Connexions 2003

[thebratqueen]

Okay, in no way am I coherent enough to really do justice to a con report but as I'm going to be busy for the next couple of days and this is my only chance, here I am going for the gusto.



Truckers: more artistic than you'd give them credit for

I drove down on Thursday with wolfling. The drive was great. Even with a stop for lunch we made it in about the time Mapquest estimated we would. Of interest along the way we saw many trucks where instead of writing "Wash Me" into the dirt, the drivers (or someone else) had drawn elaborate pro-war, anti-Iraq murals. Seriously. One even had a portrat of Saddam on it. I was oddly impressed, though I would've been more impressed if they'd, say, washed the trucks.

Your room has been made empty for your convienence

Once at the hotel I checked into my room. It was a king suite, which was supposed to have a couch in it. There was no couch, however. Instead there was a king sized bed and a very large empty space where a couch should be. When cin1607 arrived we decided that this was possibly a dance floor. Or just possibly we were missing a couch. Cin, ever resourceful, called down to room service and ordered a couch. She was told, however, that when they had rennovated the hotel the furniture had been removed. Since nothing in the room looked different from the rooms last year other than the furniture, I called no way on the rennovations. Unless, of course, the rennovations were removing the furniture.

Also for our "convienence" the ice machines weren't working. At least that's what the sign said. I had a two year old moment and added an "in" because I'm anal like that.

Chicken fingers and olive soup

After resting, relaxing and catching up on things with Cin and mickanick we headed downstairs to have dinner with wolfling, mpoetess, wesleysgirl and WG's hubby and The Boy [tm]. The food in the restaurant was plentiful and not bad for the price. I don't think any of us were able to finish our plates.

zortified and journalkitten were missing, but we were confident that they could track us down if need be.

There are 6 strange people in the room

Back up to the very empty king suite, to hook up Cin's VCR and enjoy vids, which is always a wonderful pasttime. zortified arrived later, though not after calling ahead and checking that yes, indeed, there were strange people to be found in room 701. One can only assume that if there hadn't been strange people in the room, zortified would have gone ahead and tried 702.

Vids were enjoyed, then everyone was kicked out of the room so that Cin and I could enjoy that bed for all it was worth get some sleep.

Our panels are when?

On Friday Cin and I got up, enjoyed a breakfast of the various foodstuffs we'd brought with us, and then meandered our way downstairs to register for Connexions.

I was then shocked wide awake when, as far as I could tell from the schedule, I had a panel at 1pm that afternoon and James and MP had one at 5. Then, after far too much time had passed for me to even pretend I hadn't been this dumb, I realized I was looking at the list of TV shows that were going to be shown in the theater that day. Our panels were, as we suspected, Saturday and Sunday. Ahem.

For our convienence, ice can be found across the highway

Cin and I then needed to get some ice for her cooler. Sadly, we thought that the Mobil station that was in plain view of the bus station inside of the hotel would provide this service, but upon approaching we found that the big, lit, neon "OPEN" sign was, in fact, nothing more than a trap to lure us over to the huge fucking craters that led to the center of the Earth.

The store itself was closed so we walked quickly and discreetly (so as to not attract the attention of the demons living inside the craters) away from that station and made our way across the street/highway to the other gas station to get ice and Subway sandwiches. I am happy to report that we returned safely, and at no time did I rip the bag of ice open while I was showing off and lifting it as though it was little more than a barbell.

Oh, you mean a couch

At some point during all of this we also discovered that in fact suites did have couches so Cin and I marched downstairs and asked for one to be delivered forthwith. Sure enough, we had one 20 min later, though they did try to convince us that most of the rooms didn't have them.

The actual panels.

Various forms of relaxing ensued, mostly due to the fact that I misunderstood the time and therefore ended up having to skp a panel I thought was at 3. The dealer's room was also at fault for this. I spent a great deal of time in there drooling and eventually emerged with Media Cannibals 5 and Rogue Trader (Ewan and Alexis in a film together - there's no wrong to be found there).

Also, the phenominal con suite played a role as I wandered in and out of it with various friends, happy to graze on the insane amounts of food to be found there and to strike up conversations with whatever fans we ran into.

I then hit - er, no pun intended - the BDSM & Slash panel and the Literary Slash panel.

The BDSM & Slash panel was good, but IMO only from a newbie perspective. If you already know about safewords and whatnot I don't know that it had that much to offer. I wasn't bored but I wasn't fascinated either. Diana Williams did a great job moderating it though.

Lit Slash was interesting. We talked about various lit slash pairings and whether or not narrative voice had to be preserved when writing a lit slash story (end conclusion: you need to be aware that the narrative voice is, in and of itself, a character and therefore you need to decide if you need that "character" in your fic or not).

Mmm... vids

Dinner was courtesy of the food court, then it was down to the theater for vids!

Friday night brings previously viewed vids, but I'd have to say for the most part I hadn't seen a good 90% of them so it was like a mostly new vid show to me. Of course "The Man Song" was eventually played and it really isn't a vid show without it. (Sadly WG had to miss it. Damn her and her need to be a good parent).

Saturday comes in mornings now?

Had to get up fairly early on Saturday to try breakfast down in the hotel restaurant (not bad, but the con suite had better) and then make it upstairs for the Blogs & Livejournals panel.

I liked the panel (led by brak666 and devon). I was curious about it since "How to use your journal in the service of fandom" is, to me, a topic with a few nouns in the wrong place but instead we talked about the different kinds of journals out there, how do people use their journals, do we like journals that are both fannish and personal or should those be separated and, of course, being in service of fandom and everyone else by using a damned cut tag. Like last year, the panel ended with everyone saying their LJ names and it was nice to put some names to faces (and apparently for one or two people to put a face to my name - hi katallison!)

Next was the LOTR panel, which I basically just sat back and watched since I'm not nearly a big enough fan to be able to offer opinions. Still, it was fun to listen to the more die-hard fans speak up about their favorite topics.

Was that after the scene of Xander naked?

Twelve noon brought the Buffy panel, lead by James and MP. Talk of season 7 and the joys and sorrows to be found therein was had, with a side order of discussion about slash. We covered such topics as the SiTs, is Giles really Giles, Souled Spike, Buffy as leader, the First Evil, and whether or not anyone was okay with a panel that talked about the spoiler (quote one of the women in the panel "You mean about this being Buffy's last season?" quote James and MP "Yeah, that would be the one we were trying to not give away before finding out if everyone was okay with that.")

Also? For the record? James is the good one.

The TMI panel

This year instead of minotaurs panel of just him giving sex tips to slash writers, we had a Sex and Sexuality panel with Minotaur, me, witchqueen, Toni and Martha. We covered m/m, f/f, safe sex, kinks, B/D and poly. I'd say it went pretty well. After all, we were able to make Ker squeak, and it's not every day I get a gay guy checking out my nails to make sure I can really please a girl without unwanted damage ;)

I also got to talk with Alan, our resident f/f geek, after the panel, which was nice since if nothing else I'd been spending so much time chatting with people I already knew from the net that I was starting to wonder if I wasn't going to get a chance to meet anyone new =)

Ahh... fans

I hit the QAF panel next, even though I was seriously tired at that point. But I needed to sit in the room with fellow QAF fans since god knows it's frustrating to try to wade through the TWOP discussions about it where I'm honestly left wondering why everyone there bothers to watch the show. And even in the QAF communities you get enough gen and het folks that it can make your head spin. So I spent the hour sitting more or less in silence, happily soaking in the joy of a group of people who actually like the show, and get the gay guy thing.

[ETA: This is what I get for typing while tired. What I meant by "gen and het" QAF fans is people who have come from previously gen or het only backgrounds so that QAF is their first exposure to the wonder of gay sex. I'm very happy for them, but they're so into the whole "I watched gay guys! Having sex! And I liked it! Tee hee hee hee hee!" that they make a snob like me very tired. So it's a happy thing when I can be amongst folks who don't feel a need to titter about how naughty they are for discovering that one hot guy plus another hot guy equals 2x hotness.]

Mmm... sleep. Mmm... food

Shower and nap came next, then I tarted myself up for the banquet. For the record, I did wear the see-through shirt. Although some people expressed disappointment that I had something on under it. However, people shall have to cope since you can't have boobage like mine and not wear a bra.

The banquet was yummy, just as it was last year. I enjoyed it with Cin, Mick, James, MP, Wolf, WG (and hubby and The Boy), JK and Cin's friend Cameron. I tried a bit of everything with the food and can't say I was disappointed. If you missed the banquet this year, sign up for it next year. It's well worth the money. Even if devon doesn't get dressed up like Mal from Firefly next year.

After the banquet the Sizzler Awards were given out, raffle prizes were awarded, then Fan Feud was played and it was much fun to watch, even if Wolf's team didn't win.

Then came premiering vids and man we had a good crop of vids this year. Most were excellent, with only one or two standing out as merely "pretty good". We also had an Angel vid this year (well - Wes/Gunn) which was phenominal. Here's hoping all those who watched it were seduced by the beauty of Wes into writing for our fandom. (Even if it is for such a wrong, wrong pairing).

As for the vid contest - there was only one entry so that pretty much took care of the repetition problem.

WB + TBQ = OTP

Once vids were done, taffimai (that is, I'm hoping it was taffimai, lord knows my memory for LJ names isn't that hot without a little help) came up to me and the following conversation ensued:

Taffy: Hi, I've got the Angel season 3 DVDs complete with outtakes. Would you like to watch them?

TBQ: Yes. Yes I would.

Upstairs MP, Wolf, WG, JK, James, Cameron, Taffy and I went, whereupon I pointed and scowled while Taffy figured out the ins and outs of the TV and VCR that were already in the room. We then watched the s3 outtakes and God am I glad that WG was there to hold my hand through the tough parts. Alexis acted the hell out of the dance scene but bleughaahhaaa.

Sunday already?

For all that we were up late on Saturday, we still got up fairly early on Sunday to catch the LJ RPG panel. WG, Wolf, MP and I had originally thought that we'd be a tiny group of voices in an otherwise large room of sockpuppet fans, but it turned out that we were in the majority. God bless the two girls and the mod who put up with us for constantly nattering on with our in jokes. ;)

Oh yeah, the Angel panel

Next up came the Angel panel, led by yours truly and Wolf. I enjoy modding this panel since very often there is one person in every panel who mistakenly thinks everyone is there for them and in the world of Angel this person would definitely be me, so I head the problem off at the pass by volunteering to mod and therefore having a reason to be talking all the time.

Loved the panel, though nobody ate the donuts that I brought (not that I blame them, since I couldn't eat donuts that early in the day either). We chatted about Fred, love triangles, retconning, the new writers, s3 vs s4, everyone exploring their dark side and, of course, the classic question "Who wants to sleep with Wesley?"

Someone, who's LJ name I sadly do not remember, also brought up a point about Inside Out that I hadn't thought of before (namely, Darla could have been a manifestation of evil since lord knows that the easiest way to get a teenage boy to do something is to have his mother tell him not to do it - which then led me to appreciate the symbolism of having Darla, an evil character, arguing for good while Cordy, a good one, argued for evil). And, much as with the QAF panel, it was a sheer joy to be surrounded by people who are fans of the show. I wish I could remember who all was there but it's all a blur so lemme just say thanks to everyone who showed up for making the panel so much fun for me and I hope I managed to do the same in return.

Oh, you mean I talk a lot?

I then bonded with a few fans who wanted the scoop on spoilers for Angel and then inadvertently spoiled brak666 in the process so - whoops! Sorry! At least I'm pretty certain that I manged to keep syxer7 a spoiler virgin so there's at least one checkmark in the win column.

Slashology 101 came next, wherein Textual Poachers was talked about, along with the concepts of people trying to research slash and slash fans, do we like or trust these people, do we even want to be researched and how did we think research could be done, if at all?

Then, being in denial about the con ending, I did a last swing through the dealer's room (buying a con tape in the process) and then sat in the Harry Potter panel. Again I'm not as much of a fan in this fandom as everyone else but it was still fun to watch.

Dogs and cake

The last panel of all was the Dead Dog panel, in which everyone makes comments, complaints and suggestions. Martha also brought a kick-ass cake which was too good to turn down even though I was still full from lunch.

Martha also got into a discussion about the history of cons in the area which was totally new information to me and had me wishing that I could hear more. It's possible that we may have a history of fandom panel next year and if so I'll be very happy about it.

Dead Dog easily lasted about an hour and I can't help but wonder if everyone lingered for the same reason that I did - I didn't want to admit it was over!

Psycho Pool Party

That night those of us remaining (Cin, me, MP, WG, Wolf, JK and James) got together for dinner, planned something that a few of you will be getting emails from me about, and then took over the swimming pool complete with non-bubbling hot tub. We lacked toys such as beach balls and the like, but still managed to have fun. And that was before Cin and I put on a show for the lifeguard by making out in the hot tub (a view I'm sure WG is sorry she missed - and also Mick and possibly flambeau and miss_edith now that I think about it).

Once we got kicked out (erm - because the pool was closing, not because of the making out) we went back up to the suite to watch Psycho Beach Party and I have to agree with James's opinion that the movie is strangely compelling. Also that this is so where Joss got the idea for Fred.

Over? It's OVER?

Monday morning (today, for those of you playing the home game) arrived with me really not wanting to get back to the real world, nor did I want to leave all my buddies behind. Fortunately, Wolf, MP, James and JK generously provided me and Cin with extra time to say farewell since the four of them take longer to check out of a hotel room than it does for most governments to plan, fight and win a war. Afterwhich Cin and I checked out and I had to bid Cin a fond adieu.

It's doing what now?

Wolf and I were next on the list. We drove off in freezing rain but didn't have to deal with that for long as it very rapidly turned into near white-out conditions snow. We ended up counting 27 accidents on I-95, some of which were truly scary to see (such as the one that let's just say did not have ambulances waiting by the side of the road). Luckily we did not add to that number, though it took 2 hours longer to get home than it did to get to the hotel.

Insert Porky Pig catchphrase here

And now we're home. Or I am and Wolf is still here with me. The cats are fine, the snow is still falling and scarily enough I have work in the morning. But it was wonderful and perfect and I can't believe I have to wait an entire year to do it again.

Thanks to everyone I met and to the entire con committee for such a good time! And if I met any of you there and you're not currently on my friends list, please let me know. I couldn't always catch people's names on their nametags so I want to make sure I don't miss anyone when Devon and/or Brak post the list of LJ names. Thanks! =)