Con report: Ascendio 2012!
Ahhh ASCENDIO!
WARNING. This is an image heavy post! Sorry about that. Kind of. Almost all the images are from the official HPEF photo stream (taken by Jenn Racek). Other images are all linked to their source (which will also be mentioned).
I got on site Monday morning. Tuesday we sorted through Registration and met everyone from the hotel. To kick off the con right, by the way, they made us a solid chocolate Hedwig! (Picture from Heidi's Facebook page.)
Wednesday night we had a pool party organized by attendees-primarily
alabastard and alabastardragon who were, fortunately, doing well enough to enjoy themselves, I think. :) I was really grateful to get a chance to relax before the con, even though I was super worked up and nervous about how everything was going to go! It was especially fun because I got to hang out with
panasonicyouth again (Mark Oshiro, that is) and he's as awesome as I remembered him being. Zero brain-mouth filter. Hilarity.
Any possible awkwardness at the pre-con pool party was banished by our special themed drinks, which were already being served all over the resort. (Another Heidi photo.)
The maps of the convention space we had lying around were incredibly gorgeous. They were also part of the program, which was so beautiful I can't even talk about it. Of course I just noticed that one of the scans is upside down, but whatever.
Thursday afternoon, we had our version of "lit day"-the Quill Track.
libba_bray read, and patiently signed autographs for about a zillion people. (Lots of other authors read too, but I'm too lazy to include all the photos!)
There were also six hours of wrock.
Click to viewUnfortunately, I didn't get to go to either the Wrock or the Quill Track stuff-I was too busy working, since we were still getting into the swing of things. There were only a couple minor fires to put out, but Thursday was the day that almost all our Special Guests were arriving, and there were a lot of moving parts! I did, however, get to go to Night of a Thousand Wizards-which was actually more like Night of 600 Wizards.
It was awesome. The food was great, the lines were absolutely nonexistent, and the ambiance was so much better without a jillion people there! I finally got to ride all the rides, and even see the Ollivander's wand show. We were allowed to wear costumes in the park-which lead to some great photo opportunities! Below, the Hillywood sisters in costume as Harry and Ron...
I also got to ride with
afshan_azad the very first time she ever went on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Yes, we got a picture. From left to right:
nickmofo , me,
chrisrankin and Afshan.
We went again, and both she and Chris illustrated why they're in the movies and we aren't: Afshan especially still looks like a movie star even when she's being startled by spitting animatronic spiders. As I said at the time, "Afshan, I want your face." But not in a creepy serial killer way. Extra bad because in that picture, I look like a two year old going to the bathroom. It is not a good look. I'm sure she's going to torment me by putting it online any moment now but I am going to pretend it doesn't exist.
Anyhow, afterwards we went on both colors of the Dragon Challenge, and
gwendolyngrace lost her glasses doing a loop-de-loop. :(
The next morning, Friday, I got up at ass o'clock to be on TV. Well, strictly speaking I got up at ass o'clock to run a staff meeting. We met every day at 7 AM. They sure loved me for that one. At least our staff room was beautiful.
Re: the TV clip, the embedding function isn't working very well but you can see it here. It was fun to be on live TV, it was great advertisement for the conference, and the guy interviewing me looked a little like an alternate universe Neil Patrick Harris, so that was all good. One of the things we did for the TV cameras was play Quidditch (photo by Leann Drury):
Then I presented Muggle Studies (which went well; there was a crowd of about 20 people maybe, and I gave away almost all my remaining Special Edition copies). After a moment of relieved bawling (that was the point at which I was sure that the con was going to work out okay), it was time to get back to work: that was the day that I was most nervous about crowd control, since that was the day when "Beedle the Bard" (the musical-link to YouTube when I have it) & Joe Moses' "Potion Masters Corner" were both happening. But everyone was great! I was so impressed by how chilled out the crowds were, and how much everybody worked together to get along.
That was the day of the Alumni House Tournament, put together by the same people who made Live Wizard Chess happen at Infinitus. It was incredibly well done and actually very affecting-I cried at the ending. Here's a picture of one of the more memorable duels-Bellatrix Lestrange vs. Nymphadora Tonks:
And here's some video of the next-to-last bit: a four way duel between the Foudners of Hogwarts
That evening was the Merlin's Circle Reception, where we took a photo of FictionAlley authors from way back when-too many of us to enumerate:
Saturday I had to defuse a sticky situation with some photographers and some ill feelings and some blah blah blah let's not talk about it but it sucked. It was probably the closest to a crisis we got-not a big deal at all, which was so great! But by the time I was done with it, I was pretty worked up.
In fact, I was actually super nervous about the keynote lunch. I had put together an unlikely panel-Cat Tosenberger, Neta Kliger-Vilenchik, Ben Schrank and Connie Neal-and I was super nervous about whether it would work at all. So I made my apologies and skipped it. I didn't need to-it turned out great, and apparently did exactly what I wanted in that it appealed to a wide variety of fans and illustrated the fact that our similarities are more important than our differences! But at the time, I was giving myself an ulcer, and I had to make the choice to go for my own mental health. I think everybody understood.
That afternoon, my crew got me a massage (!!!) for my half birthday. It was incredibly relaxing and wonderful, and I got back just in time for the StarKid meet and greet. There were only about 50 people there at most, and so everybody got time to hobnob with their favorite *kids, which I know meant a lot to some of the *kid fans who had chosen Merlin's Circle for the purpose of getting full access.
By this point it was clear to me that everything was going well, so prior to the Ball, Wands by Wands by Wizards (link to YouTube when I have it-it was amazing, and I cried at the end when they sang "The Weapon We Have Is Love." I was a watering pot!)...
...and the Fashion Show (link goes to YouTube) I ran off to hang out with
devdevnumnums , who is officially one of my favorite people now. It was a nice way to lead into the craziness of the evening... unfortunately, it meant that I was having such a good time, I forgot to eat dinner. Whoops. That wasn't a problem at first, but later in the night I completely bonked. I ended up turning into a pumpkin at midnight. Fortunately, I figured it out early in the night, so I didn't accidentally get embarrassingly wasted. (Can you imagine how horrible it would have been if something bad happened that night and I had managed to get drunk? Not to be thought of.)
But I must have been in quite a state, because karaoke happened at the ball, and
chrisrankin (backed up by *kids) can actually sing...
...but I cannot, not even a little bit, not even at all, and yet I got talked into singing by
afshan_azad . Fortunately
gwendolyngrace CAN sing. Strongarming provided by
acciopancake . Special conversation in the video about *kid and Nick Strauss, for some reason!
...and the real highlight of the night for me was Snape singing "Don't You Forget About Me" karaoke.
I know that Nigel does it regularly-there's YouTube of him doing it at DragonCon-but Karaoke!Snape was such a great old fandom joke (in 2003 the song he always sang was "Brandy, You're a Fine Girl") that when it happened at the very last HPEF con-and without any prompting!-I was way too maudlin. Everybody generally stayed safe and sane at the Ball, and I was able to go home at a decent hour.
...and of course there was also plenty of dancing. But I didn't do most of it.
Even Peeves got dressed up!
Sunday was, fortunately, completely chilled out. I cried more at the Leaving Feast when I gave my goodbye speech. The Auction went well, and Mark Oshiro was the best possible auctioneer.
You gotta love our hats. And our matchy matchyness.
We also raffled off (among other things) a quilt with every HPEF con t-shirt on it. Peeves won it, which was almost too perfect. (Another Heidi photo.)
I had a hard time holding it together when people told me how much they had enjoyed themselves. One dude said he was planning to get a tattoo of the Ascendio logo (!!!!)-I really have no idea how I feel about that. A bunch of the senior staff went to dinner together, and Nick bought us bubbly; we cheered the end of an era.
Costuming wise, we discovered that Snapes are the slave Leias of Harry Potter conventions. (There were at least 7 present, including Nigel, Droxy, Short!Snape, SexyLady!Snape, and Magnus.)
In particular, Droxy's Vacation!Snape was very memorable.
So was the tattooed, stripping Snape of the fashion show.
Showgirl!Fawkes fluttered his her feather fans alluringly:
I'm not positive that satyrs exist in the Harry Potter universe, but what the hell, the costume was awesome (from Lisa Waite Bunker's facebook photos):
Professor Trelawney's costume was aided by Squeek Photography:
There were plenty of Herbology-themed costumes (including a human Mandrake!) but Professor Sprout was one of my favorites:
On a Hufflepuff theme, one of our first-time congoers made an absolutely smashing Helga Hufflepuff:
And of course the con ain't over till the Fat Lady sings... Best of all, she was checking badges on the way into the Ball! (Another photo by Squeek.)
As always, the Hufflepuff Badger Bitches put in a good showing:
I think I told some of you that there was a girl going to wear a Princess Diana replica gown with a 25 foot train? Yeah, that actually did happen. She wrote about it in her own blog, too.
The House Ghosts were also pretty great. (This photo's from the Loews Portofino Bay facebook page.)
Throughout the con, the Chalk Twins (Lexi & Devon Fulmer) created a life-size drawing of Harry Potter looking at the future of fandom in the MIrror of Erised-Team Starkid, Harry & the Potters, and the Potter Puppet Pals. It took them 19 hours and they had to do it outside. Thank God they didn't get heatstroke.
We also had glockart and ArtInsights running an indoor art gallery with both fanart and professional film art.
I kept hoping I'd get to sit down for another interview with Hansi Oppenheimer of Troubled Girl Films, who was running around working on her documentary about fanfic and other forms of fan creativity. But I never did get to. Come back to Boston, Hansi!
At the very end of the con, we had a reception for the most dedicated volunteers, and we took a group photo.
Finally, here I am on the first (official) day of the conference, looking relatively bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, having just given my welcome speech. I was so grateful to get to be the last HPEF Minister of Magic, and to have had the con go so well, and to have been able to ring us out in good mental, physical and financial shape.
...and one of me and Nick, who held up like a champ.
Of course, Nick is learning quickly that con crash is a real thing with real consequences. But I've got so many other projects that I'm barreling right into the next thing. And who knows-I might see if I can scrape together an award flight and make it to LeakyCon...
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