Dragon Con 2012
Things kicked off with a flight down to Tampa at ungodly o-clock, wherein I predictably got little/no sleep on plane. There I was met by sister-chan and friend, and there was much squeeing and hugging! The weather was nice, despite hurricane worries. We stopped at Steak n' Shake for lunch <3 We were early for our tour at Big Cat Rescue, so we dorked around a mall for a bit to kill time.
I was so impressed by BCR. It so obviously is a rescue operation and not a tourist attraction, that was clear every step of the way. This is no exploitative roadside zoo, these folks are truly dedicated to the welfare of the animals and they put that first, period. It was a great experience. The animals were fantastic about chilling out right up front and showing themselves off, I got some amazing photos. We got to see the male lion and his female white tiger friend playing chase, which was *so* cute. The lion roared for us, too - very impressive. Some of the tigers were just breathtakingly huge - maybe it was just being so close, but wow. Lovely, lovely animals.
Then we headed south, stopping at assorted Bob Evans' for meals. We got to Sanibel Island, and it was just stunning. I'd known it was literally made of seashells, but it didn't really sink in until we parked and they were just *everywhere*. The parking lot was paved with nicer seashells than I've ever found on Hampton Beach back home. We went down to the beach and wandered for a while shell-picking. It was weird but fantastic to be able to look at a shell that on any other beach would have been an amazing find, and go 'nah, I've already got some of those' or 'I bet I can find a better one'. The waves were nice and the water lovely - I didn't have my swimsuit on yet but I couldn't resist wading. Unsurprisingly, I spent the rest of the day with damp shorts. Totally worth it ^_^
After Sanibel we headed down to the Keys, driving a couple islands out to a nice little cove beach. The water was smooth as glass, no waves at all - it might've been a small lake, but for the brine and endless stretch of water out to the horizon. There were a lot of fish - small white ones that hovered around our feet, tiny green darting ones, even harmless jellyfish! It was beautifully relaxing, and although I missed the surf of Sanibel, the calm water let me get a terrific look at the sea life. At one point a whole school of the little green ones leapt out of the water with a quicksilver shimmer, it was pretty amazing.
After soaking and sunbathing a while, we got out and turned north again, heading toward Atlanta. Our goal was to get there early enough the next day to check into the hotel and then head down to the con to pick up our badges, get some food, and pick up our friends at the airport. Sadly, this did not occur - we underestimated the drive and missed both badge pickup and dinner. Oops.
We collected our friends and got back to the hotel, only to find it wasn't the same Marriott they were staying at - understandable, since there were something like 4 of them in the areas. Double oops. We got back to ours and drew straws to see who'd be sleeping in the armchair, since the room had only one king bed.
The next morning, I got to sleep a little extra time while the other two got up in cosplay as Sandman's Death and Delirium. They looked pretty awesome ^_^ (I just had my trusty Serenity t-shirt and shorts.) Badge pickup went smooth as silk, there was no line backed up at all. There were people coming in, but they had enough booths open to take everyone as they came. I went and got my disability sticker for proximity seating, which I never ended up actually using - any of the panels in rooms big enough to need it were too packed for me to get into at all >.< But I was amused by the instructions: "This sticker is not your ticket to waltz into any room and commandeer a primo seat."
For my first panel at 1 pm, I had to choose between 'fandom and feminism' and 'Avengers Assemble!' - unsurprisingly, I went with Avengers : ) It was astonishingly a pretty small panel - I'd expected one of the massive, ballroom-filling mega-panels, but it was in an ordinary sized room. Great panel, lots of discussion of the movie and gossip on upcoming Avengers-related media. When I got out and hour later, I decided not to go to the 2h30 Eureka panel since it was led by some of the actual cast of the show, meaning it would be far more crowded and hard to get into than other Eureka panels which were just fan discussion. I contemplated perhaps waiting around to get into the 4 pm Firefly panel, however, when I went there - barely after 2 pm, mind you - there was *already* a huge crowd. I decided it wasn't worth waiting 2 hours for a panel I probably wouldn't get into anyway, and headed down to the dealer's room.
I was surprised by how small it was, even with two additional exhibition rooms. It had some of the usual fare - awesomely geeky t-shirts, swords - but the focus was mostly on either non-fandom fantasy, pop culture, and comic book fandoms. Still, fairly cool.
After that I headed up to the 'walk of fame', where the celebrity guests were doing autographs and meeting fans. Got a glimpse of a lot of cool people - Adam Baldwin, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, Billy Boyd, James Callis, Gigi Edgley, Eddie McClintock. (Never did see Sean Maher or Jewel Staite there, though I popped by several times over the course of the con). Most of the people I wanted to see had outrageous lines, so I got in line for Ellen McLain (voice of GLaDOS in Portal). Alas, though this line was shorter, it still took over an hour. Worth it, though - she was a lovely lady, very good at putting nervous fans at ease. She liked my shirt and talked about how much she enjoyed Firefly, and it turns out she knows the Nashua area - what are the odds, right? I asked her if fans request that she insult them in GLaDOS's voice, and she said 'all the time!' ^o^
After that it was time for my next panel, and I opted to forgo one on the theology of Supernatural in favor of the Ray Bradbury in memoriam. That was excellent, 3 of the 4 panelists had actually known the man and been friends with him for quite some time. After that I tried to go to a panel about what fans want in upcoming sci-fi and fantasy TV, but it was too noisy with cross-talk so I headed down to the art area instead. Lots of very lovely work, though surprisingly almost no fanart at all. I was excited to see a mask-maker I've long admired on dA I stopped by to fangirl a bit and it turned out she was running a panel on leather mask-making the next night….which I was going to miss half of >.< But happily, she said she'd post it on YouTube, so I'm looking forward to that. One last panel of the night, a Eureka panel, and I was done for the day. That was my night to sleep in the armchair. Bleh.
The next morning, we all got up early for the costume parade. I was nothing short of spectacular, I definitely recommend checking it out on YouTube, even though it is quite long. Almost none of my photos came out, which wasn't surprising since we were a couple rows back. I thought I had enough time after that to go finish poking around in the artist's area before heading to the Mythbusters panel with Grant Imahara, but I miscalculated and by the time I could've made it, I surely wouldn't have gotten in. So instead I went to a science panel on curing illnesses by using bacteriophage viruses, which was *fascinating* stuff. And I still did get into Grant's autograph session afterward, so that was all good. Got plenty of photos, yay - including him with a couple of *very* good Jaime and Adam cosplayers : ) Also, he liked my shirt (Portal - we can do it - with SCIENCE!)
A quick stop by the consuite for a sammich, then I went back to the walk of fame. Colin Ferguson, star of Eureka, had almost no line, so I met him. I mentioned at the precious night's panel how someone had asked 'would Eureka have been the same without Colin Ferguson?' and all the panelists instantly went 'No, not at all, it wouldn't have even worked' and he got a kick out of that. By then it was 4 pm, and I noticed a sign by John Barrowman's line - 'back at 5'. Knowing what a horrendous line he always had, I decided to just queue up then. There was no sitting allowed, so it was a little rough on the feet - especially after the parade - but soon other people were queuing and I met some lovely fellow fans. The girl behind me wasn't going to be able to get an autographed photo, since the price was unexpectedly high, so she was just going to meet him. When I went up, though, I bought photos for both of us, because no one should miss out on that ^o^ Then I asked him to introduce himself with the trademark "Hi. Captain Jack Harkness." And he did, with the smile and the voice and everything - and it was every bit as effective as fandom has it! It should be illegal (and impossible!) for a mere introduction to be that sexy.
I did catch the first half of the leather masks panel, which had a lot of great tips and also a lot of nice people I met while we were waiting for the previous panel to empty out. I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing, but alas.
After that it was time to meet my sister and friend for the DragonCon Night at the Georgia Aquarium. This was…interesting. We had tickets for 8 pm, we queued up at 7h30, but for some reason the shuttles to the aquarium were only coming every once in a blue moon. After over and hour in line, my sister and friend opted to just head back to the hotel. I stuck around, since I adore aquariums. Totally worth the wait! They had whale sharks! Beautiful 25'+ monsters cruising around their giant ocean tank. Manta rays too, and believe me there's a difference in hearing about their size on a nature show and seeing one glide past and thinking 'holy cow, that thing could entirely cover my sister's car!' The ocean tank had a tunnel beneath the water, you could take a moving walkway or sit on benches and just watch the mantas and whale sharks, other sharks and rays, groupers - very beautiful and serene. I went to the tunnel again after going around everywhere else, and just sat and rested. The ocean tank also had a *HUGE* glass wall, easily at least two stories high and maybe 3-4 times as wide. Very awesome. At one side was a stream of bubbles, and the manta rays seemed to really like it, they'd come by and do big swooping loops through it. The aquarium also had *massive* Japanese spider crabs - legspan of at least 6' - sea otters and river otters (asleep in a heap, so cute!) dolphins, garden eels, jellyfish, lionfish, sea dragons, sawfish, belugas - you name it!
I was very glad to traipse back to the hotel after that very long day (thankfully the bus back was only a ten minute wait - though he somehow made the 5-block trip take 15 minutes). Everyone was hanging out in our room, so there was much sharing of tales and photos and con-loot.
I started off Sunday by saying goodbye to my sister and friend (;__;) and switching rooms to stay with my other friends. I found that once again I was in no way going to be able to make the Firefly panel, so I went to another non-fandom panel, this one on religious liberty. It was hosted by a lobbyist from the Secular Coalition of America, which works to try to maintain the separation of church and state. A big challenge right now is trying to combat the efforts of religion to not only introduce religion-related laws, but to redefine the very meaning of religious freedom. Religious freedom isn't the right to impose one's religious beliefs on others, as some would argue, but rather than the right of all people to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose. That seems self-evident, but there are religious activists trying to subvert the meaning, demanding indulgence of their mandates in the name of 'freedom of religion'. It was a really interesting panel, and I need to support their work. *Someone* needs to oppose all the people trying to turn America into a religious state.
After that I opted to skip the panel on the science of self-esteem, and instead went downstairs to sit on my butt for a couple hours waiting in line for an autograph for a friend. I felt kind of awkward, meeting an author whose work I knew nothing of. Luckily, they were moving things along fairly quickly and I didn't have to admit my cluelessness.
After that long rest, I had enough energy to spend some time just roaming the halls in search of awesome cosplay. I hadn't really gotten many photos up until then. It wasn't always easy - I was hurrying to get places, the cosplayers were hurrying to get places (the con's spread out over five large hotels, not all of them that close to one another), and everything but the very fringes of the largest rooms is jam packed with people, most of whom are trying to get somewhere. If you try to stop for a photo if that traffic, you'll either get trampled in snarl everything up hopelessly. So I floated around the less-trafficked areas for a bit, and got some nice photos. People were cosplaying everyone from Weird Al to Tremors to every variation on the Avengers imaginable - I only got a handful of photos, but I highly recommend checking out the Dragon Con tag on Tumblr to view the range and skill of the cosplayers there.
The Warehouse 13 panel was another one of those really popular ones that I wasn't going to be able to get into with a crowbar, so I decided to go to a panel on leather carving instead. I got to the room and asked, "Is the end of the line for the leather carving?" and was told, "No, that's all the way back there."
…so yeah, didn't make it into there either. I was tired by then, so I went to the main video room where they were doing an all-day Marvel marathon. I caught the end of Iron Man 2 and all of Captain America before heading back to the room. My friends were thoughtful enough to have gotten us moved into a suite with a fold-out couch (<3), so I met up with them in the hotel restaurant since I lacked a key for the new room. They'd been hanging out with some internet friends, and we went upstairs and watched the Star Trek reboot before calling it a night.
Monday was a pretty quiet day. I did get to a last panel on mask-making, and one on alternative marriages (same-sex marriage and polyamory - very interesting stuff). I also did a last cruise around the dealer's rooms, exhibition halls, and artists bazaar.
I got an art print of two OCs, a chalcedony rose, a gold-colored belt for my Ren Faire dress, and "vehicle identification tags" for SHIELD, Aperture Science, Stark Industries, Global Dynamics, and Torchwood ^__^
(catching a ride on the hotel's service elevator, I was chatting with the kindly employee who gave me a lift about how strange it must be for the residents to have their downtown invaded by weirdoes every summer. She commented that a friend had described it as "the internet comes to life" - which I think is both hilarious and very apt!)
I met up with my friend after the alternative marriage panel and we'd gone around for a bit before heading back to the hotel around 5. The evening entailed napping and reading, a dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant, and planning the kind of silly parody fic that one comes up with after 4 days of con-stupid ^o^
The flight out the next day was eaaaaarly and had a 3 hour layover, bleh, but more tolerable for the company. Especially since we used the layover to start our silly fic. I eventually arrived home, and immediately came down with the con-crud. Yay.
Good times! ^_^
Not all oh the photos I tok and posted are linked here, so if you want to see the rest, check out my DragonCon album