San Diego Comic-Con Report: 2009 Edition Part 1

[corrielle]

We survived Comic-Con 2009!  And what's more, we have our sanity, all of our limbs, a whole lot of free swag, and some awesome memories.


On Wednesday, I had to give a final to my summer school class in the morning.  I had told my students that they would have the entire class period to finish the final, which is a computer-based grammar post-test I'm required to give, but I had not expected any of them to use all of that time.  Of course, because I was in a hurry to leave, some of them did use all of the time.  And so I stayed.  I didn't get back to the house until around 1:30, and after eating lunch, packing the car, and making sure the cats had food and litter for the weekend, we didn't leave until after 3:00. In the car with me were gaelic_bohemian and caedhe, two of my seven con room mates.

The drive to San Diego went fairly smoothly.  There wasn't a lot of traffic, and we found our hotel very easily.  We stayed in Old Town again, which is farther away from the con than the hotels on the shuttle route, but it's close to a trolley station and close to a whole bunch of wonderful little restaurants.  It's also quieter and less crowded than the closer con hotels.  When we got there, we met yamikonumber7 and... Squeak, whose lj name I don't know.  They were waiting for us to be let into the hotel room.  We got most of our stuff that we needed for the night up to the room, claimed a bed, and Rae, Neko and I went down to the trolley station to buy our passes for the weekend.  Unfortunately, the ticket window was already closed, and we ended up buying our Wednesday one-day passes from the machine.

We got to the con and found lynxgriffin (and tegurunrampant?), who handed us our badges.  We got into preview night for only a little while before getting herded out by con security.  The one thing I did get to do was bother the people at the BBC America booth about their sad lack of anything resembling Robin Hood merchandise. They had Doctor Who and Torchwood books and toys and other stuff coming out their ears, but when I asked about Robin, they shook their heads.  One girl very kindly told me that the series was going to be on BBCA in a couple of months, and I grinned and told her I'd have to watch it again when it came on.  The "exhibit hall" was just as huge as I remember it being, and I made a mental note of where the things I wanted to do were.  In the midst of all of this, we got to talk to Frank Beddor, who wrote The Looking Glass Wars, and he was a total sweetheart who was excited to talk to Neko, who is a huge fan. When the hall closed, we hopped back on the trolley to go back to the hotel.  Back in Old Town, I had a noodle bowl for dinner (thank goodness for the portable kettle we brought from home), and we listened to yamikonumber7 do readings from an entirely inappropriate old children's book that Squeak had brought with her about a family of cats. I... cannot even begin to describe the hilarity that went on there.  For having as many people in the room as we had, I couldn't have asked for a more congenial, lovely group of room mates.  All of you are awesome.



Every year, I say that I want to go to the theonering.net panel.  Every year, they have it at either 10 or 10:30, and every year, I'm not up in time to get a good spot in line. Someday, I'm actually going to go to that panel.  This year, I got close. I got to the con before the panel started, but the line for the room was ridiculous. I did run into sizzlemuffin and some of the hobbit ladies very near the front of the line.  I haven't seen her in what feels like a thousand years, so I chatted with her for a while about life and horses and other things.  I could have snuck into line with her, but Rae wasn't with me yet, and I felt bad jumping into line ahead of all of the other people who had waited. So I didn't, and when I got in the back of the line, it was obvious that I wasn't going to be getting in.  It was no big loss.  I told myself, "Next year!" and when Rae caught up with me, we went down to the exhibit hall to see if we could score some free books before the next group of panels we were interested in.

One of the most awesome areas in the exhibit hall is the row where all of the publishers are set up.  If you hang around for long enough, you will eventually be around when the booths put out the advance reader's copies they are planning to give away, and you can end up with a whole stack of books.  For the more brazen among us, straight-up asking, "Do you have any books you're giving away?" also works quite well if you phrase it right.  Some publishers have set schedules of when they're going to hand out what book, and all you have to do is show up at the right time and they'll hand you a copy.  I may have planned some of my activities around making sure I was in the right place at the right time... especially because the Tor booth was giving out first books in several series I have been wanting to read.  Anyway, I ended up with about ten books in the hour or so Rae and I hung around the book aisles, including the one I reviewed yesterday that I ended up carrying around for the rest of con.  I bought one book on Thrusday morning.  It was half off, and it's a book called Vampire Haiku.  I laughed at the title too... but it's really neat.  All of the poems go together to form a longer story, and some of the poems are extraordinarily dark and clever.

My big priority on Thursday was the Burn Notice panel, which was going to be held in Ballroom 20, the second largest room at the con. Even though the place probably seats several thousand people (anyone know Ballroom 20's capacity?), it can still be really hard to get into if the panel is popular enough. Just to be on the safe side, Rae and I wanted to show up early before Burn Notice.  And by early, I mean two panels before.  This was not such a bad thing, though, because the panel before Burn Notice was called "Wonder Women: Female Power Icons in Pop Culture."  On the panel were Sigourney Weaver, Eliza Dushku, Elizabeth Mitchell (who's from Lost, which I don't watch... but she was smart and interesting, so that was awesome), and Zoe Saldana.  Guys... guys... Just in case you missed it, I got to be in a room with Zoe Saldana. *squeeflail*  For those of you who don't know this... I have found her to be spectacularly amazing for a really long time.   She was Anamaria in Curse of the Black Pearl, where she was gorgeously beautiful and woefully underused. (And sorely missed in the next two PotC movies.)  She's one of the only actors in the PotC universe who I still hadn't seen in person, and I had kind of given up the hope of it happening.  But then... I saw her name in the program, and I knew I had to be there.  The conversation itself was great fun to listen to.  Sigourney Weaver is incredibly smart and well-spoken, and she said some really thoughtful things about being a woman and an actor. (I wish I could remember what some of them were... my notes for this panel mostly revolve around how beautiful Zoe and Eliza are.  Zoe looked stunning.)  They talked about the need to approach their characters as complex, whole people who happen to be women rather than strictly as women, and they talked about times when they've been able to talk to directors and producers about the way their characters were being portrayed and get positive changes made.  Eliza talked about working with Joss, and Elizabeth Mitchell talked about having to play her morally ambiguous character as if she believed she were right all of the time, because no one really makes decisions consciously believing that they're the wrong ones.  It was fun so see Zoe and Sigourney Weaver interact like old friends since both of them are working on Avatar together... they seem to have a sweet friendship going.  Zoe talked about getting to play Uhura a bit, but my favorite thing she said was when one of the fans asked the panel what they thought of the rumors that Megan Fox had been cast as Wonder Woman.  The person asking the question wanted to know if they thought this role needed an older, more "regal" actor.  Zoe's response made me happy forever.  She smiled a bit wickedly and said something to the effect of, "I've got a huge crush on Megan Fox, so I'm not hating that idea..." (For the record, I think Megan Fox is lovely, and I haven't seen her act, so I'm withholding judgment. But the idea of Zoe crushing on her makes my life.) I was very sad to see that I couldn't find her anywhere in the autograph schedule, or I would have been there.  I don't care what I would have had to miss.

On the heels of that heady fandom experience, I was in for another one. The Burn Notice panel was fantastic.  First of all, it was moderated by Michael Shanks, who played Victor in season two.  He's snarky and funny and knows the show really well, so he had a great rapport with the panelists and asked smart questions.  In attendance were Matt Nix (the creator), Alfredo Barrios Jr. (one of the producers) Bruce Campbell, Nate Westen's actor, and the guys who play Brennan (a recurring villain) and Strickler (Michael's new way back into the game?).  Throughout the panel, they showed video clips of Michael giving tips about how to do such things as get the best con swag or delay a panel when two things you want to see are happening at the same time. ("The key phrase here is technical difficulties.  Unplug enough microphones, and you'll probably be able to keep the second panel from starting until you arrive.  Just remember, you're looking for delay, not cancellation.")  It was completely in character, and it was hilarious.  There is such a sense that everyone on this show really loves it.  I don't just mean they love it because it's their job and it's getting them a good measure of success.  They love it because it's... something special.  During the actual Q&A, there were too many funny moments for me to remember... Here are the ones I wrote down:

-Someone asked about Nate getting more screen time and perhaps having Sam take him under his wing, and Matt Nix leans across the table and asks Seth Petersen (Nate), "So, would you like to be on the show some more?" And Seth shrugs and says, "Yeah, sure..." And the crowd went wild.   

-When talking about Michael's father, Matt Nix said that he hadn't meant to start speculation about missing parents by having Michael's father be dead by the time the show started.  He made a quip about "some other spy show that has already had missing parents coming back..." which had all of the Alias fans laughing.  Then, he assured us in the most wonderfully deadpan way, "Michael's father... did not burn him."

- Bruce Campbell is one of the most hilarious human beings ever. I had never gotten to see him in person before, and.... wow. I think I cracked up every time he opened his mouth, and some times when he didn't.  His facial expressions were priceless.  And also, he apparently sometimes hands out cash to people who ask flattering questions.  My favorite: "So, are all of Sam's funny lines Bruce's?" His reply, I think, after he'd given her some cash from his wallet, was something along the lines of, "Matt just blows shit up."  The other brilliant moment was the girl who asked what Bruce would be drinking since we know that Sam likes mojitos so much.  

-  At one point, they were all joking about the possibility of a combination spy AND zombie movie.  Someone (Bruce, I think...) said it would be called "Dead Notice" and Matt Nix starts Michael-monologuing, "There's a reason you want to fight a zombie with a chainsaw..." I think most of us just about died of laughter.

- They also showed a preview for the rest of season 3.  There was... a lot of stuff in there that made me want more.  It looks like Michael is close, very close, to getting back in, but there were also shots of him getting kidnapped, and Fi along with him.  There was also a very tense conversation between Fi and Michael where he says something like, "One fight and you're leaving?" And she says, "I'm going home."  (At least... that's my very vague memory of it.  My brain malfunctioned at the word "fight."  It must have been one hell of a fight to make her leave, though Fi's dissatisfaction with the status quo has been building all season.)

With the Burn Notice Panel over, Rae and I went to pick up noirrosaleen at the hotel and show her the ropes of how to get to con. We were lucky that the hotel had let her into our room without one of us there, or she would have been stuck in the lobby for a long while.  We stopped for dinner at a Mexican place called Rancho Corona in Old Town, and I had delicious chicken mole enchiladas and a really great pina colada. We got noirrosaleen to con in time to get her badge and, I think, show her the dealer's hall for a while, and then we left her to her own devices while we grabbed Neko and headed back to the hotel to watch the latest Burn Notice episode. (I wish there had been a showing at con... but there wasn't. I miss having the shows I watched conveniently shown in big rooms so I can watch with lots of other fans... too bad I don't pay much attention to SciFi Fridays any more.)  The episode... was a relief.  I'd been worried sick about Fi since I saw her get "shot" in last week's preview, and it was good to see that they were faking those wounds, because they were in bad places. I like that this was another "Michael gets emotionally involved with a kid with a troubled home" episode.  The way he related to the kid was just right, and the scene where Michael has him help make the bug to keep him out of trouble?  Priceless. At the end of the episode, though... he takes Strickler's deal.  I don't know if Fi knows he's done it yet, and there is going to be a (perhaps literal) firestorm of the century when she finds out.  (Edited to add:  I have since seen the most recent episode.  I've been writing this con report all week.  Fi's reaction was... not as explosive as I thought it might be, but no less heartbreaking.  Don't leave, Fi!  Michael needs you, even when he's being stubborn and single-minded!)

After the show was over, we hopped on the trolley back over to the Hyatt, which is this amazingly fancy hotel right down the street from the con center. estelofimladris, scifichicx, lady_entropy17, and hystericblue42 were all there, as well as the always-fun-to-be-around Tony Lee, who wrote a Doctor Who comic I really do need to get my hands on how that it's all out in trade format. I was tired when I got there, but I really did want to spend time with everyone, since this is the first time I haven't been in a hotel room with the Torchwood crew in... three years or so (in fact, I was rooming with the Torchwood crew before there was a Torchwood... weird...).  Anyway, we had a fun time, made fun of each other, showed off our con swag, and swapped stories.  At some point, quinn_merrick showed up as well, and it was good to see him too... I had an exorbitantly expensive rum and coke and a bit of champagne, which was just enough but not too much.  (Knowing me, "too much" would have had me falling asleep in the lobby rather than dancing on the tables.) It was entirely too late when we finally decided to go back to the hotel, and the trolleys had stopped running. All of them.  This means that noirrosaleen, Rae, and I had to flag down a taxi (which was really easy at 2 AM in front of the Hyatt bar...) to get back to Old Town.  It actually wasn't that expensive when we split the fare three ways, and it was totally worth it to have some fun, relaxing times with this particular group of friends.  I dragged myself through the shower when I got back to the room and promptly fell into bed.



I had toyed with the idea of going to the Stargate: Universe panel on Friday morning. I am on record as an angry Stargate: Atlantis fan, but I'm curious about what they're going to do with the new series. However, seeing as how we had gotten back to the room at around 2 AM, that didn't exactly happen.  We got to con around eleven and hung around in the exhibit hall some more while we waited for it to be time for the Bones panel. I picked up more fun free stuff and hung around the artists' area some.  I had a fun geek moment that I'm sure confused the gentleman manning the booth I was at at the time.  Basically, I found a place that was selling a whole bunch of WWII fighter plane stuff.  Shirts, bookmarks, replicas, that kind of thing. One of the things they had were a bunch of bookmarks (and I love me my bookmarks)  I was looking at them, and I saw that there was a type of plane called a Dauntless.  (Anyone I've ever talked to about Flyboy-verse will know why this is unutterably special.) I grabbed it and excitedly started gesturing to Rae. The older man behind the booth looked at me in a bemused fashion and asked if I knew someone who had flown one.  I told him that I didn't, but that it was exciting to me because of a character I write, and I asked him to tell me a little bit about it.  Turns out that it was an American-built plane that got a lot of use at Midway... (and here endeth my history lesson for the day.)  Anyway, I got myself a bookmark and walked away happy.

About an hour and a half before the Bones panel was due to start, we wandered upstairs to see how long the Ballroom 20 line was. It was long.  This was my first real "standing in line" experience of the con.  For people who know how Comic-Con is set up, they had the line wrapped under pavilions outside all the way down the length of the short side of the convention center - the side that runs from Ballroom 20 down to the room where you turn in your tickets for free stuff, then all the way back down once you got in the door at the far end.  Luckily, they had tents up this year to shade people in line from the sun.  At first, we weren't even in line because they weren't letting more people in line.  We were in a line (more like a slightly organized blob) to eventually get in line.  We ended up talking to some folks with amazing Stargate costumes who had been in the panel, and they seemed like decently intelligent people, so I asked them what they'd thought of the Universe preview.  They... seemed optimistic, so I am now cautiously so. We finally got into the actual line and spent the next hour or so sitting down for a while, standing up and moving a few feet, then sitting down again.  I actually worried for a while that we weren't going to get in, but I didn't need to.

The Bones panel consisted of Hart Hanson and Emily Deschanel.  David Boreanaz was supposed to be there, but his wife is very pregnant and he didn't want to be four hours away from her when she might be going into labor at any second.  So, he recorded a fun, David-esque message from a place where they were filming in Long Beach.

Though I was sad I didn't get to see David (and doubly sad I didn't get to see him interact with Emily...), she and Hart Hanson were really entertaining all on their own. They played off of each other brilliantly.  At one point, someone asked if it had been David's idea to give Booth such an astronomically high sperm count in the episode where he's thinking about donating so Brennan can have a child.  They both laughed and said no, and then Hart started saying something to the effect of, "Booth was a sniper, so even if he only had one..." *hand motion/sound to indicate a bullet hitting its target*

Other fun/intersting things I remember:

Emily did Brennan's "dancing phalanges" thing, and commented on the fact that as soon as Booth showed any reluctance about the baby, Brennan was suddenly less eager.

David is going to be directing the 100th episode.

They want to have Zack back, but his actor is apparently quite busy doing other stuff, so it's a matter of coordinating schedules.

Hart Hanson said that Booth's "who are you" at the end of the last episode wasn't total amnesia, but rather confusion about which version of Brennan she was, since he still had all of the dream memories running around in his head. (YOU COULD HAVE FOOLED ME, SIR!)

Emily is very Brennan-like.  She's smart and loud and opinionated... I love her.  She is very involved as an animal rights activist, which has caused some interesting discussions on the set (and is the reason there weren't any circus animals in the circus episode.  I hadn't even noticed that before now...)

Tamara Taylor (Cam) is apparently one of the most squeamish of the group about the "gross" stuff.  Judging from what I remember about the actors from last year, this doesn't surprise me.

With the Bones panel over, Rae left me to go wander around the exhibit hall some more (and pick me up a copy of Gardens of the Moon at the Tor booth... Thank you!), and I stayed in Ballroom 20 for the Dollhouse panel. I have recently watched all twelve episodes that were aired, and lady_entropy17 had told me that they were going to show the unaired 13th at panel, so I was pretty excited. Joss came out first and talked a little bit about what he was up to and what we could expect in various universes.  There's going to be a comic about Book, which is exciting.  Also, Joss talked about how Alan Tudyk got the role of Alpha after one of the Shakespeare readings at Joss' house where Alan played Julius Cesar in Antony and Cleopatra with a lot of egomania and a bit of psychological imbalance. Wish I could have been a fly on that wall... Also, Alexis Denisof is going to be in the next season of Dollhouse!  That makes me happy.  I've missed seeing his beautiful face on screen.

I know that there were some interesting questions at the panel... I think someone asked Eliza at one point what here favorite "role" was, but honestly, I don't remember any of them.  I was too blown away by the lost episode. It was... amazing.  It's hard to explain.  It was supposed to air between episode eleven and episode twelve.  (After Alpha takes Echo, but before we really figure out why.)  It's one of those episodes, like Firefly's "Out of Gas" that has multiple time periods going on and does all kinds of interesting things to linear storytelling, but somehow manages to make complete sense.  After I realized what he was doing in the first couple of minutes, I was never confused.  The episode takes place in the future, beyond what we've seen in the show, but there are bits and pieces in the past and everywhere in between.  We get to see sides of these characters (especially DeWitt and Topher) that we've never really been shown before, and it takes a lot of these characters to really difficult emotional places. It is... a departure from the rest of the show, in some ways, and I understand why FOX decided that this was the one they wouldn't air, but I also understand why Joss wanted to air it between the pieces of the two-parter.  Knowing what we learn in the 13th episode would have given the events of the finale.... a lot more weight.  There were some familiar faces in this episode... Felicia Day is a major character, and the little girl who played Molly on Heroes is there as well (and she does a fantastic job).  What is the episode actually about, you ask?  Well... it's complicated, but it's basically dealing with the fallout of the imprinting technology being used on a massive scale as an offensive weapon. I only hope that FOX lets the show stay on the air long enough that we can get to this point in the story and tie everything together...

After the episode and the very brief Q&A, I ducked out of the room and found lady_entropy17 so that we could flail about what we had just seen and lend each other moral support.  It was a fantastic bit of television, but it was rough.  Especially for Jess, who relates so much to Topher.  He doesn't have a good time of it in the 13th episode, to say the least.  (Massive kudos to his actor, though... he managed to make me more upset than I have ever been at this show.)

Since it was getting close to dinner time, I went to find Rae, ducked into the dealer's hall for one last purchase, and collected caedhe and noirrosasleen so that we could have our traditional Friday night dinner at Tin Fish.  It wasn't too terribly busy, and I love me some fish and chips and scallops. We ate and talked and watched people from con walk by, and then it was back to the con for one of my favorite con events: The Star Wars Fan Film awards. We found seats near lynxgriffin and yamikonumber7 completely on accident, which was fun since I hadn't seen them all day.  One of the things I really miss about Anime Expo is the focus on fan creations.  Sure, Comic-Con has an Artists' Alley, but most of the people there are professionals, or very nearly so.   I love Comic Con for the actors and the big studios and the huge booths, but I miss the purely fannish joy of the AMV awards and the crossover fanart and other amazing fan creations of the AX artist's alley.  The place at Comic-Con where I most find this "by fans, for fans" spirit is the Star Wars fan films showing.  They're always amazing and fun, and it's so obvious that there was so much love and affection for the Star Wars universe put into them.  And Lucasfilm encourages this.  It's one of the things they've done right over the years, and I love them for it.

This year's entries were great.  I loved the doodled "Star Wars on a Notebook," which was basically the story told as though a grade-school kid was drawing it in the margins of his lined paper.  It was touching and really sweet. The "Saber" cologne add was... funny, sexy, well-choreographed, and otherwise amazing.  Basically, two girls at at a bar, one in white and earth tones, the other in black and red, have an amazing light saber fight over a very ordinary looking guy.  There are clothes sliced off and other humorous Star Wars references... it was great, and it totally deserved all of the awards it won. The other really fun one was "Star Wars Retold," which is basically a girl who hasn't seen Star Wars and is a friend of the film maker telling him what she thinks the story is while animations matching what she's saying go by in the background.  It is... a riot.  The poor girl has since seen Star Wars and was too embarrassed to be at the awards, which is sad.  She wasn't dumb... she just hadn't seen the movies!  (Favorite bits of mine? Leia's "gold suit" and "Hans Solo."  "It's HAN!  H-A-N!" "Yeah, that's what I said... Hans Solo..." All of these videos are up online, as well as a bunch of other finalists.  My favorite that didn't win anything is the Wampa (the ice creature from Hoth) who just wanted to serve Luke tea...  

Just to tell you how cool this was... even the actual "getting the envelope" part was awesome.  Each presenter was handed the envelope by a different awesomely costumed character.  (And Seth Green was one of the presenters!  He was geeking out a LOT.) One of the coolest "costumes" was a black R2-D2. It looked like someone had... made R2 go darkside because the way the lights were arranged was reminiscent of Vader's chest panel... it was SO NEAT.  (I think I got a picture.  I'll have to post it with the others.)

There wasn't much to do after the awards were over, so it was back on the trolley and to our hotel.  I wanted to get a good night's sleep while I could.



On Saturday morning, I hung out with caedhe some as she worked her free book magic. I got signed copies of a couple of books, included a collection of short stories called Geektastic that came with a pocket protector and (appropriately) a box of nerds with the book's cover on the box. I also got to nab another copy of Luck in the Shadows, and Lynn Flewelling was there to sign it.  I also found out that she's working on another book, White Road, that's due out some time next year.  (In checking the name of that book, I stumbled across her lj and this most hilarious "inspirational" poster. Johnny Depp fans should go look.)

Rae hadn't been feeling well when I left the hotel, so I was pretty much left to my own devices for a while.  I got to meet Stephanie Pui-Moon Law, who draws stunningly beautiful fantasy art.  I contemplated buying a print, but wanted to wait for Rae so we could decide on one together. 

One of the things that I really wanted to do on Saturday was go to the Boondock Saints II panel.  I've been hearing rumblings about this movie for years now, and when I saw that Sean Patrick Flannery was going to be there, I decided that it had just become my Saturday priority.  (This only left me 45 minutes after the panel ended to get to True Blood, but I've adored him since I was eleven and saw him in Young Indy... and I knew my old fandom would win over my new one.)  However, it wasn't to be.  I didn't get into the panel, but I have a really good excuse.  Here's what happened... as I was walking around the fantasy artists' area, I saw a guy carrying a really kickass Boondock Saints II poster (that I can't even find a good image of online yet... I'll try to take a pic of mine). I ran after the guy with the poster and asked him where he got it.  He pointed at one of the studio booths, and I ran over there as fast as I could in the Saturday crowd in the exhibit hall.  I got a poster for me and an extra, and as I was getting my poster, the lady at the booth was talking about a signing.  "Who's signing?" I asked.  She looks at me and says, "The whole cast...." I freak out for a moment as quietly as possible and ask if I need a ticket or anything to get an autograph.  She says, "Nope, just show up." 

I showed up what I thought was pretty early, but the line already wrapped around the booth.  It was mass confusion. It turned out that we did need tickets to get autographs, and I was mightily unpleased about this since they had handed out tickets very soon after I'd left the first time having asked if I needed a ticket.  It all turned out ok, though, because one of the guys working the booth had some extras he had been holding for people who hadn't come back to claim one, and he gave one of them to me. I then proceeded to sit in a really disorganized line for the next 45 minutes. I ended up talking to a nice guy who was a San Diego local about Comic-Con, fandom in general, and crazy costumes. We were right where the line turned and snaked back down the aisle, so both of us spent a lot of time saying, "We are NOT the end of the line!  The end is down that way!"  I also nabbed a Stargate: Universe cast photo and watched the trailer at the booth at least 999 times.  It's definitely "Stargate Does Voyager," but this was stop number two on my "slowly coming around to where I maybe might watch it" tour. At one point, I debated leaving the line to go upstairs and get in line for the panel, but I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to meet anyone at the panel, and I'd been waiting for a long time already.  When the signing actually started, the line moved fairly smoothly and quickly. I got to have the cast personalize the poster I got signed to Rae and me, and I got to look Sean Patrick Flannery in the eye and tell him that I'd been a fan of his since Young Indy. When I told him that, he got this lovely boyish smile on his face and said something like, "Really?   Thank you!   That's great..." It seemed like he was happy to have someone remember the show, but maybe that's just me.  In any event, he was really nice and sweet and wonderful and I have two things he signed now.  I got him to sign my poster and my little odds and ends journal I carry around with me. He's a few pages after this year's con report notes and a few pages before a scene Rae wrote about Jack and Davy Jones. I love my fandoms... (Just to show you how big this was for me... it is very possible that Julie Benz (Darla from Angel/Buffy) was there.  She's going to be in the second movie.  I was so elated about meeting Sean that I didn't notice. I feel really stupid about that now. Julie is awesome and lovely and I wish I had had the presence of mind to tell her so.)  Even though the autograph line moved well, it still didn't move fast enough for me to get a good spot in line for the actual panel. Rae was waiting for me with the spot she'd gotten, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious we weren't going to get in.  The panel wasn't in a huge room, and there were a ton of people ahead of us.  After some spirited debate about whether we should try to stay in line or go get in line for True Blood, we decided that True Blood was the better bet.  So, we dashed back over to ballroom 20...

...where we got to wait in line for a long time. We weren't as far back as we might have been, though, and we eventually did get into the room with plenty of time to spare.  And I am so glad we did.  The panel was fantastic.  The entire main cast was there... Sookie, Bill, Sam, Tara, Maryann, Lafayette, Jessica, and Eric, as well as Alan Ball and Charlaine Harris, who wrote the Sookie Stackhouse novels in the first place. Everyone on the panel was just delightful.  Charliane Harris looks like the stereotypical image of a middle aged white Southern woman about to go to a church potluck. And then she talked... and she has this thick, brilliant accent and... that mix of politeness and force of personality that ladies from the South are known for.  At one point, someone asked her if the TV show was going to influence how she wrote future books, and she smiled and said point blank, "Alan and I have a good arrangement.  I don't tell him how to make his show, and he doesn't tell me how to write my books."  From the knowing look on Alan Ball's face when she said that... I'll bet he doesn't... and wouldn't even think of it if he knows what's good for him.  I think that she went on to say something about how the books and the show are two different versions of the same story, told in two different forms forms of media, and that people should learn to enjoy them both and not expect them to be exactly the same.  I respected her a lot for that. She also talked about writing on a deadline and not sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, especially when she had to make a deadline, and at one point, someone asked her about all of the sex on the show, and if I remember correctly, she laughed and said something about how she hoped that some of her older relatives weren't watching. 

It was fun to hear Alan Ball talk, as well. He spoke about how he tries to make events in the show grow naturally out of the characters' emotional needs and responses.  Someone joked that they might as well have had a sign that said, "It's the emotions, Stupid," pasted up in the writer's room. And then, there were the actors... I am coming to love this cast more and more as I watch more of the show.  I got to hear Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton) speak in his real accent, and even though Jess had told me he was British, it still surprised me to hear those short, clipped words coming out of his mouth instead of Bill's Southern drawl.  When it came time to take questions from the audience, a lot  of them were for Alexander Skarsgaard (Eric... and did I mention he was Bootstrap Bill's son?  I still can't get over that) who is apparently immensely popular. Not that I begrudge him that... Eric is awesome.  I think I'm a little bit in love with him my own self. And Alexander was droll and funny and laid back.  One of my favorite things he said was in response to a decently intelligent question about how working in the film industry in the U.S. was different than working in Sweden.  He thinks for a moment, and then he says, "Well, if this event was happening in Sweden, we would be in a barn right now.  There would be about thirty-five people here, and half of them would be named Skarsgaard."  It was so deadpan and serious... and the hall cracked up when he said it.  He went on to talk about how he relates to Eric, and I grinned when I recognized the tell-tale signs of an actor who loves the "bad boy" character he plays.  He talked about how he spent a lot of time when the first series was airing defending Eric from people asked questions about what it was like to play the "evil" vampire.  He got this half-confused, half-hurt look on his face and explained that Eric isn't evil... he does have a softer side (one that we've started to see in the second season, I might add...).  I have visions of him and Richard Armitage forming the "They Aren't That Bad, Really!" Society.

Other fun things I remember include Deborah Ann Woll (the absolutely adorable Jessica) talking about how nice the cast had been to her when she joined, especially since she was really sick in on of her early scenes.  She talked about how very nice the actor who plays Hoyt is, and I don't know if it was character bleed through or not, but she actually seemed to have a bit of a glow about her when she talked about him. And finally, she talked about how it was hard to be badass and scary when the soft plastic fangs she was wearing kept slipping out.  Apparently, they had two different types of fangs... a soft kind  and a harder kind.  Someone (I don't remember who) remarked that the hard kind were actually kind of sharp and painful, and Anna Paquin leans forward to her microphone and said, "Yes they are..." And the crowd went a little crazy again.  (This line makes even more sense to me in retrospect now that I know that she and Stephen Moyer are really dating.. they're sweet together.)

I was kind of sorry that no one asked Rutina Wesley anything specific that I managed to write down (I don't think anyone asked her a specific question at all... I was waiting for it because I love Tara like nobody's business), but with a panel that large and the moderators forcing fans to direct questions to specific actors this year instead of having questions that any of the panelists can answer... I guess it's understandable that Bill, Sookie, Eric, and the writers/producers got most of the attention.

I almost forgot... at the beginning of the panel, they showed a trailer for the rest of the season.  I'm sure it's up online now, but it was pretty intense seeing it in a room full of fans.  It included the Fellowship of the Sun actually burning a vampire at sunrise on that platform Jason and Luke are constructing, Jason getting caught(?) and in trouble for messing around with the preacher's wife, Sam getting chased through the woods by someone wearing Maryann's bull's head, and Sookie lying in a bed with someone who looks like he has blond hair.  There were some massive, major fannish freak outs going on when that shot went by (mine was one of them), but when someone asked Allan Ball and Alexander Skarsgaard about it during the panel, both of them were cryptic and vague (and seemed to be enjoying being so, darn them...)

With the panel over, Rae and I headed back over to the exhibit hall to pick out some art prints, which didn't take too terribly long.  With that done, we went out the back entrance of the hall that lets out on the side of the convention center that faces the ocean. This made it much easier to get to our destination: the Joe's Crab Shack that sits right on the water.  We were both about to die of hunger by the time we got there, and Rae still wasn't feeling too good.  Luckily, we got seated pretty quickly and had a nice dinner, just the two of us.  I think we both needed it at this point. We got jalapeno crab cakes and split one of their big steamer pots with crab and mussels and other goodies.  I've never eaten crab out of the shell before in my life... it's always seemed like too much work to get and a little bit of food.  But with a bit of instruction from Rae, I managed.  And it was delicious.  Well-steamed and very tasty.

After dinner, it was back up the massive flight of stairs on the back side of the convention center so we could get to the overflow room and watch masquerade. caedhe was saving some seats for us near lynxgriffin and yamikonumber7, which was nice of her.  The room was full this year, which was a departure from years before.  I think they were even directing people who couldn't get into the main masquerade room into ours. It was packed.  As masquerades go... it was ok.  There were some sound problems at the beginning, and so I got to see the True Blood trailer again without any dialogue, but they eventually got everything all sorted. There were some obnoxious people in the room where I was sitting who thought that their repetitive cracks were funny enough for the whole room to hear, and so I breathed deeply and tried not to think thoughts of murder. The costumes that really stood out to me were:

The amazing Looking Glass Wars group.  I haven't even read the books, but the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter in this group were fantastic.  And I have feeling that if I'd read the books, the actual plot of the skit was pretty interesting too.

The Disney villains vs. Disney heroes having a cheer-off skit to the "We are Cheerleaders" song was hysterical.  Also, how many times in my life am I going to see Maleficent and Jafar doing cheer routines?

And one of my personal favorites... the female cast of She-ra singing to Skeletor about how to treat a woman.  Their costumes were great, their skit was simple and easy to follow... and after all of these years, I could still name every single character from her outfit. (They had She-ra, Catra, Castaspella, Glimmer, and Flutterina. I may have used Wiki for the spellings, but I know those costumes.  I didn't spend hours as a child of the 80's playing with She-ra dolls for nothing.)

We left when judging began.  On the trolley ride back, I realized that I wanted to be out of the room by 7 AM the next morning, and it was very likely that the rest of the room would not, and Sunday was the day I needed to check out, so I had a bit of a breakdown before we got everything sorted out.  Which we did. Eventually.  We got back to the room and packed up everything we weren't going to need in the morning, then went to sleep as soon as possible. Sunday was Doctor Who day, and even thought I was tired and cranky and frazzled, I was also excited.