Shore Leave
Jul. 15th, 2002 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenBack from Shore Leave. Lots to discuss. Will use cut tag. Be aware that inside lurk mild Buffy spoilers, specifically James Marsters' feelings on the Buffy/Spike relationship and the redemptionista movement. Granted he's not a writer so his feelings may have no bearing, but it doesn't hurt to be on the safe side.
Monkeys are funny
The group for Shore Leave was me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stakebait, Keren (aka buffybot) and Liz. We started out on Friday morning with a road trip from NYC to the con, which included the joys of driving through Manhattan while blaring the Buffy Musical at full volume and singing along, complete with assigned parts. Yes we are dorks and I was Giles, thank you for asking. We also did the debuts of the Strange Bedfellows and Epiphany soundtracks which was also fun.
The trip took about five hours and wasn't that bad, for those of you, like me, who wondered if it'd be worthwhile to drive to Baltimore from the NYC area as opposed to flying or taking the train. I've been debating this for Connexions next year. I think we'll see how I feel about that closer to Connexions. On the one hand the trip isn't that awful, even with some traffic, but on the other hand you're dead tired at the end of a con and I don't know how I'd trust myself with a five hour drive back to NY when I'm exhausted.
We arrived at the hotel in the early evening. Our first clue that it was the right place was the "Trekker" plate on someone's car. Check-in was fast and I have to say I liked how even the hotel staff was into the con. Bellhops wore Star Trek pins, one of the guys behind the counter asked Mer about BuffyCon and seemed geniunely interested, etc. It's a nice change of pace from, say, Connexions when some of the hotels in the past have doused us with Holy Water and shouted "Unclean!" as we passed by.
The hotel itself was a freaking maze though. It's about 3 floors high (not counting the lower level) so instead of being tall it's long. I'm not saying that the walk from the elevator to our room took forever, but the manna that we found on the ground about halfway there was appreciated.
A slight snafu on the hotel was the fact that we were on a nonsmoking floor and my 3 roommies were pro-fire. We called down to the front desk and they sent up some ashtrays. Good for us but that's got to suck for the next person who wants a non-smoking room both b/c they don't want to be around smokers and because they don't want a room that smells of smoke. But oh well.
We registered for the con, took a quick look around and decided to take in a panel and then have dinner.
Should Spike have a soul? Or a shirt?
The panel of choice was more or less sponsored by the Bloody Awful Poets Society and was about Spike and redemption. The room was packed. The four of us had to stand in the back or squat on the floor. We arrived a few minutes late which I regret because I would have liked to know if they defined the word "redemption" at the start of the panel or not. Even on the net someone calling themselves a redemptionista can mean a lot of things.
I'm not very familiar with BAPS so I can't speak for them as a whole. I found out about them last year at GenCon and I know they're pro-redemption but again I have no idea how they define it nor do I care enough to find out. (Yes I'm aware they have a website).
The panel itself was meh. Too many people, not enough discussion. The moderators themselves looked like they were doing a good job (I appreciate the difficulty of crowd control on these kinds of things) so I don't blame them as such, I'm just saying it wasn't my platonic ideal of a panel. The mods mostly moved the discussion along by use of polls, eg "How many of you think Spike should apologize to Buffy? How many of you think Buffy should apologize to Spike?" which was okay as a method to spark conversation but way too many of the questions (like the above example) didn't really hit on the right issues in my opinion, or didn't have any relation to each other. It got to the point where some of the questions felt like onto "How many of you think season seven should focus on Spike becoming a better man? How many of you think Spike needs a new haircut?" Um - huh?
Some of the people in the discussion drove me nuts. As always with panels there was one person who felt that her opinions mattered above all and she would therefore not shut up. This was especially frustrating because it was a large crowd and people really needed to respect the "raise your hand and be called on" system and she would speak up whenever she damn well felt like it - often making other people lose their turn.
Strong opinions were also the order of the day, as exemplified by one woman who at one point, re: Buffy and Dawn, shouted "She's 21 years old!!! She's doing the best she can!!! Give her a break!!!" Which I don't argue with as a concept, but I question the vehemence of the statement given the fairly laid-back and non-challenging discussion.
This was also my first huge clue of "I don't think we're in slash country anymore". When asked what people would like to happen to Spike if BtVS went off the air there was a huge, black, sucking hole of not feeling the love on the idea of Spike going over to Angel. I was floored. I would have thought the fun - slash aside - of those two characters being together again would have spoken for itself but by the attitutdes of the room you would have thought we just suggested that vomiting become a regular part of the series as well. Um - kay.
I've gotta say too - while I am not anti het (I like Buffy/Spike and Wes/Lilah as for example) I so do not get how het-only folks (as in folks who don't see, understand, or even know about slash) think. The most romantic moment of season 6, for everyone in the room, save me and the roommies, was the "Buffy and Spike stand on either sides of a door" scene. People were in raptures about this, while the four of us were just like "Or one of them could have opened the door. That could have been a thing."
There was also an obsession about minute details and their meanings that occasionally got scary. Like huge symbolism was attached to Spike leaving the coat behind at Buffy's house, which amazed those of us who actually read interviews and knew that it was only left there as a retrofitted explanation for how Xander knew Spike had been in the house. Also people were really into Randy. To the point at which I'd say easily 80% of the room believed that Spike was going to be Randy next season. Again - um, kay.
Finally one woman, near the end of the discussion, called out "How many of us can really say that we've gotten over high school?" to which the 4 of us immediately turned to each other and said "So - time for dinner then, huh?"
So you put the cheese on the bread
We went to Friendly's for dinner, as per our tradition of going to a diner on the first night of a con. From there it was a quick trip to Wal-Mart so Mer could get party supplies.
That evening was another Buffy panel - stupidly scheduled against a showing of the Musical - but Mer and I decided to go. Keren and Liz wanted to try to watch Farscape (Liz being in full denial of the fact that this was impossible to do without actually getting the SciFi channel on the hotel TV) and wanted to hit the bar before meeting up with us for the Musical.
This second panel was called "Weeping Willow" and was much smaller, I suspect in part because the room was nigh impossible to find. I really didn't like this one. Y'all remember me telling you about the cupcake guy at Ecclecticon? I'm not entirely sure he wasn't one of the moderators. ("And then Buffy is in the coffin. And we see her skull. And then there are eyes. And her friends don't know she's there. And...")
I suspect that in this panel I was the annoying bitch who wouldn't shut up, but in my defense the moderators weren't really opening up the floor to discussion and at least I raised my hand and waited to be called on. Mer and I stuck it out for an hour (I think it was supposed to run for 2) and then headed out for the musical.
The only thing I got out of the panel was from one of the other people there who pointed out that regardless of whether you liked how the season turned out, you had to respect them for the chances they took. Which I think is true. The execution of the ideas is a separate issue from the having of the ideas, so true enough that I'll give ME some props for trying concepts like a depressed protagonist, even if I think the way they handled it was ass.
Pardon me - but where can I buy a leather mug?
Scheduling for the musical was off.There was a sketch comedy troupe type thing called Luna-C which ran for 20 minutes past when the musical was supposed to air, and I know it was 20 min because believe me I was checking my watch constantly. To say that they were funny would be... oh gee, look at the time. (20 min of sketches based solely around obvious puns just ain't my kind of thing)
Once the lights were turned on again Mer and I located Keren and Liz, who were in similar shock from the "comedy" and we settled down for the musical. This was okay, but I wish they'd made it clearer that singing along was okay, or MSTing it, or doing a Rocky Horror type thing or something. B/c as it was you had some singing, some people wanting quiet, some people dancing (I assume) in the asiles and others shouting out really random comments. For the 4 of us the greatest amusement came from watching the people who were both singing along and acting surprised at how things turned out. We couldn't help but wonder if in the versions of the musical that they originally saw the show ended with Xander and Dawn kissing or something.
Highlights:
Willow: Those guys are checking you out.
Liz: No, they're just wondering where the Ren Faire is
Spike: Whisper in a dead man's ear / doesn't make it real
TBQ: You can tell Spike's related to Angel. It takes him a minute to point to his ear and even then he still gets it wrong.
After the musical we went back to the room, which meant - Buffy board game! Suffice it to say we were huge dorks.
James Marsters, what time is it?
On Saturday none of the panels really appealed to us so we slept late and ordered room service (very tasteless food - although the muffin smelled good) and again played more of the game. Then around 2 we hit the dealer's room (which we actually did on Friday as well but cope) and went down for what we thought were James Marsters autographs....
...only to find out that 3 was actually a Q&A that you had to have gotten online at like 10 in the morning if you wanted to get in. I have no idea where in the con materials this was explained. I assume it was since other people clearly knew it, but the 4 of us - and Mal and Stef who we ran into while on line (and again the night before at the Dealer's room) - did not know it. We hung out on the "if someone leaves, you'll get in" line for a while but when James started to speak we were told that it wasn't going to happen. Some woman on line got really snotty with the con volunteer that told her this, like yelling at him was going to change the fire codes, but we just asked for the info on the autographs and went off to kill some time before coming back and waiting for our badge numbers to be called.
To Spike
The autograph line was actually handled well. It started at 4 and they did call badge numbers and for the first 200 people or so it actually moved fairly quickly. We had to go through a fuckbox (tm Keren) to get to James but other than one con volunteer who was a HUGE beeotch it all worked well. Basically you snaked through a line that passed by all the people signing autographs (like Nana Visitor) and James was at the end.
On the line I saw the Cutest. Child. Ever. She was knee high to a grasshopper and had a picture of fish from a coloring book that she'd colored in and then wrote in pencil at the top "To Spike". This was aggressively adorable. Sadly I wasn't able to see how James reacted to it.
Liz, Keren and I got our stuff signed. L&K gave him the cover books of their Buffy Musical CDs and James called Keren a pirate for swiping the music from the net but agreed that you "do what you gotta do". He also said Joss is still trying to get it released properly.
I gave him a picture of a shirtless Spike that I got from the dealer's room and basically just said hi and whatnot. We shook hands (continuing my tradition from GenCon) and that was about it. Although I did get a kick out of it when I did a Fraser and said "Thank you kindly" and he did the cutest little double take at the phrasing and smiled.
Stef and Mal were right behind me so we hung out long enough that I could snap a million pictures of the backs of their heads (people kept getting in my way) as they talked to James and then we headed out of there. Due to a fuckup on the part of Shore Leave Mer had a later badge number (300 something) and had to stay behind in order to get her stuff signed. They were kicking out anyone who already had a signature so the 3 of us had to go back to the room and wait for her.
Are eyeballs really a foyer kind of thing?
There was an Angel panel that evening but it was modded by the same people who did the Weeping Willow panel which, combined with the high likelihood that in a con like this there would be diehard Angel Cordy fluffyshippers, made me decide I was going to give it a miss. Instead we played more of the Buffy game, ordered in dinner, and then broke at around 9 so Mer could set up for the BuffyCon party. Liz, Keren and I wanted to see the masquerade and also find out if it was true that James Marsters was going to appear at the Ten Forward ball that night, so we helped her set up and then headed out.
This then started the wackiest night of all. It began with us checking out the masquerade, where unfortunately we just missed the chance to take pictures of what we thought was the best costume - a group of people dressed as the Gentlemen, with the straight jacket guys and a little girl with a box - and we couldn't find a good place to hang out and watch the fun so we bailed and headed to the bar. While there, Keren had a beer spilled on her not once but twice in the exact same way. If you were in the Paddock Lounge Sat. night and saw 3 women near the bar laughing so hard that they couldn't breathe, then you saw us.
We then checked out the Tribble War Party, thanks to Liz's suggestion, where we were attacked by Evil Vampire Tribbles from Hell and a 14 year old who has a great career as a comedian ahead of him. I think Keren is still curled up on the floor of that room, laughing so hard she's about ready to pee herself.
Mrs. Liz Klingonstein
After that we floated around. The masquerade was over so we took pictures with some of the cooler ones we could find - including the Klingon in a suit who we all thought rocked. We also got our pictures taken at the USS - um - Star Trek thingy. It was dorky and for charity so I kicked in the $7, but afterwards we were all like "So what ship was that again? Was that the one on Voyager?"
The ball was okay but needed a bigger dance floor, IMO. Liz and Keren had never seen the Macarena to the Imperial March before so it was also an educational experience. We couldn't see James if he was there but I think I saw some of the other guests. It was hard to tell though because it was dark and I'm not into those fandoms enough to judge.
After the ball we went back to the room, cleaned up, and again played the game until about 5am. By the way - Devon? Is such a jerk.
Chupa Chups
By Sunday we were definitely feeling the end of a con. We were tired and... tired. Mer somehow managed to get up early and pack, so she ran down to see what the situation was re: the JM Q&A that afternoon. She then realized that this meant she would be stuck in a room with annoying people on an empty stomach so she instead secured a place for us at the restaurant, God bless her.
We ate a lazy brunch (which actually wasn't bad. In 20/20 hindsight I wish I'd gotten one of the waffles when I was hungrier), did one last swoop of the dealer's room and then went down to get seats for the Q&A. By some miracle even though we were lead in separately we managed to get seats together. We sat through 30 min of Nana Visitor and then James came out.
James? Is such a dork. I'm sure people will transcribe the Q&A somewhere so I won't get into all the details, but it cracked us up that he's already writing fanfic for Firefly - complete with a Mary Sue character. Ha! He also said that - putting it into our terms - he's got a Spike muse and an entire little Sunnydale living inside of his head and that's how he knows how to act out the character. Good to know we aren't the only ones with the characters living inside of our heads.
Other things of note:
Two things he clearly didn't like being asked about were 9-11 (some woman asked for his reaction to that, which made the 4 of us - New Yorkers all - want to ask her what the fuck she was thinking) and the rape scene. To 9-11 he gave a diplomatic answer about how difficult it all was and then moved on.
To the rape scene (the question being how did he manage to act something so difficult) he talked about how yes, it was hard for him but that made him even more aware of how hard it would be for SMG. At one point he even teared up when talking about wanting to make sure she was okay and got through the scene with dignity. It was interesting to see since God knows we've all had our reactions to it, but here was a raw reaction from someone who actually did the thing. He also said that he had to go home that night and shower and remind himself "I'm not a rapist, I'm not a rapist..."
(And just to clarify - by "didn't like being asked about" I mean the questions clearly made him uncomfortable)
One of the first people who got up to ask questions was a BAPS woman and oh was this a bad day for her. I didn't hear her full question about Spike and redemption because I was up front trying to get a photo but basically she asked about it and James pretty much shot it down. I'm paraphrasing but he basically said that Spike was bad ("Ladies, repeat after me - if a man is mean, he'll be mean to me") and not good for Buffy. He later acknowledged that for all he knew next year Spike would be "selling cupcakes" and doing good stuff, but there was nothing good about Spike so far. The BAPS woman was clearly upset when she got off the podium and James even gave her a sad look and said "sorry".
He didn't have many spoilers about next year to give. He had some theories and wishes but that's about it. His theory was that Spike would react to having a soul by staying away from Buffy b/c the soul would make him realize how horrible he was, but he then said that such a thing would be hard to pull off since how can you have a character who doesn't interact with the protagonist of the show? He also said that if he had his way Giles would be the first one to find out about Spike's soul since he thought Giles, as a Watcher, would have the most interesting reaction and because, quote, "GILES ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
He also talked about how the writing of the show was always about the fake-out so it's hard to make predictions. This lead him to say words to the effect of "So giving Spike a soul probably means he's dead by the end of the year", and I am just waiting for the rumor to now spread that Spike will be season 7's BSD because of this. So you heard it here first that no, this wasn't a spoiler, this was just James thinking of an extreme example of why you can't predict the direction of the show.
He closed the Q&A with a song and that was about it.
You're such a Devon
We drove home after that. It was a long drive in part due to a traffic jam thanks to idiots who were rubber necking at an accident that wasn't even on our side of the highway, and in part because we took a wrong turn through Pennysylvania. Cough. We got back in NYC at about midnight (we left at 5) and here we are.
All in all I'd say it was a good con. I enjoyed it, and if I had the same roommies again I'd definitely go back. It was interesting for me to be at a media con that was still fannish, and also a con which was fannish without having a huge slash population. I'd recommend it.
It was also kind of interesting in that I went under my real name and not my net one, so if any of y'all were wondering why you didn't find a woman named TBQ there - that's why. =)
Monkeys are funny
The group for Shore Leave was me,
stakebait, Keren (aka buffybot) and Liz. We started out on Friday morning with a road trip from NYC to the con, which included the joys of driving through Manhattan while blaring the Buffy Musical at full volume and singing along, complete with assigned parts. Yes we are dorks and I was Giles, thank you for asking. We also did the debuts of the Strange Bedfellows and Epiphany soundtracks which was also fun.The trip took about five hours and wasn't that bad, for those of you, like me, who wondered if it'd be worthwhile to drive to Baltimore from the NYC area as opposed to flying or taking the train. I've been debating this for Connexions next year. I think we'll see how I feel about that closer to Connexions. On the one hand the trip isn't that awful, even with some traffic, but on the other hand you're dead tired at the end of a con and I don't know how I'd trust myself with a five hour drive back to NY when I'm exhausted.
We arrived at the hotel in the early evening. Our first clue that it was the right place was the "Trekker" plate on someone's car. Check-in was fast and I have to say I liked how even the hotel staff was into the con. Bellhops wore Star Trek pins, one of the guys behind the counter asked Mer about BuffyCon and seemed geniunely interested, etc. It's a nice change of pace from, say, Connexions when some of the hotels in the past have doused us with Holy Water and shouted "Unclean!" as we passed by.
The hotel itself was a freaking maze though. It's about 3 floors high (not counting the lower level) so instead of being tall it's long. I'm not saying that the walk from the elevator to our room took forever, but the manna that we found on the ground about halfway there was appreciated.
A slight snafu on the hotel was the fact that we were on a nonsmoking floor and my 3 roommies were pro-fire. We called down to the front desk and they sent up some ashtrays. Good for us but that's got to suck for the next person who wants a non-smoking room both b/c they don't want to be around smokers and because they don't want a room that smells of smoke. But oh well.
We registered for the con, took a quick look around and decided to take in a panel and then have dinner.
Should Spike have a soul? Or a shirt?
The panel of choice was more or less sponsored by the Bloody Awful Poets Society and was about Spike and redemption. The room was packed. The four of us had to stand in the back or squat on the floor. We arrived a few minutes late which I regret because I would have liked to know if they defined the word "redemption" at the start of the panel or not. Even on the net someone calling themselves a redemptionista can mean a lot of things.
I'm not very familiar with BAPS so I can't speak for them as a whole. I found out about them last year at GenCon and I know they're pro-redemption but again I have no idea how they define it nor do I care enough to find out. (Yes I'm aware they have a website).
The panel itself was meh. Too many people, not enough discussion. The moderators themselves looked like they were doing a good job (I appreciate the difficulty of crowd control on these kinds of things) so I don't blame them as such, I'm just saying it wasn't my platonic ideal of a panel. The mods mostly moved the discussion along by use of polls, eg "How many of you think Spike should apologize to Buffy? How many of you think Buffy should apologize to Spike?" which was okay as a method to spark conversation but way too many of the questions (like the above example) didn't really hit on the right issues in my opinion, or didn't have any relation to each other. It got to the point where some of the questions felt like onto "How many of you think season seven should focus on Spike becoming a better man? How many of you think Spike needs a new haircut?" Um - huh?
Some of the people in the discussion drove me nuts. As always with panels there was one person who felt that her opinions mattered above all and she would therefore not shut up. This was especially frustrating because it was a large crowd and people really needed to respect the "raise your hand and be called on" system and she would speak up whenever she damn well felt like it - often making other people lose their turn.
Strong opinions were also the order of the day, as exemplified by one woman who at one point, re: Buffy and Dawn, shouted "She's 21 years old!!! She's doing the best she can!!! Give her a break!!!" Which I don't argue with as a concept, but I question the vehemence of the statement given the fairly laid-back and non-challenging discussion.
This was also my first huge clue of "I don't think we're in slash country anymore". When asked what people would like to happen to Spike if BtVS went off the air there was a huge, black, sucking hole of not feeling the love on the idea of Spike going over to Angel. I was floored. I would have thought the fun - slash aside - of those two characters being together again would have spoken for itself but by the attitutdes of the room you would have thought we just suggested that vomiting become a regular part of the series as well. Um - kay.
I've gotta say too - while I am not anti het (I like Buffy/Spike and Wes/Lilah as for example) I so do not get how het-only folks (as in folks who don't see, understand, or even know about slash) think. The most romantic moment of season 6, for everyone in the room, save me and the roommies, was the "Buffy and Spike stand on either sides of a door" scene. People were in raptures about this, while the four of us were just like "Or one of them could have opened the door. That could have been a thing."
There was also an obsession about minute details and their meanings that occasionally got scary. Like huge symbolism was attached to Spike leaving the coat behind at Buffy's house, which amazed those of us who actually read interviews and knew that it was only left there as a retrofitted explanation for how Xander knew Spike had been in the house. Also people were really into Randy. To the point at which I'd say easily 80% of the room believed that Spike was going to be Randy next season. Again - um, kay.
Finally one woman, near the end of the discussion, called out "How many of us can really say that we've gotten over high school?" to which the 4 of us immediately turned to each other and said "So - time for dinner then, huh?"
So you put the cheese on the bread
We went to Friendly's for dinner, as per our tradition of going to a diner on the first night of a con. From there it was a quick trip to Wal-Mart so Mer could get party supplies.
That evening was another Buffy panel - stupidly scheduled against a showing of the Musical - but Mer and I decided to go. Keren and Liz wanted to try to watch Farscape (Liz being in full denial of the fact that this was impossible to do without actually getting the SciFi channel on the hotel TV) and wanted to hit the bar before meeting up with us for the Musical.
This second panel was called "Weeping Willow" and was much smaller, I suspect in part because the room was nigh impossible to find. I really didn't like this one. Y'all remember me telling you about the cupcake guy at Ecclecticon? I'm not entirely sure he wasn't one of the moderators. ("And then Buffy is in the coffin. And we see her skull. And then there are eyes. And her friends don't know she's there. And...")
I suspect that in this panel I was the annoying bitch who wouldn't shut up, but in my defense the moderators weren't really opening up the floor to discussion and at least I raised my hand and waited to be called on. Mer and I stuck it out for an hour (I think it was supposed to run for 2) and then headed out for the musical.
The only thing I got out of the panel was from one of the other people there who pointed out that regardless of whether you liked how the season turned out, you had to respect them for the chances they took. Which I think is true. The execution of the ideas is a separate issue from the having of the ideas, so true enough that I'll give ME some props for trying concepts like a depressed protagonist, even if I think the way they handled it was ass.
Pardon me - but where can I buy a leather mug?
Scheduling for the musical was off.There was a sketch comedy troupe type thing called Luna-C which ran for 20 minutes past when the musical was supposed to air, and I know it was 20 min because believe me I was checking my watch constantly. To say that they were funny would be... oh gee, look at the time. (20 min of sketches based solely around obvious puns just ain't my kind of thing)
Once the lights were turned on again Mer and I located Keren and Liz, who were in similar shock from the "comedy" and we settled down for the musical. This was okay, but I wish they'd made it clearer that singing along was okay, or MSTing it, or doing a Rocky Horror type thing or something. B/c as it was you had some singing, some people wanting quiet, some people dancing (I assume) in the asiles and others shouting out really random comments. For the 4 of us the greatest amusement came from watching the people who were both singing along and acting surprised at how things turned out. We couldn't help but wonder if in the versions of the musical that they originally saw the show ended with Xander and Dawn kissing or something.
Highlights:
Willow: Those guys are checking you out.
Liz: No, they're just wondering where the Ren Faire is
Spike: Whisper in a dead man's ear / doesn't make it real
TBQ: You can tell Spike's related to Angel. It takes him a minute to point to his ear and even then he still gets it wrong.
After the musical we went back to the room, which meant - Buffy board game! Suffice it to say we were huge dorks.
James Marsters, what time is it?
On Saturday none of the panels really appealed to us so we slept late and ordered room service (very tasteless food - although the muffin smelled good) and again played more of the game. Then around 2 we hit the dealer's room (which we actually did on Friday as well but cope) and went down for what we thought were James Marsters autographs....
...only to find out that 3 was actually a Q&A that you had to have gotten online at like 10 in the morning if you wanted to get in. I have no idea where in the con materials this was explained. I assume it was since other people clearly knew it, but the 4 of us - and Mal and Stef who we ran into while on line (and again the night before at the Dealer's room) - did not know it. We hung out on the "if someone leaves, you'll get in" line for a while but when James started to speak we were told that it wasn't going to happen. Some woman on line got really snotty with the con volunteer that told her this, like yelling at him was going to change the fire codes, but we just asked for the info on the autographs and went off to kill some time before coming back and waiting for our badge numbers to be called.
To Spike
The autograph line was actually handled well. It started at 4 and they did call badge numbers and for the first 200 people or so it actually moved fairly quickly. We had to go through a fuckbox (tm Keren) to get to James but other than one con volunteer who was a HUGE beeotch it all worked well. Basically you snaked through a line that passed by all the people signing autographs (like Nana Visitor) and James was at the end.
On the line I saw the Cutest. Child. Ever. She was knee high to a grasshopper and had a picture of fish from a coloring book that she'd colored in and then wrote in pencil at the top "To Spike". This was aggressively adorable. Sadly I wasn't able to see how James reacted to it.
Liz, Keren and I got our stuff signed. L&K gave him the cover books of their Buffy Musical CDs and James called Keren a pirate for swiping the music from the net but agreed that you "do what you gotta do". He also said Joss is still trying to get it released properly.
I gave him a picture of a shirtless Spike that I got from the dealer's room and basically just said hi and whatnot. We shook hands (continuing my tradition from GenCon) and that was about it. Although I did get a kick out of it when I did a Fraser and said "Thank you kindly" and he did the cutest little double take at the phrasing and smiled.
Stef and Mal were right behind me so we hung out long enough that I could snap a million pictures of the backs of their heads (people kept getting in my way) as they talked to James and then we headed out of there. Due to a fuckup on the part of Shore Leave Mer had a later badge number (300 something) and had to stay behind in order to get her stuff signed. They were kicking out anyone who already had a signature so the 3 of us had to go back to the room and wait for her.
Are eyeballs really a foyer kind of thing?
There was an Angel panel that evening but it was modded by the same people who did the Weeping Willow panel which, combined with the high likelihood that in a con like this there would be diehard Angel Cordy fluffyshippers, made me decide I was going to give it a miss. Instead we played more of the Buffy game, ordered in dinner, and then broke at around 9 so Mer could set up for the BuffyCon party. Liz, Keren and I wanted to see the masquerade and also find out if it was true that James Marsters was going to appear at the Ten Forward ball that night, so we helped her set up and then headed out.
This then started the wackiest night of all. It began with us checking out the masquerade, where unfortunately we just missed the chance to take pictures of what we thought was the best costume - a group of people dressed as the Gentlemen, with the straight jacket guys and a little girl with a box - and we couldn't find a good place to hang out and watch the fun so we bailed and headed to the bar. While there, Keren had a beer spilled on her not once but twice in the exact same way. If you were in the Paddock Lounge Sat. night and saw 3 women near the bar laughing so hard that they couldn't breathe, then you saw us.
We then checked out the Tribble War Party, thanks to Liz's suggestion, where we were attacked by Evil Vampire Tribbles from Hell and a 14 year old who has a great career as a comedian ahead of him. I think Keren is still curled up on the floor of that room, laughing so hard she's about ready to pee herself.
Mrs. Liz Klingonstein
After that we floated around. The masquerade was over so we took pictures with some of the cooler ones we could find - including the Klingon in a suit who we all thought rocked. We also got our pictures taken at the USS - um - Star Trek thingy. It was dorky and for charity so I kicked in the $7, but afterwards we were all like "So what ship was that again? Was that the one on Voyager?"
The ball was okay but needed a bigger dance floor, IMO. Liz and Keren had never seen the Macarena to the Imperial March before so it was also an educational experience. We couldn't see James if he was there but I think I saw some of the other guests. It was hard to tell though because it was dark and I'm not into those fandoms enough to judge.
After the ball we went back to the room, cleaned up, and again played the game until about 5am. By the way - Devon? Is such a jerk.
Chupa Chups
By Sunday we were definitely feeling the end of a con. We were tired and... tired. Mer somehow managed to get up early and pack, so she ran down to see what the situation was re: the JM Q&A that afternoon. She then realized that this meant she would be stuck in a room with annoying people on an empty stomach so she instead secured a place for us at the restaurant, God bless her.
We ate a lazy brunch (which actually wasn't bad. In 20/20 hindsight I wish I'd gotten one of the waffles when I was hungrier), did one last swoop of the dealer's room and then went down to get seats for the Q&A. By some miracle even though we were lead in separately we managed to get seats together. We sat through 30 min of Nana Visitor and then James came out.
James? Is such a dork. I'm sure people will transcribe the Q&A somewhere so I won't get into all the details, but it cracked us up that he's already writing fanfic for Firefly - complete with a Mary Sue character. Ha! He also said that - putting it into our terms - he's got a Spike muse and an entire little Sunnydale living inside of his head and that's how he knows how to act out the character. Good to know we aren't the only ones with the characters living inside of our heads.
Other things of note:
Two things he clearly didn't like being asked about were 9-11 (some woman asked for his reaction to that, which made the 4 of us - New Yorkers all - want to ask her what the fuck she was thinking) and the rape scene. To 9-11 he gave a diplomatic answer about how difficult it all was and then moved on.
To the rape scene (the question being how did he manage to act something so difficult) he talked about how yes, it was hard for him but that made him even more aware of how hard it would be for SMG. At one point he even teared up when talking about wanting to make sure she was okay and got through the scene with dignity. It was interesting to see since God knows we've all had our reactions to it, but here was a raw reaction from someone who actually did the thing. He also said that he had to go home that night and shower and remind himself "I'm not a rapist, I'm not a rapist..."
(And just to clarify - by "didn't like being asked about" I mean the questions clearly made him uncomfortable)
One of the first people who got up to ask questions was a BAPS woman and oh was this a bad day for her. I didn't hear her full question about Spike and redemption because I was up front trying to get a photo but basically she asked about it and James pretty much shot it down. I'm paraphrasing but he basically said that Spike was bad ("Ladies, repeat after me - if a man is mean, he'll be mean to me") and not good for Buffy. He later acknowledged that for all he knew next year Spike would be "selling cupcakes" and doing good stuff, but there was nothing good about Spike so far. The BAPS woman was clearly upset when she got off the podium and James even gave her a sad look and said "sorry".
He didn't have many spoilers about next year to give. He had some theories and wishes but that's about it. His theory was that Spike would react to having a soul by staying away from Buffy b/c the soul would make him realize how horrible he was, but he then said that such a thing would be hard to pull off since how can you have a character who doesn't interact with the protagonist of the show? He also said that if he had his way Giles would be the first one to find out about Spike's soul since he thought Giles, as a Watcher, would have the most interesting reaction and because, quote, "GILES ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
He also talked about how the writing of the show was always about the fake-out so it's hard to make predictions. This lead him to say words to the effect of "So giving Spike a soul probably means he's dead by the end of the year", and I am just waiting for the rumor to now spread that Spike will be season 7's BSD because of this. So you heard it here first that no, this wasn't a spoiler, this was just James thinking of an extreme example of why you can't predict the direction of the show.
He closed the Q&A with a song and that was about it.
You're such a Devon
We drove home after that. It was a long drive in part due to a traffic jam thanks to idiots who were rubber necking at an accident that wasn't even on our side of the highway, and in part because we took a wrong turn through Pennysylvania. Cough. We got back in NYC at about midnight (we left at 5) and here we are.
All in all I'd say it was a good con. I enjoyed it, and if I had the same roommies again I'd definitely go back. It was interesting for me to be at a media con that was still fannish, and also a con which was fannish without having a huge slash population. I'd recommend it.
It was also kind of interesting in that I went under my real name and not my net one, so if any of y'all were wondering why you didn't find a woman named TBQ there - that's why. =)
