DragonCon--Day 3 (Sunday)

[dmarley]

Warning! There are some mild spoilers for the remainder of season 8 of Stargate below. The spoilers only involve actor appearances, but if you hate spoilage of any kind you should skip the paragraph marked "Spoilers."

This was the day I had been waiting for. Christopher Judge and Tony Amendola were slated to appear in the "Jaffa!" panel at 10am. Albert and I got there early, and once the Iron Artist panel was over I found xochiquetzl and Dionysus near the front and sponged off their good fortune to get good seats.

The panel rocked. Chris started out by asking who was hungover, and got quite a few raised hands, including his own and Tony's. Then he asked if there were any kids in the audience, since he tended to cuss a lot and wanted to know if he needed to restrain himself. There was at least one kid in the front, and Chris told him that every time he said a cuss word, he'd give the kid a dollar. The kid, though, said no. Chris was so amazed by this that he came down and took the kid (whose name was Drake) up to sit with him and Tony for the rest of the panel.

Now, Drake appeared to be very nonchalant about all this. He was a good sport, but he also looked as though he were kind of bored. That is, until his sister (I think it was his sister) got up to the microphone and revealed that the two of them had waited in the lobby of the Marriott for hours the night before hoping to see Chris (who said, "Not unless you were there at 5:30 this morning"). She said Drake was so excited he was bouncing up and down, and she'd had to hold the top of his head to keep him still. So, the cool was all an act.

Anyway, the first question was, I think, about something that Teryl Rothery had said at an earlier convention. Chris looked at Drake, stood up, and handed him five dollars without saying a word. I think he ended up giving him $26 dollars, but he only used up about 6 or 7 in cuss words. Don't know if the kid got to keep the change. :)

Spoilers

Probably the best news from the panel was that Bra'tac will be returning in several more episodes this season. I think he said he would be in a total of eight, so we have something like five more to go. Chris also said that he was pitching an idea for a three-episode arc, and indicated that Ishta would be returning for more episodes.

End Spoilers

One of the hightlights of the panel, though, came when it was xochiquetzl's turn to ask a question. Her question was a simple one, "Will you be writing any more episodes?" but Chris's answer was interrupted by a cell phone ringing in the audience.

Now, this had happened before, while the owner of the phone was asking a question, and Chris had answered the phone himself. The first call was cut off, but the second time he talked for a couple of minutes, explaining that CT (the owner of the phone) was there, but someone else was answering his phone. He was about to ring off when the audience told him to at least say who he was, and Chris asked, "Do you watch Stargate?" and then was cut off. Never did find out if the guy was a Stargate fan or not.

Anyway, while Xochiquetzl was at the mike, another phone rang and Chris, once again, answered it. He was having trouble hearing the other person, and spent most of the call saying "Hello? Rachel? Can you hear me?" He was doing this when Xochiquetzl leaned into the mike and said, in a deep, quiet voice, "Can you hear me now? Good...."

The audience exploded with laughter, and I thought Chris was going to have a heart attack. It wasn't just that her voice came out of nowhere, as if the mysterious Rachel had managed to broadcast over the mike, it was that Xochiquetzl had said it in such a deep, sultry, bedroom voice. :) She asked if she'd just blown her chance for a hug, and Chris said, "No, I think you just increased it." He and Tony both gave her hugs.

After the panel, I went out and met Albert, who'd been waiting at the table outside, and found out that he'd spent a couple of minutes chatting with Chris and Tony while they were waiting to go in. Damn the luck! Actually, it was Albert's Japanese kanji book that started the conversation (which happened a lot over the course of the convention). They asked him what he was doing, and he told them, and they talked briefly about the weather in
Canada. If only I'd had the forsight to not go to the panel and sit out there and study Japanese instead....:)

I was supposed to meet Erynn for the James Marsters panel, but "Jaffa!" ran long, so I skipped it. We'd agreed that if I missed Marsters we were to meet afterwards, and so we did, then headed off to the "Fans Have Writes, Too" panel, which was about fan fiction. graculus was there, and the panel turned out to be an interesting and lively discussion of writing techniques, the importance of canon, and characterizations. Very satisfying.

One thing we touched on was how the movie versions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers had shown a closer relationship between Legolas and Aragorn than the books did, and a less close relationship between Legolas and Gimli. I'm not particularly interested in Legolas/Aragorn stories (I prefer Legolas/Gimli myself :)), but we agreed that the movies provided a definite venue for a Legolas/Aragorn reading. After the writers panel, Graculus, Erynn and I went to the "Return of the King Preview" panel given by folks from TheOneRing.net, and the first thing we saw was a still of Aragorn kneeling with Legolas standing behind him, hand on his shoulder. The caption was "Legolas comforts Aragorn." It's a good thing Erynn and I were near the back, because we were doubled over laughing and otherwise making complete idiots of ourselves.

Afterwards, we all went to the food court (I think that I actually spent more time there than anywhere else the entire con) and hung out for a while, until it was time for Graculus to leave for the Welcome Back Daniel Jackson party.

The WBDJ party was a good time. There were songvids, cookies, and door prizes. I won a Stargate TVGuide (which I gave away to the kid from the trivia contest), some toys, and a camoflague pen on a string, which turned out to be very handy. Tony Amendola dropped by for a few minutes, which was pretty darn cool. I left kind of early because Hunter was going to show Zero Prospect around 10 in his room, and I wanted to see the final cut.

After the movie, Erynn and I talked about story ideas for a while, which was great. I don't actually get much of an opportunity to do that, since none of my close friends here write or read fan fiction. They're really terrific and supporting about it, but I can't really geek out with them over the significant looks exchanged by Jack and Daniel in the latest episode or whether or not Jack could overcome his revulsion of Goa'uld's enough to have sex with Teal'c. Even though Erynn writes het and doesn't read slash, and I write slash and don't read (much) het, we still have a lot in common with how we approach stories. It was a lot like when we first started writing fan fiction back in high school, when we'd get on the phone and read our stories out loud to each other late at night. I miss that.

Eventually, Hunter put on the spacesuit costume from the movie, complete with little fans to keep the helmet from steaming up, and went out to walk around. We rode down in the elevator with him, which was an experience, and then Albert and I headed back to the room.