Con report: Saturday
Sep. 7th, 2005 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleSaturday morning, we all got to participate in our biggest flauntlike activity to date, the Dragon*Con parade.
The parade was scheduled first thing in the morning on Saturday. This is not quite as awful as it sounds, though, as in deference to the preference of the geeks that populate Dragon*Con, nothing starts until 10 a.m. This gave us plenty of time to wake up, stare around blearily, contemplate the rum, take showers, get dressed, lose costume parts, find costume parts, take pictures, and leisurely stroll down to the park. We ran a little ahead of staging time at 9:30, so got the dubious honor of holding the Wheel of Time group gathering sign. The parade was organized into lettered groups, and we were assigned to Group W. This prompted a joke about being on the Group W bench with the father-rapers and the sister-beaters, but nobody got it, and I felt terribly retro about the whole thing.
In any case, other folks arrived, we organized ourself by color and function, and began the interminable wait for Group W to be called into formation. During this time, there was a brief interlude during which several Aes Sedai attempted to wrest a black-and-white Seal away from Asha'man![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
triadruid, who had been flipping it through his fingers like a street magician manipulates a coin, and doing other things with it likely to break it. We succeeded briefly, and I held onto it for a while, but he somehow managed to retrieve it from me before we started marching. He dropped it several times along the route, but it sustained no more damage than a chip. Sculpey. It may not be cuendillar, but it will hold up through more than you'd expect.
The parade gave the Aes Sedai among our little party time to reflect on something: costuming is costuming, and our costumes were good, but the parade is a public performance, and therefore, calls for schtick. Aes Sedai have very little schtick available to them, so we had to satisfy ourselves with looking haughty, which is not very interesting to watch. We did have opportunity to heap a bit of abuse onto a young lady dressed as a Novice, who was scurrying through the lines handing out bookmarks to people on the streets, but that was about it. Next time, fun personas for the parade, please! Reportedly, Robert Jordan was in the crowd, but I didn't see him. There was a brief moment of entertainment when someone in the crowd yelled out "Death to the Amyrlin!", but sadly, our line had already gone past the yeller quite a ways, and were unable to interact on that.
Following the parade, we all dragged to the watering station and rested a bit, but were driven from our bench by some Tribe fans with water pistols who were hunting down and spraying someone who may have actually been on the show (or at least was surrounded by fangirls).
We then split to the four winds, as was often to be the case for the rest of the weekend. I took in some DangerMouse cartoons and a panel on Southern Horror, which was full of funny moments at the expense of New York editors, who are apparently willing to believe anything about the american South except that it has running water, electricity, and public schools. Also at this panel, I left my shawl behind and had to go back for it. This would be the first of about 17 billion times I had to go back for my shawl that day, leading me to the further costuming observation: No unattached props unless they're so big you can't possibly miss the fact that they're still in your seat.
Later, I went to the Wheel of Time costume contest withtriadruid and wildnsquirrelly. They both entered, I passed on that experience. I got to sit in the crowd and observe. Most of what I got to observe was this: 1) Everybody wants to be Mat Cauthon, 2) The two fellows they had emceeing the event had no business being within 25 feet of a microphone, and 3) Robert Jordan (who was there with his wife in a judging capacity) is a much better writer than speaker. Still, photo ops abounded, and some of the outfits were very cool. triadruid gave the Seal he'd been abusing to Mr. Jordan, but sadly, none of us seemed to catch what the result of that was. He makes a good Asha'man, triadruid. He's twitchy like anything when he wants to be.
For that evening's late-night entertainment, we had gotten passes to a screening of Eternal, a film about Elizabeth Bathory. There had apparently been a limited number of passes, and as we waited in the hugeass line for the screening, people went up and down the lines asking for extras. By this time, the goth crowd dominated the costume scene, which was okay by me, as I had changed into an outfit which featuredniveus_tigris' gift of collar, cuffs, and chains. This conveyed a number of benefits, not the least of which was getting rid of the damned shawl of earlier. It also made it more difficult for other people to separate me from my party, since I was now chained to triadruid. Also, it perversely decreased the effect of the ridiculous crowd pressure on me, either because a) nobody wanted to get close enough to me to get spiked, or b) having switched from a dominant outfit to a submissive outfit, I didn't really have to worry about anybody I wasn't actually attached to. The fun thing about that set is that all the chains clip on, so I amused myself in the line by clipping other people on periodically.
As it turned out, we should have given away our passes. The film was so bad that I left about 30 minutes into it. I mean, it was free, and I left. That should mean something. I'd write up a more thorough review, but I hate to waste any more time on the awful thing than I have already. I just unhooked myself and went back to the hotel. When the rest of the jolly pirate crew arrived later, they assured me I hadn't missed much.
I think it was at that point that we realized that nobody had ever actually had any of the rum, a trend which was, sadly, to continue throughout the rest of the Con.
Still to come: "Sunday is Pirate Day", "The Long Drive and the Parthenon", and "Rules for Con/Rules for Life".
The parade was scheduled first thing in the morning on Saturday. This is not quite as awful as it sounds, though, as in deference to the preference of the geeks that populate Dragon*Con, nothing starts until 10 a.m. This gave us plenty of time to wake up, stare around blearily, contemplate the rum, take showers, get dressed, lose costume parts, find costume parts, take pictures, and leisurely stroll down to the park. We ran a little ahead of staging time at 9:30, so got the dubious honor of holding the Wheel of Time group gathering sign. The parade was organized into lettered groups, and we were assigned to Group W. This prompted a joke about being on the Group W bench with the father-rapers and the sister-beaters, but nobody got it, and I felt terribly retro about the whole thing.
In any case, other folks arrived, we organized ourself by color and function, and began the interminable wait for Group W to be called into formation. During this time, there was a brief interlude during which several Aes Sedai attempted to wrest a black-and-white Seal away from Asha'man
triadruid, who had been flipping it through his fingers like a street magician manipulates a coin, and doing other things with it likely to break it. We succeeded briefly, and I held onto it for a while, but he somehow managed to retrieve it from me before we started marching. He dropped it several times along the route, but it sustained no more damage than a chip. Sculpey. It may not be cuendillar, but it will hold up through more than you'd expect.The parade gave the Aes Sedai among our little party time to reflect on something: costuming is costuming, and our costumes were good, but the parade is a public performance, and therefore, calls for schtick. Aes Sedai have very little schtick available to them, so we had to satisfy ourselves with looking haughty, which is not very interesting to watch. We did have opportunity to heap a bit of abuse onto a young lady dressed as a Novice, who was scurrying through the lines handing out bookmarks to people on the streets, but that was about it. Next time, fun personas for the parade, please! Reportedly, Robert Jordan was in the crowd, but I didn't see him. There was a brief moment of entertainment when someone in the crowd yelled out "Death to the Amyrlin!", but sadly, our line had already gone past the yeller quite a ways, and were unable to interact on that.
Following the parade, we all dragged to the watering station and rested a bit, but were driven from our bench by some Tribe fans with water pistols who were hunting down and spraying someone who may have actually been on the show (or at least was surrounded by fangirls).
We then split to the four winds, as was often to be the case for the rest of the weekend. I took in some DangerMouse cartoons and a panel on Southern Horror, which was full of funny moments at the expense of New York editors, who are apparently willing to believe anything about the american South except that it has running water, electricity, and public schools. Also at this panel, I left my shawl behind and had to go back for it. This would be the first of about 17 billion times I had to go back for my shawl that day, leading me to the further costuming observation: No unattached props unless they're so big you can't possibly miss the fact that they're still in your seat.
Later, I went to the Wheel of Time costume contest with
triadruid and wildnsquirrelly. They both entered, I passed on that experience. I got to sit in the crowd and observe. Most of what I got to observe was this: 1) Everybody wants to be Mat Cauthon, 2) The two fellows they had emceeing the event had no business being within 25 feet of a microphone, and 3) Robert Jordan (who was there with his wife in a judging capacity) is a much better writer than speaker. Still, photo ops abounded, and some of the outfits were very cool. triadruid gave the Seal he'd been abusing to Mr. Jordan, but sadly, none of us seemed to catch what the result of that was. He makes a good Asha'man, triadruid. He's twitchy like anything when he wants to be. For that evening's late-night entertainment, we had gotten passes to a screening of Eternal, a film about Elizabeth Bathory. There had apparently been a limited number of passes, and as we waited in the hugeass line for the screening, people went up and down the lines asking for extras. By this time, the goth crowd dominated the costume scene, which was okay by me, as I had changed into an outfit which featured
niveus_tigris' gift of collar, cuffs, and chains. This conveyed a number of benefits, not the least of which was getting rid of the damned shawl of earlier. It also made it more difficult for other people to separate me from my party, since I was now chained to triadruid. Also, it perversely decreased the effect of the ridiculous crowd pressure on me, either because a) nobody wanted to get close enough to me to get spiked, or b) having switched from a dominant outfit to a submissive outfit, I didn't really have to worry about anybody I wasn't actually attached to. The fun thing about that set is that all the chains clip on, so I amused myself in the line by clipping other people on periodically. As it turned out, we should have given away our passes. The film was so bad that I left about 30 minutes into it. I mean, it was free, and I left. That should mean something. I'd write up a more thorough review, but I hate to waste any more time on the awful thing than I have already. I just unhooked myself and went back to the hotel. When the rest of the jolly pirate crew arrived later, they assured me I hadn't missed much.
I think it was at that point that we realized that nobody had ever actually had any of the rum, a trend which was, sadly, to continue throughout the rest of the Con.
Still to come: "Sunday is Pirate Day", "The Long Drive and the Parthenon", and "Rules for Con/Rules for Life".
