Comic Con: The Con of Lines
Many people have asked me what Comic Con is like, so here’s where I do my best to sum it up. In short, it’s amazing and exciting and wonderful and full of nerdom and geekdom and squeeing. But it’s also painful, dehydrating, tiring, expensive, disappointing, and annoying.
It’s the con of lines. Seriously. My friends and I like to joke about how you wait in lines for lines. And there’s lines for everything. There’s a line for food, and a line for panels, and a line for swag, and a line for water, and a line for the bathroom, and a line to cross the street, and a line to walk through a door, and a line for the shuttle, and I could go on.
On preview night, I even joked that there was an amorphous blob waiting TO WAIT IN LINE. You see, I really wanted the BBCA Doctor Who 50th Anniversary lanyard that was being given out (my obsessive tendencies are just not normal). And there was a very long line for it, but you couldn't actually get in the line because they had capped it. They cap lines for multiple reasons: keep people out of the aisleways, keep people from blocking exits or other booths, or just because they don’t think that many people are going to get through in time. So me and about 50 other people were forming a blob near the end of the BBCA booth line, just waiting for that magical moment when the line guard staff dude let a few more of us get in line. He was being as nice and fair as possible, too, while still following the rules. I hugged him for his awesome. I eventually made it in that line and got my lanyard, YAY, but what a show. So yes, a line to wait in line.
Obviously, me and the other quarter of a million people find this line thing worth it. I love seeing some of the panels from my favorite shows up close. I love that I get to witness the actors, actresses, writers, and producers talking about their show in person. I love the sneak peeks we get. I’m the most in love with that palpable feeling of excitement and love and admiration that the entire audience exudes during the panels. It’s also so much fun to make friends in lines, I’ve met someone new and awesome every single year.
It’s even fun, to an extent, to camp out in line. I do this at least once each year, sometimes twice. I have camped overnight in the Hall H line in order to get into the Doctor Who panel for every year there has been one. It’s fun to get so hyped about a show I love so much. It’s also fun to have people walk by and ask you what you’re waiting for, and explaining that you’re trying to get into a panel 18 hours in the future. The looks are priceless. At some point, this will probably become not worth it to me. I got in line at 6 pm Saturday night for a 12:30 pm panel the next day. Due to loudness and messed up plans and being woken up at 5 am to condense the line, I got about 3 hours of sleep. That becomes a problem when I have a 10 hour drive ahead of me later that day. But so far, I’ve managed it, and still think it’s fun.
SDCC really is all about the fan excitement. My friends and I work ourselves into a frenzy discussing our potential plans on the drive down. We check into the hotel as fast as possible, shove all of our stuff in the room real quick, and catch the shuttle to the convention center to pick up our badges. On the shuttle is when you get struck by that giddy excitement of geekdom. Inevitably, you’ll overhear some conversation about some aspect of fandom you’re into and you’ll join in. And soon, at least half of the shuttle bus will launch into huge discussions that span fandoms. It’s just so much fun. To share your love of whatever thing and get excited with people who were strangers 5 minutes ago.
So, yes, so far, SDCC has been worth every annoyance that comes with it because of the cool things I get to see and do, and the cool people I share it with and meet. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to kill every person on the planet by midday Sunday.