(no subject)
Alrighty, let’s just see how my word count goes with an actual full day to update about, lmao! Though since the con now started exactly A WEEK AGO *sigh* I can claim it to not be my fault when I forget … everything.
I remember waking up in time for breakfast, and Quinn and I getting out of bed at 7.56 despite having arranged to meet Dru downstairs for breakfast at 8. And we pretty much managed it, too. We were one, maybe two minutes late. Go us. So we toddled off to the special convention breakfast room (we were totally cheated out of the good food, the bastards!) and ate (bacon was good, sausages and beans were so-so, eggs were a bit watery, for those interested in that kind of thing. Like me.), then headed back to our room, where Quinn watched Spongebob and I went in the shower and listened to Spongebob.
First photoshoots were at 9 but our tickets weren’t particularly low, so we took a wander down around 9.15 and I think they were calling all 1-150, and we were just after that. So we waited, and then they called us, and we headed in. Sean, Summer and Jewel were looking, as always, delightful (and in Sean’s case, DAMN HOT). Quinn got pulled out of the queue since she was getting individual shots of all three and they were collecting people who wanted singles with Summer. I think it was Summer. Quinn will correct me if it was Jewel, I’m sure. It definitely wasn’t Sean.
Anyway, she got pulled out of the queue, I got pushed to the side because I had tickets for Sean/Summer and Sean/Jewel and they hadn’t decided to do with the group shots yet. Eventually they split us and I think I went through Sean/Jewel first, though I can’t be sure. I do remember, though, sticking my tongue out at Quinn, who was still in her queue at this point. Hee! I got practically straight through the next queue, too, and since I’d seen Dru in whichever queue it was she was in (Sean, I think), we told Quinn we’d meet her outside when she got all of her singles done. Which took FOR-FREAKING-EVER. Anyway. Dru had been up and got her Nathan ticket, and I noticed that she was number two hundred and seventy something, and I know they only sell 300 per session, so she waited for Quinn while I ran upstairs and snagged myself a Nathan/Christina ticket. I knew Quinn wanted a single with Nathan but I didn’t have enough money to get her a ticket, and I knew there was a chance tomorrow if they sold out.
Which, of course, by the time Quinn was finished getting her shots done, they had. Since they were on 292 when I got there, I wasn’t surprised. Though it wasn’t a completely wasted journey back up to photo ticket sales, since Dru bought a Neil ticket, and I chatted to Kirsty and Kev. So then we went downstairs to get our 10x8s … and I discovered they’d sold out of some of the ones I wanted. Which wasn’t really an issue since they had similar shots or other ones I liked of everyone, but it meant making more choices, damnit! I eventually walked out of there after having spent £120 (though £20 of it was everysingleway’s, but it still felt like an awful lot!), and Quinn and Dru had gone off to the cash machine. I bought my badger tickets while I was still in there - made the painful decision not to get Jewel to sign Wonderfalls this time - and met them out at the cash point. While we were there, they called some more numbers for something else … all numbers for the group photo, I think. Which neither Quinn nor Dru were getting, so I said I’d meet them back in the room, and went to get that done.
It meant I was in the room when the cast were getting ready and arranging themselves for the shoot. To start with they were all just milling around, and then Dave told them to get themselves ready for the picture. So Nathan RAN across the room and lay out full length on the chairs in the front row, heh. He did a "face on chin" pose like Jewel's in those pretty shots where she's lying on...something. Dave started snapping pictures of that, and then Morena sat on his head! :D
It felt even more school photo-y than usual because there was something weird about the chairs…they seemed to LEAN strangely backwards so I couldn’t decide how to sit. Never mind, it came out okay! I was very pleased to see Nathan and Sean standing together, which made up for them not doing a shoot together … a LITTLE bit. But I am very jealous, though, that some people earlier in the line than me got some fantastic pictures with Nathan draping his arms over Jonathan and Sean (Hilary, I’m looking at you!) and they look like they’ve had a severe falling out in mine, lmfao.
What did amuse me, though, was when Scorch went in to get her picture taken, she went in at the back instead of on the seat, and Jewel moved up into the spare seat, and Dave asked Sean to come round and sit next to Jewel. And he pulled SUCH a cute ‘don’t wanna!’ face and whined “next to Jewel? Aaw…” Heh. Was great!
I’m a little hazy on the order of what came next, but I think I went back up to the room to find Quinn and Dru still there, having decided to miss Neil’s talk (which, with Dru’s Neil obsession, surprised me somewhat!), and while they sat around I got all my autography stuff out and arranged it into piles of what was for who, since there was so much of it and I didn’t know how they were splitting the sessions. I think then I convinced Quinn it was time to sample a guest talk - Jonathan’s - and we headed up to the main hall. I think Dru came too, because I have a vague recollection of sitting next to her discussing how it was weird that they hadn’t called any more Nathan/Morena shoot numbers for AGES. She was very glad she did. We were both crying with laughter by the end, the man’s a nutcase! Still!
He’d just started telling a story, or a joke, or something of the sort, when he spotted a note on the floor. “No Jonathan beyond this point.” He was completely offended by this, and started to wander on, over, behind, past, anything he could think of, the sign. He started to tell jokes - he loves his Bob ‘n’ Rob jokes, and one of them had absolutely no punch line, which WAS the punch line, and it was so ridiculous that it became hilarious! Someone cleverly asked him what happened to Tracey’s real guts in The Message, and Jonathan was like, “you know what? Yeah! What did happen to them! Because they said they could only be transported in a person … so where’s the guy with my guts, huh?” This also became a theme for his talk.
Someone brought up his relationship with Nathan (as he’d mentioned at the opening ceremony) and he said we’d just have to ask Nathan why they broke up. And to mention the Romanian Midget. LMFAO. Also, he was wearing the kilt he wore at Prime. People asked him if he was being a true Scotsman, of course, and he was like “Uh, of COURSE I’m wearing underwear, it’s freaking freezing!” Heh. Which is better than at Prime, when he was reminded of the custom during the autograph session and he was so wasted he took them off and put them on the chair behind him.
He also talked about the con in Belfast the previous weekend, thanked Dennis (organiser of the Belfast con) for taking him to a distillery on Sunday and apologised to Dennis for being such a horrible travelling companion in the car on the way there, because he was so hungover, hee. He did, however, still manage to sample seven different types of whiskey, apparently! Knowing Jonathan, this does NOT surprise me.
He also went off stage when his talk was over, and then immediately ran back on again when everyone had started to leave because he’d forgotten to thank Thomas, the *other* organiser of the Belfast con. Heh.
Then Dru and I went for our Christina/Morena and Nathan/Christina pictures (our numbers were so high we managed to catch all of Jonathan’s talk before they called ‘all numbers‘) respectively, having dumped our bags on Quinn outside the door. Heh. She was a handy bag lady. I got mine done fairly quickly again, then went out to wait with Quinn for Dru. I noticed her getting a film change on both girls, which was nice for her! (Though it turned out to be camera problems rather than film change, but that’s really too much detail, isn’t it? I’ll stop.)
EVENTUALLY she came out, though I knew we hadn’t been missing anything talk-wise because Christina was still in there, and it was supposed to be her talk. And I think then Dru went back to her room, while Quinn and I went back up to the main hall. We stood at the back because by the time we got there, Christina had gone on stage and we didn’t want to fumble around in the dark looking for seats!
She was cute. A little nervous at first, but I remember people asking her about the auditioning process, what shows she likes at the moment - she said she loves comedy and I was standing at the back going “say Scrubs! Say Scrubs!” to Quinn but she didn’t mention my beloved show. She did, however, say Arrested Development, to which someone nearish the back yelled “STEVE HOLT!” and I wet myself laughing, but he was so far towards the back that she didn’t really hear what he said and just got a bit confused. Hee! Someone also told her that it had been cancelled, and she was like “What? No! It’s still in the middle of a season in the US!” “Yeah, but they’re not making any more, and they had the episode order cut down.” She looked (okay, sounded, we were too far back to see her face…damn long narrow room!) gutted!
She also talked about Kevin Hill, and how it was a weird experience because different writers were writing the episodes and they all had different ideas on what “quirky” meant, which is what her character was supposed to be. She said it didn’t really follow from one episode to the next, and she was constantly calling the writers up and saying “I’ll DO this, but only if you explain to me WHY.” She said it was a weird working environment, too, because they were shooting … somewhere. Canada, possibly, I don’t remember, but I do remember that the writers were in LA.
She got quite a few questions about what she would like to see next for Saffron, what she would like to see her do if there was another movie, if she’d be interested, that kind of thing. She said she would be interested, but she thinks that Saffron is more the kind of character you’d only understand if you’d seen the show and wasn’t sure how it would work in a movie.
Someone asked her what the cast were like as far as accommodating new people, and she laughed and said they were great. She told us that her first day on set, Nathan came up to her and said "Are you okay? Can I get you anything? A sandwich?" and she looked at him like "Uh, aren't you the STAR?" and he was like "Yeah, but I can make you a sandwich if you want a sandwich. Do you want a sandwich?"
She also talked about going to the LA premiere of the movie and seeing Mark Sheppard (Badger), who came up to her and said “So you’re going to London then.” “Yeah.” “I can’t go because you’re going!!” Heh. She said she was all “Oh! I won’t go then! You go!”
After Christina left the stage, I wasn’t sure what was going on because as usual, the schedule was all to pot. I thought there was supposed to be a break, but wasn’t positive, so Quinn and I headed up to the front while the lights were on to sit in the stewards seats. We ended up in the second row, with excellent seats, I was pretty damn pleased with that! There were far more stewards seats spare than I expected, to be honest!
So the next talk, which actually started pretty much right away without the gap I’d predicted, was Jewel, Morena and Sean. Now, I already *knew* how much fun Jewel and Morena would be together from the last con, and having Sean there was great. He was really sarcastic a lot of the time - I wasn’t sure if he’d be a bit shy and stuff, but he really threw himself into it! When Sean Harry introduced them all, they came out and Morena was glaring at Sean H, who said “WHAT?! I said it right this time! Baccarin!” and she was like “Yeah, but you said Morenna!” Heh. Sean always gets her name so wrong. By the closing ceremony (of her THIRD con with him, lmfao) he got it right.
I remember them talking about making fun of someone for something, and then Jewel said something about the “sleep easy” story - which was apparently something to do with making fun of Sean, looked at the audience like we should know what that was and said “You guys know that story?” to which we all said no (though I vaguely remembered hearing it, and just couldn’t remember the specifics til she started to talk) and she looked at Sean really apologetically (in a teasing way) for letting it out, hee! He said “You guys can do it, I can’t do it with my mouth!” which made me laugh. Basically, it’s the scene where Simon punches Mal, and he said “Well we’re off your boat” - it used to be longer and was “Well sleep easy, ‘cause we’re off your boat.” But the first time he said it, he made a clicking noise when he said sleep, and then Nathan looked at him and said “Did you just say SCHLEEP easy?!” and then it was a theme, and it escalated, and, yeah. You probably had to be there, but it was hilarious nonetheless!
I remember Yara coming up and asking if they had any favourite scenes that were cut out, and Morena was like “Yeah, ALL of my scenes!” Though Yara was talking about the cut she saw in Feb, and they all got a bit confused and thought that she meant we had a different version here, which would have been nice, but no. And Jewel was laughing and saying that when Nathan was over for the premiere, called and left her a message saying “Oh, they have a different version here! In this one, you die!” To which Jewel was like “….that was … nice.!” and Morena left a pause and then said “He left me that exact same message!”
Jewel talked about how everyone always thinks Summer’s the youngest, when really she is, and, uh … yeah. I’m sure I’ll remember a lot of stories from this talk later! One thing I DO remember, though, is Jewel talking about her experience on Stargate Atlantis with all the prosthetics she had to have to be a wraith. She said when she got the part, the thing said “some” prosthetics. Then she told us about how the day before she was supposed to fly out here for the con in April, she’d gotten a call asking for her to come in and get a full head cast, which she thought was weird.
The funniest part was when she was talking about how she had to breath through a straw while they were doing it, and Morena thought that mental image was hilarious, and Sean started to pretend like all Jewel does is complain, and was going “Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch…” (which is an in-joke that Nathan explained more on Sunday, but it was funny as just a Sean thing at the time, hee!) and then someone - I think Morena - said something about how it would be funny if someone just blew smoke up the straw … it went on and on until they were all crying with laughter, which amused me more than anything - then Sean said “Where were we? Oh yeah - bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch…” Heh.
Next came Nathan and Summer’s talk, and once again I was much pleased that we had our lovely stewards seats, as I got some great photos again. As usual, there was much teasing of Summer, and much of Nathan just being … stupid. The one question I remember very, very clearly was the person who asked Summer what role she’d gone for in The 4400 season one, and if she’d watched since to see how the person who ended up with the part had played it. Summer said that she’d fought so hard for the role, because the producers thought she was too young, but Summer really wanted to prove to them that she could do it. And in the end, she got the role, and had to turn it down because it overlapped with her training/shooting for the movie by two weeks, and nothing comes before Firefly/Serenity to her. Which I thought was adorable.
She revealed that the part she was supposed to play originally was Lily, which drew quite a few gasps and aaaws from the audience, including myself, because Lily is one of the characters that I just never quite *warmed* to, even though she had so much potential, and if Summer had been playing the part, it would have been perfect. She’d have made an AWESOME Lily. So she said that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to watch it, because she’d wanted the part so badly, but when she got the role in the season two premiere they producers sent her the DVD set and she watched it right through. And she gave Laura Allen her seal of approval - though I really doubt she’d have said otherwise even if she thought it, she’s so sweet!
The other thing I remember is Nathan talking about when they went to Amsterdam … I think actually it wasn’t when he was there for the premiere, I think that he was just *there* for some reason, I’m a little fuzzy on the aspects… but anyway. He said when you’re in Amsterdam, it’s rude not to join in (what the joining in was WITH was not discussed but very clearly implied, hee!) so her partook, which left him in a weird state, and he was sitting in the back of a café in Amsterdam reading the end of Order of the Phoenix crying his eyes out. He was about to say exactly which part made him cry when Summer shushed him and Nathan was all “you haven’t read it yet?! But I thought … okay.” and said no more. Heh.
Oh! Also, I vividly remember someone asking Summer and Nathan if they remember going on the “British Institution” that is GM:TV, and if they thought Fiona Phillips was as rude as we all did. It took quite a lot of prompting before they even remembered, so clearly she didn’t make much of an impression! Then finally Nathan was like “Oh! The woman who was anti sci-fi before we came out and she thought we mightn’t actually come out and I called her on it when we were on screen, heh.” Yeah, I got the impression they didn’t think much of Fiona either. Good thing, too, she was horrible to them. Called him Nathan Fullion the first time she mentioned that they’d be coming up!
Someone brought up Jonathan’s Romanian midget story - they asked what happened between them and Nathan said that it didn’t work out, then when the midget was mentioned Nathan looked highly baffled but still managed to make a joke of it, saying “that’s WHY it didn’t work out.”
Someone asked if he plays Halo 2 Online, and he said yeah, and when she asked for his name he said he didn’t want to give it out (OBVIOUSLY!!) and said it’s how he relaxes with his friends, some of whom he doesn’t see very often. He said they’ll all be hanging out together, and someone will say “Wanna play Halo?” and they’ll say “Okay!” and everyone will go home. LMFAO. He’s SO one of us.
Apparently I remember more of this talk than I thought I did. Maddy went up to ask … something (yeah, way to demonstrate my excellent memory!) and as she was walking away, Nathan actually managed to see PAST the ridiculously bright lights to who she was, and said “Wait, you’re the fella…come up here.” And as she came up, I turned to Quinn and said “that’s a girl … maybe fella is some Edmontonian slang for ‘person’ in the same way that ‘dude’ can be…” and Maddy got to sit in Nathan’s chair and tell everyone what happened to her ear and arm (for anyone who doesn’t know - and I’m sure she won’t hurt me for sharing, hee!) she was doing a stunt in a film, a-la War Stories, except they accidentally used a real knife instead of the prop one and cut off half her ear. And since she was bound and gagged, nobody knew that she was yelling (something along the lines of) IT’S A FUCKING REAL KNIFE STOP CUTTING MY EAR OFF! …or at least, that’s what I’D have been yelling. And she broke her arm wrenching out of the binds. Eep! Summer looked absolutely mortified at the idea of it!
After all this excitement was over, we went back to the room and got depressed as Sunderland let more and more goals in, lmfao. We were watching Final Score and also Dad was texting me, so it was double the agony. After that was over, we gathered up our things for the autograph session (we were numbers 185 and 186, and they’d been up to 150 on Nathan, Summer, Neil and Jonathan when we walked past on the way back to the room) and headed up to photo distribution for the start of our duty, which wasn’t for half an hour. They didn’t really have any photos back to GIVE to people at this point, so we took the chance to ask if we could have a stewardy pass thingy to get our autographs done before we were due to start, and were duly given them and toddled off to the room. After getting our post-it notes (and I needed about three million, lmao, so I ended up writing them all myself for speed) we were ushered up to the door of the room. Neither of us was getting Neil’s autograph - much as I love the man, he was a bonus guest, which meant you *had* to buy a 10x8 to get his autograph on anything, even the con book, and I just couldn’t quite stretch to that. So we got into the queue for Nathan, which wasn’t huge, just a manageable size, and got out everything I wanted him to sign, plus the brick certificate.
As I handed over my action figure, his liaison woman asked if I wanted it signing on the front or the back, I said front, she said whereabouts, and she was eyeing up the cardboard at the top. Now I don’t know how many of you HAVE the action figures, but there isn’t a whole LOT of cardboard at the top. So I suggested the plastic, and she said she just wasn’t sure if it would stick … so I said “Well I’ve got a Cordelia figure signed by Charisma Carpenter, so ….” which, looking back, was a stupid thing to say. I should have just said “Nah, it’ll be fine,” but never mind. As Nathan took the figure from her, he looked up to ask me if I wanted him to sign in silver or black (silver, please!) and I gave him the certificate. He remembered, thankfully, and said “Oh! Thank you!” and put it on the floor with the various other things people had given him. And he wrote “Rachael - for the brick, thanks!” on it. I love him. He has lovely neat writing, too, and he’s - usually - so careful to spell names right.
After I’d got my gazillion things signed, Quinn stepped up for hers, and I waited for her. She briefly chatted to him when he asked if she was enjoying herself, etc, and she asked if he was, and he asked if she was at the talks and said that they’re his favourite part, getting to really talk to us all.
Next was Summer, and Quinn was kind enough to help me rearrange myself in the queue and find the various things I had for Summer to sign. She was lovely, as always - Quinn went first this time so that I could dump all of my Summer stuff on her before I went to Jonathan, since she wasn’t getting his autograph. He was a bonus guest like Neil, but I’d got a 10x8 for him to sign since I didn’t like the one I ended up with at Prime. It was a weirdly aspect ratio-ed cap of him and Jewel from The Message.
I gave Summer the card I’d brought for her and she got this wide-eyed “Wow, so cool! Thank you!” look on her face, although I’m sure she’d already received loads of similar things, which I really appreciated. She grinned and moved off her chair a little so that she could sit on it and not lose it, which was so sweet! I love her.
Then we moved onto Jonathan, who made me laugh so much when he signed my con book. He wrote “To Rachael, love, Jonathan Woodward,” caught sight of the post it with my name on, went “Oh! A-E-L!!” glanced back at what he’d written and pulled a face. “Oh, I wrote that. *pause* How completely unexpected!” Okay so maybe you had to be there because it was totally the TONE that he said it in that made it so funny. Quinn will back me up. Right Quinn? Quinn? Quinn? Oh. Anyway, after that, we RAN back to photo dis and started our duty. I got the funnest job ever, I was the runner, and I got to go around all the signs and write the numbers of what rolls were back on them. Which is great. And didn’t at all involve me using a tannoy like I had to when I was the runner at the White Room, which is a big bonus.
Spent a couple of hours giving back people’s photos at a surprisingly slow photo dis session, then we eventually relieved of our duties even though one of the replacements hadn’t shown up. Other highlights of that stewarding session included running away to find Ian an ashtray, running downstairs to ask reception to put the lights back on, sitting on the floor behind a desk and hearing “Who’s the runner?” and yelling “ME!” from the floor where nobody could see me. That really only amused me because it amused Quinn, to be fair. Also we’d become infamous, because I heard Ian say to Davey, “something something isn’t that one of the Rach(a)els” (though I doubt he spoke in brackets and Davey replied “No, those are the Rach(a)els”. Hee!
Bla, bla, went back to room, got ready for fancy dress, finally got there, nowhere to sit, tried to sit with Gail and Dru, were told to move because the space at the front was full up, and found a spot in the middle - and not long after that, emony, niannah and odycee stepped over us, realised we were there, and sat down with us. Though Anna and Cee did have to go on an expedition to find Anna’s sister first. They were showing Sean’s episode of the Ghost Whisperer, which I have had the misfortune to have sat through before, so I explained the plot - er, and the ending, OOPS! - to Quinn and Emony and Cee and basically everyone within a two mile radius. Sean Harry came out and said Summer wouldn’t be joining us for the fancy dress because she was exhausted from all the chatting and signing and stuff, so she’d gone to sleep. Bless her. He also told us Nathan had brought the Serenity gag reel (to which Quinn said she hoped it’d be the extended one that’s online and we all said “Nooo, he said Serenity, not Firefly!”) to show while the contest was being judged, and everyone got excited.
Eventually the contest started, the costumes were good, as always, though they should co-ordinate it so that whatever little Liz comes as, if there’s another version of it, she should come out last. Because she came out as River and everyone LOVES Liz so there was no way the other Rivers that came after would win anything! Plus she did the pose from the international poster. Seriously, the Starfury fancy dress contests have turned more and more into acting competitions in recent times!
While the guests were out judging the competition we got the Serenity gag reel. And OMG, so funny. But I’ll put that in a separate post because I know some people don’t want gag reel spoilers, which is fair enough, I don’t think that I would! So then the guests came out, the winners were announced (it was won by Clare ‘Washasaurus’ Ramsey, with a fantastic Recycling Mrs Reynolds costume) and Nathan told us he was going to show us something special, something never before seen … yup, the gag reel. They showed it again and nobody had the heart to mention that we’d already seen it, and besides, nobody CARED! We all laughed just as hard second time over! *sigh* It was just awesome.
Jonathan was also presented with his birthday card which the majority of us had signed, and also with cake. Which obviously he loved. Sean H announced that there was going to be a dance-off at midnight, and, uh … yeah. The party’s a big blur. I drank quite a lot of vodka plus a lot of vodka based bottled drinks from Trudi’s room. Went back and forth to Trudi and Clair’s room quite a few times, watched Quinn and Dru almost winning the dance-off because Neil was going to fix it for them - and Dru got a hug from Sean Harry, which creeped me out a LOT. I don’t like him.
I left them inside and went out to talk to Wendy. For HOURS. About my dissertation and a variety of other things. Really. We just talked and talked and she was at least three times more helpful about my dissertation than my dissertation supervisor has been so far! I’ve made bunches of notes since I got back plus I have an email from her with a fic that she wrote about Mal’s past still to write…see? Browncoats are the FRIENDLIEST bunch of people!
So eventually the party started to empty, and Quinn and Dru came out to join us … and then we went to bed. Except the bed part may have happened, but the sleep part didn’t really. It was almost 4am before we realised what time it was, what was happening, and that we were supposed to be meeting Dru for breakfast again at 8. Heh. And there endeth Saturday.
Just over 5000 words. Wow. I predict Sunday will be shorter, to be fair. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
I remember waking up in time for breakfast, and Quinn and I getting out of bed at 7.56 despite having arranged to meet Dru downstairs for breakfast at 8. And we pretty much managed it, too. We were one, maybe two minutes late. Go us. So we toddled off to the special convention breakfast room (we were totally cheated out of the good food, the bastards!) and ate (bacon was good, sausages and beans were so-so, eggs were a bit watery, for those interested in that kind of thing. Like me.), then headed back to our room, where Quinn watched Spongebob and I went in the shower and listened to Spongebob.
First photoshoots were at 9 but our tickets weren’t particularly low, so we took a wander down around 9.15 and I think they were calling all 1-150, and we were just after that. So we waited, and then they called us, and we headed in. Sean, Summer and Jewel were looking, as always, delightful (and in Sean’s case, DAMN HOT). Quinn got pulled out of the queue since she was getting individual shots of all three and they were collecting people who wanted singles with Summer. I think it was Summer. Quinn will correct me if it was Jewel, I’m sure. It definitely wasn’t Sean.
Anyway, she got pulled out of the queue, I got pushed to the side because I had tickets for Sean/Summer and Sean/Jewel and they hadn’t decided to do with the group shots yet. Eventually they split us and I think I went through Sean/Jewel first, though I can’t be sure. I do remember, though, sticking my tongue out at Quinn, who was still in her queue at this point. Hee! I got practically straight through the next queue, too, and since I’d seen Dru in whichever queue it was she was in (Sean, I think), we told Quinn we’d meet her outside when she got all of her singles done. Which took FOR-FREAKING-EVER. Anyway. Dru had been up and got her Nathan ticket, and I noticed that she was number two hundred and seventy something, and I know they only sell 300 per session, so she waited for Quinn while I ran upstairs and snagged myself a Nathan/Christina ticket. I knew Quinn wanted a single with Nathan but I didn’t have enough money to get her a ticket, and I knew there was a chance tomorrow if they sold out.
Which, of course, by the time Quinn was finished getting her shots done, they had. Since they were on 292 when I got there, I wasn’t surprised. Though it wasn’t a completely wasted journey back up to photo ticket sales, since Dru bought a Neil ticket, and I chatted to Kirsty and Kev. So then we went downstairs to get our 10x8s … and I discovered they’d sold out of some of the ones I wanted. Which wasn’t really an issue since they had similar shots or other ones I liked of everyone, but it meant making more choices, damnit! I eventually walked out of there after having spent £120 (though £20 of it was everysingleway’s, but it still felt like an awful lot!), and Quinn and Dru had gone off to the cash machine. I bought my badger tickets while I was still in there - made the painful decision not to get Jewel to sign Wonderfalls this time - and met them out at the cash point. While we were there, they called some more numbers for something else … all numbers for the group photo, I think. Which neither Quinn nor Dru were getting, so I said I’d meet them back in the room, and went to get that done.
It meant I was in the room when the cast were getting ready and arranging themselves for the shoot. To start with they were all just milling around, and then Dave told them to get themselves ready for the picture. So Nathan RAN across the room and lay out full length on the chairs in the front row, heh. He did a "face on chin" pose like Jewel's in those pretty shots where she's lying on...something. Dave started snapping pictures of that, and then Morena sat on his head! :D
It felt even more school photo-y than usual because there was something weird about the chairs…they seemed to LEAN strangely backwards so I couldn’t decide how to sit. Never mind, it came out okay! I was very pleased to see Nathan and Sean standing together, which made up for them not doing a shoot together … a LITTLE bit. But I am very jealous, though, that some people earlier in the line than me got some fantastic pictures with Nathan draping his arms over Jonathan and Sean (Hilary, I’m looking at you!) and they look like they’ve had a severe falling out in mine, lmfao.
What did amuse me, though, was when Scorch went in to get her picture taken, she went in at the back instead of on the seat, and Jewel moved up into the spare seat, and Dave asked Sean to come round and sit next to Jewel. And he pulled SUCH a cute ‘don’t wanna!’ face and whined “next to Jewel? Aaw…” Heh. Was great!
I’m a little hazy on the order of what came next, but I think I went back up to the room to find Quinn and Dru still there, having decided to miss Neil’s talk (which, with Dru’s Neil obsession, surprised me somewhat!), and while they sat around I got all my autography stuff out and arranged it into piles of what was for who, since there was so much of it and I didn’t know how they were splitting the sessions. I think then I convinced Quinn it was time to sample a guest talk - Jonathan’s - and we headed up to the main hall. I think Dru came too, because I have a vague recollection of sitting next to her discussing how it was weird that they hadn’t called any more Nathan/Morena shoot numbers for AGES. She was very glad she did. We were both crying with laughter by the end, the man’s a nutcase! Still!
He’d just started telling a story, or a joke, or something of the sort, when he spotted a note on the floor. “No Jonathan beyond this point.” He was completely offended by this, and started to wander on, over, behind, past, anything he could think of, the sign. He started to tell jokes - he loves his Bob ‘n’ Rob jokes, and one of them had absolutely no punch line, which WAS the punch line, and it was so ridiculous that it became hilarious! Someone cleverly asked him what happened to Tracey’s real guts in The Message, and Jonathan was like, “you know what? Yeah! What did happen to them! Because they said they could only be transported in a person … so where’s the guy with my guts, huh?” This also became a theme for his talk.
Someone brought up his relationship with Nathan (as he’d mentioned at the opening ceremony) and he said we’d just have to ask Nathan why they broke up. And to mention the Romanian Midget. LMFAO. Also, he was wearing the kilt he wore at Prime. People asked him if he was being a true Scotsman, of course, and he was like “Uh, of COURSE I’m wearing underwear, it’s freaking freezing!” Heh. Which is better than at Prime, when he was reminded of the custom during the autograph session and he was so wasted he took them off and put them on the chair behind him.
He also talked about the con in Belfast the previous weekend, thanked Dennis (organiser of the Belfast con) for taking him to a distillery on Sunday and apologised to Dennis for being such a horrible travelling companion in the car on the way there, because he was so hungover, hee. He did, however, still manage to sample seven different types of whiskey, apparently! Knowing Jonathan, this does NOT surprise me.
He also went off stage when his talk was over, and then immediately ran back on again when everyone had started to leave because he’d forgotten to thank Thomas, the *other* organiser of the Belfast con. Heh.
Then Dru and I went for our Christina/Morena and Nathan/Christina pictures (our numbers were so high we managed to catch all of Jonathan’s talk before they called ‘all numbers‘) respectively, having dumped our bags on Quinn outside the door. Heh. She was a handy bag lady. I got mine done fairly quickly again, then went out to wait with Quinn for Dru. I noticed her getting a film change on both girls, which was nice for her! (Though it turned out to be camera problems rather than film change, but that’s really too much detail, isn’t it? I’ll stop.)
EVENTUALLY she came out, though I knew we hadn’t been missing anything talk-wise because Christina was still in there, and it was supposed to be her talk. And I think then Dru went back to her room, while Quinn and I went back up to the main hall. We stood at the back because by the time we got there, Christina had gone on stage and we didn’t want to fumble around in the dark looking for seats!
She was cute. A little nervous at first, but I remember people asking her about the auditioning process, what shows she likes at the moment - she said she loves comedy and I was standing at the back going “say Scrubs! Say Scrubs!” to Quinn but she didn’t mention my beloved show. She did, however, say Arrested Development, to which someone nearish the back yelled “STEVE HOLT!” and I wet myself laughing, but he was so far towards the back that she didn’t really hear what he said and just got a bit confused. Hee! Someone also told her that it had been cancelled, and she was like “What? No! It’s still in the middle of a season in the US!” “Yeah, but they’re not making any more, and they had the episode order cut down.” She looked (okay, sounded, we were too far back to see her face…damn long narrow room!) gutted!
She also talked about Kevin Hill, and how it was a weird experience because different writers were writing the episodes and they all had different ideas on what “quirky” meant, which is what her character was supposed to be. She said it didn’t really follow from one episode to the next, and she was constantly calling the writers up and saying “I’ll DO this, but only if you explain to me WHY.” She said it was a weird working environment, too, because they were shooting … somewhere. Canada, possibly, I don’t remember, but I do remember that the writers were in LA.
She got quite a few questions about what she would like to see next for Saffron, what she would like to see her do if there was another movie, if she’d be interested, that kind of thing. She said she would be interested, but she thinks that Saffron is more the kind of character you’d only understand if you’d seen the show and wasn’t sure how it would work in a movie.
Someone asked her what the cast were like as far as accommodating new people, and she laughed and said they were great. She told us that her first day on set, Nathan came up to her and said "Are you okay? Can I get you anything? A sandwich?" and she looked at him like "Uh, aren't you the STAR?" and he was like "Yeah, but I can make you a sandwich if you want a sandwich. Do you want a sandwich?"
She also talked about going to the LA premiere of the movie and seeing Mark Sheppard (Badger), who came up to her and said “So you’re going to London then.” “Yeah.” “I can’t go because you’re going!!” Heh. She said she was all “Oh! I won’t go then! You go!”
After Christina left the stage, I wasn’t sure what was going on because as usual, the schedule was all to pot. I thought there was supposed to be a break, but wasn’t positive, so Quinn and I headed up to the front while the lights were on to sit in the stewards seats. We ended up in the second row, with excellent seats, I was pretty damn pleased with that! There were far more stewards seats spare than I expected, to be honest!
So the next talk, which actually started pretty much right away without the gap I’d predicted, was Jewel, Morena and Sean. Now, I already *knew* how much fun Jewel and Morena would be together from the last con, and having Sean there was great. He was really sarcastic a lot of the time - I wasn’t sure if he’d be a bit shy and stuff, but he really threw himself into it! When Sean Harry introduced them all, they came out and Morena was glaring at Sean H, who said “WHAT?! I said it right this time! Baccarin!” and she was like “Yeah, but you said Morenna!” Heh. Sean always gets her name so wrong. By the closing ceremony (of her THIRD con with him, lmfao) he got it right.
I remember them talking about making fun of someone for something, and then Jewel said something about the “sleep easy” story - which was apparently something to do with making fun of Sean, looked at the audience like we should know what that was and said “You guys know that story?” to which we all said no (though I vaguely remembered hearing it, and just couldn’t remember the specifics til she started to talk) and she looked at Sean really apologetically (in a teasing way) for letting it out, hee! He said “You guys can do it, I can’t do it with my mouth!” which made me laugh. Basically, it’s the scene where Simon punches Mal, and he said “Well we’re off your boat” - it used to be longer and was “Well sleep easy, ‘cause we’re off your boat.” But the first time he said it, he made a clicking noise when he said sleep, and then Nathan looked at him and said “Did you just say SCHLEEP easy?!” and then it was a theme, and it escalated, and, yeah. You probably had to be there, but it was hilarious nonetheless!
I remember Yara coming up and asking if they had any favourite scenes that were cut out, and Morena was like “Yeah, ALL of my scenes!” Though Yara was talking about the cut she saw in Feb, and they all got a bit confused and thought that she meant we had a different version here, which would have been nice, but no. And Jewel was laughing and saying that when Nathan was over for the premiere, called and left her a message saying “Oh, they have a different version here! In this one, you die!” To which Jewel was like “….that was … nice.!” and Morena left a pause and then said “He left me that exact same message!”
Jewel talked about how everyone always thinks Summer’s the youngest, when really she is, and, uh … yeah. I’m sure I’ll remember a lot of stories from this talk later! One thing I DO remember, though, is Jewel talking about her experience on Stargate Atlantis with all the prosthetics she had to have to be a wraith. She said when she got the part, the thing said “some” prosthetics. Then she told us about how the day before she was supposed to fly out here for the con in April, she’d gotten a call asking for her to come in and get a full head cast, which she thought was weird.
The funniest part was when she was talking about how she had to breath through a straw while they were doing it, and Morena thought that mental image was hilarious, and Sean started to pretend like all Jewel does is complain, and was going “Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch…” (which is an in-joke that Nathan explained more on Sunday, but it was funny as just a Sean thing at the time, hee!) and then someone - I think Morena - said something about how it would be funny if someone just blew smoke up the straw … it went on and on until they were all crying with laughter, which amused me more than anything - then Sean said “Where were we? Oh yeah - bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch…” Heh.
Next came Nathan and Summer’s talk, and once again I was much pleased that we had our lovely stewards seats, as I got some great photos again. As usual, there was much teasing of Summer, and much of Nathan just being … stupid. The one question I remember very, very clearly was the person who asked Summer what role she’d gone for in The 4400 season one, and if she’d watched since to see how the person who ended up with the part had played it. Summer said that she’d fought so hard for the role, because the producers thought she was too young, but Summer really wanted to prove to them that she could do it. And in the end, she got the role, and had to turn it down because it overlapped with her training/shooting for the movie by two weeks, and nothing comes before Firefly/Serenity to her. Which I thought was adorable.
She revealed that the part she was supposed to play originally was Lily, which drew quite a few gasps and aaaws from the audience, including myself, because Lily is one of the characters that I just never quite *warmed* to, even though she had so much potential, and if Summer had been playing the part, it would have been perfect. She’d have made an AWESOME Lily. So she said that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to watch it, because she’d wanted the part so badly, but when she got the role in the season two premiere they producers sent her the DVD set and she watched it right through. And she gave Laura Allen her seal of approval - though I really doubt she’d have said otherwise even if she thought it, she’s so sweet!
The other thing I remember is Nathan talking about when they went to Amsterdam … I think actually it wasn’t when he was there for the premiere, I think that he was just *there* for some reason, I’m a little fuzzy on the aspects… but anyway. He said when you’re in Amsterdam, it’s rude not to join in (what the joining in was WITH was not discussed but very clearly implied, hee!) so her partook, which left him in a weird state, and he was sitting in the back of a café in Amsterdam reading the end of Order of the Phoenix crying his eyes out. He was about to say exactly which part made him cry when Summer shushed him and Nathan was all “you haven’t read it yet?! But I thought … okay.” and said no more. Heh.
Oh! Also, I vividly remember someone asking Summer and Nathan if they remember going on the “British Institution” that is GM:TV, and if they thought Fiona Phillips was as rude as we all did. It took quite a lot of prompting before they even remembered, so clearly she didn’t make much of an impression! Then finally Nathan was like “Oh! The woman who was anti sci-fi before we came out and she thought we mightn’t actually come out and I called her on it when we were on screen, heh.” Yeah, I got the impression they didn’t think much of Fiona either. Good thing, too, she was horrible to them. Called him Nathan Fullion the first time she mentioned that they’d be coming up!
Someone brought up Jonathan’s Romanian midget story - they asked what happened between them and Nathan said that it didn’t work out, then when the midget was mentioned Nathan looked highly baffled but still managed to make a joke of it, saying “that’s WHY it didn’t work out.”
Someone asked if he plays Halo 2 Online, and he said yeah, and when she asked for his name he said he didn’t want to give it out (OBVIOUSLY!!) and said it’s how he relaxes with his friends, some of whom he doesn’t see very often. He said they’ll all be hanging out together, and someone will say “Wanna play Halo?” and they’ll say “Okay!” and everyone will go home. LMFAO. He’s SO one of us.
Apparently I remember more of this talk than I thought I did. Maddy went up to ask … something (yeah, way to demonstrate my excellent memory!) and as she was walking away, Nathan actually managed to see PAST the ridiculously bright lights to who she was, and said “Wait, you’re the fella…come up here.” And as she came up, I turned to Quinn and said “that’s a girl … maybe fella is some Edmontonian slang for ‘person’ in the same way that ‘dude’ can be…” and Maddy got to sit in Nathan’s chair and tell everyone what happened to her ear and arm (for anyone who doesn’t know - and I’m sure she won’t hurt me for sharing, hee!) she was doing a stunt in a film, a-la War Stories, except they accidentally used a real knife instead of the prop one and cut off half her ear. And since she was bound and gagged, nobody knew that she was yelling (something along the lines of) IT’S A FUCKING REAL KNIFE STOP CUTTING MY EAR OFF! …or at least, that’s what I’D have been yelling. And she broke her arm wrenching out of the binds. Eep! Summer looked absolutely mortified at the idea of it!
After all this excitement was over, we went back to the room and got depressed as Sunderland let more and more goals in, lmfao. We were watching Final Score and also Dad was texting me, so it was double the agony. After that was over, we gathered up our things for the autograph session (we were numbers 185 and 186, and they’d been up to 150 on Nathan, Summer, Neil and Jonathan when we walked past on the way back to the room) and headed up to photo distribution for the start of our duty, which wasn’t for half an hour. They didn’t really have any photos back to GIVE to people at this point, so we took the chance to ask if we could have a stewardy pass thingy to get our autographs done before we were due to start, and were duly given them and toddled off to the room. After getting our post-it notes (and I needed about three million, lmao, so I ended up writing them all myself for speed) we were ushered up to the door of the room. Neither of us was getting Neil’s autograph - much as I love the man, he was a bonus guest, which meant you *had* to buy a 10x8 to get his autograph on anything, even the con book, and I just couldn’t quite stretch to that. So we got into the queue for Nathan, which wasn’t huge, just a manageable size, and got out everything I wanted him to sign, plus the brick certificate.
As I handed over my action figure, his liaison woman asked if I wanted it signing on the front or the back, I said front, she said whereabouts, and she was eyeing up the cardboard at the top. Now I don’t know how many of you HAVE the action figures, but there isn’t a whole LOT of cardboard at the top. So I suggested the plastic, and she said she just wasn’t sure if it would stick … so I said “Well I’ve got a Cordelia figure signed by Charisma Carpenter, so ….” which, looking back, was a stupid thing to say. I should have just said “Nah, it’ll be fine,” but never mind. As Nathan took the figure from her, he looked up to ask me if I wanted him to sign in silver or black (silver, please!) and I gave him the certificate. He remembered, thankfully, and said “Oh! Thank you!” and put it on the floor with the various other things people had given him. And he wrote “Rachael - for the brick, thanks!” on it. I love him. He has lovely neat writing, too, and he’s - usually - so careful to spell names right.
After I’d got my gazillion things signed, Quinn stepped up for hers, and I waited for her. She briefly chatted to him when he asked if she was enjoying herself, etc, and she asked if he was, and he asked if she was at the talks and said that they’re his favourite part, getting to really talk to us all.
Next was Summer, and Quinn was kind enough to help me rearrange myself in the queue and find the various things I had for Summer to sign. She was lovely, as always - Quinn went first this time so that I could dump all of my Summer stuff on her before I went to Jonathan, since she wasn’t getting his autograph. He was a bonus guest like Neil, but I’d got a 10x8 for him to sign since I didn’t like the one I ended up with at Prime. It was a weirdly aspect ratio-ed cap of him and Jewel from The Message.
I gave Summer the card I’d brought for her and she got this wide-eyed “Wow, so cool! Thank you!” look on her face, although I’m sure she’d already received loads of similar things, which I really appreciated. She grinned and moved off her chair a little so that she could sit on it and not lose it, which was so sweet! I love her.
Then we moved onto Jonathan, who made me laugh so much when he signed my con book. He wrote “To Rachael, love, Jonathan Woodward,” caught sight of the post it with my name on, went “Oh! A-E-L!!” glanced back at what he’d written and pulled a face. “Oh, I wrote that. *pause* How completely unexpected!” Okay so maybe you had to be there because it was totally the TONE that he said it in that made it so funny. Quinn will back me up. Right Quinn? Quinn? Quinn? Oh. Anyway, after that, we RAN back to photo dis and started our duty. I got the funnest job ever, I was the runner, and I got to go around all the signs and write the numbers of what rolls were back on them. Which is great. And didn’t at all involve me using a tannoy like I had to when I was the runner at the White Room, which is a big bonus.
Spent a couple of hours giving back people’s photos at a surprisingly slow photo dis session, then we eventually relieved of our duties even though one of the replacements hadn’t shown up. Other highlights of that stewarding session included running away to find Ian an ashtray, running downstairs to ask reception to put the lights back on, sitting on the floor behind a desk and hearing “Who’s the runner?” and yelling “ME!” from the floor where nobody could see me. That really only amused me because it amused Quinn, to be fair. Also we’d become infamous, because I heard Ian say to Davey, “something something isn’t that one of the Rach(a)els” (though I doubt he spoke in brackets and Davey replied “No, those are the Rach(a)els”. Hee!
Bla, bla, went back to room, got ready for fancy dress, finally got there, nowhere to sit, tried to sit with Gail and Dru, were told to move because the space at the front was full up, and found a spot in the middle - and not long after that, emony, niannah and odycee stepped over us, realised we were there, and sat down with us. Though Anna and Cee did have to go on an expedition to find Anna’s sister first. They were showing Sean’s episode of the Ghost Whisperer, which I have had the misfortune to have sat through before, so I explained the plot - er, and the ending, OOPS! - to Quinn and Emony and Cee and basically everyone within a two mile radius. Sean Harry came out and said Summer wouldn’t be joining us for the fancy dress because she was exhausted from all the chatting and signing and stuff, so she’d gone to sleep. Bless her. He also told us Nathan had brought the Serenity gag reel (to which Quinn said she hoped it’d be the extended one that’s online and we all said “Nooo, he said Serenity, not Firefly!”) to show while the contest was being judged, and everyone got excited.
Eventually the contest started, the costumes were good, as always, though they should co-ordinate it so that whatever little Liz comes as, if there’s another version of it, she should come out last. Because she came out as River and everyone LOVES Liz so there was no way the other Rivers that came after would win anything! Plus she did the pose from the international poster. Seriously, the Starfury fancy dress contests have turned more and more into acting competitions in recent times!
While the guests were out judging the competition we got the Serenity gag reel. And OMG, so funny. But I’ll put that in a separate post because I know some people don’t want gag reel spoilers, which is fair enough, I don’t think that I would! So then the guests came out, the winners were announced (it was won by Clare ‘Washasaurus’ Ramsey, with a fantastic Recycling Mrs Reynolds costume) and Nathan told us he was going to show us something special, something never before seen … yup, the gag reel. They showed it again and nobody had the heart to mention that we’d already seen it, and besides, nobody CARED! We all laughed just as hard second time over! *sigh* It was just awesome.
Jonathan was also presented with his birthday card which the majority of us had signed, and also with cake. Which obviously he loved. Sean H announced that there was going to be a dance-off at midnight, and, uh … yeah. The party’s a big blur. I drank quite a lot of vodka plus a lot of vodka based bottled drinks from Trudi’s room. Went back and forth to Trudi and Clair’s room quite a few times, watched Quinn and Dru almost winning the dance-off because Neil was going to fix it for them - and Dru got a hug from Sean Harry, which creeped me out a LOT. I don’t like him.
I left them inside and went out to talk to Wendy. For HOURS. About my dissertation and a variety of other things. Really. We just talked and talked and she was at least three times more helpful about my dissertation than my dissertation supervisor has been so far! I’ve made bunches of notes since I got back plus I have an email from her with a fic that she wrote about Mal’s past still to write…see? Browncoats are the FRIENDLIEST bunch of people!
So eventually the party started to empty, and Quinn and Dru came out to join us … and then we went to bed. Except the bed part may have happened, but the sleep part didn’t really. It was almost 4am before we realised what time it was, what was happening, and that we were supposed to be meeting Dru for breakfast again at 8. Heh. And there endeth Saturday.
Just over 5000 words. Wow. I predict Sunday will be shorter, to be fair. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.