Dragon*Con Report: Friday
Holy crap, I caught up on LJ! Except for the D*C posts, which I've bookmarked, so don't be surprised if you get a comment on something from a few days ago. Speaking of D*C posts, unlike my last great fannish adventure, I'm determined to actually get these out the door. And so we begin.
Dragon*Con 2007
I've wanted to go to a con like this one since before I discovered online fandoms, really. I've done day trips to Comic-Con, and of course, I've been intensely involved in our 1200-person HP symposia, but Dragon*Con was my first experience with a multi-day, multi-fannish, guest centric convention, and it really was everything I could've hoped. The sheer size and diversity of it blew my mind. If you're curious, I made it to most of my first-priority sessions, and a few of the second-priority ones when there were errors on the schedule, although aside from the Yule Ball, I ignored the evening programming in favor of spending time with friends.
My adventure began after work on Thursday, when I dashed home, glanced forlornly at my laptop, and ran around taking care of all of the chores and packing I needed to do before hopping back into the car and up to SFO. I was assigned a "cozy" seat in the back right corner of the plane, in that last row where there's only two seats and neither is against the window, but the one on the right has extra leg room and storage space. Unfortunately, I lost that spot because a woman traveling with a cat needed more under-seat storage than would fit in her aisle seat, so we switched. I didn't get much sleep - even without the switch, I was too cold and they ran out of blankets - but upon landing in the pre-dawn hours, I was pumped up anyway from adrenaline and excitement.
I had no trouble navigating Marta and only a smidge of trouble finding my way through the mall to the Marriott, the middle of the three conference hotels, but I knew I was close when I started seeing lanyards. The first awesome thing to happen that morning was being able to check in as soon as I arrived at seven. Hooray! I could brush my teeth and feel like a human again! Trust me, it was very exciting.
Once I'd gotten re-organized, I made the first of the weekend's many trips to the Starbucks in the lobby and then went to join the registration line across the street. There were already costumed people wandering around, and I was early enough to get a spot right below the Hyatt's exit stairway, for those who were there. Honestly, for all that I've seen complaints about lines, they didn't really bother me, except for an incident to be discussed later. They're part and parcel of the con experience. What did bother me was the realization that my Starbucks cup was broken and had become a dribble cup, leaking chai latte all over my Squee! shirt. Once eight o'clock rolled around and I had my badge in hand, I canceled my plans to maybe use the pool and went straight back to my room to wash out my shirt.
SUCH EXCITEMENT.
Cleanup done, I went back out into the growing masses and got the lay of the land in all three hotels. Nothing was open yet except for the fan group tables, where I bought a Farscape lanyard (and what is this business about not including those at reg?) and added a D'Argo pin to my bag. Mostly, I was waiting for a reasonable hour to start getting in touch with my fandom friends. Because I'm multi-fannish, I often have trouble negotiating my time between groups and events at these sorts of things, but I think I did pretty well this time, though of course, I would have loved to spend more time with all of you. In the meantime, I plopped down on the upper lounge level of the Marriott, a place with which I was to become very familiar over the weekend. As you may have seen on annerbhp's journal, the setup was excellent. They had the Sci-Fi Channel playing on the giant projected television all weekend. I watched a little bit of the SGA marathon until it was after ten and I figured I could give shutthef_up a call.
That became the second awesome thing of the morning, because I was able to meet a whole crowd of LJ people, including surrealphantast and Courser, as well as annerbhp, katcorvi, splash_the_cat, and stargazercmc. One of my favorite things about the whole con was getting to know not only people who've been friends for a while, but also those with whom I've traveled in similar fannish circles without really being acquainted. We babbled together for a while and thenl trooped over to the food court for lunch before the con really got started.
A note on my session recaps: I didn't take notes during the panels and I don't plan on recapping them in their entirety. There were plenty of other people to do that. I'm just sharing the highlights and tidbits that I remember best.
First up on the official programming: the now-infamous Star Trek vs. BSG panel of much confusion and flirting. Over the weekend, it was interesting to note the differences between panels with moderators and those without, and how the happy medium was never really found. (Unless you were Nichelle Nichols or Claudia Black, who rise above the whole thing with their awesome.) The panel was huge, including Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Jonathan Frakes from the TNG cast; Richard Hatch, Jamie Bamber, and Aaron Douglas from the BSG cast; and a couple of those "New Voyages" or whatever it's called guys. Great lineup, not so great sense of direction. The TrekTrak guy introduced them and then vanished from the stage, leaving the guests to flail about what they were supposed to do for a while. The whole artificial drama of pitting these shows against one another is so tired and pointless, even though I'm pretty sure some fan asked about it in every single Trek or BSG session. But they gamely answered questions through their start-of-con haze, and we all got to know that particular ballroom quite well.
Ooo, before I go on, I should mention for those not there that D*C kept us amused while waiting for sessions to start with Adult Swim style bumpers and shorts up on the monitor. It was fun, as was the guy running the tech in that room who gave a continuous, deadpan monologue about the proper way to fill the room. Er. Maybe just take my word that it was funny?
Right, so while the Trek people were screwing around with one another and Aaron Douglas during the panel, poor Jamie Bamber sat at the end of the table looking a bit forlorn in his dragon pants. I believe he spoke twice during the entire thing: once to give a characteristically brilliant answer to That Question, and once to flirt - a lot - with Aaron. And that was just the verbal segment; Aaron had his arm around Jamie's chair the entire time, even while he was hamming it up, and I laughed a lot to myself.
Anyway, because it was early in the con, we were allowed to stay in the room for the next panel. Before it started, though, I got to meet wisteria_ - and though I didn't realize it at the time, elly427 and indigo419 - on her way out. There was MUCH squee, although I am currently bummed because we didn't get to see each other before I left Monday.
The next session was the first Stargate one, limited to "guest stars" - Alexis Cruz, Corin Nemec, Paul McGillion, and John de Lancie. Yeah, I question their definition of guests, too, particularly since Jason Momoa was at one time scheduled to be on the panel. General impressions, as told by lolcats:
AC and CN: WE R SRS ACTORZ IN SRS BIZNIS!
PM: AYE, LISTEN TO MAH SEXY ACCENT
JdL: ...oh, children.
In any case, I was thankful that most people didn't go for the particular questions about scenes and episodes and instead, the whole discussion was unexpectedly focused on the acting process. This was...for better and for worse. On the one hand, there's John de Lancie, who I would love to have sit in a room and talk about everything he's done. On the other...yeah. I know most of you really enjoyed Alexis's brain, but while I, too, was pleasantly surprised, it got a little tired and trite to me, though it would come in handy on Saturday. This panel was one of the scheduling mistakes on my giant chart, slated for a double session but only really intended to be one hour, which was good for many reasons...
...including what it enabled me to see in that newly-opened hour: Farscape! The rest of the group took off for the dealer room while I ventured to another tower of the Hyatt for some bonus time with Lani Tupu, Gigi Edgley, and David Franklin (Bracca). It was a smaller room, so lack of moderation worked a little better here. The audience wasted no time getting to the question on everyone's minds about the webisodes, but the actors haven't been contacted yet. All they knew was that Pilot and Rygel are being rebuilt (!) and LT thinks that they're doing these to gauge interest in future projects. Eee!
Also interesting: The reason Pilot sounded so different in PK Wars was because they had a different sound engineer.
They were darling and had lots of stories to share from the set, as well as about their current projects. Good times.
Unfortunately, next up was my first experience with being cleared from a room to make way for the next panel, which in this case was the first Harry Potter session. I wanted to see it but didn't figure I'd get a good enough place in the line that was stretched out the door and down the street, until I ran into annerbhp and katcorvi waiting in it. Hooray!
It was, as we knew, HP with fifty percent less Harry, only featuring Matthew Lewis and the Phelpses. I hadn't planned to make their sessions a priority, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected I would. They've grown up well, and I kind of want to see a sit-down chat between Dan Radcliffe and ML about acting. It would be at least as interesting as anything Bravo puts out. On a more shallow note, the moderator had a bunch of pre-submitted questions, including one from a twelve-year-old that asked how ML had gotten so hot. The mod was very careful to preface the question with the asker's age, and we were very thankful she'd done so.
After the prepared questions, they opened it up to the audience, and the spoiler bomb got dropped in the first minute, causing a girl in front of us to shriek and dive into her lap. They gave any spoiler warnings up as a lost cause but did screen the questions before they were asked. They were a mixed bag, but the best was when a guy in all-out Hagrid gear came up to the mic and launched into a long comment about Pink Floyd and bureaucracy and HP, all in a thick Southern drawl. We were on the floor trying not to laugh, and the guests had to ask for a repetition because they couldn't understand him - whether from the accent or our snickers, I don't know.
That was the end of official programming for me as I went back to the Marriott for greycoupon's birthday dinner. I got to meet ebneter, lyssie, trinnifer, and more people whose LJ names I didn't catch (and some who were non-fandomers lost in the sea of costumes). We walked over to the Hard Rock Cafe, where all dinner conversation was severely limited by the noise. But the YMCA thing was very funny. :-D
After dinner, I followed wisteria_, elly427, and indigo419 back through all three hotels to their rooms at the Hilton, where we chatted for a while before people started turning in. I was tired from my red-eye, too, but when I got back to the Marriott, I discovered just what a party spot the lounge bar was going to be over the weekend and found a second wind. I had a vague idea of trying to find people at the SG Track Party, but luckily, I ran into Courser on my way and she directed me back up to the lounge to where everyone else was hanging out, including more people whose names I didn't all catch at the time - even now, I'm not even sure of some! :)) We heard there that the SG party had been very high school-like, so we just stuck around and had a blast enjoying the silent SG-1 marathon up on the big screen, watching the cosplayers walk by, playing with the Spartans, and talking the evening away.
Unfortunately, all the talking made me miss my roommate's phone call from the lobby. I felt terrible because they were stuck waiting to hear from me for half an hour before I finally got the messages en route to the elevator. Because of the late arrival, I didn't end up getting to sleep until almost two.
So to recap, on my first day at the con,I saw five of my fandoms represented on stage - and it wasn't even a full day of programming! Stay tuned for day two.
Dragon*Con 2007
I've wanted to go to a con like this one since before I discovered online fandoms, really. I've done day trips to Comic-Con, and of course, I've been intensely involved in our 1200-person HP symposia, but Dragon*Con was my first experience with a multi-day, multi-fannish, guest centric convention, and it really was everything I could've hoped. The sheer size and diversity of it blew my mind. If you're curious, I made it to most of my first-priority sessions, and a few of the second-priority ones when there were errors on the schedule, although aside from the Yule Ball, I ignored the evening programming in favor of spending time with friends.
My adventure began after work on Thursday, when I dashed home, glanced forlornly at my laptop, and ran around taking care of all of the chores and packing I needed to do before hopping back into the car and up to SFO. I was assigned a "cozy" seat in the back right corner of the plane, in that last row where there's only two seats and neither is against the window, but the one on the right has extra leg room and storage space. Unfortunately, I lost that spot because a woman traveling with a cat needed more under-seat storage than would fit in her aisle seat, so we switched. I didn't get much sleep - even without the switch, I was too cold and they ran out of blankets - but upon landing in the pre-dawn hours, I was pumped up anyway from adrenaline and excitement.
I had no trouble navigating Marta and only a smidge of trouble finding my way through the mall to the Marriott, the middle of the three conference hotels, but I knew I was close when I started seeing lanyards. The first awesome thing to happen that morning was being able to check in as soon as I arrived at seven. Hooray! I could brush my teeth and feel like a human again! Trust me, it was very exciting.
Once I'd gotten re-organized, I made the first of the weekend's many trips to the Starbucks in the lobby and then went to join the registration line across the street. There were already costumed people wandering around, and I was early enough to get a spot right below the Hyatt's exit stairway, for those who were there. Honestly, for all that I've seen complaints about lines, they didn't really bother me, except for an incident to be discussed later. They're part and parcel of the con experience. What did bother me was the realization that my Starbucks cup was broken and had become a dribble cup, leaking chai latte all over my Squee! shirt. Once eight o'clock rolled around and I had my badge in hand, I canceled my plans to maybe use the pool and went straight back to my room to wash out my shirt.
SUCH EXCITEMENT.
Cleanup done, I went back out into the growing masses and got the lay of the land in all three hotels. Nothing was open yet except for the fan group tables, where I bought a Farscape lanyard (and what is this business about not including those at reg?) and added a D'Argo pin to my bag. Mostly, I was waiting for a reasonable hour to start getting in touch with my fandom friends. Because I'm multi-fannish, I often have trouble negotiating my time between groups and events at these sorts of things, but I think I did pretty well this time, though of course, I would have loved to spend more time with all of you. In the meantime, I plopped down on the upper lounge level of the Marriott, a place with which I was to become very familiar over the weekend. As you may have seen on annerbhp's journal, the setup was excellent. They had the Sci-Fi Channel playing on the giant projected television all weekend. I watched a little bit of the SGA marathon until it was after ten and I figured I could give shutthef_up a call.
That became the second awesome thing of the morning, because I was able to meet a whole crowd of LJ people, including surrealphantast and Courser, as well as annerbhp, katcorvi, splash_the_cat, and stargazercmc. One of my favorite things about the whole con was getting to know not only people who've been friends for a while, but also those with whom I've traveled in similar fannish circles without really being acquainted. We babbled together for a while and thenl trooped over to the food court for lunch before the con really got started.
A note on my session recaps: I didn't take notes during the panels and I don't plan on recapping them in their entirety. There were plenty of other people to do that. I'm just sharing the highlights and tidbits that I remember best.
First up on the official programming: the now-infamous Star Trek vs. BSG panel of much confusion and flirting. Over the weekend, it was interesting to note the differences between panels with moderators and those without, and how the happy medium was never really found. (Unless you were Nichelle Nichols or Claudia Black, who rise above the whole thing with their awesome.) The panel was huge, including Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Jonathan Frakes from the TNG cast; Richard Hatch, Jamie Bamber, and Aaron Douglas from the BSG cast; and a couple of those "New Voyages" or whatever it's called guys. Great lineup, not so great sense of direction. The TrekTrak guy introduced them and then vanished from the stage, leaving the guests to flail about what they were supposed to do for a while. The whole artificial drama of pitting these shows against one another is so tired and pointless, even though I'm pretty sure some fan asked about it in every single Trek or BSG session. But they gamely answered questions through their start-of-con haze, and we all got to know that particular ballroom quite well.
Ooo, before I go on, I should mention for those not there that D*C kept us amused while waiting for sessions to start with Adult Swim style bumpers and shorts up on the monitor. It was fun, as was the guy running the tech in that room who gave a continuous, deadpan monologue about the proper way to fill the room. Er. Maybe just take my word that it was funny?
Right, so while the Trek people were screwing around with one another and Aaron Douglas during the panel, poor Jamie Bamber sat at the end of the table looking a bit forlorn in his dragon pants. I believe he spoke twice during the entire thing: once to give a characteristically brilliant answer to That Question, and once to flirt - a lot - with Aaron. And that was just the verbal segment; Aaron had his arm around Jamie's chair the entire time, even while he was hamming it up, and I laughed a lot to myself.
Anyway, because it was early in the con, we were allowed to stay in the room for the next panel. Before it started, though, I got to meet wisteria_ - and though I didn't realize it at the time, elly427 and indigo419 - on her way out. There was MUCH squee, although I am currently bummed because we didn't get to see each other before I left Monday.
The next session was the first Stargate one, limited to "guest stars" - Alexis Cruz, Corin Nemec, Paul McGillion, and John de Lancie. Yeah, I question their definition of guests, too, particularly since Jason Momoa was at one time scheduled to be on the panel. General impressions, as told by lolcats:
AC and CN: WE R SRS ACTORZ IN SRS BIZNIS!
PM: AYE, LISTEN TO MAH SEXY ACCENT
JdL: ...oh, children.
In any case, I was thankful that most people didn't go for the particular questions about scenes and episodes and instead, the whole discussion was unexpectedly focused on the acting process. This was...for better and for worse. On the one hand, there's John de Lancie, who I would love to have sit in a room and talk about everything he's done. On the other...yeah. I know most of you really enjoyed Alexis's brain, but while I, too, was pleasantly surprised, it got a little tired and trite to me, though it would come in handy on Saturday. This panel was one of the scheduling mistakes on my giant chart, slated for a double session but only really intended to be one hour, which was good for many reasons...
...including what it enabled me to see in that newly-opened hour: Farscape! The rest of the group took off for the dealer room while I ventured to another tower of the Hyatt for some bonus time with Lani Tupu, Gigi Edgley, and David Franklin (Bracca). It was a smaller room, so lack of moderation worked a little better here. The audience wasted no time getting to the question on everyone's minds about the webisodes, but the actors haven't been contacted yet. All they knew was that Pilot and Rygel are being rebuilt (!) and LT thinks that they're doing these to gauge interest in future projects. Eee!
Also interesting: The reason Pilot sounded so different in PK Wars was because they had a different sound engineer.
They were darling and had lots of stories to share from the set, as well as about their current projects. Good times.
Unfortunately, next up was my first experience with being cleared from a room to make way for the next panel, which in this case was the first Harry Potter session. I wanted to see it but didn't figure I'd get a good enough place in the line that was stretched out the door and down the street, until I ran into annerbhp and katcorvi waiting in it. Hooray!
It was, as we knew, HP with fifty percent less Harry, only featuring Matthew Lewis and the Phelpses. I hadn't planned to make their sessions a priority, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected I would. They've grown up well, and I kind of want to see a sit-down chat between Dan Radcliffe and ML about acting. It would be at least as interesting as anything Bravo puts out. On a more shallow note, the moderator had a bunch of pre-submitted questions, including one from a twelve-year-old that asked how ML had gotten so hot. The mod was very careful to preface the question with the asker's age, and we were very thankful she'd done so.
After the prepared questions, they opened it up to the audience, and the spoiler bomb got dropped in the first minute, causing a girl in front of us to shriek and dive into her lap. They gave any spoiler warnings up as a lost cause but did screen the questions before they were asked. They were a mixed bag, but the best was when a guy in all-out Hagrid gear came up to the mic and launched into a long comment about Pink Floyd and bureaucracy and HP, all in a thick Southern drawl. We were on the floor trying not to laugh, and the guests had to ask for a repetition because they couldn't understand him - whether from the accent or our snickers, I don't know.
That was the end of official programming for me as I went back to the Marriott for greycoupon's birthday dinner. I got to meet ebneter, lyssie, trinnifer, and more people whose LJ names I didn't catch (and some who were non-fandomers lost in the sea of costumes). We walked over to the Hard Rock Cafe, where all dinner conversation was severely limited by the noise. But the YMCA thing was very funny. :-D
After dinner, I followed wisteria_, elly427, and indigo419 back through all three hotels to their rooms at the Hilton, where we chatted for a while before people started turning in. I was tired from my red-eye, too, but when I got back to the Marriott, I discovered just what a party spot the lounge bar was going to be over the weekend and found a second wind. I had a vague idea of trying to find people at the SG Track Party, but luckily, I ran into Courser on my way and she directed me back up to the lounge to where everyone else was hanging out, including more people whose names I didn't all catch at the time - even now, I'm not even sure of some! :)) We heard there that the SG party had been very high school-like, so we just stuck around and had a blast enjoying the silent SG-1 marathon up on the big screen, watching the cosplayers walk by, playing with the Spartans, and talking the evening away.
Unfortunately, all the talking made me miss my roommate's phone call from the lobby. I felt terrible because they were stuck waiting to hear from me for half an hour before I finally got the messages en route to the elevator. Because of the late arrival, I didn't end up getting to sleep until almost two.
So to recap, on my first day at the con,I saw five of my fandoms represented on stage - and it wasn't even a full day of programming! Stay tuned for day two.