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So the 4th of July was a lot of fun. It was hot as can be so it was a bit of a slog to be cooking, but oh well. My flatmate and I cooked up a mix of American(ish) and Korean foods, making a ridiculously large feast which we devoured around 6pm. We then waited until around 8 before heading across one of the many bridges onto the west bank and making our way to the stone arch bridge. There was free live music and candy being handed out. We made it to the bridge by 9 and grabbed a spot though we weren't sure where the fireworks were going to be. The view of the falls was gorgeous, and it turns out the fireworks were right there. We had an awesome view. See? The bridge behind us was lit up beautifully as well. The fireworks only lasted about 25 minutes so we walked home after that and languished in the heat.
CONvergence 2012 was a whole lot of fun. I skipped out on class on Friday so I could go for a full three days. I wasn't really sure what to expect because cons can be very different and a con focused on everything seemed like it could get a little schizo. However, even though it was pretty different from a lot of cons, I think it worked out very well. There were two things that made this con really unique to me: all the free food and stuff, and the room parties.
The free food and stuff made me sincerely wonder how the con was funded because there's something crazy about feeding 7000+ people for days on end. At nearly any time during the con you could get free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, rice, apples, bananas, oranges, carrots, potato chips, coffee, tea, soda (of several different types) and candy. At certain times of day, you could get more than that. In the morning there was cereal. There were periodic muffins (pineapple cranberry is an interesting combo). On Saturday night they had free pizza and fruit smoothies! They also handed out hundreds of glow sticks and body paint. Their movie room had all the chairs replaced with comfy couches and recliners and the room had a popcorn machine continuously dispensing free popcorn, along with free soda, traditional movie theatre candy, and cookies. And if you really wanted more food, there were tons of restaurants around the hotel to eat at.
The room parties just basically seem to be done by the fans and for the fans, only with levels of effort which made me hope they were compensated for their time and money. People basically altered their hotel rooms to fit their party theme (often the beds were just completely removed), and then cosplayed and did whatever else they wanted to fit their theme. This was a view of one of the five corridors the parties could be found on (note the tardis and Hogwarts in the background). The Mos Icee Cantina in the forefront had Jedi and Sith serving icees making it one of the few non-alcoholic parties. Some of them went to crazy lengths to fit their themes. One of the Star Trek ones looked like a bar out of the original series complete with a transporter out front (I spent an hour chatting with the Captain of that particular ship). The Discworld Seamstresses Guild where I spent a lot of time since they were showing all the movies (I may have been anointed a trainee of the guild for knowing how to spell octarine) was decked out like a Victorian boudoir and had tea and cookies (the tea turning alcoholic in the evening). There were Klingons and Ghostbusters and Xena's training guild, etc. The Honor Harrington party stayed impressively in character - I was only allowed to drink a shot with them with the permission of Harrington herself. After 9pm, the majority of these parties started offering shots and drinks which were free, though you tipped them a dollar to be polite. Yes, a dollar, for what were some really complicated drinks in places. It will surprise no one then that I got very drunk on Friday night (before realizing I should probably stop drinking if I wanted to go home and also not giggle madly through the slash panel). People just kept offering me more free drinks though. I was on line for toast with the Dread Pirate Roberts (who wanted to talk about franchising options) and we shared rum. The toast party was pretty much an 'anything you ever wanted to eat on toast' party which is the only way I have to explain why I ate pickled cactus and nutella on toast (I liked it taste-wise (though it was slightly too salty) but my stomach was not so impressed - alcohol and cactus-nutella toast don't mix). Oh, and most of these parties also served some sort of food just in case you weren't getting enough from the actual con. I had matzo ball soup at the Jews in Space party for example (they had hilarious advertising posters). Posters for these parties and other things were up all around the con. I love that someone went to the effort to print out a bunch of Sherlock was a fraud, Moriarty is a lie etc posters, seemingly for no apparent reason.
The only two disappointing things about the con really was the dealers room which was way too steampunk oriented for a con with a theme of Wonder Woman (apparently the year before was steampunk so I get why but geez) and the artists alley which was way below the level shown at all the anime cons I've been to. There was a masquerade but I skipped it because it all gets put up on youtube. I enjoyed the way they organized the rest of their programing around themes so the literary room had programming about writing and publishing and fanfic while the tv room was dedicated to discussing various shows, etc. When I got there on Friday, I explored a bit before ending up in the main room where Sophie Aldred (who played Ace on Doctor Who) was speaking. She had a lot of good stories and was a very cheerful guest. I then wandered a bit before hitting the panel on internet trolling, but it wasn't really the in depth discussion I was expecting so I read blogs on my phone during it. The next panel I hit was the Game of Thrones tv show panel which was fun because they weren't allowed to discuss beyond the first two books and since I don't like the books much but like the show, that evened it out. I ended up watching Color of Magic in the Seamstresses guild for quite a while (it would have been so much better if not for the mis-casting of Rincewind and to a lesser extent, Twoflower *sigh*). I chatted with quite a few people, hit up many parties, got very drunk (a sample of my tweets from the evening: "It's pretty useless to card a Klingon." and "Narrowly avoided being eaten by Pacman."), then ended up in the slash fiction panel around 11:30pm which meant I wasn't the only one who was drunk there, and it very quickly kept veering into Avengers squee. I was kinda hoping for a more serious discussion of such things as the fetishsizing of homosexuality, but that was probably a bit crazy of me *L* I seem to recall watching some Princess Jellyfish and then I chatted with a fellow fan while waiting for the alcohol to wear off enough to drive home.
Saturday morning, I arrived early to get parking and intended to hit the Sherlock Holmes movie panel, but was somewhat hungover and couldn't stand it. I'm not really sure why I thought entering myself in a bat'leth tournament instead would be a good idea, but it really wasn't. See, bat'leths are crappy weapons (sorry Star Trek fans, they are weapons made by someone whose never had to use a weapon) and I don't know how to use one so I figured it would narrow the field since I'm trained to use most other weapons, and it did work in that sense (I only made it about half way through the tournament), but once the adrenaline wore off, I was feeling really out of it. Luckily, the hotel where the con is did an amazing job of always keeping water available and ready so I just sat down and drank tons of water (and was later very sore because bat'leths are hell on the wrists, which I did not know) before hitting the Avengers panel. That was probably one of the best panels of the con for me. It was interesting, varied, and had discussions of such things as whether Loki was pulling a Xanatos gambit in the movie. After that, I somehow ended up at the unofficial Sherlock slash meetup which was cute, but I was feeling far too socialized so I ended up wandering away and settling down on one of the many couches to read my kindle before heading to the Seamstresses guild, this time to watch Going Postal (which is hands down the best of the most recent movies even if I flash back to Coupling and Black Books whenever I see it). Around 8:30pm, I attended a fascinating panel (which ties with the Avengers one) on the future of publishing in regards to ebooks and whatnot. I then did the rounds of the parties, this time saying a firm no to all but the more interesting/tasty drinks. I was sober enough by midnight to drive home.
Sunday was a bit of a free day. I had one goal which was to get my books (which I had to buy that morning since my original copies are in NJ) signed by Lois McMaster Bujold then listen to her read the first chapter of the new Vorkosigan book. Since everyone else was on line for Tamora Pierce, this was actually rather easy to do, and here she is after signing a book for me and my bro. I then had an hour to kill before the reading so I headed to the movie room to eat popcorn and candy and watch the last hour of Enchanted. The reading afterwards was fantastic with her answering questions about the books, her writing and the characters before and after the reading which was also a lot of fun (I should have known a book from Ivan's pov would shade towards humour). I then headed over to the Mall of America since it was the closest movie theatre I knew of and watched the matinee of Spiderman which reminded me strongly of Ultimate Spider-man.
I think you see a lot more cosplay at anime conventions, but there was still a lot going on. Avengers was very popular, genderbent and not, and so were the scifi staples like Doctor Who, and Star Trek. The best Doctor Who cosplay I saw was this utterly huge group (I couldn't actually get them all in one picture) of genderbent Doctors. Curiously, Danerys is the most popular Game of Thrones character being cosplayed. I've only seen one Jon Snow, but I loved this couple who did her and Viserys. His expression is hilarious. It was funny to stumble upon the Xena and Calypso cosplayers meeting for the first time and get them to pose. My two favourite cosplays though were this group who made an impressive Monty Python: Holy Grail group, and the Sokka, Suki, and Mai cosplayers because it was really hilarious to see a live action Sokka in Kyoshi uniform.
And that was CONvergence. I had so much fun, I'm highly tempted to go back next year. I need to see if I'm going to be free during that time.
CONvergence 2012 was a whole lot of fun. I skipped out on class on Friday so I could go for a full three days. I wasn't really sure what to expect because cons can be very different and a con focused on everything seemed like it could get a little schizo. However, even though it was pretty different from a lot of cons, I think it worked out very well. There were two things that made this con really unique to me: all the free food and stuff, and the room parties.
The free food and stuff made me sincerely wonder how the con was funded because there's something crazy about feeding 7000+ people for days on end. At nearly any time during the con you could get free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, rice, apples, bananas, oranges, carrots, potato chips, coffee, tea, soda (of several different types) and candy. At certain times of day, you could get more than that. In the morning there was cereal. There were periodic muffins (pineapple cranberry is an interesting combo). On Saturday night they had free pizza and fruit smoothies! They also handed out hundreds of glow sticks and body paint. Their movie room had all the chairs replaced with comfy couches and recliners and the room had a popcorn machine continuously dispensing free popcorn, along with free soda, traditional movie theatre candy, and cookies. And if you really wanted more food, there were tons of restaurants around the hotel to eat at.
The room parties just basically seem to be done by the fans and for the fans, only with levels of effort which made me hope they were compensated for their time and money. People basically altered their hotel rooms to fit their party theme (often the beds were just completely removed), and then cosplayed and did whatever else they wanted to fit their theme. This was a view of one of the five corridors the parties could be found on (note the tardis and Hogwarts in the background). The Mos Icee Cantina in the forefront had Jedi and Sith serving icees making it one of the few non-alcoholic parties. Some of them went to crazy lengths to fit their themes. One of the Star Trek ones looked like a bar out of the original series complete with a transporter out front (I spent an hour chatting with the Captain of that particular ship). The Discworld Seamstresses Guild where I spent a lot of time since they were showing all the movies (I may have been anointed a trainee of the guild for knowing how to spell octarine) was decked out like a Victorian boudoir and had tea and cookies (the tea turning alcoholic in the evening). There were Klingons and Ghostbusters and Xena's training guild, etc. The Honor Harrington party stayed impressively in character - I was only allowed to drink a shot with them with the permission of Harrington herself. After 9pm, the majority of these parties started offering shots and drinks which were free, though you tipped them a dollar to be polite. Yes, a dollar, for what were some really complicated drinks in places. It will surprise no one then that I got very drunk on Friday night (before realizing I should probably stop drinking if I wanted to go home and also not giggle madly through the slash panel). People just kept offering me more free drinks though. I was on line for toast with the Dread Pirate Roberts (who wanted to talk about franchising options) and we shared rum. The toast party was pretty much an 'anything you ever wanted to eat on toast' party which is the only way I have to explain why I ate pickled cactus and nutella on toast (I liked it taste-wise (though it was slightly too salty) but my stomach was not so impressed - alcohol and cactus-nutella toast don't mix). Oh, and most of these parties also served some sort of food just in case you weren't getting enough from the actual con. I had matzo ball soup at the Jews in Space party for example (they had hilarious advertising posters). Posters for these parties and other things were up all around the con. I love that someone went to the effort to print out a bunch of Sherlock was a fraud, Moriarty is a lie etc posters, seemingly for no apparent reason.
The only two disappointing things about the con really was the dealers room which was way too steampunk oriented for a con with a theme of Wonder Woman (apparently the year before was steampunk so I get why but geez) and the artists alley which was way below the level shown at all the anime cons I've been to. There was a masquerade but I skipped it because it all gets put up on youtube. I enjoyed the way they organized the rest of their programing around themes so the literary room had programming about writing and publishing and fanfic while the tv room was dedicated to discussing various shows, etc. When I got there on Friday, I explored a bit before ending up in the main room where Sophie Aldred (who played Ace on Doctor Who) was speaking. She had a lot of good stories and was a very cheerful guest. I then wandered a bit before hitting the panel on internet trolling, but it wasn't really the in depth discussion I was expecting so I read blogs on my phone during it. The next panel I hit was the Game of Thrones tv show panel which was fun because they weren't allowed to discuss beyond the first two books and since I don't like the books much but like the show, that evened it out. I ended up watching Color of Magic in the Seamstresses guild for quite a while (it would have been so much better if not for the mis-casting of Rincewind and to a lesser extent, Twoflower *sigh*). I chatted with quite a few people, hit up many parties, got very drunk (a sample of my tweets from the evening: "It's pretty useless to card a Klingon." and "Narrowly avoided being eaten by Pacman."), then ended up in the slash fiction panel around 11:30pm which meant I wasn't the only one who was drunk there, and it very quickly kept veering into Avengers squee. I was kinda hoping for a more serious discussion of such things as the fetishsizing of homosexuality, but that was probably a bit crazy of me *L* I seem to recall watching some Princess Jellyfish and then I chatted with a fellow fan while waiting for the alcohol to wear off enough to drive home.
Saturday morning, I arrived early to get parking and intended to hit the Sherlock Holmes movie panel, but was somewhat hungover and couldn't stand it. I'm not really sure why I thought entering myself in a bat'leth tournament instead would be a good idea, but it really wasn't. See, bat'leths are crappy weapons (sorry Star Trek fans, they are weapons made by someone whose never had to use a weapon) and I don't know how to use one so I figured it would narrow the field since I'm trained to use most other weapons, and it did work in that sense (I only made it about half way through the tournament), but once the adrenaline wore off, I was feeling really out of it. Luckily, the hotel where the con is did an amazing job of always keeping water available and ready so I just sat down and drank tons of water (and was later very sore because bat'leths are hell on the wrists, which I did not know) before hitting the Avengers panel. That was probably one of the best panels of the con for me. It was interesting, varied, and had discussions of such things as whether Loki was pulling a Xanatos gambit in the movie. After that, I somehow ended up at the unofficial Sherlock slash meetup which was cute, but I was feeling far too socialized so I ended up wandering away and settling down on one of the many couches to read my kindle before heading to the Seamstresses guild, this time to watch Going Postal (which is hands down the best of the most recent movies even if I flash back to Coupling and Black Books whenever I see it). Around 8:30pm, I attended a fascinating panel (which ties with the Avengers one) on the future of publishing in regards to ebooks and whatnot. I then did the rounds of the parties, this time saying a firm no to all but the more interesting/tasty drinks. I was sober enough by midnight to drive home.
Sunday was a bit of a free day. I had one goal which was to get my books (which I had to buy that morning since my original copies are in NJ) signed by Lois McMaster Bujold then listen to her read the first chapter of the new Vorkosigan book. Since everyone else was on line for Tamora Pierce, this was actually rather easy to do, and here she is after signing a book for me and my bro. I then had an hour to kill before the reading so I headed to the movie room to eat popcorn and candy and watch the last hour of Enchanted. The reading afterwards was fantastic with her answering questions about the books, her writing and the characters before and after the reading which was also a lot of fun (I should have known a book from Ivan's pov would shade towards humour). I then headed over to the Mall of America since it was the closest movie theatre I knew of and watched the matinee of Spiderman which reminded me strongly of Ultimate Spider-man.
I think you see a lot more cosplay at anime conventions, but there was still a lot going on. Avengers was very popular, genderbent and not, and so were the scifi staples like Doctor Who, and Star Trek. The best Doctor Who cosplay I saw was this utterly huge group (I couldn't actually get them all in one picture) of genderbent Doctors. Curiously, Danerys is the most popular Game of Thrones character being cosplayed. I've only seen one Jon Snow, but I loved this couple who did her and Viserys. His expression is hilarious. It was funny to stumble upon the Xena and Calypso cosplayers meeting for the first time and get them to pose. My two favourite cosplays though were this group who made an impressive Monty Python: Holy Grail group, and the Sokka, Suki, and Mai cosplayers because it was really hilarious to see a live action Sokka in Kyoshi uniform.
And that was CONvergence. I had so much fun, I'm highly tempted to go back next year. I need to see if I'm going to be free during that time.
