escapade con report, finally

[hafital]

My cable and internets are out. booooo. As always happens in situations like these, I then have an itch to get rid of the whole shebang. But, while I don't really need cable, one does need the internets. sigh. Skimming off of my neighbors wireless is not where it's at, people. I hate Time Warner.

~~~

Escapade! Quickly, before I forget everything. And, uh, no user tags, cause I'm lazy, yo. Also, I don't guarantee that I won't mix things up and say things were done on the wrong day.

the social: I left work around 3ish on Thursday, promptly got stuck in the quagmire that is Hollywood, made doubly worse by the approach of The Oscars, but I finally managed to get onto the freeway, only to be in an honest to God deluge for the entire hour it took me to drive to Ventura. Holy jeez, that was a lot of rain! So, slightly stressful drive to Escapade, but then the rain cleared up about 15 mins out of Ventura and then smooth sailing. I arrived at the hotel just in time to find everyone I wanted to see heading for me on the way to dinner! YAYZ. So, there were HUGS, especially for my peeps who I don't see nearly as often as I should, like Taselby and Killa, then I quickly dumped off my stuff, and we were off to imbibe and ingest at the Mexican Restaurant -- this place cracks me up because it's like you need to know the secret code in order to find it: it lies within that Torchwood invisibility perception field or whatever.

There were a bunch of us at dinner that night and I'm not going to name them all, because even as I think of it right now I can only be sure of about 4 of us and I'm definitely going to miss everyone but those I was sitting across from. Taselby got a margarita the size of her head. I also had a margarita, but it was not the size of my head. I met troyswann and that was fun. I think the talk centered mostly around Torchwood, some Wiseguy, probably Highlander: you know, the usual. heh.

That night a bunch went back to my room and we watched the the Phillipi episode of Rome as well as the pilot episode of Torchwood, which was my first introduction to Torchwood and Captain Jack. After that, people dropped off to sleep and departed and things. I think I watched one more episode of Torchwood (the sex alien one) and then I went to sleep. Sleep. zzzzzzz.

On Friday morning I had breakfast. With people. I think Killa, Melina, Salieri, um... Taselby, Madison, and maybe more. Friday was a busy day for me in terms of panels and things. I think I just had a subway sandwich for lunch, and then dinner with a large group of us at the House of Meat (I think). Afterwards I believe we watched an episode of Torchwood (Captain Jack Harkness) (see a theme developing there? blame it on my roommate. hee) and then there was the party. wooo party. To which I went to for a few hours -- the highlight was getting to meet and talk to trysfanstone! And then Salieri and Tafkar and I went DANCING! At this club called Bombay. We danced for a while until it started to get too packed and rather claustrophobic, but still it was a lot of fun. The music was so so -- could have been more dancey, imo, but I've been to clubs with worse selection. And then sleep. zzzzzz.

Saturday morning there was breakfast again. And then I sort of lazed around for a while. Went to one or two more panels. Had another subway sandwich for lunch. Around 5, a bunch of us went for SUSHI. Which was awesome cause the restaurant had like gigantic sushi portions omg and we all nearly beached ourselves eating so much. Then Vid Show! It was an enjoyable show. Totally low stress and stuff. Afterwards there was about 15 of us at the hotel bar. I had a dirty martini and sipped someone's purple nurple. This was where Maygra said "pass me my drink and my lube", 'cause she's wacky awesome like that and Salieri abused people with candy. I think the party broke up around 1ish. zzzzz.

Sunday was Escapade Breakfast. By Sunday morning, I started to get really tired, but was still good to go. I was able to talk to adonnchaid and be giddy over 24 for a bit, which was nice, since it's my current obsession and not really anyone elses, so there wasn't much opportunity to wibble. heh. I went to Vid Review and then had lunch with Killa, Anoel, Greensilver, Permetaform, um... and others. God, I suck at remember these things. Sunday, for me, was spent looking forward to watching Miracles -- which I think finally occurred after dinner. We watched the pilot. I hadn't watched any Miracles before and it's a show that's always intrigued me and then the beautiful, wonderful Killa gave me all the DVDs! 'cause she loves me and I love her and it's all shiny. :D :D Anywoo, I really wanted to watch it and the pilot was goooood and creepy, and hot damn Paul and Alva are great together. After Miracles we watched Torchwood (the episode Cyberwoman this time. And by this part of the weekend I'd pretty much determined that Torchwood is not going to be a fannish show for me, but I rather enjoyed it anyway, and Melina gave me a disc for that too! so yayz). And then, after Torchwood, um, I think there was some lingering chatting in my room before we all went to bed. I remember making Killa listen to music, which I think happened that night. hee. zzzzz.

Monday morning was sad. :( Melina and I stumbled downstairs to find the rest of our lovely cohorts and there was general brain fry and lots of "fourth day of a three day con" kind of fumbling love. I had to leave around 9, for work, and that made me very sad so let's not talk about it. I gave everyone hugs, twice over, and then left. This time the drive was sunny and pleasant.

the panels: I hope I remember all the ones I went to...

Rome: Good lord, I don't remember at all what we spoke about in this panel. Some about the time compression and the violence of the show. What we can expect for the remaining episodes. I think we talked about the new Octavian and our reaction to him. Vorenus and Pullo. Antony and his general hawtness. Atia, being a mixture of three women. We wondered of Antony and Octavia would marry. Fun!

Writing for 'Guh': I came late to this panel because I had attempted to go to the PotC panel, but I had to leave when every other sentence out of one of the moderators mouth was how much they disliked Elizabeth.

Now, generally, the sex scenes of my stories are like the one part of them I don't worry about( eta: not that my sex scenes are any great thing, mind you, just I don't spend as much time angsting over writing them then the rest of a story. and they're even a bit of relief sometimes), but, as is often the case with writing, the tools for writing a 'good' sex scene are the same you use for writing in general, imo, and Rache and Aristide did such a fabulous job with the hand out, I'm really glad I bailed on PotC and went there instead. :) The room was packed, too. Practically everything that was said by the moderators I agreed with a 100%, not that they need my agreeing with them, but it's all the same that I have been hearing and attempting to do in my writing for the last 7/8 years, and what every writing teacher I've ever had say, too. Of particular note was the stuff about there being too much emphasis on "show not tell", which I struggle with. A lot. There's telling and then there's telling. *g*

Highlander: YAY HIGHLANDER! *ahem* sorry. :D Um, Devo ran this panel, and as always, we had a interesting discussion. We talked about what professions the characters would be practicing now. I was happy to think Duncan would go to work for CTU, to be quite honest. :D And there was also talk about Warrior/Priest pairings and how Duncan and Methos fit into that. For more detail, I think devohoneybee has notes.

Friday Night Lights: There was just a few die hard FNL fans at this one. Speculation as to where the show can go, seeing as the kids are in high school and they will graduate one day. We determined the most likely to leave at this point would be Lyla. We all want Tyra to get out, but she's tied to Dillon because of her mother. There was some general talk about sports, and sports fan, and football, and the mentality of that whole sub-culture, which I'm always interested in. Sports and sports fans fascinate me. There was general lamenting on the fact that not enough people watch the show and fear for it's cancelation. We drew up a chart, or rather Kady Mae did, of all the relationship connections between the characters. Tim Riggins was in the middle. heee. We wondered if Tim and Jason would have a resolution of some sort, and we all hoped so. Then we swapped lj comms and such.

Genre TV: This was interesting, in that the panel posed the question, what's the next wave? There are indeed a lot of genre shows broadcasting at the moment. So, what does that mean? No one had an answer. *g* We listed all the shows currently on the air for 5 years or less. I disputed Lost being a "genre" show, but got shot down. LOL. Genre, for this panel, meant sci-fi/fantasy, which, honestly, doesn't feel like Lost to me, but whatever. It's definitely quirky. Nothing was really determined in the panel, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Romance VS Doom: The highlight for me for this weekend in terms of panels. Moderated by the lovely and talented Devo. Devo mentioned an essay written by someone who I didn't write down, so I can't link to it, that posited that they Cyberwoman epsiode of Torchwood was using the time honored tradition set forth by the great Greek tragedy Oedipus, in which the Hero falls for the Wrong Woman, and thus Doom follows. When the Hero falls for the wrong woman, he gives up *everything* for her, usually to great cost which is sometimes diverted at the last minute or sometimes not. We listed many great examples, my two favorite being Kirk/Edith Keeler and Methos/Kronos. Kronos is soooo the Wrong Woman! HEEE. *ahem*.

Writing Aliens/Race: Interesting topic - Are aliens often coded as being racially notWhite? Do writers of sci-fi shows write alien races to signify racial storylines? I think we could come up with many examples of alien races coded as being nonwhite (such as the Klingons) as well as alien races used as a tool to depict racial themed stories, but not many examples of the two together. Very interesting.


I feel like I went to more panels, but I'm totally blanking now...

And woo, okay, that ate up much of my day. *g* Way to avoid writing! hee.