I am that awesome. I don't think the smile left my face the entire time I was there. Bill was introduced by Ken Plume and talked a little about himself and how he came to find MST3k before reading from an old one-man show of his called "The Heckler." It was hysterical, really. He answered questions afterwards and gave away a bunch of posters and dvds that, sadly, I wasn't quick enough to win. Still, I was just so happy to be in a room with other MiSTies that I didn't care.
After the panel, he had an autograph session. Hilariously, the panel let out at 5:10 at the Hyatt and the autograph session was at 5:30 at the Marriott. I ran over to the Marriott, only to realize that I had no cash monies in my wallet. I didn't know if he'd be charging for autographs, so I went on an epic quest for an ATM, where I stumbled upon a hotel employee taking photos of a guy in a pirate costume using the ATM. There was a hugeass line, but eventually I got my money and by the time I got down to the autograph line, there were only like, four people in it.
A girl came in a little after me and was distressed that she didn't have any money and didn't know if Bill would be charging. I told her that I'd cover her if he was because a) she was the only person I had seen so far who was waiting for Bill and was close to my age (she was a bit younger than me) and b) I was filled with fan love.
Guys. I'm going to do a whole section of my D*Con write up about fan love, but... oh, guys, the love I felt at this con. Constantly.
Anyway, it turned out that Bill wasn't charging and also that he didn't have any pictures or anything to sign. I stupidly forgot to bring, you know, anything, so I had him sign my con spreadsheet. I explained to him, at first, that he was in purple because all the ~*important*~ must-see things were in purple, and then I gushed for a bit about how important the show was to me. He shook my hand and thanked me and told me that hearing people say things like that make him feel good about making his living by being a sarcastic jerk. We fanned over Jonathan Coulton a little while talking about Rifftrax Live (which is being rebroadcast on 10/8 at 8pm!) and he was kind enough to take a picture with me. Here is a shitty picture of that picture while I'm waiting to upload my real photos.
Afterwards, I ran over to the Hyatt again and came in for the end of Marvel vs. DC Family Feud, the comics trivia game that Margot was taking part in. Her team lost, but it seemed pretty close. Also, oh my frigging god, some of the answers were SO wrong. It was family feud style, so they polled 100 fans and asked them comics questions and each team had to try and guess the top six in any given category. In the "Spider-Man villains" category, Venom didn't make the top six! Total bullshit! And there was another one that I can't remember now that actually made me boo! I mean, I'm not even a hardcore comics fan and some of the stuff that was left off blew my mind.
Anyway, I said hi to Margot and talked to her for a few minutes before running over the the Sheraton. Jen^2 were done with their nap and they were going to pick me up for dinner. Gay Themes in the Whoniverse was that night at 10pm and I still had yet to check into the hotel.
Oh, there was really great chalk art all weekend of giant robots. I took this picture. It's now the background of my phone. It's adorable!
Dinner was at a cute little Thai restaurant that I enjoyed, despite my snobby NYC metro attitude. ("Broccoli? Instead of bok choy? Crazy!") We went back to the hotel and crashed and... I can't remember much of went on, except that I checked my e-mail briefly and Jenny decided she was too tired for the Gay Who panel. She gave us directions to downtown and her car keys and let Jen and me out into the wild.
We got stuck in some crazy traffic (there was an ambulance!), but managed to find parking and get to the panel just by the skin of our teeth. Margot and her friend Heather were already there, and there were two seats in front of them. Unfortunately, they were in the front row. Jen and I shared a look of, "Oh man, I hope this panel is good because it would suck if we were in the front row with no chance of escape!" The last fan panel we attended together was horrible. It was at Shore Leave last year and we stupidly got seats in the front corner and couldn't get out once the RAGE started. We took the front row seats for this panel anyway, though, which ended up being a good idea, because the panel was AWESOME.
Really, guys, I think this panel may have been one of the highlights of my con experience. It was a really interesting debate, mostly about Ianto, and I found myself incredibly drawn into the conversation. I even participated in the discussion and was totally bummed when they had to end the panel to clean the room.
We talked a little bit about Jack (the fact that all Jack has to say is that he's from the 51st Century and the Doctor knows that he's more sexually flexible) and the general representation of queers on Who (lots of gushing about how nice it was that there were so many gay background characters whose sexuality was never a big deal), but a lot of the conversation was about Ianto, so clearly I was quite happy XD There was a lot of discussion about his "It's not men, it's just him" comment in CoE, and while I didn't agree with all of the theories, it was so cool to hear them all. Everyone seemed really respectful and intelligent. There was one woman who was a little crazy and filled me with RAGE, but I can ignore her for the sake of the panel as a whole.
(Re: RAGE: At one point, one of the panelists asked how many of us felt emotionally disconnected from the show now that Ianto was gone and nearly the entire room raised their hands. Someone brought up their frustration with RTD and Crazy!Woman went off on how Ianto is RTD's character and he's allowed to do whatever we want and we have to trust him and RTD only has our best interests at heart and basically just worshiped all over him and told us off for being angry with him because of Ianto's death. It was hella annoying and most of the room was ready to throttle her. Thankfully, the panel got out right about then.)
(Oh, also, a different panelist asked for a show of hands to see who WOULDN'T sleep with Jack Harkness and only three or four of us raised our hands. Guys, I really don't get the attractiveness of Jack. Also, I would be afraid of space herpes.)
(Oh, and there was a cool bit of discourse on Torchwood as a "post-gay" situation, in which sexuality doesn't matter and there's no gay visibility because everyone just assumes gender doesn't matter, where as Doctor Who is a "gay" situation because there's gay representation, but it's still considered different from the norm. I'm not summarizing it well, but it was a neat idea that was thrown around.)
Anyway, after the panel, Margot's friend Heather and I ranted at each other for a little while and then Jen and I headed back to the hotel. I ranted at Jen a LOT and basically told her all about CoE and, you know, the history of Ianto Jones. I am so thankful that Jen didn't kill me over the course of this weekend, guys. SO thankful.
My rage had mostly ebbed by the time we got back to the hotel, and we interneted briefly, but mostly climbed into bed for sleep. Gareth David-Lloyd's panel was at 11:30 the next morning and we wanted to get breakfast first, so we needed to get up early.
***
AND SO ENDS FRIDAY. To be continued!