Escapade Con Report
I'm going to be good this year and do a con report. It was probably my favorite Escapade ever so I had to write up some thoughts on it.
So I was able to leave a couple hours early thankfully so I was able to drive more in daylight and arrive earlier. I took the 101 S down and ran into some rush hour traffic but I enjoyed the drive down much better than the 5 as there was not many trucks around nor cars. I made good time and got there around 11:30 where I met
elipie in our room. It was so good to see her again and we talked for a few hours discovering once again that we are very, very similar. We then watched the latest episode of Parks & Rec (thank you, hotel internet) which was fun to do with another person and it was a good episode. Finally we went to sleep as we didn't want to totally destroy ourselves before the weekend began.
The next morning we went downstairs to the Welcome panel and I said greeted
talitha78,
rhoboat,
killabeez,
hafital and probably a few other people I'm forgetting. Then I went to the Pimpfest to try to pimp Parks & Rec but had some tech issues and there weren't many people there so I mostly talked with
elipie,
jetpack_monkey and a few others. Next I went to the Vidwatching panel which was led by
talitha78 and
rhoboat who did a fantastic job and I had fun discussing various vids and techniques used in them. Afterwards I went up to the con suite to grab some lunch and talk with a few people and then I went down to Festivids Review led by
franzeska where we watched a bunch of new to me vids (I'm still behind on them) and had some discussion about them. Next I took a short nap as I was super tired and wanted to be alive for the party later in the night. I met up at 6 pm for dinner where I went with
arallara,
sinensiss,
elipie and a bunch of other people who I don't know their DW/LJ names to an Italian place where they had delicious food. We had a fun discussion talking about slash in academia, bestiality (as one does), Adam Lambert and various other topics.
Then
elipie and I pregamed the party by drinking early and checked LJ. We went back down and got our drinks, mine was a Midori like fruity drink that was delicious and
elipie coined a new drink, the Vulcan Sunrise that the bartender made for her and then everyone wanted it too. We went to a table to talk with
jetpack_monkey,
diannelamerc
lizbetann and several other people and had fun figuring out what our fortune cookie fannish quotes were from.
elipie and I wanted more of a Club Vivid atmosphere so we talked to the con chairs about the possibilities of setting up some music so we could dance. We tried their speakers but they were soft so I went out to my car to get mine which were a little better. We made a Club Vivid vid playlist (at the end of this post if you're interested), I turned the volume all the way up in VLC on my laptop and we gathered up the few people we could persuade to dance with us (
jetpack_monkey,
echan,
niqaeli,
jmtorres,
kerithwyn at one point (the Fringe vid of course) and maybe someone I'm forgetting). It was so much fun! The playlist was a little too long so we missed the last songs but it was fun getting to watch vids and dance and recreate a little of the Club Vivid magic.
Then we all went back up to a room to watch The Losers which by that point I was super drunk and tired so it was hard to stay awake. But I loved the movie! SO much hotness and funny lines and great action. I was totally slashing JDM and Idris's characters together. Finally
elipie and I stumbled to bed and fell asleep hoping to avoid hangovers. I was sadly not so lucky but I survived and promised myself I'll never drink again (haha that will never last). We slept in til noon as none of the early morning panels motivated us sufficiently to get out of bed. We went downstairs, grabbed brunch and then headed to Wayback Machine and Once Upon a Time panels. Next up was the Comedies in Fandom: unfairly ignored? panel which I suggested and was happy to see someone volunteer for it so I didn't have to do it ;) It was great! The mod had some statistics from the Archive of our Own that showed comedies (half hour) represented only 2.5% of the total stories and we discussed reasons for why that was. I don't remember all of them, it ranged from not taking characters seriously, less attractive leads, embarrassment squick and various others. Next I hung out in the consuite a bit and then went back down for Thing-a-thon which was interesting and helped in terms of thinking how to set up a challenge based thing. After that I went to the Orgy of Manpain discussion which was funny and introduced some new definitions.
After that I went to the bar with
elipie and we had dinner where we were joined by
jetpack_monkey and we talked about vidding, fandoms, LA and other things. It made me very excited to go back to LA and be able to hang out with them more often. Finally it was time to line up for the vidshow! I was very excited to read the playlist and found out my vid, Hero was playing third so that was good for getting my nerves out of the way. Finally we began the show and it was awesome! I especially loved
talitha78's Stronger vid (SO slashy and awesome),
greensilver's heartbreaking Charles/Erik vid,
rhoboat's impeccably timed and funny Sherlock Holmes vid and
franzeska's Miami Vice vid (hilariously wonderful LKBV) although there was some other great ones in there as well. I always think I won't be nervous when my vid plays but I was totally nervous and may have led to me crying a little bit to it (because of the FEELINGS, oh boys).
Afterwards I gave some feedback to the vidders, grabbed my DVDs and then headed up to
franzeska's birthday party to celebrate with some vids. It was basically all the people from the night before with the addition of
rhoboat,
talitha78 and someone whose name I'm forgetting (sorry!). We all watched the Club Vivid vids from 2011 which were amazing and talked about them and various other things all while drinking (I stuck to just plain pineapple juice this time). We left around 1 am or so excited to vid so
elipie and I decided to work on clipping/vidding our CVV vids. It was fun to vid with another person and I managed to get some good work on mine. By 2am we were dying of lack of sleep so we finally headed to bed.
The next morning we went to the breakfast in the bay view room which has a gorgeous view.
elipie and I talked with
jetpack_monkey,
diannelamerc and several other people and then went over to the auction where we enjoyed the crazy bidding wars even if we were both too poor to take part. We left early for Vid Review and
elipie was awesome enough to take great notes so the vidders and I didn't have to worry about forgetting (or not hearing) the feedback. I was unsurprised with my feedback, I knew the majority of people weren't into The Social Network for one reason or another but I was glad that people seemed to still like it for the most part. I liked the smaller atmosphere compared to Vid Review at VVC, there were less vids to discuss since we focused on premiering vids from attending vidders for the most part and there was less people making it less intimidating. Next
elipie and I stayed for Nearly New vids since we missed those the night before for the party. I was surprised to learn that I had won at the art show and in the middle of it I left to get my Brokeback Mountain fanart which was a real steal at $10 and was super beautiful. I can't wait to hang it in my room! I went back and was happy to see Disarm by
obsessive24 which is one of my favorite Harry Potter vids.
After that I went to the Wildcard panel about the balkanization of fandom which was interesting but I left early in order to watch the DVD of the fan pairs panel that took place in 1996 at Escapade. It was funny to see faces I recognized but so much younger and it was really great (although super sad) to see
sherrold again. I can't believe it's been a year since I've seen her and was lucky enough to talk with her...Then I went to the Escapade Review for a short time. I stepped away after a bit in order to go walk along the ocean as I hadn't had a chance to do that. It was sooo nice and made me miss LA a lot as it was great to get my feet wet and walk in the sand. One of the things I take for granted that I miss. Then I went back to see the end of Review and say goodbye to everyone. I missed a few people but managed to get a good portion of people. The goodbyes are always one of the worst parts :( I at least had a chance to talk a little with
gwyn_r before I left. Finally I left the hotel and drove down to LA to get a last hour of LA time before I had to go back to SF. It was HEAVENLY from driving down the 101 and seeing the Valley and Hollywood to walking all around Downtown LA taking a billion pictures and being in complete happiness. God I miss LA SO MUCH. Only 4.5 weeks til I get to go back...
The drive back to San Francisco was fine, I mostly listened to Glee a lot. By 11pm I was super tired and thankfully managed to stay awake to get back to where I was staying by 1am. Monday was really hard as the sudden lack of fans and SoCal hit me hard along with the lack of sleep but I had a good talk
lianri and I'm feeling better about things now. At the very least, I'm motivated to vid again so that's awesome. I can't wait to go back to LA in April and get to hang out more with vidders in the area. It's going to be so fun!
Mini-Club Vivid Playlist (I forgot to save the playlist so the order is approximate): Joxer Dance, Club Vivid Tik Tok by
diannelamerc and
lizbetann, Footloose by
sdwolfpup (meta was that we weren't allowed to dance at the party but now we were!), Party in the USA by
millylicious, Bad Romance by
sisabet, Paul Mccartney by
jarrow, Blow by
elipie, Improper Dancing by
marycrawfield, Copacabana by
barkley and
destina, Boom Boom Pow by
hollywoodgurl, Beautiful, Dirty, Rich by
astolat, Holding Out for a Hero by
marycrawford, I'm on a Boat by
kiki_miserychic, Give It Up by
jarrow and we didn't have time but the last vids were Vogue by
luminosity, Closer by
killabeez, God is a DJ by
dualbunny and Hot, Hot, Hot by
sherrold and
wickedwords. Mostly I tried to pick the classic CVV vid songs with a few additions of my own.
Besides that, back to the same routine here in SF. Finally starting to learn some Rails so it's been a jump in the deep end. If you like comedies at all (or not), be sure to watch Cougar Town! It's on at Tuesdays at 8:30pm and this season is especially hilarious. The name is not relevant at all, it's all about friends with wine basically and it's just so much fun. Planning on visiting some new to me neighborhoods on the weekends and also really looking forward to going to the Apple Campus and getting a short tour :D I will probably die of squee as I have turned into a huge Apple fangirl over the last 5 months (my iPhone is still the BEST thing ever, highly recommended). So that is one good thing about being here. Still a little overwhelmed playing catchup but I got a lot of sleep yesterday so that helped and I'm hoping the next few days will also help.
32 more days until I go back to Los Angeles!!
So I was able to leave a couple hours early thankfully so I was able to drive more in daylight and arrive earlier. I took the 101 S down and ran into some rush hour traffic but I enjoyed the drive down much better than the 5 as there was not many trucks around nor cars. I made good time and got there around 11:30 where I met
elipie in our room. It was so good to see her again and we talked for a few hours discovering once again that we are very, very similar. We then watched the latest episode of Parks & Rec (thank you, hotel internet) which was fun to do with another person and it was a good episode. Finally we went to sleep as we didn't want to totally destroy ourselves before the weekend began.
The next morning we went downstairs to the Welcome panel and I said greeted
talitha78,
rhoboat,
killabeez,
hafital and probably a few other people I'm forgetting. Then I went to the Pimpfest to try to pimp Parks & Rec but had some tech issues and there weren't many people there so I mostly talked with
elipie,
jetpack_monkey and a few others. Next I went to the Vidwatching panel which was led by
talitha78 and
rhoboat who did a fantastic job and I had fun discussing various vids and techniques used in them. Afterwards I went up to the con suite to grab some lunch and talk with a few people and then I went down to Festivids Review led by
franzeska where we watched a bunch of new to me vids (I'm still behind on them) and had some discussion about them. Next I took a short nap as I was super tired and wanted to be alive for the party later in the night. I met up at 6 pm for dinner where I went with
arallara,
sinensiss,
elipie and a bunch of other people who I don't know their DW/LJ names to an Italian place where they had delicious food. We had a fun discussion talking about slash in academia, bestiality (as one does), Adam Lambert and various other topics.
Then
elipie and I pregamed the party by drinking early and checked LJ. We went back down and got our drinks, mine was a Midori like fruity drink that was delicious and
elipie coined a new drink, the Vulcan Sunrise that the bartender made for her and then everyone wanted it too. We went to a table to talk with
jetpack_monkey,
diannelamerc
lizbetann and several other people and had fun figuring out what our fortune cookie fannish quotes were from.
elipie and I wanted more of a Club Vivid atmosphere so we talked to the con chairs about the possibilities of setting up some music so we could dance. We tried their speakers but they were soft so I went out to my car to get mine which were a little better. We made a Club Vivid vid playlist (at the end of this post if you're interested), I turned the volume all the way up in VLC on my laptop and we gathered up the few people we could persuade to dance with us (
jetpack_monkey,
echan,
niqaeli,
jmtorres,
kerithwyn at one point (the Fringe vid of course) and maybe someone I'm forgetting). It was so much fun! The playlist was a little too long so we missed the last songs but it was fun getting to watch vids and dance and recreate a little of the Club Vivid magic.
Then we all went back up to a room to watch The Losers which by that point I was super drunk and tired so it was hard to stay awake. But I loved the movie! SO much hotness and funny lines and great action. I was totally slashing JDM and Idris's characters together. Finally
elipie and I stumbled to bed and fell asleep hoping to avoid hangovers. I was sadly not so lucky but I survived and promised myself I'll never drink again (haha that will never last). We slept in til noon as none of the early morning panels motivated us sufficiently to get out of bed. We went downstairs, grabbed brunch and then headed to Wayback Machine and Once Upon a Time panels. Next up was the Comedies in Fandom: unfairly ignored? panel which I suggested and was happy to see someone volunteer for it so I didn't have to do it ;) It was great! The mod had some statistics from the Archive of our Own that showed comedies (half hour) represented only 2.5% of the total stories and we discussed reasons for why that was. I don't remember all of them, it ranged from not taking characters seriously, less attractive leads, embarrassment squick and various others. Next I hung out in the consuite a bit and then went back down for Thing-a-thon which was interesting and helped in terms of thinking how to set up a challenge based thing. After that I went to the Orgy of Manpain discussion which was funny and introduced some new definitions.
After that I went to the bar with
elipie and we had dinner where we were joined by
jetpack_monkey and we talked about vidding, fandoms, LA and other things. It made me very excited to go back to LA and be able to hang out with them more often. Finally it was time to line up for the vidshow! I was very excited to read the playlist and found out my vid, Hero was playing third so that was good for getting my nerves out of the way. Finally we began the show and it was awesome! I especially loved
talitha78's Stronger vid (SO slashy and awesome),
greensilver's heartbreaking Charles/Erik vid,
rhoboat's impeccably timed and funny Sherlock Holmes vid and
franzeska's Miami Vice vid (hilariously wonderful LKBV) although there was some other great ones in there as well. I always think I won't be nervous when my vid plays but I was totally nervous and may have led to me crying a little bit to it (because of the FEELINGS, oh boys).
Afterwards I gave some feedback to the vidders, grabbed my DVDs and then headed up to
franzeska's birthday party to celebrate with some vids. It was basically all the people from the night before with the addition of
rhoboat,
talitha78 and someone whose name I'm forgetting (sorry!). We all watched the Club Vivid vids from 2011 which were amazing and talked about them and various other things all while drinking (I stuck to just plain pineapple juice this time). We left around 1 am or so excited to vid so
elipie and I decided to work on clipping/vidding our CVV vids. It was fun to vid with another person and I managed to get some good work on mine. By 2am we were dying of lack of sleep so we finally headed to bed.
The next morning we went to the breakfast in the bay view room which has a gorgeous view.
elipie and I talked with
jetpack_monkey,
diannelamerc and several other people and then went over to the auction where we enjoyed the crazy bidding wars even if we were both too poor to take part. We left early for Vid Review and
elipie was awesome enough to take great notes so the vidders and I didn't have to worry about forgetting (or not hearing) the feedback. I was unsurprised with my feedback, I knew the majority of people weren't into The Social Network for one reason or another but I was glad that people seemed to still like it for the most part. I liked the smaller atmosphere compared to Vid Review at VVC, there were less vids to discuss since we focused on premiering vids from attending vidders for the most part and there was less people making it less intimidating. Next
elipie and I stayed for Nearly New vids since we missed those the night before for the party. I was surprised to learn that I had won at the art show and in the middle of it I left to get my Brokeback Mountain fanart which was a real steal at $10 and was super beautiful. I can't wait to hang it in my room! I went back and was happy to see Disarm by
obsessive24 which is one of my favorite Harry Potter vids.
After that I went to the Wildcard panel about the balkanization of fandom which was interesting but I left early in order to watch the DVD of the fan pairs panel that took place in 1996 at Escapade. It was funny to see faces I recognized but so much younger and it was really great (although super sad) to see
sherrold again. I can't believe it's been a year since I've seen her and was lucky enough to talk with her...Then I went to the Escapade Review for a short time. I stepped away after a bit in order to go walk along the ocean as I hadn't had a chance to do that. It was sooo nice and made me miss LA a lot as it was great to get my feet wet and walk in the sand. One of the things I take for granted that I miss. Then I went back to see the end of Review and say goodbye to everyone. I missed a few people but managed to get a good portion of people. The goodbyes are always one of the worst parts :( I at least had a chance to talk a little with
gwyn_r before I left. Finally I left the hotel and drove down to LA to get a last hour of LA time before I had to go back to SF. It was HEAVENLY from driving down the 101 and seeing the Valley and Hollywood to walking all around Downtown LA taking a billion pictures and being in complete happiness. God I miss LA SO MUCH. Only 4.5 weeks til I get to go back...
The drive back to San Francisco was fine, I mostly listened to Glee a lot. By 11pm I was super tired and thankfully managed to stay awake to get back to where I was staying by 1am. Monday was really hard as the sudden lack of fans and SoCal hit me hard along with the lack of sleep but I had a good talk
lianri and I'm feeling better about things now. At the very least, I'm motivated to vid again so that's awesome. I can't wait to go back to LA in April and get to hang out more with vidders in the area. It's going to be so fun!
Mini-Club Vivid Playlist (I forgot to save the playlist so the order is approximate): Joxer Dance, Club Vivid Tik Tok by
diannelamerc and
lizbetann, Footloose by
sdwolfpup (meta was that we weren't allowed to dance at the party but now we were!), Party in the USA by
millylicious, Bad Romance by
sisabet, Paul Mccartney by
jarrow, Blow by
elipie, Improper Dancing by
marycrawfield, Copacabana by
barkley and
destina, Boom Boom Pow by
hollywoodgurl, Beautiful, Dirty, Rich by
astolat, Holding Out for a Hero by
marycrawford, I'm on a Boat by
kiki_miserychic, Give It Up by
jarrow and we didn't have time but the last vids were Vogue by
luminosity, Closer by
killabeez, God is a DJ by
dualbunny and Hot, Hot, Hot by
sherrold and
wickedwords. Mostly I tried to pick the classic CVV vid songs with a few additions of my own.
Besides that, back to the same routine here in SF. Finally starting to learn some Rails so it's been a jump in the deep end. If you like comedies at all (or not), be sure to watch Cougar Town! It's on at Tuesdays at 8:30pm and this season is especially hilarious. The name is not relevant at all, it's all about friends with wine basically and it's just so much fun. Planning on visiting some new to me neighborhoods on the weekends and also really looking forward to going to the Apple Campus and getting a short tour :D I will probably die of squee as I have turned into a huge Apple fangirl over the last 5 months (my iPhone is still the BEST thing ever, highly recommended). So that is one good thing about being here. Still a little overwhelmed playing catchup but I got a lot of sleep yesterday so that helped and I'm hoping the next few days will also help.
32 more days until I go back to Los Angeles!!