Reading Amidst the Chaos: Dragon*Con Day 2

Ok so here we go (or continue) - on to Day 2! Day 2 for me is Saturday and for most people it includes the parade first thing in the morning, but somehow I have yet to see it. I like sleep! Or more accurately, I like sleep and the leisure time to do complicated makeup without feeling pressured by a panel.

To-ma-to, to-mah-to.

According to my phone app, which is such a badass because it STILL shows me the events from Labor Day weekend, I had 23 events that I tentatively wanted to go to. A completely ridiculous goal, especially considering that at least half of them were happening at the same time. I started with the panel 'Hunting Monsters for Fun and Profit' which had both LKH and Sherrilyn Kenyon (with some other authors) there to speak on their worlds and characters.

It was great as usual, especially since Kenyon has SO MANY BOOKS that any one question takes forever for her to answer or she can't answer at all because each character has their own motivation. Plus I thought it was hilarious that Larry Correia's main character physically takes after himself because he didn't feel like readers saw enough 'big & tall' men representing. And Correia's walked into a spinning ceiling fan. Cause this is apparently something that tall people need to worry about.

I didn't go to any readings, though I had some written down for Rachel Caine and Carole Nelson Douglas. I think I decided that sustenance was more important, which I don't regret because if you don't make time for it you can seriously never eat at Dragon*Con. You'll always find yourself in line, in a panel, or gawking at freaking amazing costumes. Oh and the only reason I didn't go to the Stargate SG-1 panel was because it was out in the freaking WESTIN which not only is hard to get to because it's so far away, the rooms are small! How do I know this you ask? Because they turned people away from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog's sing-a-long! Which has never happened to me! They turned people away because they didn't empty the room after the Buffy the Musical sing-a-long and then wouldn't even let anyone stick around to see if people left. It was infuriating! And then I found out later that there were empty seats!!! My butt could have been in one of those empty seats! I hate you Westin!

But my very favorite thing of the day was the Star Trek Next Generation panel which had not only Wil Wheaton but Gates McFadden AND Brent Spiner! Dr. Crusher and Data in the house!! Dr. Crusher by the way seems to have not aged a bit, which is both cruel and unfair because we all know I'm not going to be as lucky. I always get unbelievable geek glee when I see a bunch of TNG actors together because you can just see how much they know and like each other. They joke and kid, not only with themselves mind you, but also with the audience, and it makes you like them. And I guess I feel like liking the actors somehow makes it better that I love the show. Which I realize makes no sense but I'm trying to explain a feeling and who makes sense explaining a feeling? No one that's who.

(sorry my picture is blurry, I couldn't any using my flash due to someone in the audience.)

After that the Rainbow Brite group got together for some general debauchery and it was fantastic. Not only were all of us different modern interpretations of our character's costumes, but even though we all did it our own way we still fit together. And were way hotter than another Rainbow Brite group we randomly ran into (I think about these things ok? I already know I'm a bad person you don't have to tell me :P). What was the best were all the parents who made their kids take pictures with us. The kids would have no idea who we were but to the parents we were a part of their childhood and THEY wanted to memorialize it, even if the kids ended up crying about it later. Plus can you imagine being a little kid at Dragon*Con? Everyone's huge and dressed up and often very scary and here we were, a co-ed group of younger people in brightly colored costumes with big smiles. We were the most non-threatening thing ever.

And in a case of 'WTF?' for the con, after our original Buddy Blue went off to some kind of panel on polymath decision making (don't ask) we ran into ANOTHER Buddy Blue! With a Canary Yellow! All of a sudden were and even more impressive group of Rainbow Brite cosplayers and we didn't even have to do anything! Even better was the fact that these two were looking for their own group and thought we were them. No one knew anyone else and once they found us people started taking pictures and that was just the end of it. None of us were willing to break up the group and halt the madness so we all just stuck around and had fun.

This post is starting to get epic again so I'm just going to stop here and say that after pictures Jessica and I went to a Nightmare Before Christmas Panel and it was epic. And if Rogue from Curxshadows would teach a class on almost anything almost anywhere I'd probably attend because he's that badass.