The
wind-down period begins. Monday comes and you start to see suitcases
rolling through the hotels and the food court, lines forming at the
check-out desks. You begin
to feel deflated despite your continued Con-enjoyment. You are still attending
panels, but as you see suitcases sitting at the feet of others in the
panel with you, your heart aches. You’re soon to join them.
DragonCon is coming to a close in a few short hours.
As
I type this I am at my first official day back at work and back to
reality. The good thing is that it takes at least a week before I ever
accept this mentally, as
I stay in the realm of memories and grins, burps that still taste of
food court goodies no matter how many times I brush my teeth, and
swag that litters the house for days until one figures out how to
organize all that crap. While I’m back to the grind,
I’m not terribly bummed about it yet; I’m still on my “Con-High.” With
that in mind, I am rewinding the wind-down to take you on a journey
through my Con experience for 2015.
I
arrived on Wednesday as my Husband and I are volunteers for the
DragonCon Store. We were part of the set-up team goes to the Marriott,
Sheraton, and America’s Mart, and
makes sure all those pretty DC shirts, backpacks, and lanyards are all
laid out nice and pretty on the shelves and in the display cases, with
LOADS of stock organized in the back in just the right place so you
aren’t waiting for hours for us to rummage through
boxes to find what you want. You’re welcome, by the way. We plowed
through a ten hour day and an eleven-plus hour day on Thursday setting
up shop in all the stores, crashing at the hotel afterwards. We missed
any Thursday fun because like most of the other
staffers, we were wiped after all that work. We played Magic in the
room and chatted with other Store staffers on Facebook or text about how
sore we were gonna be.
Next day, the fun came.
The
next morning it was officially “Con or Bust.” While my Hubby went to
get the life sucked out of him (I could have put that more heroically on
his part. He went
to donate blood,) I went to the Threats of the Streets panel for the
Armory Track. I have missed Armory panels more times than I wanted in previous years and
this is one of my favorite tracks that I refused to miss this time. This
panel was well worth the wait. A discussion of
what Law Enforcement of any level can and cannot do in terms of
arresting, attacking, home invasion and breaching…and I was a
note-taking fiend. I followed it up with my Husband and I going to
another Armory panel on Ammunition and Explosives, which was just
as good as the last and just as full of note-taking from me. Have you
begun to realize I am far from a normal, feminine person? The more I
write about the Armory track the more I realize my two favorite lines
from Fiona in Burn Notice remind me of myself:
“The balcony’s big enough to lay prone with a sniper rifle…but there’s not enough space for my snow globes.”
Michael: Fi, if someone wanted to buy a modified Sega 12-K, where would they go?
Fiona: Oh, Michael! That’s so sweet! But…it’s not my birthday for months!
Michael: Fi, if someone wanted to buy a modified Sega 12-K, where would they go?
Fiona: Oh, Michael! That’s so sweet! But…it’s not my birthday for months!
I’m SO un-feminine…
I
wish I could say we fit in a few more panels afterwards, but we decided
this year to do something we don’t usually do. Go to a lot of actor’s
panels. Anyone that
has done this before knows this requires hours out of your time for
lining up early. With that in mind we sat our butts in line for Stephen
Amell’s panel. The long wait was worth it as we were 6th
row aisle seat. What a view
and what a panel. We got the official preview of the Season Four Arrow
trailer before anyone else in the world. You can’t beat awesome like
that. Friday was capped by a two hour game of Are You a Death Eater…in
which I sold out my own Husband. Before you
judge me, it was good thing I did. I was a Student and it turned out
that he was a Death Eater and had helped in getting rid of two other students
already! I helped people, alright?! Don’t judge me!
From Saturday morning until lunch time we were shopping in the America's Mart, then straight on to a Magic: The Gathering Booster Draft. My deck turned out alright…I
fashioned a pretty good Boros Renowned with a splash of Black. Not
shabby. But mana flooding in the first round killed me and I was
eliminated early. Sucked badly. Husband was annihilated shortly after
so we just play-tested our makeshift decks for fun
until the next panel we wanted to hit, which was the Cruxshadows’
reading of their screenplay “After All.” When I attended last year, it
was a theatre play and read much differently. I loved both variations
and am unsure which I gravitated towards more, but
I was thrilled to hear the differences. I can’t wait to see this on the
big screen.
After
this it was time to grab some Subway and crash outside of the panel
room for the Adult Themes In Genre TV Shows, on which I was panelist.
The discussion ranged
from the over-sexism in Game Of Thrones and its overuse of rape, to
violence and emotional/mental issues, to espionage and cop shows, and
whether or not any of the above listed issues have a benefit onscreen or
are only hindrances and de-sensitizations in society.
It was definitely an hour I enjoyed being a part of. If you couldn’t
get to it and wanted to, the panel is on the Highlights video I’ve
attached to this article.
Sunday
morning proved to start off right, and with one of the best panels I
have ever attended in my eleven years of DragonCon. We got in line
early with Red Bull in
hand from our long night of card playing and lack of sleep to see John
Barrowman. I already knew he was outlandish and fun, in touch with his
fans and a sweetheart, plus outrageous and hyper. But when he stepped
out on stage wearing a TARDIS dress and red
pumps to match, I knew it could only go downhill from there. I was
wrong however, as it instead just climbed higher and higher to insane
hilarity and touching sweetness throughout the hour. He talked of his
upcoming Represent campaign to raise money for foster
homes for LGBT youth. Many get displaced due to foster parents who
choose not to deal with them or try to “change” them, and as a result
their self-esteem can plummet, many leaning towards suicide attempts.
He stressed his hope of having such homes in ever
major city someday. That was the serious part. The funniest, however,
were more outlandish than the next. The highlights for me?
1:
John’s PA coming out on stage dressed as Captain America. John sees
him a freaks, gingerly rubbing his shoulders saying, “Hello, Captain America! I'm TARDIS. I have a friend called The Doctor. He's been in me. Would you like to save your
nation and come inside the TARDIS?”
2:
Someone asking John what he was wearing underneath his dress. He
responds with asking his bodyguard to come to the edge of the dais,
which was putting the man’s
head level with his waist. He threw his dress over his bodyguard’s
head, much to the scream of the crowd. His bodyguard came out from
underneath, looked at us in feigned “Oh my!” with a hand to his lips in
shock, and walked away grinning, to which John says,
“He’ll never be the same again.”
It gets better than this man’s panels….HOW, exactly?
We
went straight from there to lining up for Felicia Day’s Geek &
Sundry panel. At the start of the panel I found that while watching
DCTV, I had earned my place in DragonCon history. Remember the Earwig
bumper about Star Trek? The one with the Frozen lyrics screaming "LET IT
GOOOOOOO?" That was mine! I got a bumper on DCTV! WOOT! But back to
the panel. Escaping being the butt of dirty double entendre is
beyond her, but it makes for one
hilarious hour. I was even the last person of the hour to ask her a
question about whether she felt the digitization of tabletop games
(Magic: The Gathering on Playstation, Family Game Night on Wii,) was a
negative to social interaction in the Tabletop realm
or a positive spin to gather more people to board games in the
technological era. She agreed it was a positive, which I hoped that she
would. But I leave you with two awesome words that were repeatedly
uttered by the guests on this panel.
“Ample bosoms.”
See, you’re hooked. Now you wanna look the panel up on Youtube don’t ya?
Our
next stop was grabbing dinner and heading to a panel that touched the
childish heart in me: The Animaniacs sing-along. The show’s composer
plus the voice of Yakko
himself sung songs from the show plus other creations. There is nothing
like hearing their stories then being taken back in time by the voice
that led your younger years. I have been playing the State Capital song
and the Countries of The World song in my
head ever since then. They even included a new verse to the “Countries”
song as we have had new countries form since the Nineties…which they
performed for the very first time at that panel.
The
panel was in the Hilton, which worked out nicely as my next stop was
right after said panel in the same location. It was the meet and greet
for the very blog you
are all reading this from. That’s right…all the writers and
contributors for this lovely blog gathered together in one place by the
Hilton pool, and it didn’t open a hole in the space time continuum,
blowing up the universe. I did, however, discover that
between the laughs and birthday cake, the talking and general goofing,
that we at Needless Things apparently have supernatural powers. Several
of us began talking about the GI Joe verses He-Man panel, which led to
our favorite childhood movies/cartons, which
as He-Man was in the mix led to one of those being referenced as Master
of The Universe. I get home and find that Masters of The Universe has
been added to Netflix. Just like that. We have the amazing ability to
add movies we talk about here at Needless
Things to Netflix with the powers of discussion. Submit your favorites
so we can say their names out loud and POOF! We’ll see what pops up in
your Netflix queue the next week! By the way...I'm just kidding about the submit your ideas, bit. We're not X-Men, people.
Or...ARE WE...
Monday.
The last day. The day that, while you are still enjoying yourself, you
are made of sad feelings and woe. We’ve now came full circle in my
post. My Husband
and I packed out suitcases and showered that morning and headed to our
last day of festivities. Our first stop was a spot in line at the
Marriott for Karen Gillan’s panel. We had lucked out seating-wise for
most panels to date: Stephen Amell: 6th
row aisle. John Barrowman, 8th row center. Felicia Day, 4th
row center. Karen was a bit further back, sadly, as despite the
volunteer’s advisement that she had promised our group first admittance
pre-line as were among first arrivals, a group of rabid fans RUSHED the
line-up from out of nowhere so hard and fast they started knocking
people over. The volunteer had to start screaming at people and shut
off the line entirely, advising that she would have
people ejected if they didn’t “grow up and start acting like adults.”
It was truly a pitiful site. But once inside the panel itself was
wonderful, with discussions ranging from Doctor Who to Guardians,
upcoming projects to her favorite embarrassing stories
about her to two real-life best friends Matt and Arthur (The Doctor and
Rory Williams.)
We
ended our panels with time on the Tabletop track, attending two
back-to-back panels on Advanced Gamemastering (I thought it would help
with the Supernatural RPG I
want to run and at next year’s DragonCon,) and our favorite, Worst
Gaming Story Ever. You can hear my husband’s story about his brother in
the video I included in this article.
There’s
much I didn’t toss in. Playing cards, reading books I bought or my
Husband surprised me with (WOOT for Felicia Day’s new book!) People
watching and the general
adventures we all experience at Con. But half the fun of Con are the
stories that you DON’T share. The ones you keep to yourself for that
happy memory when you need a smile to pull out of your back pocket. So
enjoy the video I have attached for highlights
and the Adult Themes panel (no kids in the room when watching that
panel, please. It is rated R/MA/NSFW.) Here is my Flickr link for a full list of my shots:
Part one of my Highlights video:
And Part two of my Highlights video. This video is the panel which is rated NSFW. So as I said before, NO CHILDREN in the room:
Look through my pictures and
video as well as your own and smile a bit as you gear up for next year. Half of us
already have rooms booked and registrations bought.
Do you?
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