girlpire | Massive Dragon*Con Report, pt. 1

So, Dragon*Con! This was my first convention, unless you count the FX Show thing I went to in Orlando in February, which I don't because it was very small and there were no actual Q&A's and panels and things. The report I did for that one is lame, so I flocked it. This one will be much better! I divided it into two posts because LJ told me it was too long, but the link to the second one shall be at the bottom. Or you can just hit the arrow to the next post. :)

Friday

We left for Atlanta on Friday at around 1PM. I still had to work a half-day, although my mom took the day off so she could pack and stuff.

Things I made sure to pack:
1. Milkduds
2. Twizzlers
3. Oreos

Things I forgot to pack:
1. Hair dryer
2. Chapstick
3. My favorite necklace

We arrived in Atlanta at around 3 or so and went straight to our hotel to check in. We stayed at the Sheraton, which was only about two blocks from the hotels where the convention was taking place (the Hyatt, the Mariott, and the Hilton).

The back of our hotel, as seen from the parking lot.

This is the part where I felt like country come to town, because first they tried to valet park our car, then a bellhop put all our stuff on a cart and walked us up to the room while giving us a little tour, and then he waited around for us to tip him. Also, they have people who will iron your clothes for you, and they charge according to what article of clothing it is. For your future reference, if you stay at the Sheraton in downtown Atlanta, the staff will iron your necktie for $4.

I thought the keycards were pretty, which shows just exactly how often I get out. My mom carried the one with the flipflops on it, and I carried the one with the painted eggs.

Shiny!

My sister Sara met us at the hotel, and then the three of us walked to the Mariott. It was crowded. I heard different numbers while I was there; some people said there were about 20,000 people and others said 30,000. (I think by this time more than half of them were already in line for the Q&A with Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau.) Anyway, a dude with roughly 54 piercings on his face gave us directions to the Hyatt, which is where registration was. We walked all the way around the hotel to get there.

Registration at the Hyatt was pretty quick for us. My mom and I had pre-registered online, but my sister had to go buy a ticket. They had different colored tape on the floor for you to follow, depending on what type of badge you were after, which was helpful. (I think the line was so short because everyone was already in line for the Q&A with Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau.) They had the registration booths divided up by last name, so we went to the P's to get our badges.

First Negative Experience at Dragon*Con: Registering

The volunteer in charge of our line was dressed as a nurse. She had on all white, but her makeup (and we're talking serious dark makeup here) was smudged all over her outfit. Her lips were painted on up to her nose and down to her chin... but the fact that she looked nasty wasn't the bad experience. This girl? The rudest person I have ever met in my life. She kept trying to talk to the other volunteers while they were helping other people, she had to ask our names three times because she wasn't paying attention and kept forgetting, and the girl next to her finally pointed out that she was developing a long line and the girl was all, "I don't care. They just have to deal with me - I'm slow." (Yeah, in more ways than one.) After she flung our badges at us, we tried to ask her questions, and she said, "I don't know. Bye." And then she called for the next person while we were standing there! We kind of stood there in shock for a second, but the nice volunteer who was sitting next to her heard our question and explained some things to us very politely. And she gave us some program booklets, which our nurse-person was supposed to do but didn't. Actually, the nurse had told us that there weren't any, even though they were sitting in plain view in front of her.

This is what our badges looked like. I blacked out my last name and hometown because I know you're all stalkers. Ha, foiled again!

We also picked up some program schedules on newsprint, one of which became my Bible for the weekend because it had maps of the hotels in it. We met Sara again after she was done registering and went inside.

it was about 4:30 by this time, and the Q&A with Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau was scheduled for 5:30. There was a looooong line already formed outside the ballroom, so we got in it, but then my sister started getting worried that since she was only going to be there for Friday she might not get a chance to meet James Callis (Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica), and even though she's in love with Alan Tudyk, she'd already met him once and would rather meet James Callis than hear Alan talk. Which makes sense. I am not a BSG fan, so I didn't really care one way or the other about meeting James Callis, so I stayed in the line while my mom and my sister went back to the Mariott to see if James was still in the Walk of Fame there. I told them I would be waiting in exactly that spot when they came back. About a minute after they left, the line got moved.

I guess they moved it because there were SO many browncoats there to see the Q&A and the line was snaking all around the lobby area and holding up other fans who were not there for Firefly-related events. They moved the line down a hallway near the lobby, then up some steps and outside, around the building, through a breezeway thing... it was long. I spent most of the wait time sitting in the breezeway, and the weather was pleasant so it wasn't too bad. I was sitting next to a boy about my age who was kind of cute, henceforth to be referred to as Line Guy because he shows up again later. We spoke for a little while. He was holding a place for his friends. There was an older Indian woman behind me who kept complaining about people singing too loud in the line, and I'm still not sure whether or not she was talking to me, but I had a hard time understanding her accent so I didn't catch most of what she said anyway.

At one point, a couple of guys with guitars came down the line and played some Serenity filk, which was fun. I didn't have a camera, but I recorded some of one song on a handheld tape recorder. I would put a clip, but... I don't know how to get it into my computer.

Meanwhile, on the Walk of Fame...

James Callis looks like Jesus. And they have the same initials! Coincidence? YOU decide.

Sara and Mama saw James Callis' table as soon as they went in, but there was a reeeeeally long line. When they went up to get in it, it turns out the line wasn't for him - it was for Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau, who were seated nearby. The line was so long it actually stuck out of the ballroom where the Walk of Fame was located, even though most of the browncoats were already in line for the Q&A in the Hyatt! Craziness. I'm so glad we had all already met them in February, because there was no way we were coming within twenty feet of those two with all the flans swarming about. Not that I have anything against browncoats - I self-identify as a browncoat myself - but even though I had seen "Done the Impossible," I never really got how many of them there are.

Anyway! Sara met James Callis.

This is my sister's happy face.

He was very polite, and they chatted for a minute. She asked him to make the autograph to her husband Scott as well, and he said he thought she looked too young to be married and asked how old she was. Sara and Amy (my sisters are twins) turned 26 on August 28, and she started telling him about how coming to the convention was her birthday present because she had really wanted to meet him, and he smiled genuinely and told her she was sweet, and she never did actually tell him her age because she was so nervous she forgot to.

Why does he have a Down With Love chocolate bar?

She told him she'd like for the autograph to say, "No more Mr. Nice Gaius," and he said, "Then that is what it shall say!"

Just looking at that makes me groan because it's so cheesy.

Next up was Aaron Douglas, who plays Chief Tyrol on BSG. Sara was excited about meeting him, but when she got to his table, the dude who plays Helo was sitting there too. It was a last-minute thing for him to be there, so he didn't have a real name sign or anything; they just wrote his name and character on a piece of paper and taped it to Aaron's. But Sara hyperventilated. Helo is her favorite character.

Me: So it would be like... if Alexis Denisof and J. August Richards were there, but when I went to meet them I found out that David Boreanaz was there too?
My mom: Sort of... but I think you would have actually passed out if David Boreanaz had been there. You would have burst into tears.
Me: Burst into flames, more like.

He's kind of cute.

Sara tried to take pictures, but her hands were shaking so hard she couldn't work the camera, so my mom took the pictures. Which was better, because that way Sara could be in them. They ended up taking about 4 pictures with Helo because he kept looking at the pictures and saying he thought his eyes were shut and wanting to take more.

Scary hand.

Of course Sara also met Aaron Douglas. I've only seen the BSG miniseries thing, but I think Chief Tyrol would be my favorite character if I were a fan.

Sara and Aaron.

Back at the Hyatt...

They finally started letting people into the Serenity Q&A. The Centennial ballrooms were huge and they used more than one, so even though I was afraid I wouldn't get a very good seat since I was pretty far back in line, I actually ended up front and center during the Q&A. Seriously, perfect seat. And this is where I would post some amazing pictures of Alan and Summer, but my mom and my sister had the cameras and I only had my handheld recorder. I recorded the entire panel because I was afraid Sara and Mama had missed it, and it was soooo great. As it turns out, they made it back to the Hyatt in time to get in, but they ended up so far in the back that they couldn't see Alan and Summer and had to watch the whole thing on big video screens. I barely even glanced at the video screens because my seat was so good. :D

Sara took this one. I was going to count all the Jayne hats, but there were way too many.

My favorite part of the whole thing was when Alan pulled out his cell phone. Summer had made a comment about not being very sad when she found out Wash and Book were going to die in the movie, and Alan acted all hurt and pretended like he was calling Ron Glass to tell him that Summer didn't like either of them anymore... and while he had out his cell phone, he accidentally hung up on a call - and it was Nathan Fillion! Nathan then called him again and started talking with a funny accent, which we all heard because Alan held his phone up to the mic. Sara videoed some of the conversation with her camera, but she had to aim it at the screen instead of the actors.

Watch on YouTube

Excerpt from Alan and Nathan's conversation.

I love that Alan and Nathan are always so great to the fans. I mean, I'm pretty sure they planned for Nathan to call while Alan was in the panel, and I just think it's so neat that they would do that just to make the experience more special for the audience, even when they didn't have to.

Sara also recorded Alan talking about an experience he had when he was in London, and some Firefly fans recognized him.

Watch on YouTube

This is funny. :)

The only thing that I didn't thoroughly enjoy about this panel is that the Indian lady I couldn't understand sat down next to me and kept asking me questions about stuff like which of Alan's movies they were talking about, and every time I answered her I missed something. And then afterwards she made a comment to me about not really understanding anything anyone said, which was pretty funny coming from her.

The Q&A ran over because it got started late, so we missed the next thing we were going to do - which was perfectly fine with us, because we enjoyed the Q&A a lot and the other thing was just the Opening Ceremonies, and it was only supposed to last half an hour anyway. The next thing I was interested in after that was the Supernatural panel called "I Love the Winchester Brothers." Which I do. Sara had already done everything that she wanted to do, so she said that she'd just follow me around for the rest of the time she was there and do whatever I wanted. We had some time to kill before the ~~Wincest~~ Winchester panel, so I thought we'd check out the consuite.

Best kept secret at Dragon*Con 2006: The Consuite

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a big secret, but every time we went in there, there were only about 30 or so other people. That's like... one thousandth of the attendees. And they had free food and coke! We saw so many other people buying overpriced refreshments from the hotel restaurants and bars when they could have been getting coke for free. But I didn't really mind that they weren't using the consuite, because that meant that the line was never very long for us. :)

In the consuite: there was a TV playing BSG over to the left; in the back was the table with food, and over to the right was the line for softdrinks.

This is my mom in line for coke. Hehe, she's so cute with her little backpack!

We ate moonpies, which are a staple of the South. They also had chips and salsa and twinkies.

While my mom was in line, Sara and I started talking to this guy who was wearing a shirt that looked like an alien Hello Kitty, only the shirt said, "Hello Cthulhu." Or something. Not really sure how it's spelled. Sara asked what it was, and the guy launched into this very ~~long~~ informative lecture on H.P. Lovecraft, whom neither my sister nor I have ever read. He tried to tell us that Cthulhu was evil, but I pointed out that it couldn't be evil because it was wearing a cute little red bow. The guy had decidedly less to say to us once my sister mentioned that she was married.

After being sufficiently refreshed, we went in search of the Supernatural panel. This would be the very first Supernatural panel ever at Dragon*Con, and the only Supernatural event for the weekend. It was located in the very bowels of the Mariott, and it took us a while to find, but it was worth getting stuck behind a battalion of Storm Troopers on the escalator.

The Mariott is tall. This is a picture looking up through the middle from the bottom floor. Notice how the ceiling disappears into nothingness. The elevators were glass so you could see exactly how high up you were.

The panel had two mods, or leaders, or... panelists? One was Andrea, who runs a website called TV Makes You Stupid, and the other was Dana. I found the panel very interesting. Andrea had some intelligent and insightful things to say, and some of the audience had some good things to say as well. Even I said something. I think Dana was mostly there for the squee factor, but that's okay too. :) There were even some men there, which surprised me.

The first time someone mentioned Wincest, Dana gave Andrea a dollar. Heh.

I didn't record this panel, but I do remember someone pointing out that a certain kind of incest isn't healthy - implying that there is a kind of incest that is healthy, which made me giggle. Someone else (I think it was Dana) began a sentence with, "In defense of the racist monster truck..."

I think Sara enjoyed the panel as well, even though she'd never seen an episode of Supernatural. She whispered to me at one point, "This show sounds crazy." But she also said she'd be interested in watching it. After the panel was over, the two of us spoke to Andrea and a girl who is somehow affiliated with the website Supernatural TV (I think she's friends with the person who owns it or something). They were both very nice.

[Side note: I later saw Andrea wearing an angel costume with a halo tipped to one side. It was cute.]

The next thing I wanted to see was the "Buffy Horror Picture Show," which is where they play the episode "Once More with Feeling" on a large screen while simultaneously acting it out on stage. Someone in the Supernatural panel said that there would already be a line, even though it was over an hour away. There was. When we found the line, I sat in it while Mama and Sara went and bought a pizza. A nice gamer named Lisa was teaching me how to play Fluxx when they came back.

A dude named

mrdennings took a picture of his inflatable spaceguy playing Fluxx with us to put it on his website, The Real Spaceman.

Mama, Sara, Lisa, and I played Fluxx until the line moved. With no offense intended, let me just say that this is not a game I will ever willingly play again. A boy on the escalator saw us and called out that Fluxx rules, though, so maybe I just have an underdeveloped sense of fun. I thought it was lame. And then I told Lisa that gamers frighten me, and I think she was offended... I'm just always startled when I'm talking to someone and they start doing their own sound effects.

So anyway, the "Buffy Horror Picture Show" was fun. I was especially impressed with the people who played Buffy, Spike, and Anya. They had all the right costumes, and if you looked from the screen to the stage, those three were always doing almost exactly the same moves at the same time as the actual actors. I was impressed with the Spike character the most, but probably just because I found him really attractive. The funny thing is that for the rest of the convention, whenever I saw him, he was dressed as Angel, and he looks more like Angel than Spike, so when I first saw that he was in the show, I was like, they're putting Angel in this episode? What's going on?

He was wearing Spike's outfit, but doesn't he look more like Angel?

The girl who played Buffy looked the most like her character, I think.

Every time I saw the Angel guy, this Riley guy was nearby. I was supremely happy that someone had dressed as Riley, since I find him second most attractive out of all the men in the whole Buffy/Angel universe. (Shut up.) In the Buffy Horror Picture Show, I think he played a minion. But he was still dressed as Riley.

This one has Sweet and Anya. These pictures are crappy quality because I had to brighten them so you could see anything. It was super dark in there.

Highlights of the Buffy Horror Picture Show:
1. While screen!Giles throws knives at Buffy, stage!Giles throws people at Buffy.
2. While screen!Tara levitates on the bed, stage!Tara is lifted awkardly by the Riley minion (and someone holds up a "Censored" poster).
3. During screen!Buffy's slow-motion gymnastics, stage!Buffy holds up a sign that says "stunt double."
4. During Spike's part, the cue-card girl holds up a sign that says "Whipped."
5. The Buffy/Spike stage!kiss at the end? It was... enthusiastic. :)

Sara videoed the audience holding up lighters during "Where Do We Go from Here?" but it's so dark you can't even see what's going on. You can hear everyone singing, though.

The whole audience sang all the songs. Aww, big happy nerd!family! :)

There was a Battlestar Galactica party that night, and Sara thought it might be interesting, so we went to that, too. Actually what happened was that we went to the wrong thing, and it was a live band saying very crude things to an audience who kept cheering at each cuss word... and we stayed for about five minutes and tried to figure out where we made a wrong turn. We finally realized that the BSG thing was next door, so that's where we went, and it was much nicer. We didn't stay very long, though.

By this time, it was nearly two in the morning, and we were all so tired that we were stumbling over our own feet and walking as though we were drunk - which now that I think about it probably means that we fit right in with everyone else. We stumbled back to our hotel, and as soon as we walked into the room, we each got a second-wind type thing. I had brought my laptop (which had been fixed just in time to take with me!) so we used it to look at the photos we'd taken, and Sara and I watched the pilot episode of Supernatural. I stayed up even later to look through the schedule of events and plan what I wanted to do on Saturday, and I ended up not getting to sleep until around 4:30.

Saturday

We missed the parade. It was at ten, and I got up in time to see it, but the three of us didn't get ourselves ready in time. Sara was supposed to leave then because she was meeting our other sister Amy at the beach to celebrate their birthday, but there was a Battlestar Galactica celebrity panel happening at 11:30 that she really wanted to see. I told her I would buy her a Saturday pass for her birthday if she wanted to stay and see it, so she called and changed plans.

We put Sara's stuff in her car before walking back down to the Hyatt, since she wasn't planning to come back to the hotel room.

Mama was just happy to be there. (My mother is half Japanese, but she self-identifies as white. I never think about her being mixed-race until I see pictures of her.)

On the way back to the Hyatt, a guy strapped to the front of a car waved at us. I can only assume that he was part of the parade. We also saw the Ghostbusters car and some miscellaneous ghostbusters, but I didn't manage to get a picture.

I took this picture as we passed the Hilton. I was trying to show how many people crossed the street all at once, but i was too late and the camera has a delay of a couple seconds, so most of the people had already crossed when it took the picture. If you look closely, though, you can see our beloved Captain Tightpants, as well as Wash and a blue-hand guy.

We went straight to the place where registration was going on, but there was a reeeeally long line. It was already 11:00, and we knew that if we got in line then we'd miss the panel at 11:30. So, instead of registering for Saturday as well, Sara just put on her Friday pass and her hoodie, which covered up the word "Friday" on the pass, and we walked right by the people checking badges without being asked to stop. We are criminals.

There was already a line for the BSG panel. We sat down in the line, and I looked up and noticed Line Guy directly in front of me again, so we chatted for a bit. He wasn't in line for the BSG thing, but there was something going on in the room next door that he was waiting for. Something with swords... I don't know. It was funny though, because when everyone stood up to go into the panel, Line Guy was actually the only one not in line for it.

The people on the panel were: James Callis, Aaron Douglas, a dude with like six doctorates who explains space things to the script writers, the woman who plays Saul's wife Ellen, Tahmoh Somethingorother (the guy who plays Helo), and Richard Hatch, who was Apollo on the original series and now plays a different character.

James Callis, Aaron Douglas, Dr. Dude. The pictures we took in this room turned out fuzzy for some reason, which sucks because the Q&A with Nick Brendan was in the same room.

I wish I were a BSG fan, because I would have known exactly what was going on in this panel if I had been. Sara really enjoyed it, though.

Highlights from the Battlestar Galactica Celeb Panel:
1. James Callis talked about the "ludicrous flesh-colored underpants" that he had to wear during a love scene with Number Six.
2. An audience member suggested that Tahmoh and Richard Hatch sitting next to each other looked like a boxer and his manager doing a press conference, so then Tahmoh started acting like a boxer and Aaron stood up to challenge him. Aaron ended up jumping into Tahmoh's arms, which was pretty hilarious, but then when Tahmoh put him down, Aaron started kind of limping away, and then he announced, "I banged my wang on his shoulder - fight's off!"
3. Aaron told a funny story about Edward James Almos, who apparently ate something really nasty before doing a scene where they had to talk into each other's faces. Aaron said his own face melted off and he had no olfactory senses for the next two weeks.
4. Someone complimented Aaron on his performance as an officer in the military and asked where he drew his inspiration. He said, "I'm from Canada. We have a gun."
5. This isn't really a highlight, but it nearly made me cry: Someone asked how much of the emotion is real when the actors are acting a scene - how much of the character they take home with them once they get into the headspace of the character, etc... and Aaron said that the writers hadn't known it, but that his wife had died of cancer a couple of months before they had to shoot scenes with Aaron being sad over the death of another character. He said that when you play an emotion, you have to really feel the emotion for it to be convincing, and he was thinking about his wife when he played those scenes, so he really was sad when he was acting. And then when they yelled "Cut!" and everyone started talking and laughing with each other, he was still sitting there in the sadness that he's in so he can act, and it's really hard to just turn it off. I wanted to go up and hug him! *sniffle*
6. James Callis was wearing an Atlanta Braves hat. :)

Here's the clip of James Callis talking about the love scenes. I like his accent.

Sara left right after the BSG thing. On the way out, she saw Richard Hatch walking around like he was just a fan and not a celebrity guest, and someone asked him why he didn't go out the same way the other celebs went out, and he said that he didn't think he ought to get special treatment just because he was on a TV show, which I thought was kind of nice. But at the same time, I wonder if he was really just walking with the fans to see who recognized him.

The Nicholas Brendan Q&A was in the same room, and they didn't clear the room beforehand, so Mama and I just moved up. The seats weren't spectacular, but I had a good view and I didn't have to run up to the front to take pictures. Nicky was funny and friendly and kind of charming. I thought he looked good, too. He had gained a little weight during the later seasons of Buffy, and he looked pretty much the same on Kitchen Confidential, but at Dragon*Con, he was thinner and... did he have more hair? Anyway, he looked swell. As opposed to swollen. :)

Most of my pictures of Nicky turned out kind of fuzzy. I completely blame the room we were in. I also had to brighten these, so they're not very high quality at all.

Fuzzy! :(

He started off the panel wearing a hat, but it got voted off the island when he asked the fans if he should wear it or not.

Here are some links to better pictures at Nicky's Q&A:
1, 2, 3. They were taken by someone named Patcave.

Highlights from the Q&A with Nicholas Brendan:
1. Someone mentioned Xander's relationship with Giles. Nick said, "Yeah, very gay."
2. He performed this line from "Once More with Feeling": "It could be witches, some evil witches, which is ridiculous cause witches, they were persecuted, wicca good and love the earth and women power, and I'll be over here..." without being asked to do it.
3. Someone asked how we knew he was himself and not his twin brother. He stood up and started unbuckling his pants. :D Then he took off his shirt and showed us his tattoo instead. Which meant nothing to me because I didn't even know he had a tattoo, but the fans loved it. :)
4. He told an interesting story about Kelly: During the very first stunt Kelly did for him on Buffy, he dislocated his shoulder and had to go to the hospital. He was fired. Nicky talked to Gareth Davies and said, "It's a perfect match! What more could you want?" and ended up getting him hired again. He loves working with his brother, which is kind of sweet.
5. He told a story about his favorite blooper:

He starts off talking about Joss wanting to kill Xander, but then he tells a kind of funny story involving James Marsters.

6. He did the ~~Scooby~~ Snoopy dance! Fun stuff.

This is actually a variation on the ~~Scooby~~ Snoopy Dance, I think... didn't he have his arms down by his sides in the episode? (I shouldn't nitpick. It's sweet that he did it at all.)

At one point, some guy asked if Nicky realized that everyone in the room wanted to go home with him (or something to that effect) and prefaced the question with a reference to a Q&A James Marsters did where someone asked if he knew that everyone wanted to sleep with him... only the guy asking the question said James Masters, and immediately everyone in the room said "Marsters! It's Marsters!" so Nicky didn't hear the rest of the question. He sort of chuckled and asked, "Is this a gay thing?" and then asked the guy to repeat the question - which he did, but he again mispronounced James' name and again everyone started calling out "Marsters!" and Nicky said, "Yeah, that was the first problem," indicating the yelling. I don't think he ever did hear the whole question, which is just as well because it wasn't true - I like Nicky alright, but I have never actually wanted to go home with him. (He ended up just saying something like, "Yes. Does that answer the question? It does? Then my answer is yes, absolutely.")

What I like about Nicholas Brendan is this: he seems to really enjoy interacting with the fans. He doesn't act like he's tired of talking about the Xander character, and he does his Xander lines without being asked to (stay tuned - he does it again later), and he does the ~~Scooby~~ Snoopy dance because he knows we'll get a kick out of it. He just seems like a genuinely nice guy. Also, for those interested, he is divorced and recently broke up with his girlfriend, so... single. And perhaps looking for a rebound? ;)

After the Q&A, my mom and I high-tailed it to the bottom level of the Hyatt for $10,000 Crypt. On the way, we stopped at a big Jabba sculpture and took a picture of some gold-bikinied Princess Leias.

There were like ten girls dressed this way.

$10,000 Crypt was a game-show type thing based on $10,000 Pyramid, complete with celebrity guests Andy Hallet (Lorne from Angel) and James Leary (Clem from Buffy). I was surprised at how small the room was, considering that the event had actors there, but it worked out alright because there weren't really that many people who showed up. Before the guests arrived, we watched a video that had been entered in the video contest. It was called, "I Wish I Was a Lesbian," and was one of the funniest vids I've ever seen. It's about every girl that Angel likes becoming a lesbian. I was going to try to find it online and link to the website of whoever made it, but it's not listed in the Buffyverse Music Video Database, and when I google "I wish I was a lesbian," I get some pretty weird returns... but if you ever have the opportunity, do watch it because it's really funny.

[ETA! The creator of this video is

its_art and she says this in the comments: You mentioned in part one of your post The Lesbian Video. I was the creator of this video. It IS listed at the BMVD, under it's proper title "I.W.I.W.A.L" (Let's Hear it for Femmeslash). You can download it from my website Marauder Productions. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I worked really hard on it. So go! Download!]

Anyway, Andy and James (Andy kept calling him Jimmy, so I guess he goes by that...? But the fans all called him James) came in and sat at the front of the room.

Andy is not this blurry in person.

James is, though.

Two fans were picked to be paired with them for the game. Then the teams chose categories and the actors were given ten Buffy/Angel-related things from those categories, and they had to give their partners clues to guess what the things were. Whichever team got the most correct in one minute won the round. Andy was abysmal. It was hilarious though. During the first round, James and his partner got every clue correct in like 40 seconds, and when it was Andy's turn, he didn't even know where to start! I think part of the problem was that most of the questions had to do with Buffy and not Angel, and he didn't know Buffy that well... but anyway, I laughed a lot at this event. And I recorded Andy's first round to share with y'all!

Just thinking about this makes me giggle. You can see James' head dipping in from the side of the frame when he leans over because he's laughing so hard.

Highlights from $10,000 Crypt:
1. "That's the second word... what's the first word?" Heh!
2. Andy was trying to get his partner to guess the factory, and he said, "It rhymes with... tractor...y..."
3. In the category "Things That Start with W," Andy guessed Wesley correctly, but he couldn't remember Wesley's last name. He was like, "Uhhh... Winthrop... Winston... Watson... Denisof!"
4. The answer was Drusilla, and Andy's partner gave him the clue, "Spike dated..." Andy goes, "Angel!" :D
5. The answer was Mr. Trick, and Andy's partner gave him the clue, "On Halloween, you say..." Andy's answer: "Boo!"
6. The answer was red, and James' partner gave him the clue, "Not pink, but..." I think James guessed black, and then he was like, "Not pink? That's every other color!"

After the game, I met James and Andy.

It's James! He's a funny guy.

This is me with Andy... sort of. I cut myself out because I was doing a weird eye thing (yeah, I don't know) but I'm posting it to prove I did actually meet him. And he did actually put his arm around me.

I think Andy was being a really good sport after the game, because some kid went up behind him and grabbed his pants and started yanking on them while he was trying to take pictures. He was like, "Uh, she's got my pants." But he couldn't really do anything about it because his hands were full, so she just kept jerking at his hips while he was meeting people. I think she thought she was being cute because she kept laughing. Children bother me. But he didn't snatch a knot in her head like I would have done, which I thought was very gracious of him.

I told Andy that I had a friend who couldn't be at Dragon*Con because she lived in England, but that she would want a picture with him if she could have been here, so I asked if I could take another picture of him holding a picture of her, and he was very sweet about it.

This is for

frimfram. Look, you had your picture made with Andy Hallett!

There wasn't another thing that I wanted to do until late that night, so we headed over to the Walk of Fame in the Mariott to meet Nicholas Brendan. It was packed! And they had people directing traffic so that everyone was going in the same direction. I felt like a lemming - like I could just pick up my feet and be carried by the current. There was a long line sticking out of the ballroom too, but it was all browncoats waiting to meet Alan and Summer.

Nicky wasn't sitting at his table when I got there, but there was a pleasant-looking girl sitting there who took my $25 and gave me an 8x10 picture of him. She said that he had just stepped away for a moment but that he would be back soon. I waited behind two gay guys who had gotten there before me. One of them turned around and asked me what character Summer Glau had played on Buffy because he couldn't remember. I told him she was on Angel, not Buffy, and he asked me what episode, and when I told him I think he still didn't know what character it was. I have a hard time imagining someone liking the Buffy show better than the Angel show, so it's frustrating when a fan doesn't know something simple like which episode "Waiting in the Wings" is.

Anyway, Nicky came back and I met him, and he was really supernice. I asked him to write "Nothing can defeat the penis" on my picture, and he laughed and repeated it back to me in a loud voice, just the way he did it on the show, which was really funny. See, being happy to do Xander lines even though no one actually asked him to is something that I just think is really nice of him, because he knows that the fans will like it.

This is my favorite Xander line of all time, even though it's from "Beer Bad," which is... not quite as good an episode as "Hush."

I also had a stick-picture of Tisa that I was going to ask him to hold, but there was a sign up over his table that said, "Absolutely no photographs," or something like that, because you could take professional photos with him if you paid for it. So I didn't ask him to hold the sign, and I'm sorry

spankspike... but do know that I was thinking about you! (Patcave took a picture of him anyway! Here is a picture of Nicky at his table. ETA: Hi-res picture of Nicholas Brendan taken by Ray Radlein... I think it's in the Walk of Fame, but I'm not sure.)

Afterwards, we went to meet James Callis, who is just about the nicest person ever. The reason that I wanted to meet him even though I'm not a BSG fan is because my friend David thinks that he's an amazing actor, and he wanted to be at Dragon*Con to meet him but had something else he had to do for work. David asked me to take lots of pictures of James, so I wanted to go talk to him even though I didn't particularly want his autograph. He had a bit of a line - about five people. When I got up to the table to talk to his assistant, I asked if I could just take a picture instead of buying an autograph, and he said that it was fine, but they were asking people to donate to a charity if they wanted to take photos. I asked him how much of a donation they wanted and he said any amount was fine, so I gave $10 and took this picture:

I wasn't planning to be in the picture with him, but he put his arm around me before I could get away, so I just cropped myself out. I can't really get over how absolutely nice and friendly this guy was, especially considering the character he plays. If I start to watch BSG, it might just be because of him. [I printed this photo and gave it to David at work on Tuesday, and he totally freaked out and thought it was awesome.]

On the way out of the Walk of Fame, my mom nearly bumped into Andy Hallett near the stairs and didn't even notice. Heh.

There was a smallish dealer room right beside the Walk of Fame, so I went hunting for Angel action figures. There was only one booth set up in that room that had Buffy/Angel figures, and I bought a Series One Buffy Angel in human face, which came with a sword and a claddagh ring. He instantly became my favorite action figure.

After that, I nearly dropped dead of exhaustion because we hadn't eaten anything or had very much sleep. The next thing we wanted to do was at 10PM, so we decided to go back to the Sheraton and rest. On the walk back, we met a cute guy from Virginia, who was carrying some Serenity merch, and the three of us walked together and chatted. I only mention this because we came across a discarded black thong on the sidewalk leading back to our hotel, and he had a funny reaction. :)

There was an Indian wedding going on at the Sheraton - Patel/Patel. The outfits were very pretty and very sparkly. That has nothing to do with Dragon*Con.

We bought some really expensive (but tasty) sandwiches at the hotel and then took a nap. I fell asleep with chewing gum in my mouth, and when I woke up, I closed my teeth and bit into the gum, and for one terrifying second I thought I had bitten through my tongue and somehow not felt it. That also has nothing to do with Dragon*Con.

Cut here because the post is too long!
Click for the next part.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

shapinglight

Very interesting and fun to read (knew it would be).

Also, you're right about the bloke being Spike in OMWF looking more like Angel. I suspect a Bangel 'shipper plot.

From:

girlpire.livejournal.com

heh. i suspect none of the spike-alikes were brave enough to try it! he did an amazing job, though. i was very impressed ~~and turned on~~. :)

open your thighs to fate.

Massive Dragon*Con Report, pt. 1

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