FailCon 2014, Day 3 - Panels and Cosplay at C2E2, plus Drunk Cards Against Humanity
Previously on FailCon log - noelct, jasondemotte, phoenix_anew and jaklocke arrived in Chicago and I showed them around. Some more than others. The next day, we enjoyed C2E2, and went to the western suburbs to see tweelore and meet up with alliancesjr and skybreak_seeker to play some arcade games.
Day 2 at C2E2 - Panels, Cosplay and Loose Threads
For all the talk about how tired we were on Friday, we didn't sleep in too late. Most of us made it to the con by 11:00 - less than an hour later than a day before.
I say "most of us" because, this time, we didn't try to walk there together in one group. Angie was hanging out with Jak, Noel and JD were doing their own things. And so, I wandered around on my own. My priority was to catch a couple of things that, as it turned out, I missed the day before. Plus, I realized a day earlier that a three-day pass gave me one advantage - if I saw creators in the artists' alley whose works I liked, I could look through my collection and bring back a couple of comics for them to sign the next day.
The idea had some bugs - if I had to do it again, I would make a list while I'm at the artists' alley, so that I wouldn't forget anyone, and make sure I actually have all the comics I wanted to bring in my bag. But overall, it was a sound plan. I can now say that I got Dustin Ngyuen (best known for his work on Batman titles) to sign the first professional comic book story he ever did (a Jet and Backlash story in the Wildstorm Thunderbook anthology).
Naturally, there was also lots of cosplay
Donna Troy, Power Girl and Starfire - the "next generation" (circa 70s-80s) of the DC Comics universe. I admire the Starfire cosplayer (she's the one to right) for being willing to use all that body paint.
Booster Gold
I never played Halo, so I have no idea who those guys are
An interesting, armored take on the Batman costume from the Batman Beyond cartoon. I noticed the Joker cosplayer about to photo-bomb the shot, and I consider asking him to get out of the frame, but I decided it would be more fun to let him do his thing.
Iron Man
A Marine from Starcraft games. Whoever this guy is, he put a lot of work into this
Movie Loki and his ladies
Tusken Raider and a Tusken Raider baby
Daenerys Targaryen
This guy is cosplaying as Aiden Pearce, the protagonist of Watch Dogs - a video game set in Chicago that hasn't come out yet. It would be interesting to see how many Watch Dogs cosplayers there will be in the next C2E2
A Dalek, making its way through the Artists' Alley. And yes, he talked
This is less of a cosplay and more of a fashion statement - this woman is wearing a dress based on the armor worn by Shephard, the main protagonist of Mass Effect games.
The Dragon Age II group - Isabella, Alistair (from earlier) and Varric
This one confused me at first. Turned out that he was cosplaying as Harry Dresden (of the Dresden Files book series) - and sure enough, he had a staff, a pentacle, a blasting rod, Dresden's classic duster and Bob the Skull. But what about the crown?
"I'm a Burger King," he said (a joking reference to Harry Dresden's love for that chain that became a thing in the later books)
Kids cosplaying as characters from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Because, as I've said before, kid cosplayers are adorable.
Dream of the Endless - and not just any Dream of the Endless. No, this is Dream as he appeared in the first volume of Sandman, with the ruby and the helm
At 1:30 PM, I was supposed to meet up with Noel and JD to attend the Power Rangers Reunion panel. The panel featured Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy (who played Bulk and Skull in the original Mighty Morphing Power Rangers - and several seasons beyond) and Steve Cardenas (who played Rocky, the second Red Ranger). I mostly wanted to attend the panel because, from what I've seen on Youtube, any panel featuring Schrier and Narvy was bound to be pretty entertaining. Plus, there's the whole nostalgia factor, not going to lie.
Like I said, I was supposed to meet with Noel and JD before we went into the panel, but, as I've said earlier, the panels were in a completely different building this year, and by the time I found them, Noel and JD were already inside and trying to find them in a pretty large crowd was pointless.
The panel itself was pretty much as entertaining as I hoped. Noel would later comment that Cardenas was about as charismatic as he was on the show (which is to say, not really), but I don't know... I could see why he never really tried acting after Power Rangers, and Schrier and Narvy were naturals at playing the crowd while Cardenas was... not. But, at the same time, he was more likable than Michael Pere as Dante Montana.
I didn't get any pictures during the panel itself, but I managed to get a decent shot right after.
I saw Noel and JD as I was exiting and waved, but I was pretty sure they didn't see me. So I decided to take my time, walk back and catch up when we were somewhere less crowded.
A view from the panel floor
Noel and I did manage to catch up eventually. By that point, Angie and JD went back to the hotel. So did JD. I would text Angie later to see if she and Jak wanted to see any more of the city, but Angie thanked me for the offer and told me that they were pretty tired and that they'd rather hang out at the hotel.
Noel and I talked over our plans. I wanted to see the screening of RUR:Genesis - a movie based on the iconic play by Karel Čapek. Noel wanted to see a pilot for a cartoon based on Zenescope Entertainment's Grimm Fairy Tales comic book franchise. Not because he thought it would be good, but because anything based on the infamously "Adult" in the "Teenager Trying Way Too Hard" sense series could turn out to be amusing. It would be over by 6:30 PM. Since neither of us had anything to see at C2E2 afterwords, we'd head back to the hotel and we'd all go and get some dinner before Kevin, Adam and the others would come over.
Noel also suggested I stop by artist J.K. Woodward's table. I remembered him because he was friends with Queenanthai (as I recall, he did a sketch of her PRG character). But that was in 2011, and Woodward's career really took off since then.
I wound up going over there and introducing myself... and it turned out that, once we figured out which Noel I was talking about, there wasn't much more to say.
So... I continued wandering around and taking pictures of cosplayers.
Mystique
The Shadow (sans his trademark guns)
Nightcrawler (from X-Men)
Nico Minoru from Runaways, one of my favorite comics and a fairly rare cosplay subjects. This one... didn't go so well. I'm not entirely sure what I said or did wrong, but after I took the photo, i heard the cosplayer's boyfriend comforting her. "Yeah. Sometimes, people are going to do that."
This one caused a bit of controversy on Teh Twitters. Thing is, with cosplay, I feel that you are allowed a lot of leeway when it comes to depicting the character. If we took issue with everyone who cosplayed a character of different race, different gender or different body type, we wouldn't have that many cosplayers left. But cosplaying Tyrion from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones is trickier than most. Tyrion is a dwarf. Not in the mystical race sense the way Varric from Dragon Age II is, but as in an actual biological condition. It's an integral part of his character. The way he gets treated because of his height shaped his character a great deal. So if you are not a dwarf and you're coplaying as Tyrion, the height is going to draw attention.
Personally, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with a tall person playing Tyrion, because, well, leeway. Nor do do I think what this cosplayer did is necessarily bad. But I can see why Noel described it as an "interesting" choice and why CC took offense.
Speaking of Game of Thrones - Jaime, King Robert and Queen Cersei, as seen during the first season
I have cosplayed as Grifter from Wildstorm Productions' shared universe before. It's my go to cosplay/Halloween costume. I didn't go this time, because my mask was damaged and I didn't have time to sew a new one. So it was weird to see someone else dress up as Grifter this time.
Adventure Time is a kids show that takes place in a fun, candy-filled post-Apocalyptic Earth where the main antagonist was driven insane while trying to protect a demon vampire girl. I've only seen a few episodes, but I'm not surprised that the show became popular beyond its main demographic - and that we see plenty of Adventure Time cosplay.
(I should note that those three weren't originally a group - they just saw each other and decided they had to take a picture together)
The gothy high-school version Rogue from the X-Men: Evolution cartoon. The cosplayer was amazed that I was able to realize what she was cosplaying as - or that I would want to get a picture of her.
X-Men: Evolution was my favorite show in high school. Of course I was going to recognize Evo!Rogue. Besides, if that weren't for that show, I never would have met Randi.
There aren't a lot of cosplayers that could truly be considered professional in the sense that they earn money from their craft. Aside from Yaya Han (more on her in the next post), I'm not sure there really are any. But there are cosplayers who gain enough online fan following to be considered pretty prominent. And cosplayer and professional seamstress BelleChere is definitely one of them.
During the last C2E2, I tried to find her. I thought I did, but it was actually a whole other cosplayer entirely. They just wore the same costume and had similar body types. I didn't discover my mistake until the next day. So when I saw someone who really looked like BelleChere, I decided not to jump to conclusions, and asked her if I could take her picture just like I would any other cosplayer. And she was happy to oblige
And yes, it turned out to be really sure. She was even nice enough to link my picture on her Facebook and Tumblr and give me credit (unlike the people at Cos Culture, who forgot that second part and haven't responded to my tweets/e-mails yet)
BelleChere was hanging out with cosplayer John Detty, who was dressed up as Magneto. I only know his name because he was handing out business cards.
And here's Detty with BelleChere
I was going to visit the panel on geeks dealing with sexism in the comic book workplace, but I got distracted and I missed it. I was considering visiting the Lost Girl panel, but I got distracted and missed most of it, too. And then, there was Supernatural City panel, which was talking about using cities in urban fantasy - which sounds right up my alley. Too bad I didn't find out about it until the next day.
The lesson here, clearly, is to plan my panel visits better.
So I decided that there was no way I would miss the RUR: Genesis screening and made sure I was up on the panel floor half an hour ahead of time. Early enough to get some pics of more cosplayers.
Archer and Lana from, well, Archer.
Cersei and Joffrey from Game of Thrones.
"Everybody, say 'incest!'" a guy behind me shouted.
"Shh!" I told him. "Joffrey doesn't know that!"
So anyway, I got to screening and... I wasn't sure what to expect. But I didn't expect them to turn a politically and socially complex play into a, for the lack of a better word, babe-fest.
And that was just the teaser. They didn't actually screen the full movie. And based on what I saw, I'm not sure I would be interested in the full movie.
After the teaser, the producer did a Q&A. She talked about deep themes and compelling characterization and... yeah. I wasn't buying it. And after a while, I just got bored and decided to go and wait for Noel to get out.
Noel got out 15 minutes before his screening was supposed to end.
"This was the worst piece of shit I've ever seen," he declared.
Noel then went to great length explaining how awful the plot was, how badly animated it was and how even the people presenting it seemed to be ashamed of showing it. To the point where they almost sounded apologetic when they introduced the pilot and didn't mind people leaving before the Q&A portion.
Noel and I walked back to the hotel and chatted, and, honestly, Noel was a pretty interesting conversationalist. I mean it. His knowledge of American cinema and behind the scenes details far, far outstrip my own. It was interesting to find out so much I didn't know, so much history I didn't even realized existed.
Once we got back to the hotel, Noel, Jak, Angie, JD and I decided to get some lunch. Kevin, Adam and Tessa would be arriving in an hour, and I figured we'd have plenty of time.
Waiting for Burgers and Drunken Board Gaming
We decided to grab some food to go at Ricobene's, where we had dinner on Thursday. It was close to the hotel, and we figured we'd order food, grab it and get out.
It turned out to be a lot busier on Saturday then on Thursday. And while Angie, Jak and JD got their pizzas quickly, Noel and I didn't order pizzas, and we had to wait. And wait. And wait.
By the time we got our food, Kevin, Adam and Tessa were only a few minutes away.
Now, as I said in the previous entry, we were all going to meet up at the hotel to play some board games (courtesy of Angie and Jak). We invited Julie to join us, but she decided to see the C2E2 costume contest instead (and, by her account, it was pretty cool).
Now, Kevin and Adam I knew, mostly through Twitter. Tessa ( sonozakitwins ) was Kevin's roommate before he and Lore got married (from what I recall, they got to know each other through some online RPG and she moved from another state to be his roommate). I followed Tessa on Twitter around the same time I started following Kevin, Noel and Adam on Twitter. I even managed to meet her not once, not twice, but three times (mostly at Rowandoll's get-togethers. But, in all that time, I don't think we've ever exchanged more than a few pleasantries.
Funny how things pan out sometimes.
After some discussion, we decided to play Cards Against Humanity. For those who don't know, the idea is basically that one player pulls out a card with the sentence with a blank, and other players need to pull in the card with a word of phrase to fill in that blank. It doesn't have to make sense - the idea is to come up with something funny. Or gross. Or, ideally, something that manages to accomplish both.
As we started playing, everybody but Noel and I had drinks. So most of the people played Cards Against Humanity tipsy. But Angie quickly stole the show by getting very drunk. To the point where she started drunkenly flirting with tweelore on Twitter (Kevin and I quickly reassured her that it was normal. At least when you're a girl).
At one point, Angie said "I'm making an ass of myself," to which I can safely say - no, Angie, you weren't. You were among friends, and we weren't going to judge you. Though I did wonder what it would have been like to get Drunk Angie and Drunk Grace in the same room.
Anyway, I was writing about playing Cards Against Humanity. Getting drunk didn't affect anybody's playing that much. It just made the game louder and jokes funnier. And while I wasn't doing so well at first, I eventually figured out a winning strategy - playing completely against type. I got first place, with Tessa getting second and Adam getting third. (Technically, the game was supposed to be over after I got seven cards, but we decided to keep playing - which is how we wound up with two more places).
When we did decide to stop paying, it was still an hour before midnight, and we decided to play Clue. Now, I've never actually played Clue in my life (and, as it turned out, neither did anyone Noel). I tried to figure out the murder through sheer process of elimination, hoping that I would get there before everyone else... But I wasn't anywhere close. And, as Noel later said, drinking seems to have made Angie a deductive genius - she figured out that the murderer was... Noel. The only sober person other than me. Which was... oddly fitting.
At this point, it was almost midnight, and we decided to head our separate ways. But not before taking a group picture.
I posted it in the first FailCon log, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to repost it again. It's a nice picture.
(Left to right - alliancesjr, sonozakitwins, jasondemotte, jaklocke, phoenix_anew, noelct, skybreak_seeker)
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On the next and final entry - the last day at C2E2, Adam gets lost and some final thoughts.
Day 2 at C2E2 - Panels, Cosplay and Loose Threads
For all the talk about how tired we were on Friday, we didn't sleep in too late. Most of us made it to the con by 11:00 - less than an hour later than a day before.
I say "most of us" because, this time, we didn't try to walk there together in one group. Angie was hanging out with Jak, Noel and JD were doing their own things. And so, I wandered around on my own. My priority was to catch a couple of things that, as it turned out, I missed the day before. Plus, I realized a day earlier that a three-day pass gave me one advantage - if I saw creators in the artists' alley whose works I liked, I could look through my collection and bring back a couple of comics for them to sign the next day.
The idea had some bugs - if I had to do it again, I would make a list while I'm at the artists' alley, so that I wouldn't forget anyone, and make sure I actually have all the comics I wanted to bring in my bag. But overall, it was a sound plan. I can now say that I got Dustin Ngyuen (best known for his work on Batman titles) to sign the first professional comic book story he ever did (a Jet and Backlash story in the Wildstorm Thunderbook anthology).
Naturally, there was also lots of cosplay
Donna Troy, Power Girl and Starfire - the "next generation" (circa 70s-80s) of the DC Comics universe. I admire the Starfire cosplayer (she's the one to right) for being willing to use all that body paint.
Booster Gold
I never played Halo, so I have no idea who those guys are
An interesting, armored take on the Batman costume from the Batman Beyond cartoon. I noticed the Joker cosplayer about to photo-bomb the shot, and I consider asking him to get out of the frame, but I decided it would be more fun to let him do his thing.
Iron Man
A Marine from Starcraft games. Whoever this guy is, he put a lot of work into this
Movie Loki and his ladies
Tusken Raider and a Tusken Raider baby
Daenerys Targaryen
This guy is cosplaying as Aiden Pearce, the protagonist of Watch Dogs - a video game set in Chicago that hasn't come out yet. It would be interesting to see how many Watch Dogs cosplayers there will be in the next C2E2
A Dalek, making its way through the Artists' Alley. And yes, he talked
This is less of a cosplay and more of a fashion statement - this woman is wearing a dress based on the armor worn by Shephard, the main protagonist of Mass Effect games.
The Dragon Age II group - Isabella, Alistair (from earlier) and Varric
This one confused me at first. Turned out that he was cosplaying as Harry Dresden (of the Dresden Files book series) - and sure enough, he had a staff, a pentacle, a blasting rod, Dresden's classic duster and Bob the Skull. But what about the crown?
"I'm a Burger King," he said (a joking reference to Harry Dresden's love for that chain that became a thing in the later books)
Kids cosplaying as characters from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Because, as I've said before, kid cosplayers are adorable.
Dream of the Endless - and not just any Dream of the Endless. No, this is Dream as he appeared in the first volume of Sandman, with the ruby and the helm
At 1:30 PM, I was supposed to meet up with Noel and JD to attend the Power Rangers Reunion panel. The panel featured Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy (who played Bulk and Skull in the original Mighty Morphing Power Rangers - and several seasons beyond) and Steve Cardenas (who played Rocky, the second Red Ranger). I mostly wanted to attend the panel because, from what I've seen on Youtube, any panel featuring Schrier and Narvy was bound to be pretty entertaining. Plus, there's the whole nostalgia factor, not going to lie.
Like I said, I was supposed to meet with Noel and JD before we went into the panel, but, as I've said earlier, the panels were in a completely different building this year, and by the time I found them, Noel and JD were already inside and trying to find them in a pretty large crowd was pointless.
The panel itself was pretty much as entertaining as I hoped. Noel would later comment that Cardenas was about as charismatic as he was on the show (which is to say, not really), but I don't know... I could see why he never really tried acting after Power Rangers, and Schrier and Narvy were naturals at playing the crowd while Cardenas was... not. But, at the same time, he was more likable than Michael Pere as Dante Montana.
I didn't get any pictures during the panel itself, but I managed to get a decent shot right after.
I saw Noel and JD as I was exiting and waved, but I was pretty sure they didn't see me. So I decided to take my time, walk back and catch up when we were somewhere less crowded.
A view from the panel floor
Noel and I did manage to catch up eventually. By that point, Angie and JD went back to the hotel. So did JD. I would text Angie later to see if she and Jak wanted to see any more of the city, but Angie thanked me for the offer and told me that they were pretty tired and that they'd rather hang out at the hotel.
Noel and I talked over our plans. I wanted to see the screening of RUR:Genesis - a movie based on the iconic play by Karel Čapek. Noel wanted to see a pilot for a cartoon based on Zenescope Entertainment's Grimm Fairy Tales comic book franchise. Not because he thought it would be good, but because anything based on the infamously "Adult" in the "Teenager Trying Way Too Hard" sense series could turn out to be amusing. It would be over by 6:30 PM. Since neither of us had anything to see at C2E2 afterwords, we'd head back to the hotel and we'd all go and get some dinner before Kevin, Adam and the others would come over.
Noel also suggested I stop by artist J.K. Woodward's table. I remembered him because he was friends with Queenanthai (as I recall, he did a sketch of her PRG character). But that was in 2011, and Woodward's career really took off since then.
I wound up going over there and introducing myself... and it turned out that, once we figured out which Noel I was talking about, there wasn't much more to say.
So... I continued wandering around and taking pictures of cosplayers.
Mystique
The Shadow (sans his trademark guns)
Nightcrawler (from X-Men)
Nico Minoru from Runaways, one of my favorite comics and a fairly rare cosplay subjects. This one... didn't go so well. I'm not entirely sure what I said or did wrong, but after I took the photo, i heard the cosplayer's boyfriend comforting her. "Yeah. Sometimes, people are going to do that."
This one caused a bit of controversy on Teh Twitters. Thing is, with cosplay, I feel that you are allowed a lot of leeway when it comes to depicting the character. If we took issue with everyone who cosplayed a character of different race, different gender or different body type, we wouldn't have that many cosplayers left. But cosplaying Tyrion from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones is trickier than most. Tyrion is a dwarf. Not in the mystical race sense the way Varric from Dragon Age II is, but as in an actual biological condition. It's an integral part of his character. The way he gets treated because of his height shaped his character a great deal. So if you are not a dwarf and you're coplaying as Tyrion, the height is going to draw attention.
Personally, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with a tall person playing Tyrion, because, well, leeway. Nor do do I think what this cosplayer did is necessarily bad. But I can see why Noel described it as an "interesting" choice and why CC took offense.
Speaking of Game of Thrones - Jaime, King Robert and Queen Cersei, as seen during the first season
I have cosplayed as Grifter from Wildstorm Productions' shared universe before. It's my go to cosplay/Halloween costume. I didn't go this time, because my mask was damaged and I didn't have time to sew a new one. So it was weird to see someone else dress up as Grifter this time.
Adventure Time is a kids show that takes place in a fun, candy-filled post-Apocalyptic Earth where the main antagonist was driven insane while trying to protect a demon vampire girl. I've only seen a few episodes, but I'm not surprised that the show became popular beyond its main demographic - and that we see plenty of Adventure Time cosplay.
(I should note that those three weren't originally a group - they just saw each other and decided they had to take a picture together)
The gothy high-school version Rogue from the X-Men: Evolution cartoon. The cosplayer was amazed that I was able to realize what she was cosplaying as - or that I would want to get a picture of her.
X-Men: Evolution was my favorite show in high school. Of course I was going to recognize Evo!Rogue. Besides, if that weren't for that show, I never would have met Randi.
There aren't a lot of cosplayers that could truly be considered professional in the sense that they earn money from their craft. Aside from Yaya Han (more on her in the next post), I'm not sure there really are any. But there are cosplayers who gain enough online fan following to be considered pretty prominent. And cosplayer and professional seamstress BelleChere is definitely one of them.
During the last C2E2, I tried to find her. I thought I did, but it was actually a whole other cosplayer entirely. They just wore the same costume and had similar body types. I didn't discover my mistake until the next day. So when I saw someone who really looked like BelleChere, I decided not to jump to conclusions, and asked her if I could take her picture just like I would any other cosplayer. And she was happy to oblige
And yes, it turned out to be really sure. She was even nice enough to link my picture on her Facebook and Tumblr and give me credit (unlike the people at Cos Culture, who forgot that second part and haven't responded to my tweets/e-mails yet)
BelleChere was hanging out with cosplayer John Detty, who was dressed up as Magneto. I only know his name because he was handing out business cards.
And here's Detty with BelleChere
I was going to visit the panel on geeks dealing with sexism in the comic book workplace, but I got distracted and I missed it. I was considering visiting the Lost Girl panel, but I got distracted and missed most of it, too. And then, there was Supernatural City panel, which was talking about using cities in urban fantasy - which sounds right up my alley. Too bad I didn't find out about it until the next day.
The lesson here, clearly, is to plan my panel visits better.
So I decided that there was no way I would miss the RUR: Genesis screening and made sure I was up on the panel floor half an hour ahead of time. Early enough to get some pics of more cosplayers.
Archer and Lana from, well, Archer.
Cersei and Joffrey from Game of Thrones.
"Everybody, say 'incest!'" a guy behind me shouted.
"Shh!" I told him. "Joffrey doesn't know that!"
So anyway, I got to screening and... I wasn't sure what to expect. But I didn't expect them to turn a politically and socially complex play into a, for the lack of a better word, babe-fest.
Click to view
And that was just the teaser. They didn't actually screen the full movie. And based on what I saw, I'm not sure I would be interested in the full movie.
After the teaser, the producer did a Q&A. She talked about deep themes and compelling characterization and... yeah. I wasn't buying it. And after a while, I just got bored and decided to go and wait for Noel to get out.
Noel got out 15 minutes before his screening was supposed to end.
"This was the worst piece of shit I've ever seen," he declared.
Noel then went to great length explaining how awful the plot was, how badly animated it was and how even the people presenting it seemed to be ashamed of showing it. To the point where they almost sounded apologetic when they introduced the pilot and didn't mind people leaving before the Q&A portion.
Noel and I walked back to the hotel and chatted, and, honestly, Noel was a pretty interesting conversationalist. I mean it. His knowledge of American cinema and behind the scenes details far, far outstrip my own. It was interesting to find out so much I didn't know, so much history I didn't even realized existed.
Once we got back to the hotel, Noel, Jak, Angie, JD and I decided to get some lunch. Kevin, Adam and Tessa would be arriving in an hour, and I figured we'd have plenty of time.
Waiting for Burgers and Drunken Board Gaming
We decided to grab some food to go at Ricobene's, where we had dinner on Thursday. It was close to the hotel, and we figured we'd order food, grab it and get out.
It turned out to be a lot busier on Saturday then on Thursday. And while Angie, Jak and JD got their pizzas quickly, Noel and I didn't order pizzas, and we had to wait. And wait. And wait.
By the time we got our food, Kevin, Adam and Tessa were only a few minutes away.
Now, as I said in the previous entry, we were all going to meet up at the hotel to play some board games (courtesy of Angie and Jak). We invited Julie to join us, but she decided to see the C2E2 costume contest instead (and, by her account, it was pretty cool).
Now, Kevin and Adam I knew, mostly through Twitter. Tessa ( sonozakitwins ) was Kevin's roommate before he and Lore got married (from what I recall, they got to know each other through some online RPG and she moved from another state to be his roommate). I followed Tessa on Twitter around the same time I started following Kevin, Noel and Adam on Twitter. I even managed to meet her not once, not twice, but three times (mostly at Rowandoll's get-togethers. But, in all that time, I don't think we've ever exchanged more than a few pleasantries.
Funny how things pan out sometimes.
After some discussion, we decided to play Cards Against Humanity. For those who don't know, the idea is basically that one player pulls out a card with the sentence with a blank, and other players need to pull in the card with a word of phrase to fill in that blank. It doesn't have to make sense - the idea is to come up with something funny. Or gross. Or, ideally, something that manages to accomplish both.
As we started playing, everybody but Noel and I had drinks. So most of the people played Cards Against Humanity tipsy. But Angie quickly stole the show by getting very drunk. To the point where she started drunkenly flirting with tweelore on Twitter (Kevin and I quickly reassured her that it was normal. At least when you're a girl).
At one point, Angie said "I'm making an ass of myself," to which I can safely say - no, Angie, you weren't. You were among friends, and we weren't going to judge you. Though I did wonder what it would have been like to get Drunk Angie and Drunk Grace in the same room.
Anyway, I was writing about playing Cards Against Humanity. Getting drunk didn't affect anybody's playing that much. It just made the game louder and jokes funnier. And while I wasn't doing so well at first, I eventually figured out a winning strategy - playing completely against type. I got first place, with Tessa getting second and Adam getting third. (Technically, the game was supposed to be over after I got seven cards, but we decided to keep playing - which is how we wound up with two more places).
When we did decide to stop paying, it was still an hour before midnight, and we decided to play Clue. Now, I've never actually played Clue in my life (and, as it turned out, neither did anyone Noel). I tried to figure out the murder through sheer process of elimination, hoping that I would get there before everyone else... But I wasn't anywhere close. And, as Noel later said, drinking seems to have made Angie a deductive genius - she figured out that the murderer was... Noel. The only sober person other than me. Which was... oddly fitting.
At this point, it was almost midnight, and we decided to head our separate ways. But not before taking a group picture.
I posted it in the first FailCon log, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to repost it again. It's a nice picture.
(Left to right - alliancesjr, sonozakitwins, jasondemotte, jaklocke, phoenix_anew, noelct, skybreak_seeker)
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On the next and final entry - the last day at C2E2, Adam gets lost and some final thoughts.