DragonCon--Day 1 (Friday)

[dmarley]

Did I mention that Thursday night and Friday morning we were sharing the hotels with a drug rep convention? One of my friends was engaged by a rep in conversation and learned that Bayer and Galaxo had joined forces to develop a drug for erectile disfunction. They were all very excited about this, and my friend discovered that by talking to them he would hear the words "erectile disfunction" more times than one would think possible in normal conversation. They had badges that were similar to the DragonCon badges (except that theirs were purple and had the slogan "All Fired Up!" emblazoned across them) and I kept seeing them look at my con badge and then look at me hopefully, as if they were dying to talk to me. Best quote from drunken sales representative in the elevator: "This new quota system is going to rock!" All in all, we've shared convention space with worse.

Friday was panel day. Well, it was panel day once the panels started at 1. I was standing in the lobby of the Hyatt around 11:30 or so and eventually noticed that the person standing near the "All Fired Up!" luggage drop sign was graculus. We roamed around, had lunch, and toured the dealer's room. I broke a rule about first-day buying and purchased three sets of collector's cards for $10: The Stargate Season 5 set, a Sleepy Hollow set, and a LOTR Two Towers set (which wasn't supposed to have been in the bargain bin but which the dealer let me have for the bargain price anyway). We then headed over to the Hyatt for the Stargate Mission Briefing. I met Marge at that panel for the first time, and ended up spending quite a bit of time with her over the course of the con, but was dumbass enough to not get her e-mail (so, Marge, if you read this, e-mail me, okay?) After the Mission Briefing, I tried to get in to see John Rhys-Davies at 4, but the room was full a half hour before the start of the panel.

Thwarted in my pursuit of Gimli-love, I went to the bathroom, and, lo! ran into Erynn Lasgalen, the one person I'd most wanted to find and hadn't yet. I knew she'd be there, but I'd been a slack-ass and hadn't made any arrangements to meet her, so it was sheer luck that I found her a couple of hours after her arrival. Whee! We sat and yakked and then went to the Marriott and sat and yakked and gathered some folks together for dinner, including my sister and another of my old friends from high school. Because Erynn and I wanted to go to the Yaoi/Yuri panel at 8:30, we went to the closest restaurant we could find, which was the Champions sports bar in the Marriott.

As usual, we spent too much time sitting around and talking, but that's half the con fun. I got to try my sister's blue martini, which I'd never had before, and it was pretty good. Hunter joined us after a while, and told a very funny story about Wil Wheaton geeking at him because he knew the creator of Alpha Centauri. ("Oh, Fartscream? Yeah, I went to college with him.") This led to a discussion of the use of nicknames in differing venues. We left the restaurant around 8, and Erynn and I headed for the Yaoi panel.

The Yaoi panel was fun. I have absolutely no knowledge of anime, but the woman moderating the panel was very perky and enthusiastic about her subject, which went a long way towards making it entertaining. One thing I hadn't realized about yaoi was that the femme/butch dynamic so despaired of in slash fandom is an element of canon in a lot of yaoi. I guess I found it interesting that many of the fanon elements in slash were yaoi canon. But while yaoi has undoubtedly influenced slash, many of the stereotypes existed before yaoi fandom, which makes an interesting statement about the persistence of the stereotypes. I'm not sure if anyone who knew anything about anime learned anything new, but it was a good introduction for me.

After the yaoi panel, Erynn and I went up to our respective rooms to take a break before the "Dirty Girls" Buffy panel at 11:30. I haven't even seen the seventh season of Buffy and don't read or write Buffy fiction, but it was just about the only fan fiction panel, plus I knew harmonyfb would be on it and I wanted to see her. I was almost late to the panel because I thought that Erynn was staying in the Marriott, and by the time I figured out where she was she'd left. Albert and I hiked over to the Hyatt for the panel, and then got lost in the labyrinth underneath (There's are two separate sets of subterranean floors that only connect on certain levels, and we had to go down, back up, back down, across, and up before arriving at the panel). By then, there was standing room only, but luckily a group next to us left near the start of the panel and we nabbed their seats.

The panel was terrific. harmonyfb kicked off the panel by saying, "Cunt" (and other R-rated words) into the microphone, just to set the tone and make sure that people knew what they were getting into. :) As I said, I don't actually read Buffy fan fiction, but since a lot of the same issues come up in most fandoms, I figured it would be interesting, and I was right. It was also interesting to hear about the specific problems/issues that other fandoms have. One of the best moments, though, was when a group of guys from a fandom that I can't, sadly, remember (Star Command, I think) got up and begged the Buffy writers to come write in their fandom, since they didn't have any good smut. Very funny. Most of the questions from the audience were actually the kind that forced the panelists to talk about their own work, but they all did a good job keeping the answers relevant to the discussion and not turning it into a "all about us" fest.

This turned out to be my latest bedtime. After the panel I headed straight back to the room, but then ran into some of our other group on the way. They were a wee bit tipsy, and we had a brief conversation on the steps before parting ways. It was around 2am by the time I got to bed.