Urban fantasy authors predict evil unicorns will take over the genre in the near future. Stay tuned.
SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2010: DAY 2
Falling asleep on the job is embarrassing. Falling asleep on the job and waking up on the floor in the middle of the hustle and bustle that is Comic Con is humiliating. Not my fault they didn't really have a job for us and just left us sitting in a corner, being bored as fuck until time was up.
I volunteered really early today (forgot the exact reason why) in line management; several of us were assigned to the massively massive Hall H (which has its own giant restrooms, ffs). Problem was we showed up at a very slow time, where the programming at Hall H wasn't very...interesting. We weren't needed to help control the crowd because there was no crowd.
So after I woke up and got my work hours validated I stalked off to the exhibition hall...or I ate a pretzel and zeroed in on my first real panel of SDCC - Bite Me: Evolving Urban Fantasy Beyond the Vampire Phenomenon, featuring Tanya Huff (the Victoria Nelson novels), Mario Acevedo (the Felix Gomez detective-vampire series), Merrie Destefano (Afterlife: The Resurrection Chronicles), Jocelynn Drake (Pray for Dawn), Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim), Lauren Kate (Fallen series), and Marjorie M. Liu (In the Dark of Dreams). There were a lot of jokes to be had about the Twilight vampires ("My vampires don't brood, or sparkle.") but it was a rather interesting discussion about what supernatural creatures the authors choose to write about, why vampires are so appealing and what's up with writing them as Romantic Interests, what kind of research do they do, what would they like to do, and what pet peeves do they have. I was most struck by Lauren Kate, whose book I once stumbled upon while clicking links on Amazon.com like you do at TV Tropes and rolled my eyes at, only because her supernatural creatures were (fallen) angels.
Can you guess where this is going? The one WIP I have that's the farthest removed from the Supernatural verse is my dystopian AU. With a bit of tweaking, a few hard decisions, and some research into mythologies I can easily turn it into an original work of fiction. I believe this story would work best as an origific because I would be freeing it from the constraints of the canon material I'm working off of.
Right now I'm looking at several other books featuring fallen angels on Amazon while rereading
bookshop's post about YA & Rape Culture, and yeah, I kind of want to try it out. I was already over 30K words in by the time I stopped to deal with something else (because what is word count) so I have something solid to work off of.
I should stop discussing what I want to do with it when all I want to do is write this post and hit the hay.
After the panel I spent the next...hour and fifteen looking for the Supernatural comic book at various booths. This immediately evolved into a search for Marvel's The Runaways and Young Avengers as well. Toss in some out-of-print Transformers material by Dreamwave and yeah, it' a lot of shit to carry around. But oh man is it worth it, even though my finger bled during the search. Oops? Look, the Runaways are impossible to find, so I'm fucking lucky I found a hardcover...although it's Volume 2., There's #1?! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with nabbing some stuff that's out of print. I mean, the booth was selling everything for half off. I only paid $53 for the loot!
The second and last panel of the day was Marvel: The Heroic Age: Avengers, featuring Joe Quesada, Marvel's talent liaison C. B. Cebulski, and creators Brian Michael Bendis,(Avengers), Matt Fraction (Invincible Iron Man), Jim McCann Hawkeye & Mockingbird), and one other person who I think is in marketing? I only remember his pride at being Canadian and a South Asian. And his love of the immortal Iron Fist's cap. Brubaker, I believe, was also here for a few minutes via Fraction's iPhone. Also, Matt Fraction looks like some crazy combination of Pinto (already a combination) and David Tennant. Bizarre.
Basically they discussed the aftermath of Norman Osbourne's reign and Steve Rogers' rise to head cop, along with the various branches of the Avengers team - Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers - and gave us sneak peeks into their latest projects. They're also returning to the Runaways, and BMB is in love with Spiderwoman. Me, too, Brian, me too.
Then came Q & A, where someone probably shouldn't have asked why there are so many heroines on the Avengers team(s) especially to Brian. I missed another person's question because I was also reading Young Avengers Represent but did catch Quesada discussing why Marvel doesn't try to meet quotas on characters of color - they don't want COC to be caricatures and stereotypes that end up disappearing from the pages; they want fully fleshed out COCs who are more than just what color they are. I don't know if maybe they should just push for having more COCs in general, but I appreciate the idea that they want well-rounded COCs rather than just another forgettable face. Who knows, maybe they're just deflecting and never seriously consider it.
I should read the Hercules series, since Amadeus is Korean-American.
You know, try as I might I simply cannot relate to any of the DC Comics characters. I feel nothing for their iconic characters. When I was younger I thought it was something you do, kind of like the way you embrace Wolverine (who's become an utter bore thanks to everyone's fascination with him). I decided the Teen Titans were my best bet thanks to the cartoon at Cartoon Network and bought several issues to start with. I never moved beyond those several issues. I couldn't care about these guys. But Marvel? I was breathless all throughout Siege. I connected with these characters more. Never mind this particular universe's audacity to have a hero called Captain America who parades around in the stars and stripes; I actually care about these people. My only beef with them is that you have to think a bit to find their iconic female character, like DC Comics has Wonder Woman. But they do exist; the ones off the top of my head are Storm, Ms. Marvel, Spiderwoman, Black Widow...
After this panel I met up with
regicidaldwarf and her boyfriend, and went to Horton Westfield to find Panda Inn for Slashers' Dinner. We ended up at the same table as kijikun, among other people. Dude, I got a spiffy little badge with my fandom name on it; I'm using it the next two days along with my real badge and, uh, hoping nobody notices the Dean/Castiel bit above the name. The dinner was great and the swap table was amusing in the sense that I now own a shirt with John Barrowman's face on it. Yay?
Meeting people who are in fandom face to face is quite something, and I'd love to do it again.
What sucks is that we couldn't make it to the encore screening of Batman: Under the Red Hood because we had a bus to catch. Ticked as fuck, but that's what the Internet is for, amirite?
So, overall a good day. Saturday's schedule is going to be obnoxious as fuck because it's Saturday, do you have any idea what the crowd is going to be like? I scheduled my 3-hour block to be from 2-5PM so that I can get into the Futurama panel @ 12:45PM and (hopefully) the Nikita panel @ 5:15PM. If not, then I'll just line up for the Human Target panel @ 6:15PM and ninja my way to the front for Mythbusters which comes afterwards @ 7:15PM.
You see, it's all part of the plan.
Then I'm stealing my brother's fancy new camcorder for the Supernatural panel on Sunday. If I know how the damn thing works you might get a spiffy HD video of the whole thing. Yay?
Falling asleep on the job is embarrassing. Falling asleep on the job and waking up on the floor in the middle of the hustle and bustle that is Comic Con is humiliating. Not my fault they didn't really have a job for us and just left us sitting in a corner, being bored as fuck until time was up.
I volunteered really early today (forgot the exact reason why) in line management; several of us were assigned to the massively massive Hall H (which has its own giant restrooms, ffs). Problem was we showed up at a very slow time, where the programming at Hall H wasn't very...interesting. We weren't needed to help control the crowd because there was no crowd.
So after I woke up and got my work hours validated I stalked off to the exhibition hall...or I ate a pretzel and zeroed in on my first real panel of SDCC - Bite Me: Evolving Urban Fantasy Beyond the Vampire Phenomenon, featuring Tanya Huff (the Victoria Nelson novels), Mario Acevedo (the Felix Gomez detective-vampire series), Merrie Destefano (Afterlife: The Resurrection Chronicles), Jocelynn Drake (Pray for Dawn), Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim), Lauren Kate (Fallen series), and Marjorie M. Liu (In the Dark of Dreams). There were a lot of jokes to be had about the Twilight vampires ("My vampires don't brood, or sparkle.") but it was a rather interesting discussion about what supernatural creatures the authors choose to write about, why vampires are so appealing and what's up with writing them as Romantic Interests, what kind of research do they do, what would they like to do, and what pet peeves do they have. I was most struck by Lauren Kate, whose book I once stumbled upon while clicking links on Amazon.com like you do at TV Tropes and rolled my eyes at, only because her supernatural creatures were (fallen) angels.
Can you guess where this is going? The one WIP I have that's the farthest removed from the Supernatural verse is my dystopian AU. With a bit of tweaking, a few hard decisions, and some research into mythologies I can easily turn it into an original work of fiction. I believe this story would work best as an origific because I would be freeing it from the constraints of the canon material I'm working off of.
Right now I'm looking at several other books featuring fallen angels on Amazon while rereading
bookshop's post about YA & Rape Culture, and yeah, I kind of want to try it out. I was already over 30K words in by the time I stopped to deal with something else (because what is word count) so I have something solid to work off of.
I should stop discussing what I want to do with it when all I want to do is write this post and hit the hay.
After the panel I spent the next...hour and fifteen looking for the Supernatural comic book at various booths. This immediately evolved into a search for Marvel's The Runaways and Young Avengers as well. Toss in some out-of-print Transformers material by Dreamwave and yeah, it' a lot of shit to carry around. But oh man is it worth it, even though my finger bled during the search. Oops? Look, the Runaways are impossible to find, so I'm fucking lucky I found a hardcover...although it's Volume 2., There's #1?! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with nabbing some stuff that's out of print. I mean, the booth was selling everything for half off. I only paid $53 for the loot!
The second and last panel of the day was Marvel: The Heroic Age: Avengers, featuring Joe Quesada, Marvel's talent liaison C. B. Cebulski, and creators Brian Michael Bendis,(Avengers), Matt Fraction (Invincible Iron Man), Jim McCann Hawkeye & Mockingbird), and one other person who I think is in marketing? I only remember his pride at being Canadian and a South Asian. And his love of the immortal Iron Fist's cap. Brubaker, I believe, was also here for a few minutes via Fraction's iPhone. Also, Matt Fraction looks like some crazy combination of Pinto (already a combination) and David Tennant. Bizarre.
Basically they discussed the aftermath of Norman Osbourne's reign and Steve Rogers' rise to head cop, along with the various branches of the Avengers team - Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers - and gave us sneak peeks into their latest projects. They're also returning to the Runaways, and BMB is in love with Spiderwoman. Me, too, Brian, me too.
Then came Q & A, where someone probably shouldn't have asked why there are so many heroines on the Avengers team(s) especially to Brian. I missed another person's question because I was also reading Young Avengers Represent but did catch Quesada discussing why Marvel doesn't try to meet quotas on characters of color - they don't want COC to be caricatures and stereotypes that end up disappearing from the pages; they want fully fleshed out COCs who are more than just what color they are. I don't know if maybe they should just push for having more COCs in general, but I appreciate the idea that they want well-rounded COCs rather than just another forgettable face. Who knows, maybe they're just deflecting and never seriously consider it.
I should read the Hercules series, since Amadeus is Korean-American.
You know, try as I might I simply cannot relate to any of the DC Comics characters. I feel nothing for their iconic characters. When I was younger I thought it was something you do, kind of like the way you embrace Wolverine (who's become an utter bore thanks to everyone's fascination with him). I decided the Teen Titans were my best bet thanks to the cartoon at Cartoon Network and bought several issues to start with. I never moved beyond those several issues. I couldn't care about these guys. But Marvel? I was breathless all throughout Siege. I connected with these characters more. Never mind this particular universe's audacity to have a hero called Captain America who parades around in the stars and stripes; I actually care about these people. My only beef with them is that you have to think a bit to find their iconic female character, like DC Comics has Wonder Woman. But they do exist; the ones off the top of my head are Storm, Ms. Marvel, Spiderwoman, Black Widow...
After this panel I met up with
regicidaldwarf and her boyfriend, and went to Horton Westfield to find Panda Inn for Slashers' Dinner. We ended up at the same table as kijikun, among other people. Dude, I got a spiffy little badge with my fandom name on it; I'm using it the next two days along with my real badge and, uh, hoping nobody notices the Dean/Castiel bit above the name. The dinner was great and the swap table was amusing in the sense that I now own a shirt with John Barrowman's face on it. Yay?
Meeting people who are in fandom face to face is quite something, and I'd love to do it again.
What sucks is that we couldn't make it to the encore screening of Batman: Under the Red Hood because we had a bus to catch. Ticked as fuck, but that's what the Internet is for, amirite?
So, overall a good day. Saturday's schedule is going to be obnoxious as fuck because it's Saturday, do you have any idea what the crowd is going to be like? I scheduled my 3-hour block to be from 2-5PM so that I can get into the Futurama panel @ 12:45PM and (hopefully) the Nikita panel @ 5:15PM. If not, then I'll just line up for the Human Target panel @ 6:15PM and ninja my way to the front for Mythbusters which comes afterwards @ 7:15PM.
You see, it's all part of the plan.
Then I'm stealing my brother's fancy new camcorder for the Supernatural panel on Sunday. If I know how the damn thing works you might get a spiffy HD video of the whole thing. Yay?