ADVENTURES! V.1B: LEAKYCON 2014 ETC. (CONT'D)
(v.1a)
Thursday!!
So the first order of business was: They're finally putting us in the hotel we had actually booked and not the Shingle Creek Reject City. The long and short of THIS was that our first night at Shingle Creek was free, and our second night at Shingle Creek was only $89, which was pretty great for our bank accounts in the long run, but we're not quiiiite sure it was worth the inane inconveniences that were caused to us by having to up and move our entire lives on the first real day of the convention. Gabi, Kelsey and I were kind of spearheading the switch-over process, me because I had a panel I was trying to get to (the Glee meetup...eesh) and them because Gabi had decided they were gonna blow off Thursday of the con proper and instead take Kelsey to the parks just the two of them, since they weren't able to come to OATC. That was super nice aaahhh :') frandz. So we kind of had to book it out of Shingle Creek to catch the last available shuttle to the Rosen Plaza before my stuff happened, and Hannah and Sera were still kind of getting their ish together in the room, and basically because of how timing worked (super shittily) we had to leave before they got down and joined us and we had to leave them there to check out of Shingle Creek without us. And we felt like dicks about it!!!! Too much was happening all at once. Also I was cosplaying Ginny that day so that was the extra stress of like, try not to look like shit in costume because that's embarrassing and also MY WHOLE PANEL THAT I'M RUNNING IS ABOUT WEARING A COSTUME and I have to look legit for that :( TOO MUCH WAS HAPPENING :(
The long and short of it was a) In putting on my makeup for Ginny, I took my nosering out, and left it on the sink at the fucking Shingle Creek after we LEFT THE SHINGLE CREEK FOR GOOD and I did exactly what I said I was going to do/not do on Twitter and went without a nosering for the whole rest of my fucking vacation rip in peace, AND b) We got to the Rosen Plaza and checked in-ish but they didn't have a room ready for us yet so we had to leave our stuff at the front desk. Which was fine if a little awkward/hilarious because of my prop for my Friday costume and Kelsey's just like...takeout container of spaghetti that was just loose with the rest of her stuff lmao. But we pre-checked in and got all that sorted and then Gabi and Kelsey gallivanted off to WWOHP and I high-tailed it to the convention center trying to get there in time for this Glee panel.
Which like. The sched.org schedule and the printed convention book schedule were telling me it was at two different times? So when I got to the room and the Warblers actors were sitting up at the front, I was a little confused and a little frustrated, because I was under the impression that it was just a Fan Panel For Fans By Fans which was what I was there for and I was like, this is not the right thing, the schedule lied to me and I booked it over here for nothing!! BUT they left like halfway through and then it turned back into the thing I thought it was? So I went back into the room (after sitting on the floor in the hall chatting with a really cute Southern-accent mom I had met back at the Plaza - she was freaking adorable and it was her 10yo daughter's first convention and she was in the adjacent room in the MLP meetup and I was like awww) and kind of pal'd around with people and maybe talked too much and screamed about Cooper Anderson and the next-gen New Directions being fusions of the OG New Directions and idk hahaha. And I met Andie ohblainers briefly and that was cute and we hated on the DCST together which is always a great Bonding Moment for internet people I've learned, and then I had an hour to waste between the end of that panel and the beginning of my own so I was like, better find my friends!
Spoilers I could NOT find my friends. I sat alone at this table out front for a while and texted/tweeted at some folks attempting to locate them but cell phones were A Struggle this whole weekend so it was ultimately not super reliable. I saw a TINY CUTE KAWAII Cecil Palmer + Glow Cloud Umbrella cosplayer omg she was the Most Precious (I think it was same girl who was karkat the day before? but I was WAY more into cecil omg). I met this cute couple that was dating and he'd never been to a con before and she was talking him through it and they were collecting tons of badge ribbons and we talked a little as like, LeakyCon Grown Ups Who Aren't 14 and that was p neat. (Turns out later I think they were some of the people who won in that Bring A Newbie To LeakyCon contest thing, the girl on the right, so yeah neato for them!!) Also in addition to finding the people I was actually at the con with I was also supposed to find Arianna and give her Gabi's badge for A Reason? I think to go collect Gabi's wristbands for a thing bc rockstars. or something. Since Gabi wasn't there. BUT ANYWAY Trying to find her also and so I'm sitting there alone chillin dressed as Ginny Weasley and Nick Lang just like...casually walks by.... And no one is saying anything to him or bothering him so I kind of didn't want to call attention to it? But? I was just like "Hey, psst, Nick"
and he was like "Oh, uh, yeah?"
and I was like, "Do you know where Arianna is?"
PFFFFFFT. And he was like "Do I know where Arianna is.... I...do not." And then we chatted for a little bit and apparently he was there because he'd been to the MLP meetup and they gave him a parasprite pin thingie that he was wearing and he was being real cute and chill and Nick Langy about the whole thing. Then a like middle-school age boy noticed him and was like DUDE CAN WE TAKE A SELFIE? :D And literally climbed over this tall wall thing to take a pic with him and that was presh and dude's older sister/older girl chum was like "I'd like a selfie too but I'm going to walk around like a normal person instead of climbing over pff" and idk adorable Nick Lang times.
IDR if I found my friends RIGHT before my panel and we went there together or if I found them because they came to my panel but anyway it was time for my meetup panel!! cool!! So I walked down to the room where it was and keep in mind it was meant to start at 1 and it's now like 12:52 so I was like ok cool perfect timing, let's get this show on the road hooray, but when I arrived...another girl...was up at the front table?? So idk at first I assumed she was staff and she was gonna be talking to me about what was going on and then letting me do the thing but I talked to her and she was like "Oh are you Emily? haha we didn't think you were coming and if you didn't I was just going to do the panel myself!!! because I really wanted to but they told me I couldn't!!!! HAHAHA"
TL;DR this chick was REALLY OBNOXIOUS and straight tried to HIJACK MY PANEL FROM ME. She asked if she could do it ~with me~, and because I hadn't really planned to talk a WHOLE lot before taking everyone out into the hallway to just take a bunch of pics, (AND because I could tell she was going to make a huge stink if I made her sit her ass back down and she would probably just talk over everyone the whole time anyway), I went ahead and said yes. But she just talked over ME the whole time instead and really tried to just do the panel almost as if I wasn't there or as if I was inferior to her in some way. I think she WAS actually on volunteer staff, but I really didn't appreciate her behavior at my panel and I'm kind of mad that she would abuse her power in that way. If this was you: You really upset me at this panel that was supposed to be my thing, and I'm angry that you needed so badly to be in charge of this thing that you took it from the person who actually signed up to do it. You were unnecessarily pushy and I don't like you. Your proposal for a meetup like this was turned down because I already asked to do it first. :( jerk.
ANYWAY My panel had a really huge turnout and it was really cool!!! I wasn't expecting so many people to be there!! There were all kinds of folks, HP, Marvel and DC, Doctor Who, ponies, Disney, aahhh neat things happening. I think I had a good rapport with them (moreso than annoying shouty volunteer woman harrumph) and we talked about neat stuff like getting recognized, the different intensity levels of cosplay at Leaky vs like an anime con, hardest props/wardrobe pieces to make, etc etc. A super-legit dating couple were Slytherin and Ravenclaw Quidditch players and they HAND-MADE THEIR OWN BROOMS, she stood up to show them off and we were all mad impressed. Also a dude was dressed as Lumpy Space Princess and he was literally just wearing a purple morph suit with stuff stuck in it to make lumps and he kind of looked like a bunch of grapes and he was hilarious. But the big deal part was!! there was a reporter there!! from an Orlando paper!!! She got the whole room to shout about LeakyCon in a way that was really neat and then afterward, once I'd led everyone out into the halls for pics (and this kind of fell the fuck apart but it was fun anyway), she was interviewing some individual people and one of them was me!!! I STILL HAVEN'T LOOKED FOR THIS I AM ACTUALLY GOING TO GO LOOK FOR IT RIGHT NOW, WOWWEE, well okydoke I have not found anything yet but I remain hopeful! Idk how actually articulate I was in my interview bit l m a o but they talked to me, LSP guy, and a girl dressed as Luna with the giant lion hat. coolo boolo!!!
I took a bunch of pics of/with a bunch of folks including Rita Skeeter + her photographer, some cute Wreck-It Ralph folks, and this hilarious dude dressed as StarKid Voldemort. Except!! the entire time I was trying to take a pic with him he was TALKING! I was like dude shut your mouth and pose! But there are a couple okay ones I guess and then after I also made him take a selfie with me hehehe. Always Dance :3
So because of the hectic morning stuff we have not eaten yet and we have The Hunger so we decide we're going to go on a mission to walk to IHOP. It's only a little bit further than the McDonald's and even though I'm in two shirts, pantyhose and a wig I'm like sure why the fuck not I'll suffer for my art. LITTLE DID I KNOW HOW MUCH SUFFERING THIS WOULD ACTUALLY ENTAIL BC THIS WAS THE GROSSEST IHOP I'VE EVER BEEN TO. Sera and Hannah seemed to be like "well yeah IHOP is always gross what did you expect?" but I was like, no?? This IHOP was more like what I think of a Waffle House being like. It was unclean and understaffed, and our service was lackluster at BEST. We were also seated right next to like, the kitchen area, like that awkward little half-wall business? And some dude in back of house was trying to clean the floor and he tries to prop his mop up against this half-wall and it falls and nearly SLAMS ME IN THE FACE like the mop handle was maybe four inches from my face. This happened a good two or three times. no. stop. Also all of the food was gross like my sandwich was D R I P P I N G grease and Sera's eggs benedict were liquid and like factually disgusting. 0/10 WOULD NOT PATRONIZE THIS ESTABLISHMENT AGAIN. vile. I was like, how do I leave a tip that says "I understand this is your living wage and you need to have a life" but also says "you were a shit waitress and our experience was terrible" ugh lmao. (Also I was dressed as Ginny with my con badge and my pink sunnies on my head and I was like ew, can I get more stereotype starkid fangirl, and Hannah I think was like "You could have a SMFAH shirt on" and I was like "...I DO HAVE A SMFAH SHIRT ON UNDERNEATH THIS GINNY SHIRT" l m a o I'm the worst.) The sweatiness of this whole experience was not worth it basically, the end.
But like FINALLY it was late enough that Rosen Plaza actually had a room available for us and we could check in, so we went over to finagle all of that ish except for like. They almost didn't let us?? We'd already retrieved all our shit from the bag check area (including Kelsey's spaghetti container lol ok) and she was like "Unless Gabi is here I can't check you in because we need that credit card that is on file" and we were like UHHHH...WE THOUGHT WE WORKED ALL THIS OUT ALREADY....... There was a giant clusterfuck and I had Gabi on the phone trying to figure it out which was terrible, but somehow it all got sorted I guess (apparently the dude who took Gabi's info at our pre-check in put some stuff in wrong and once this woman figured that out she undid it and we were good to go?). Cool whatever. SO we get our new room and pile in but all in all this has taken Too Damn Long and we're now running late to get a good spot in line for opening ceremonies!! rats!!!
Fortunately New Friend Maddie is still adorable and great and she let us cut in line with her yaaayyy~ So we're waiting in line and these girls behind us are doing some kind of Harry Potter trivia sheet? Except it's weird and stupid and we overheard/got hung up on one question like, hold on, and Maddie goes "Oh yeah they gave us one too" and hands it over and it's like a newspaper-style printout of like...HARRY POTTER SHOULD BE IN THE CIA AND HERE'S WHY?? IDK this whole thing was RIDICULOUSSSS but they had a booth in the vendor's room and a panel and everything apparently, Harry Potter + SUPER SPY tech and strategies and stuff like, okay whatever wow weirdo. So all these questions are from HP being a superspy during Order of the Phoenix, they're all from book five, and they're all SUPER DUMB and phrased like "Harry, the Intelligence Analyst" and stuff and omgggg. This was pretty great I guess because it was stupid and entertaining enough to hold us over while we waited in this line. Weird weird weird shit lmao.
Then opening ceremonies happened and...eh. OK WELL FIRST OF ALL THE SET WAS GREAT, THANK U COREY. It was all Department of Mysteries-ish with doors everywhere including doors like floating in the air and stuff it was real badass, but the whole thing was literally just a setup for the punchline of the entire opening ceremonies skit to be "Love is an Open Door" from Frozen. YAWN. Tessa Netting Tessa Netting'd everywhere which was as unimpressive as usual to those of us who are not fans of Tessa Netting (SHE AND JOE MOSES KISSED ON THE MOUTH AT ONE POINT, LIKE, EW GET A ROOM WE'RE NOT HERE FOR THIS), and idk compared to last year and even the year before it just seemed kind of p...paltry? Like the writing was weaker and the jokes were less funny and shrug. Tessa's so shrill idk. The highlights were definitely the GLaDOS situation and Jim Povolo being super awkward. (Speaking of super awkward: Tessa's character was named Alice because lol alice in the rabbit hole jokes bleh but at one point she encountered Marty McFly and there was definitely an exchange that was like "It's okay Marty, you can call me Ali" and I was like NOPE NOPE NOPE LEMME NOPE RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF THERE my noTP was touching my OTP in this way and I was revolted, I'M SORRY I'M GROSS, I was just glad Kelsey was not there to see this she didn't deserve it (I totally told her about it later that night anyway), yikes forever.) But even Jim being awkward - he and Curt were Sam and Dean in a Supernatural bit - was just a setup, too, because the two of them were eating a sandwich together and that was absurd and hilarious when it had no explanation but then you realize it's just a setup for "We finish each other's - " "Sandwiches!" and it takes some of the wackiness out of it. Also there was ONE pretty great joke where someone asked Hermione if she knew any good riddles, and she was like "My friend Harry knows one really, really BAD Riddle..." and it took forever to land on most of the audience but I was like eyyyyyy the thing lol. Also Dylan was Gandalf and that was pretty legit. IDK HAHA STUFF. OPENING CEREMONIES. I want to write for Opening Ceremonies so bad, who do I speak to about this. I don't need any kind of compensation at all I just want the satisfaction of knowing that the thing was better ugh
After that sort of fizzled out the only thing we had left on our schedules was maybe going to this HPA vs Leaky Quidditch match. We figured we could check it out, and if it was lame or we got bored of it we'd just leave. Super non-committal. So we sat all the way at one end, which was actually p great because we got there early enough that the only people "in front" of us were sitting in the center, so by moving all the way to the end we were in the very front. WHICH WAS GREAT BECAUSE THE MATCH WAS GREAT AND WE ENDED UP STAYING THE WHOLE TIME!! Even though let me tell you it was roouughh from start to finish.
We get there and HPA team is already there. There's about 20 of them and they're all wearing matching red shirts, and some of them in matching headbands. They're doing big team spirit chanting and team-building lil games and exercises, they're helping each other do serious athletic stretches, they're running scoring and blocking drills, working on passes, Andrew Slack is yelling at the crowd tryna get us hype, THEY'RE ABOUT THIS. LeakyCon team isn't even there yet. Staffers in our general area expressing mild panic like wtf. Leaky shows up like, fifteen minutes after the match is already supposed to have STARTED and there are like. Just enough of them to make a whole team. No sense of unity or a uniform. One girl is wearing a maxi dress and sandals. FRIENDS UR NOT READY.... Next to HPA they looked so sloppy and sad like aww leakycon pls.... Melissa is waving some pompoms and getting us chanting and finally Leaky team is like OH YEAH LET'S TAKE A LAP!!! HUHHHH WE'RE BUTCH RUNNING!!! So they take off into the rest of the vendor's room shouting and trying to get pumped and they run and run and don't come back for a bit and when they do return finally, they've obviously run past the LeakyCon merch booth in the room and all picked up matching pink Leaky tank tops. Maxi dress girl and at least one other person are also wearing Leaky track shorts now too hehehe. The game gets going and for a while Leaky's getting their asses handed to them. Snitch dude disappears and it's just Quaffle play and they stick maxi dress girl on Keeper and she's clearly their best player (she's super tall, so good for Keeper, dat wingspan!). One of Leaky's Beaters needed way more sports bra action than she had and I felt super sad for her oh no friend ur boobies are clearly impeding u. But Leaky scored a couple of times anyway even though HPA was clearly doing better, and finally they pulled tall girl off Keeper and put someone else there, and she ran off into the main field and started scoring some. Shit's gettin real and at one point it was like 7-6 SO CLOSE but it ended up a bit more of an HPA runaway by the time the Snitch re-emerged.
And okay Snitch dude is hella legit but the Seekers are also hella legit!! Both the Seekers were clearly REALLY good players and once the Snitch came back I had a hard time making myself watch any of the Quaffle stuff and following who was scoring because the three of them were so mesmerizing. It was hilarious because the Snitch was not a big dude but both the Seekers were teeny tiny and so they'd run at him and he'd just kind of shove at their shoulders like "Hmm no." ahahaha. like when a taller person holds a shorter person at arm's length and they "keep running" but they're being stopped by the tall person's hand, like that bit, but irl. pfft. His little Snitch dongle was hanging RIGHT on his butt too like you pretty much had to go for the booty to grab the Snitch. And eventually Leaky got it!!! Unfortch HPA was too far ahead at that point and I think the final score was like 14-11 and HPA won which was a big bummer. But I was mad impressed by the whole game and it was definitely A++ would attend again next year. fuckin Quidditch, man.
So we were pretty much done for Thursday and I was like, Let's case Ann Arbor Tees on our way out and then go die and that sounded like a gr8 idea so we walked past and holla'd at Ricky. Man we had a great rapport with Ricky like the whole weekend, what a choice dude. He saw me in costume and IMMEDIATELY handed me a badge ribbon that said "Must Be A Weasley" and I was like EEYYYYY bc I am literally that weasley being spoken of in that quote. legit as hell. And idk we talked at him a little and was this when? we bought? the confluence posters? WE SPENT SO MUCH TIME IN RICKY'S PRESENCE IT IS ALL A BLUR but we chatted with him a bunch I think about TCB stuff and Dylan stuff and I don't even fucking know all I have in my notes for right here is "GOOD TALK, RICKY" and I'm sure that sums it the fuck up. Basically I decided I needed a day to think on the merch and stuff and I'd come back later and who even knows. This fuckin bro basically. ricky Ricky ricky. :***
We crash back into our hotel room and I take a few minutes to de-Ginny, at long last, before we commit to a real-ass Walgreen's run for convention weekend snacks. This was fun and silly bc most of the other people in the Walgreen's were also Leaky people, but also because in order to get there we walked THROUGH both the convention center and the Rosen Centre hotel, which was hella fun because of everything else that was going on. In addition to Miss America Outstanding Teen, there was also some kind of chess convention? And who knows what else, we were FAR from the only event scheduled that weekend, and everyone kind of people-watching everyone else was fucking fun as hell. In Walgreen's we got super hype on some Lunchables and also spent plenty of time fucking with all the Cokes and Diet Cokes with the "Share a Coke" names on them and stuff, and we bought Gabi a Share A Diet Coke With Corey because we're good/terrible friends and we stuck a bunch of other ones with names of starkids all next to each other but like the cross-section of starkids we found was WEIRD and really funny omg, it was like, Daniel, Tyler, Dylan, Lauren, and Mark. Good times. (The full legacy of this Share A Coke With Corey bottle that I forgot to include in the narrative and I'm sticking in awkwardly right here: Eventually once it was empty we took a pic of Kelsey about to throw it away with the caption "is THIS a trash?" because of that damn TCB PSA thing, and he was like, Recycle that shit!, and we were Into It. TCB foreverrr)
So yeah Lunchables and Pop-Tarts and vegetables and we were feelin pretty good about life. By the time we got back from all of that Gabi and Kelsey were getting back from the park, too, I think, mostly, and we did some good like, crashing in the hotel talking and chilling and telling stories. One of my favorite parts of all conventions tbh. I love my friends so much ;~; and we all have such gr9 stories to tell at all times and I just want to hang out with people I love and touch their faces and tell them I love them. They seemed to have fun in the park :3 apparently Gabi got selected for the Ollivander's thing so that was A+. FRANDSHIPZ. And we were like ok gotta go to bed early now bc of waking up for signing wristbands! but we still did not. Really do that ahahah. #theworst
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Friday
We got up early-early because Hannah and Kelsey were trying to get wristbands for things!! Hannah NEEDED Hannah Hart and Kelsey was going for StarKid I believe [lol edited this for accuracy]. So I was like sure I'll come with to try to help out with our odds and I think eventually everyone came with! Only I was like, Not in my costume at 8am not yet lmao. So we waited in the big snakey line and we kept having to go through because we kept not getting them boo. The person holding the ticket bag for the Hannah line was a cool they/them/theirs pronoun friend with a BUTTON on their con lanyard that specifically was like "here's the pronouns buddy" and I was like !! where did it come from because my roommate! will want!! AND EVENTUALLY ON OUR THIRD TIME THROUGH THEY JUST GAVE IT TO GABI bc gabi had surfaced by then and lmao hooray. I think it took four times total to get all the things we needed? Hannah got one but we still needed one for Kelsey and we all went through the line like Kelsey - no, Hannah - no, me - no and we were like IT'S UP 2 U SERA And then Sera got one!! hooray!! Then we came back to help a small friend Gabi had made and eventually secured one for her too. Overall the MOST times I have had to do the wristband thing but still successful and yay. And awww a wristband line is how Hannah and I first met IRL :* emotions hehehe.
Then some people (Gabi and Kelsey?) went to a thing and I went to put on my DUMB FRIDAY COSTUME HERE WE GO U'VE PROBABLY SEEN ALREADY BUT: I was a Pi Xar soldier/one of Achmed's henchmen from Twisted and I made a sign that was a picture of a tiger's face and then a picture of two restroom-sign-style stick people doing the nasty. TIGER FUCKER!! I was a huge hit ok I do not think I am exaggerating to say this. People loved it. I was worried when I first conceived of it that I was going to get fussed at by staff for having the sign bc ~inappropriate and then the costume was not going to be AS great without the sign, but no one said a goddamn thing and I was so pleased aaahhhh cosplaayyyyyy. ANYWHO fucking @TinCanBrothers had been tweeting about an unofficial meetup that morning at 10:30 and they FINALLY posted a location for the thing so we went to that, and I felt stupid in my costume at the thing lmao but MAMA ETHAN MAH BUDDY was also there in costume so we worked it out.
What a great meetup!! Corey and Brian were adorable and so was everyone else there (Brian is so weird, lol omg), and we had a lot of fun just broing out with them in such a casual, non-intense capacity like there were probably only 25 of us there tops and no one was like, rushing them or being a dick, we just sat in a circle on the floor and chilllllled. (It was funny bc a woman on a Segway tried to get through at one point and we had to clear her a path oops.) They asked about our favorite sketches and we were pretty much like, The public service announcement lol (hence all our trash jokes always). We talked a lot about theatre and comedy and the internet, and Hannah got Corey to geek out about Broad City with her, and Gabi showed up late and had to do their introduction after the fact and their 'third thing about me' (besides name and hometown) was "I don't know my social security number" and Corey looks them dead in the eye and straight calls them OUT with "AREN'T YOU IN COLLEGE??" L M A O we laughed a lot bc it was like the one time Corey kind of flat-out acknowledged the whole "hey it's my fanclub again fancy seeing y'all here" kind of situation hehehehe. That and me complaining about not being able to go to the live show and like LET THE RECORD SHOW I DID NOT INSTIGATE THIS, but Corey legit said "Tweet at us, because we may be rehearsing..." He invited me to their rehearsal of his own volition. Just saying. We also discussed like, if they'd ever had some ~creative differences, and Brian was talking about a big fight they'd had about a sketch that basically boiled down to "I was like, Geishas are funny! And Corey was like, Geishas are racist." lmao TELL IT, LUBOWICH. And then at one point Hannah invited them all to her house if they ever needed to use live goats or chickens in a sketch so like, there you go lol. ALSO, viral marketing via sticking stickers on random supermarket products? Okay yep we can do that. BUT BEST PART: They were like "Who do you guys think we should maybe collaborate with?" and Kelsey and Gabi and I just immediately screamed FAR FROM FAMOUS!!! hehehehe. we're the worst and we don't even care xoxo
When it kind of wrapped up we all took a big picture together where we are pretending to sneeze and that was kind of weird and hilarious and basically fit the whole weird, hilarious tone of the whole meetup. Kelsey took some Snapchats with Brian and Corey to send to Ali Gordon for #stealingallyourfriends hehehe and then I took a pic or two with the two of them and they've got their fists up all shouty like TIGERFUCKER which is great :3 And so just yeah what a nice lil thing to do! So happy to have been involved!
I don't remember if we were going specifically to A Thing immediately after that or we were just kind of heading in a direction but we went down an escalator, walked a certain way, and then almost immediately ran into Eric and Jade going the other way about to go up a different escalator. We kind of whisper-shouted at them like HEY. HEY WHERE'S YOUR DOG. WHERE'S THE DOG, JADE and eventually they noticed us and Jade was like "Wait are you HECKLING me am I being HECKLED right now?" LOL forever and the two of them stopped and chatted with us some. (Also what you need to understand is that EVERY OTHER TIME WE SAW JADE AND ERIC THE WHOLE CONVENTION, we just shouted "WHERE'S THE DOGGGGG" at them. It happened at least 6 times. Just a blanket statement in case it doesn't work its way into my narrative later. (Spoilers I added this parenthetical much later because it didn't. BUT IT'S IMPORTANT.))They were very impressed by my costume!! ALTHOUGH Jade was not understanding the green hair? She was like I don't...get it... about the green mustache and I was like well I wanted it to match the hair and she was like uhh right sure I just don't. Okay whatever fine and it took her FOREVER to realize that THE GREEN HAIR WAS MY ACTUAL REAL HAIR AND NOT JUST PART OF THE COSTUME and this was hilarious to us for some reason omg. Jade was MVP of this con like Jade and Ricky tbh. We also started making fun of Eric for his gross toe shoes because we know Jade hates them like just to get a rise out of Jade and she compared the smell when he took them off to "hot nacho cheese from an arcade stuffed inside a rubber tube" like ewwwww blech lmao. And we took a picture with Eric in EKGS order because our last one from Twisted was so crap but I felt awkward doing it in costume and not just as myself the E from the EKGS hahaha but whatever. Overall a fun silly interaction that we thought might be all we really got with Jade for the weekend but we were so soooo mistaken because Saturday night happened but more on that when I get to saturday night oops.
Almost immediately after that we ran into Robert as well and he was REALLY INTO the costume. (Over the course of the weekend I think a lot of people thought I was meant to be Robert specifically and not just Pi Xar Person because I had my hair out in the front and I guess he was the only one who really had his like that in the show as well? But yeah lol me and Robert ummm cool.) He was not super articulate about it though he was just like "That's...so awesome. Like that's really good and just awesome." and HE wanted a picture with ME oh how the turntables, so Kelsey took one and tweeted it at him and the tweet literally just said "Heyyo." cacklin about it. He looked super exhausted/semi-hungover/jetlagged lmao bro was really out of it.
We split ways from Rob and the next thing we did was Snape: Not The Hero We Deserve AKA THE SNAPE'S A DICK PANEL. GOD BLESS AMERICA. Or well Canada the dude who was running it was from Canada and like we barely got in because I guess we were running late bc lol EKG/Jade/Rob times but YEAH and like, Kelsey didn't come in? :(? She was trying to do her makeup I guess and felt kind of awkward so she just stayed in the hallway oh no friend. :( BUT ANYWAY this panel was so great like idk it wasn't a whole lot of panel-panel it was just the dude running it basically reading aloud an essay/presentation that he had written about everything that was wrong with Snape, and since it was pre-written it sounded a little bit prosey/obviously scripted but it was like literally just like. A SERMON. About how Snape is shitty like we were clapping and shouting at the appropriate times and everything was perfect. He opened it up for input at the end and everyone had gr8 things to say EXCEPT ONE WOMAN... And like panel dude had indicated even in the con manual/panel description like, If you love Snape and want to come to the thing you are also more than welcome! To come and argue your point! Not tryna exclude folks, but he had also indicated "booing and hissing encouraged" so this one Snape-Lovin Older Lady comes up to the front to kind of speak her piece and oh god. She was like "Snape behaves the way he does because he never grew and matured emotionally he was stunted! He makes bad choices because he doesn't know any better because he never learned! I mean, when the first time you try to forge a deep emotional connection with someone or something, it goes HORRIBLY WRONG, doesn't that encourage you to never make a connection like that again? He didn't know how to love!!!" OR SOME SHIT LIKE THIS and we literally just booed her and made her sit back down. I was like u know who never learned to grow up and make adult decisions but WASN'T an asshole child abuser? Sirius Black!! WOW cool story bro!! And then literally just the capstone of this panel was Mark Oshiro gets up there and says "As a person of color: SNAPE IS A RACIST." and then basically just...dropped the mic. God it was so affirming to be in a room full of badass Snape haters god Snape what a piece of turd amirite.
I guess we migrated off to StarKid photobooth after this? I forget if all 5 of us went to this or? I think so because I remember talking about like groups of five/groups of seven or something with the pics. When we got there a line was aggressively Not Forming Yet so there was a lot of loitering in big groups and I was able to reconnect with some cosplayers I'd seen just for a second or two earlier, other people from Twisted! for pics! There was a Scheherazade + Flashback Jafar duo and then just another Scher by herself and I took pics for me and for a bunch of strangers with both of them, Super Fun. So much StarKid cosplay at this con! It was great!! Then a real-ass line finally starts forming for real and we snaaaaaked~ through the line forever, and people would keep like, just then noticing my sign and getting into it. hehehe I'm such an attention whore I was living for this. Meredith also instagram'd a picture from this line and you can totally see us in it! Me especially but also Kelsey and I think almost Hannah right next to us hehehe. Freakin' great.
When we finally got to the front I think some of the StarKids like, kind of reacted to the costume? Which was the whole point of me even going to the photobooth at all was so everyone saw it and knew hehe but I think a lot of them weren't super able to process it right in that moment because everything was moving so fast so that everyone could get through the line. Jim I think definitely went "oh, tiger fucker!" though which was great. Then pics and then we're clearing out and Pat Brady catches sight of the costume and asks for a pic!! Pat Brady!!! She was like, "Oh, I am texting Joe Walker so many things from today" and I was like !!!!! IS PAT LEGIT SENDING WALKER A PIC OF ME RIGHT NOW so much was happening!! Aahhhh a good. Also Kelsey tells us right after this that apparently when she was getting into the pic, since she was closer to Denise, she heard Denise say something like "Okay, who here is a Crip and who's a Blood?" and we were like ???!!! DENISE ARE U OK. wtf even was friday afternoon man ahahahaha.
We had some time to waste so we wasted it, maybe we ate some snacks or something I don't even remember, just chillin doin' stuff, and then Hannah and I (and I'm PRETTY sure Sera? Look Friday is messy) went to Greg Laslo's wandlore panel and almost didn't get seats which was rough. They had to turn some people out of the room even because of capacity and stuff and ugh it was like the least air-conditioned room in the con or something it was so hot in here, also some super rudeness from some girls dressed as house-elves about saving seats, there was a Situation. fuckin house-elves. WHATEVER. I love Greg Laslo he's so baller and I'm so glad we went to the panel bc I love to hear him talk, he honestly cares so much about his work and the part of the fandom that he's attuned to and it was greeeaattt, I'm glad I took Hannah to it :3 BUT THEN WHEN HE OPENED UP FOR QUESTIONS people were asking really fucking dumb questions. Like, stuff where they were tryna front like they knew more than him? that awkward situation? Like sit your ass DOWN dude he MAKES WANDS HE KNOWS ALL OF THE WAND THINGS. smh. His panel last year was way more civilized. But overall still super glad we went because his drive and devotion just makes me so happy.
Although not happy: It was during this panel that I received the text from my mom that our cat, Isabella, whom we've had for a good eighteen years, was living her last day and would no longer be with us come tomorrow. Like, super sad. She's been a family pet since I was in elementary school and she was old for a kitty, and sick too, but no one ever wants to hear that news. It wasn't quite as hard on me as the death of our other cat was though because Sylvia was "my" kitty and Bella was much more "my mom's" kitty. I was mostly worried and sad for Mom. :( tragedy here in the middle of my fun vacation. No bueno.
Anyway, recovering from all of that, we went back to the vendors' room to scope out The Things. I kept telling myself I was going to get a Greg Laslo wand but every time I was in the area I was kind of like, The time is not right yet, idek haha. So of course we just ended up back at Ann Arbor Tees. A bunch of starkids were there!! I think we were kind of looking for Dylan but he vanished like an IRL fucking wizard somehow so mostly we talked to Denise hehehe. DENISE WAS SUPER INTO MY COSTUME AS SOON AS SHE FINALLY LIKE COTTONED ON TO IT. She saw the sign and parsed it and just GASPED ahaha omg like "!!!! tiger fucckerrrrrr!!" and she actually took the sign out of my hands and held it up to herself and was so about the whole thing. I took a couple pics with her that I think she was super excited about omg denise is The Cutest, she was having Ricky set her aside a couple shirts off the discount rack, so much was going on, I love her Forever. Also Corey was there still handing out his TCB trading cards like he'd had at the meetup, and he was like "Ironically, I am out of...the Corey ones" and I was like "Lol ur soooo popular!" and he was like "Omg I know right." so fab. Also Julia was apparently there but before we could find her we already lost her?? Like WHERE IS JULIA ahaha that was the game of the whole con basically. Valentina especially was on a Julia hunt and idk if she ever even found her at all. The last person kind of there was Jim and I talked to him a second about the costume and he was like "Oh yes. Tiger fucker." and I took a pic of him with the sign and we all kind of pal'd around with Jim and that was fun.
Then there was. A situation? about the paper hats world record thing? Wherein like, some people needed to go to that in order to crash in the room and still be there for a Hannah Hart thing that was happening after it was over, so we were trying to work out what was going on with that, but before that could even unfold there was a lineup for the StarKid signing. And so we had to basically hop from thing to thing to thing but we were all also SUPER HUNGRY so it was like, we have to be in StarKid line EARLY so we can clear out of it to line up for hats thing and in the meantime can someone go get food? I WAS NOT INVOLVED IN...ANY OF THESE THINGS...it was all kind of vortexing around me haha. But I decided to keep people company in the StarKid signing line just not actually line up, just kind of being in costume and being silly and waving my sign around, and so I was holding down the fort while I think Sera and Hannah ran back to that McDonald's for food - LOOK I TOLD YOU FRIDAY AFTERNOON IS A MESS - and Gabi and Kelsey waited in this line... and eventually what happened was here's a thing that happened:
Ricky was walking through/around the line trying to hock posters. He was like "COOL POSTER ONLY $10! Or, if you hate the artwork, flip it over and it's totally blank! Create your own poster for $10!" What a NERD. So I was like, for $10, will YOU create me a poster? And he was like "...Badly drawn cat posters, $10!" And Gabi was like "Whoa whoa wait, draw me a cat, if I give you money will you draw me a cat?" But somehow this worked its way around to not wanting it on a poster, just on something, and that something became a person's arm, and from some dumb shit Gabi and I just started casually trolling Ricky about, this eventually turned into Ricky taking my Sharpie and my other colorful markers and drawing a ton of people fake tattoos. #CattoosAndTattoos THAT'S RIGHT FRIENDS. Gabi got a Mickey Mouse/alien hybrid thing?? People got cats and snakes and dragons? I GOT A DOG. IT WAS ACTUALLY A PRETTY LEGIT DOG, and I made him sign it so his handiwork would be properly attributed. If I were more casual about the idea of getting tattoos I honestly might have tried to save it on there long enough to get it as a real tattoo because if you just kind of glanced at it it almost DID LOOK REAL it was pretty legit, thanks Ricky, you big fuckin dweeb.
When the line kind of started moving For Real they made us move off to the side if we weren't actually in the line proper, so I kind of chilled over there and waved my sign back at the line and waited for people to be done. And this staff person kept YELLING at us like ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOMEONE U NEED TO MOVE and ugh she was the worst, like yes, we've told you every damn time that we are in fact waiting for someone, this has not changed since you yelled at us four minutes ago? smh. Eventually Sera and Hannah returned with food and Hannah was like HERE'S THE THING THO I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO GET MY PAPER CROWN SO WE'RE GONNA MAKE ME ONE OUT OF THIS MCDONALD'S BAG. Basically we sat there and made Hannah and Kelsey crowns for the thing out of our reject supplies that we happened to have, and I just gave Sera mine to wear because I had un-committed from the idea of really going my own self, and we just sat there and did this and ate our McDonald's and we were a mess. Friday was MessDay. Arianna was in here somewhere too? according to my notes? A LOT WAS HAPPENING???? yikes.
So like I was also trying to stay in communication with Lucie and Megan bc we were I think going to try to go out to dinner that night? But Megan had to cancel bc she's moving away to grad school so it was just me and Lucie and I had no idea what her timeframe was which was frustrating but totally not her fault, there was some crazy traffic shenanigans I guess plus I was misinterpreting some messages or something ANYWAY what this led to was like, everyone else had another Thing or Things they were doing but me, so I was just going to chill on the floor in the general area of where I was expecting Lucie to arrive and just wait for her with my slowly-dying phone, cool story bro. A couple people walked past who either did or did not recognize my sign and I could always kind of hear their reactions which was funny, one person was like "I'm guessing that's a reference to a show I have never watched before" lol. At one point a total stranger sat down next to me for some unknown reason and attempted to talk to me about a whole bunch of stuff and like Intensely Befriend me, but she was weirding me out, so I made up some excuse to leave her and then I was like welp, now I have to go somewhere else, so I wandered aimlessly a little bit until some girls who liked my costume were nice enough to let me bum a phone charger from them for a while, and I sat in the corner with them and chatted a bit and mostly just spaced out.
THIS WAS WHEN I FINALLY SAW FUCKING BRANDON?? The Brandon mystery omg. I was honestly not even sure he was in the convention proper until he'd tweeted something about the vendor room, but he was in another kind of cluster of people Aggressively Not Lining Up for a thing, and I called him over and we chatted for a bit and it was great. Dude Brandon is such a cool guy I'm real bummed we didn't hang out more. But he asked me about StarKid stuff and I asked him about Hannah Hart stuff and I guess the line thing he was Not In was for a John Green thing which was cool cool. (He tweeted later like "@threepwillow found me out as a secret John Green fangirl" ahahaha bless ♥) So that stuff happened, and I watched a bunch of stuff for these girls as they CHASED after the Warbler boys who randomly appeared (nothing came of that I guess), and then the line ACTUALLY started forming for the John Green thing and they had to get into it so I gave them their charger back and began to wander aimlessly again, and I saw Dylan! I really wanted to talk to him but the people that were already there were talking to him A Lot and I couldn't really cut in except to ask for a quick picture, which I really wanted of him and me and the sign but he said no to the sign, blush blush. What a cute dumb FACE he has, overwhelming, I love him.
Still hadn't heard a whole lot from Lucie but she was running late I guess and it was already time for TRIVIA!!!!! WHICH I HAD TO go get in line for because my buddies were still stragglin in from all the other stuff they were doing. The line situation here was REALLY shitty and people were yelling and blech LineCon 2014 status okay whatever BUT they almost didn't let my friends over to me? They were like ARE YOU LINING UP FOR TRIVIA THE LINE ENDS OVER THERE >:||| and I literally yelled "HEY THAT'S MY TEAM!!" back at them to get them to get up in the line with me. Too much was happening. Then we eventually get into the trivia room and I guess the setup is "no more than 6 to a team" so we kind of shouted out like "Hey anyone who wants to play but is by themselves can join our group of 5 we guess haha" and we recruited a small stranger named Melissa and then THE GAME. WAS ON!!!
TEAM LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER READY TO FUCKING GO omg it took us forever to come up with a team name but when we finally did we were like, oh, duh. The setup of the whole thing was really great, not much like my own trivia gigs but I liked it!! Basically there were 6 rounds and each round addressed a different fandom. We were told up front that one round was audio, one was visual and one was multiple choice, and that each round was 8 points but two of the six rounds would be double (16 points). IN ADDITION, for exactly 1 round, you had the option to circle this lil joker guy on your answer sheet and all your answers in that round would count double. SO you could joker one of the already-doubled rounds and get QUADRUPLE!! Damn son.
The first round was Doctor Who questions and it was like baby round, even I knew some of those. I don't think we got any wrong except for maybe one that was about Old Who that our team couldn't scrounge the knowledge for. But like, your standard Tumblrite could've gotten the majority of them. Then round 2, the audio round, which turned out to be one of the double-points rounds, was GET THIS: THE MUSIC OF JOSS WHEDON. I kind of snatched the answer sheet over like "I GOT THIS" and I think it was really this round, plus some ass-pulls in other places and our general HP badassery, that really squeaked us by in this game. Every question was two parts: 1) identify the song and 2) another question about the song. I think I maybe missed 3 or 4 out of all 16 on that one. SOME OF THEM WERE REAL ASS SONGS? Like the ep of Angel where everyone is singing and it was like, I Will Survive, and who is the original artist, or Giles playing in the coffee shop and it was Behind Blue Eye and who is the original artist. BUT SOME PEOPLE WERE BABIES AND LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW GLORIA GAYNOR. wowwee. so yeah we kicked that round's ass and by we I mean I. I kicked that round's ass. God bless.
Round 3 was the multiple-choice round and it was Game of Thrones, which we trusted to Sera. Each question was literally just is it A or B and she felt pretty good about almost all of them, so god bless. That was really our downfall was we were not SUPER-diversified in the fandoms that we had knowledge about, which we proved in round 5 when it was all obscure-as-fuck Lord of the Rings stuff and we literally got...three. (And a half but not credit for it.) LOL EMBARRASSING.
Round 4, which it may look like I skipped, was actually the visual round, which got passed out at the beginning, and we had till the end of round "5" (which came fourth) to complete it, and turn it in along with the LOTR stuff. The visual round was MCU!! And me and Sera literally PULLED THIS OUTTA OUR BUTTS WE WERE SO IMPRESSED W OURSELVES. Basically it was like, eight pictures depicting scenes where MCU characters had died, only the dying character was replaced with Deadpool, and you had to identify who Deadpool was replacing. We got I think five of them straight away; another we kind of fumbled our way to, but felt decent about; and then the last two, we knew exactly who they were, but could not for the life of us remember their goddamn names. It was the bad guy from Iron Man 2 and the bad guy from Iron Man 3. DESPERATION. So we spent the whole of the first four rounds trying to scramble these guys' names from our brains. I got real hung up on the IM3 dude. I was like, Isn't his name Pierce? or like NO Pearce, with an A? His first name or his last name I do not even know? And Sera was like, No, that's not it, and finally she dug it out of her brain what his real name was, which was like Killian, and we spelled his first name totally fucking wrong but we knew what it was SUPPOSED to be, so whatever. And IM2 guy we were like, Russian guy wtf!! And I was like Or WAIT, isn't his super alias like, Whiplash? I think it's Whiplash! And Sera was all, I don't fucking know did they ever call him that??? AND WE WERE SO PATHETIC ON IT so finally when we had to turn it in I just wrote "...Russian guy from IM2 (whiplash?)" and called it a fucking day.
So after we turn in round 4 and round 5 at the same time, the host guy has to take a break to keep score before we move into round 6 which is of course Harry Potter. While we're taking this break Sera googles it up these dudes' real names and is like "EMILY. GUY PEARCE. PLAYS HIM IN THE MOVIE." SO THAT'S WHERE I WAS GETTING PEARCE FROM at least I am not totally insane hahaha!! And then our dude is announcing out the correct answers to all the rounds up to that point, and he totally DID take Whiplash for other guy!!! So all in all we got 7/8 in the visual round because we just goofed ONE, which was the red herring that in the Wolverine one Deadpool was replacing...Deadpool. And we put Sabertooth. BOOOOO. But HONESTLY it was the grace of fucking god on that. So I'm like casually tallying the ones we know we got right and it's looking PRETTY good but not PERFECTLY good...
BUT THEN HE ANNOUNCES THE TOP TEN AND WE ARE IN FIFTH PLACE!!! HOLY SHIT we were so proud of ourselves because honestly we TANKED the LOTR round and the MCU one had us all shook up. So now all we have left is HP and like, A) we saved our double-bonus joker for this round because obviously, but B) it's also ALREADY a double round so we're technically capable of getting THIRTY TWO more points. shit son. We felt REALLY good about the HP round like we pretty much knew all of them although we worried about some spelling and idk but WHATEV but then he's reading out the correct answers and we
fucked one up.
There was a question like "What did the boggart become for a) Parvati Patil and b) Dean Thomas" and we GOT THEM BACKWARD!! WE PUT THE WRONG BOGGARTS W THE WRONG PEOPLE and Gabi and I were LIVID with ourselves and everyone else was like "calm down" and we were like "noooooo we hecked up." Also there was one that was like Repello Muggletum and I think I put Repellum Muggleton?? And we didn't know if he was going to take that or not aaahhhh so he's reading off the top 10 again and it's NONE of the same people who were in the top 10 before the HP round, and he's not calling our name, and we were like shit, did we heck up THAT badly?
BUT WE GOT THIRD PLACE!!!!!! THIRD PLACE OUT OF SIXTY-FOUR TEAMS!!!! HOLY SHIT we were SO proud of ourselves omg we NAILED it and next year we are going to go back and nail it even HARDER bc now I wanna WIN. Now that I know we CAN do that well, I think we SHOULD!! Omg it was the fucking coolest. And lol because the two teams ahead of us both had Whedon-inspired team names so I'm pretty sure ONLY people who nailed that Whedon round as hard as we did were able to get to the top. God bless. I love trivia so dang much. It was just infuriating to know that like there was only a 1-point difference between first and second, and between second and third, so if we hadn't botched that boggart question WE ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE WON. Still so mad at myself tbh aahhhhh boo.
Lamesauce there were no prizes for third place, only first place actually got anything, but I holla'd at the host dude from one trivia host to another and thanked him for a lot of fun, and we actually ran into winning team The Reavers outside the room and took a pic of the four of them together for them, so they took pics of us, and all in all a game well fucking played. God we were so hype on this for the rest of forever. THIRD PLACE. OUT OF SIXTY FOUR.
Once that was over I had finally sorted out my Lucie shenanigans! Gabi and Kelsey were going to Walgreen's for their own run I think(? --NO, THEY WENT....SOMEWHERE.....Food was involved idk) and Hannah and Sera were going to stick around for some WRock, so Lucie and I walked back to the hotel room so I could change out of my costume and give her the presents I had for her ♥ and also do some Good Talk about Klaine/the fandom/the dumb internet and all that stuff hehe. And I showed her my klaine book~ and stuff~ LUCIE'S THE GREATEST. And too much stupid shit has happened to her lately and that is just Unacceptable, universe :< I felt a lil bad though because I was so high off the convention and kicking trivia ass that I was kind of bouncing off the walls, I felt hyperactive and annoying and Too Much for sweet sick lucie and I didn't want to be bothering you aww friend :( so I hope everything was all right. After some chitchats and nice things she had to head out so I walked her back most of the way to her car and was going to go reconvene with Sera and Hannah at the WRock concert but they were already leaving!! Lol we must have JUST passed each other. I'd walked up past Gabi and Kelsey and Arianna's crew playing games in a floor circle with some folks I did not know at all and I stole a granola bar from them lol and then I walked ALL the way up to mainstage only for Sera and Hannah to not be there. whomp whomp. So they waited for me in their trek back to the hotel and I caught up with them and we walked the rest of the way back together. And I think it was at this time when we walked past a couple girls singing Big T's Temptation in the dead-empty wing of the OCCC that the con wasn't in lmao and I sang it back at them and it was delightful. WHOOOO'S THAT BOY~ lmao best.
Then as we were leaving, gearing up to hike across that freaking skybridge back to our hotel, a rad person in a golf cart type thing came and retrieved us and drove us all the way back instead! WINNING. So back to the room to crash whooo. Except idk I guess I REALLY WANTED some milk to go with my poptarts? So I went on a lil quest down to the restaurant/convenience store area inside the hotel and bought a tiny carton of milk haha success. So yeah then milk+poptarts+hanging out just the three of us 5ever before sleeping and we were all just the best of buds and I loved everything. We had a gr8888 conversation about which StarKids we'd most like to get high with and I think our general consensus is like...Nick Strauss, Rachael Soglin, and then either a TalkFine double-team or a Dylan/Watsky double-team. yes please. I LOVE MY FRIENDS WHY DO WE NOT JUST HANG OUT LIKE THIS FOREVER IT ISN'T FAIR :( THE WORLD IS CRUEL The world is wicked etc. etc. sad times. I must have been asleep or very close to it by the time Gabi and Kelsey came back from their separate adventure which is A BUMMER because I just want all the friend time forever. Obvi. But like honestly sleeping was also really good at this point so.
CONCLUDED IN V.1C
Thursday!!
So the first order of business was: They're finally putting us in the hotel we had actually booked and not the Shingle Creek Reject City. The long and short of THIS was that our first night at Shingle Creek was free, and our second night at Shingle Creek was only $89, which was pretty great for our bank accounts in the long run, but we're not quiiiite sure it was worth the inane inconveniences that were caused to us by having to up and move our entire lives on the first real day of the convention. Gabi, Kelsey and I were kind of spearheading the switch-over process, me because I had a panel I was trying to get to (the Glee meetup...eesh) and them because Gabi had decided they were gonna blow off Thursday of the con proper and instead take Kelsey to the parks just the two of them, since they weren't able to come to OATC. That was super nice aaahhh :') frandz. So we kind of had to book it out of Shingle Creek to catch the last available shuttle to the Rosen Plaza before my stuff happened, and Hannah and Sera were still kind of getting their ish together in the room, and basically because of how timing worked (super shittily) we had to leave before they got down and joined us and we had to leave them there to check out of Shingle Creek without us. And we felt like dicks about it!!!! Too much was happening all at once. Also I was cosplaying Ginny that day so that was the extra stress of like, try not to look like shit in costume because that's embarrassing and also MY WHOLE PANEL THAT I'M RUNNING IS ABOUT WEARING A COSTUME and I have to look legit for that :( TOO MUCH WAS HAPPENING :(
The long and short of it was a) In putting on my makeup for Ginny, I took my nosering out, and left it on the sink at the fucking Shingle Creek after we LEFT THE SHINGLE CREEK FOR GOOD and I did exactly what I said I was going to do/not do on Twitter and went without a nosering for the whole rest of my fucking vacation rip in peace, AND b) We got to the Rosen Plaza and checked in-ish but they didn't have a room ready for us yet so we had to leave our stuff at the front desk. Which was fine if a little awkward/hilarious because of my prop for my Friday costume and Kelsey's just like...takeout container of spaghetti that was just loose with the rest of her stuff lmao. But we pre-checked in and got all that sorted and then Gabi and Kelsey gallivanted off to WWOHP and I high-tailed it to the convention center trying to get there in time for this Glee panel.
Which like. The sched.org schedule and the printed convention book schedule were telling me it was at two different times? So when I got to the room and the Warblers actors were sitting up at the front, I was a little confused and a little frustrated, because I was under the impression that it was just a Fan Panel For Fans By Fans which was what I was there for and I was like, this is not the right thing, the schedule lied to me and I booked it over here for nothing!! BUT they left like halfway through and then it turned back into the thing I thought it was? So I went back into the room (after sitting on the floor in the hall chatting with a really cute Southern-accent mom I had met back at the Plaza - she was freaking adorable and it was her 10yo daughter's first convention and she was in the adjacent room in the MLP meetup and I was like awww) and kind of pal'd around with people and maybe talked too much and screamed about Cooper Anderson and the next-gen New Directions being fusions of the OG New Directions and idk hahaha. And I met Andie ohblainers briefly and that was cute and we hated on the DCST together which is always a great Bonding Moment for internet people I've learned, and then I had an hour to waste between the end of that panel and the beginning of my own so I was like, better find my friends!
Spoilers I could NOT find my friends. I sat alone at this table out front for a while and texted/tweeted at some folks attempting to locate them but cell phones were A Struggle this whole weekend so it was ultimately not super reliable. I saw a TINY CUTE KAWAII Cecil Palmer + Glow Cloud Umbrella cosplayer omg she was the Most Precious (I think it was same girl who was karkat the day before? but I was WAY more into cecil omg). I met this cute couple that was dating and he'd never been to a con before and she was talking him through it and they were collecting tons of badge ribbons and we talked a little as like, LeakyCon Grown Ups Who Aren't 14 and that was p neat. (Turns out later I think they were some of the people who won in that Bring A Newbie To LeakyCon contest thing, the girl on the right, so yeah neato for them!!) Also in addition to finding the people I was actually at the con with I was also supposed to find Arianna and give her Gabi's badge for A Reason? I think to go collect Gabi's wristbands for a thing bc rockstars. or something. Since Gabi wasn't there. BUT ANYWAY Trying to find her also and so I'm sitting there alone chillin dressed as Ginny Weasley and Nick Lang just like...casually walks by.... And no one is saying anything to him or bothering him so I kind of didn't want to call attention to it? But? I was just like "Hey, psst, Nick"
and he was like "Oh, uh, yeah?"
and I was like, "Do you know where Arianna is?"
PFFFFFFT. And he was like "Do I know where Arianna is.... I...do not." And then we chatted for a little bit and apparently he was there because he'd been to the MLP meetup and they gave him a parasprite pin thingie that he was wearing and he was being real cute and chill and Nick Langy about the whole thing. Then a like middle-school age boy noticed him and was like DUDE CAN WE TAKE A SELFIE? :D And literally climbed over this tall wall thing to take a pic with him and that was presh and dude's older sister/older girl chum was like "I'd like a selfie too but I'm going to walk around like a normal person instead of climbing over pff" and idk adorable Nick Lang times.
IDR if I found my friends RIGHT before my panel and we went there together or if I found them because they came to my panel but anyway it was time for my meetup panel!! cool!! So I walked down to the room where it was and keep in mind it was meant to start at 1 and it's now like 12:52 so I was like ok cool perfect timing, let's get this show on the road hooray, but when I arrived...another girl...was up at the front table?? So idk at first I assumed she was staff and she was gonna be talking to me about what was going on and then letting me do the thing but I talked to her and she was like "Oh are you Emily? haha we didn't think you were coming and if you didn't I was just going to do the panel myself!!! because I really wanted to but they told me I couldn't!!!! HAHAHA"
TL;DR this chick was REALLY OBNOXIOUS and straight tried to HIJACK MY PANEL FROM ME. She asked if she could do it ~with me~, and because I hadn't really planned to talk a WHOLE lot before taking everyone out into the hallway to just take a bunch of pics, (AND because I could tell she was going to make a huge stink if I made her sit her ass back down and she would probably just talk over everyone the whole time anyway), I went ahead and said yes. But she just talked over ME the whole time instead and really tried to just do the panel almost as if I wasn't there or as if I was inferior to her in some way. I think she WAS actually on volunteer staff, but I really didn't appreciate her behavior at my panel and I'm kind of mad that she would abuse her power in that way. If this was you: You really upset me at this panel that was supposed to be my thing, and I'm angry that you needed so badly to be in charge of this thing that you took it from the person who actually signed up to do it. You were unnecessarily pushy and I don't like you. Your proposal for a meetup like this was turned down because I already asked to do it first. :( jerk.
ANYWAY My panel had a really huge turnout and it was really cool!!! I wasn't expecting so many people to be there!! There were all kinds of folks, HP, Marvel and DC, Doctor Who, ponies, Disney, aahhh neat things happening. I think I had a good rapport with them (moreso than annoying shouty volunteer woman harrumph) and we talked about neat stuff like getting recognized, the different intensity levels of cosplay at Leaky vs like an anime con, hardest props/wardrobe pieces to make, etc etc. A super-legit dating couple were Slytherin and Ravenclaw Quidditch players and they HAND-MADE THEIR OWN BROOMS, she stood up to show them off and we were all mad impressed. Also a dude was dressed as Lumpy Space Princess and he was literally just wearing a purple morph suit with stuff stuck in it to make lumps and he kind of looked like a bunch of grapes and he was hilarious. But the big deal part was!! there was a reporter there!! from an Orlando paper!!! She got the whole room to shout about LeakyCon in a way that was really neat and then afterward, once I'd led everyone out into the halls for pics (and this kind of fell the fuck apart but it was fun anyway), she was interviewing some individual people and one of them was me!!! I STILL HAVEN'T LOOKED FOR THIS I AM ACTUALLY GOING TO GO LOOK FOR IT RIGHT NOW, WOWWEE, well okydoke I have not found anything yet but I remain hopeful! Idk how actually articulate I was in my interview bit l m a o but they talked to me, LSP guy, and a girl dressed as Luna with the giant lion hat. coolo boolo!!!
I took a bunch of pics of/with a bunch of folks including Rita Skeeter + her photographer, some cute Wreck-It Ralph folks, and this hilarious dude dressed as StarKid Voldemort. Except!! the entire time I was trying to take a pic with him he was TALKING! I was like dude shut your mouth and pose! But there are a couple okay ones I guess and then after I also made him take a selfie with me hehehe. Always Dance :3
So because of the hectic morning stuff we have not eaten yet and we have The Hunger so we decide we're going to go on a mission to walk to IHOP. It's only a little bit further than the McDonald's and even though I'm in two shirts, pantyhose and a wig I'm like sure why the fuck not I'll suffer for my art. LITTLE DID I KNOW HOW MUCH SUFFERING THIS WOULD ACTUALLY ENTAIL BC THIS WAS THE GROSSEST IHOP I'VE EVER BEEN TO. Sera and Hannah seemed to be like "well yeah IHOP is always gross what did you expect?" but I was like, no?? This IHOP was more like what I think of a Waffle House being like. It was unclean and understaffed, and our service was lackluster at BEST. We were also seated right next to like, the kitchen area, like that awkward little half-wall business? And some dude in back of house was trying to clean the floor and he tries to prop his mop up against this half-wall and it falls and nearly SLAMS ME IN THE FACE like the mop handle was maybe four inches from my face. This happened a good two or three times. no. stop. Also all of the food was gross like my sandwich was D R I P P I N G grease and Sera's eggs benedict were liquid and like factually disgusting. 0/10 WOULD NOT PATRONIZE THIS ESTABLISHMENT AGAIN. vile. I was like, how do I leave a tip that says "I understand this is your living wage and you need to have a life" but also says "you were a shit waitress and our experience was terrible" ugh lmao. (Also I was dressed as Ginny with my con badge and my pink sunnies on my head and I was like ew, can I get more stereotype starkid fangirl, and Hannah I think was like "You could have a SMFAH shirt on" and I was like "...I DO HAVE A SMFAH SHIRT ON UNDERNEATH THIS GINNY SHIRT" l m a o I'm the worst.) The sweatiness of this whole experience was not worth it basically, the end.
But like FINALLY it was late enough that Rosen Plaza actually had a room available for us and we could check in, so we went over to finagle all of that ish except for like. They almost didn't let us?? We'd already retrieved all our shit from the bag check area (including Kelsey's spaghetti container lol ok) and she was like "Unless Gabi is here I can't check you in because we need that credit card that is on file" and we were like UHHHH...WE THOUGHT WE WORKED ALL THIS OUT ALREADY....... There was a giant clusterfuck and I had Gabi on the phone trying to figure it out which was terrible, but somehow it all got sorted I guess (apparently the dude who took Gabi's info at our pre-check in put some stuff in wrong and once this woman figured that out she undid it and we were good to go?). Cool whatever. SO we get our new room and pile in but all in all this has taken Too Damn Long and we're now running late to get a good spot in line for opening ceremonies!! rats!!!
Fortunately New Friend Maddie is still adorable and great and she let us cut in line with her yaaayyy~ So we're waiting in line and these girls behind us are doing some kind of Harry Potter trivia sheet? Except it's weird and stupid and we overheard/got hung up on one question like, hold on, and Maddie goes "Oh yeah they gave us one too" and hands it over and it's like a newspaper-style printout of like...HARRY POTTER SHOULD BE IN THE CIA AND HERE'S WHY?? IDK this whole thing was RIDICULOUSSSS but they had a booth in the vendor's room and a panel and everything apparently, Harry Potter + SUPER SPY tech and strategies and stuff like, okay whatever wow weirdo. So all these questions are from HP being a superspy during Order of the Phoenix, they're all from book five, and they're all SUPER DUMB and phrased like "Harry, the Intelligence Analyst" and stuff and omgggg. This was pretty great I guess because it was stupid and entertaining enough to hold us over while we waited in this line. Weird weird weird shit lmao.
Then opening ceremonies happened and...eh. OK WELL FIRST OF ALL THE SET WAS GREAT, THANK U COREY. It was all Department of Mysteries-ish with doors everywhere including doors like floating in the air and stuff it was real badass, but the whole thing was literally just a setup for the punchline of the entire opening ceremonies skit to be "Love is an Open Door" from Frozen. YAWN. Tessa Netting Tessa Netting'd everywhere which was as unimpressive as usual to those of us who are not fans of Tessa Netting (SHE AND JOE MOSES KISSED ON THE MOUTH AT ONE POINT, LIKE, EW GET A ROOM WE'RE NOT HERE FOR THIS), and idk compared to last year and even the year before it just seemed kind of p...paltry? Like the writing was weaker and the jokes were less funny and shrug. Tessa's so shrill idk. The highlights were definitely the GLaDOS situation and Jim Povolo being super awkward. (Speaking of super awkward: Tessa's character was named Alice because lol alice in the rabbit hole jokes bleh but at one point she encountered Marty McFly and there was definitely an exchange that was like "It's okay Marty, you can call me Ali" and I was like NOPE NOPE NOPE LEMME NOPE RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF THERE my noTP was touching my OTP in this way and I was revolted, I'M SORRY I'M GROSS, I was just glad Kelsey was not there to see this she didn't deserve it (I totally told her about it later that night anyway), yikes forever.) But even Jim being awkward - he and Curt were Sam and Dean in a Supernatural bit - was just a setup, too, because the two of them were eating a sandwich together and that was absurd and hilarious when it had no explanation but then you realize it's just a setup for "We finish each other's - " "Sandwiches!" and it takes some of the wackiness out of it. Also there was ONE pretty great joke where someone asked Hermione if she knew any good riddles, and she was like "My friend Harry knows one really, really BAD Riddle..." and it took forever to land on most of the audience but I was like eyyyyyy the thing lol. Also Dylan was Gandalf and that was pretty legit. IDK HAHA STUFF. OPENING CEREMONIES. I want to write for Opening Ceremonies so bad, who do I speak to about this. I don't need any kind of compensation at all I just want the satisfaction of knowing that the thing was better ugh
After that sort of fizzled out the only thing we had left on our schedules was maybe going to this HPA vs Leaky Quidditch match. We figured we could check it out, and if it was lame or we got bored of it we'd just leave. Super non-committal. So we sat all the way at one end, which was actually p great because we got there early enough that the only people "in front" of us were sitting in the center, so by moving all the way to the end we were in the very front. WHICH WAS GREAT BECAUSE THE MATCH WAS GREAT AND WE ENDED UP STAYING THE WHOLE TIME!! Even though let me tell you it was roouughh from start to finish.
We get there and HPA team is already there. There's about 20 of them and they're all wearing matching red shirts, and some of them in matching headbands. They're doing big team spirit chanting and team-building lil games and exercises, they're helping each other do serious athletic stretches, they're running scoring and blocking drills, working on passes, Andrew Slack is yelling at the crowd tryna get us hype, THEY'RE ABOUT THIS. LeakyCon team isn't even there yet. Staffers in our general area expressing mild panic like wtf. Leaky shows up like, fifteen minutes after the match is already supposed to have STARTED and there are like. Just enough of them to make a whole team. No sense of unity or a uniform. One girl is wearing a maxi dress and sandals. FRIENDS UR NOT READY.... Next to HPA they looked so sloppy and sad like aww leakycon pls.... Melissa is waving some pompoms and getting us chanting and finally Leaky team is like OH YEAH LET'S TAKE A LAP!!! HUHHHH WE'RE BUTCH RUNNING!!! So they take off into the rest of the vendor's room shouting and trying to get pumped and they run and run and don't come back for a bit and when they do return finally, they've obviously run past the LeakyCon merch booth in the room and all picked up matching pink Leaky tank tops. Maxi dress girl and at least one other person are also wearing Leaky track shorts now too hehehe. The game gets going and for a while Leaky's getting their asses handed to them. Snitch dude disappears and it's just Quaffle play and they stick maxi dress girl on Keeper and she's clearly their best player (she's super tall, so good for Keeper, dat wingspan!). One of Leaky's Beaters needed way more sports bra action than she had and I felt super sad for her oh no friend ur boobies are clearly impeding u. But Leaky scored a couple of times anyway even though HPA was clearly doing better, and finally they pulled tall girl off Keeper and put someone else there, and she ran off into the main field and started scoring some. Shit's gettin real and at one point it was like 7-6 SO CLOSE but it ended up a bit more of an HPA runaway by the time the Snitch re-emerged.
And okay Snitch dude is hella legit but the Seekers are also hella legit!! Both the Seekers were clearly REALLY good players and once the Snitch came back I had a hard time making myself watch any of the Quaffle stuff and following who was scoring because the three of them were so mesmerizing. It was hilarious because the Snitch was not a big dude but both the Seekers were teeny tiny and so they'd run at him and he'd just kind of shove at their shoulders like "Hmm no." ahahaha. like when a taller person holds a shorter person at arm's length and they "keep running" but they're being stopped by the tall person's hand, like that bit, but irl. pfft. His little Snitch dongle was hanging RIGHT on his butt too like you pretty much had to go for the booty to grab the Snitch. And eventually Leaky got it!!! Unfortch HPA was too far ahead at that point and I think the final score was like 14-11 and HPA won which was a big bummer. But I was mad impressed by the whole game and it was definitely A++ would attend again next year. fuckin Quidditch, man.
So we were pretty much done for Thursday and I was like, Let's case Ann Arbor Tees on our way out and then go die and that sounded like a gr8 idea so we walked past and holla'd at Ricky. Man we had a great rapport with Ricky like the whole weekend, what a choice dude. He saw me in costume and IMMEDIATELY handed me a badge ribbon that said "Must Be A Weasley" and I was like EEYYYYY bc I am literally that weasley being spoken of in that quote. legit as hell. And idk we talked at him a little and was this when? we bought? the confluence posters? WE SPENT SO MUCH TIME IN RICKY'S PRESENCE IT IS ALL A BLUR but we chatted with him a bunch I think about TCB stuff and Dylan stuff and I don't even fucking know all I have in my notes for right here is "GOOD TALK, RICKY" and I'm sure that sums it the fuck up. Basically I decided I needed a day to think on the merch and stuff and I'd come back later and who even knows. This fuckin bro basically. ricky Ricky ricky. :***
We crash back into our hotel room and I take a few minutes to de-Ginny, at long last, before we commit to a real-ass Walgreen's run for convention weekend snacks. This was fun and silly bc most of the other people in the Walgreen's were also Leaky people, but also because in order to get there we walked THROUGH both the convention center and the Rosen Centre hotel, which was hella fun because of everything else that was going on. In addition to Miss America Outstanding Teen, there was also some kind of chess convention? And who knows what else, we were FAR from the only event scheduled that weekend, and everyone kind of people-watching everyone else was fucking fun as hell. In Walgreen's we got super hype on some Lunchables and also spent plenty of time fucking with all the Cokes and Diet Cokes with the "Share a Coke" names on them and stuff, and we bought Gabi a Share A Diet Coke With Corey because we're good/terrible friends and we stuck a bunch of other ones with names of starkids all next to each other but like the cross-section of starkids we found was WEIRD and really funny omg, it was like, Daniel, Tyler, Dylan, Lauren, and Mark. Good times. (The full legacy of this Share A Coke With Corey bottle that I forgot to include in the narrative and I'm sticking in awkwardly right here: Eventually once it was empty we took a pic of Kelsey about to throw it away with the caption "is THIS a trash?" because of that damn TCB PSA thing, and he was like, Recycle that shit!, and we were Into It. TCB foreverrr)
So yeah Lunchables and Pop-Tarts and vegetables and we were feelin pretty good about life. By the time we got back from all of that Gabi and Kelsey were getting back from the park, too, I think, mostly, and we did some good like, crashing in the hotel talking and chilling and telling stories. One of my favorite parts of all conventions tbh. I love my friends so much ;~; and we all have such gr9 stories to tell at all times and I just want to hang out with people I love and touch their faces and tell them I love them. They seemed to have fun in the park :3 apparently Gabi got selected for the Ollivander's thing so that was A+. FRANDSHIPZ. And we were like ok gotta go to bed early now bc of waking up for signing wristbands! but we still did not. Really do that ahahah. #theworst
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Friday
We got up early-early because Hannah and Kelsey were trying to get wristbands for things!! Hannah NEEDED Hannah Hart and Kelsey was going for StarKid I believe [lol edited this for accuracy]. So I was like sure I'll come with to try to help out with our odds and I think eventually everyone came with! Only I was like, Not in my costume at 8am not yet lmao. So we waited in the big snakey line and we kept having to go through because we kept not getting them boo. The person holding the ticket bag for the Hannah line was a cool they/them/theirs pronoun friend with a BUTTON on their con lanyard that specifically was like "here's the pronouns buddy" and I was like !! where did it come from because my roommate! will want!! AND EVENTUALLY ON OUR THIRD TIME THROUGH THEY JUST GAVE IT TO GABI bc gabi had surfaced by then and lmao hooray. I think it took four times total to get all the things we needed? Hannah got one but we still needed one for Kelsey and we all went through the line like Kelsey - no, Hannah - no, me - no and we were like IT'S UP 2 U SERA And then Sera got one!! hooray!! Then we came back to help a small friend Gabi had made and eventually secured one for her too. Overall the MOST times I have had to do the wristband thing but still successful and yay. And awww a wristband line is how Hannah and I first met IRL :* emotions hehehe.
Then some people (Gabi and Kelsey?) went to a thing and I went to put on my DUMB FRIDAY COSTUME HERE WE GO U'VE PROBABLY SEEN ALREADY BUT: I was a Pi Xar soldier/one of Achmed's henchmen from Twisted and I made a sign that was a picture of a tiger's face and then a picture of two restroom-sign-style stick people doing the nasty. TIGER FUCKER!! I was a huge hit ok I do not think I am exaggerating to say this. People loved it. I was worried when I first conceived of it that I was going to get fussed at by staff for having the sign bc ~inappropriate and then the costume was not going to be AS great without the sign, but no one said a goddamn thing and I was so pleased aaahhhh cosplaayyyyyy. ANYWHO fucking @TinCanBrothers had been tweeting about an unofficial meetup that morning at 10:30 and they FINALLY posted a location for the thing so we went to that, and I felt stupid in my costume at the thing lmao but MAMA ETHAN MAH BUDDY was also there in costume so we worked it out.
What a great meetup!! Corey and Brian were adorable and so was everyone else there (Brian is so weird, lol omg), and we had a lot of fun just broing out with them in such a casual, non-intense capacity like there were probably only 25 of us there tops and no one was like, rushing them or being a dick, we just sat in a circle on the floor and chilllllled. (It was funny bc a woman on a Segway tried to get through at one point and we had to clear her a path oops.) They asked about our favorite sketches and we were pretty much like, The public service announcement lol (hence all our trash jokes always). We talked a lot about theatre and comedy and the internet, and Hannah got Corey to geek out about Broad City with her, and Gabi showed up late and had to do their introduction after the fact and their 'third thing about me' (besides name and hometown) was "I don't know my social security number" and Corey looks them dead in the eye and straight calls them OUT with "AREN'T YOU IN COLLEGE??" L M A O we laughed a lot bc it was like the one time Corey kind of flat-out acknowledged the whole "hey it's my fanclub again fancy seeing y'all here" kind of situation hehehehe. That and me complaining about not being able to go to the live show and like LET THE RECORD SHOW I DID NOT INSTIGATE THIS, but Corey legit said "Tweet at us, because we may be rehearsing..." He invited me to their rehearsal of his own volition. Just saying. We also discussed like, if they'd ever had some ~creative differences, and Brian was talking about a big fight they'd had about a sketch that basically boiled down to "I was like, Geishas are funny! And Corey was like, Geishas are racist." lmao TELL IT, LUBOWICH. And then at one point Hannah invited them all to her house if they ever needed to use live goats or chickens in a sketch so like, there you go lol. ALSO, viral marketing via sticking stickers on random supermarket products? Okay yep we can do that. BUT BEST PART: They were like "Who do you guys think we should maybe collaborate with?" and Kelsey and Gabi and I just immediately screamed FAR FROM FAMOUS!!! hehehehe. we're the worst and we don't even care xoxo
When it kind of wrapped up we all took a big picture together where we are pretending to sneeze and that was kind of weird and hilarious and basically fit the whole weird, hilarious tone of the whole meetup. Kelsey took some Snapchats with Brian and Corey to send to Ali Gordon for #stealingallyourfriends hehehe and then I took a pic or two with the two of them and they've got their fists up all shouty like TIGERFUCKER which is great :3 And so just yeah what a nice lil thing to do! So happy to have been involved!
I don't remember if we were going specifically to A Thing immediately after that or we were just kind of heading in a direction but we went down an escalator, walked a certain way, and then almost immediately ran into Eric and Jade going the other way about to go up a different escalator. We kind of whisper-shouted at them like HEY. HEY WHERE'S YOUR DOG. WHERE'S THE DOG, JADE and eventually they noticed us and Jade was like "Wait are you HECKLING me am I being HECKLED right now?" LOL forever and the two of them stopped and chatted with us some. (Also what you need to understand is that EVERY OTHER TIME WE SAW JADE AND ERIC THE WHOLE CONVENTION, we just shouted "WHERE'S THE DOGGGGG" at them. It happened at least 6 times. Just a blanket statement in case it doesn't work its way into my narrative later. (Spoilers I added this parenthetical much later because it didn't. BUT IT'S IMPORTANT.))They were very impressed by my costume!! ALTHOUGH Jade was not understanding the green hair? She was like I don't...get it... about the green mustache and I was like well I wanted it to match the hair and she was like uhh right sure I just don't. Okay whatever fine and it took her FOREVER to realize that THE GREEN HAIR WAS MY ACTUAL REAL HAIR AND NOT JUST PART OF THE COSTUME and this was hilarious to us for some reason omg. Jade was MVP of this con like Jade and Ricky tbh. We also started making fun of Eric for his gross toe shoes because we know Jade hates them like just to get a rise out of Jade and she compared the smell when he took them off to "hot nacho cheese from an arcade stuffed inside a rubber tube" like ewwwww blech lmao. And we took a picture with Eric in EKGS order because our last one from Twisted was so crap but I felt awkward doing it in costume and not just as myself the E from the EKGS hahaha but whatever. Overall a fun silly interaction that we thought might be all we really got with Jade for the weekend but we were so soooo mistaken because Saturday night happened but more on that when I get to saturday night oops.
Almost immediately after that we ran into Robert as well and he was REALLY INTO the costume. (Over the course of the weekend I think a lot of people thought I was meant to be Robert specifically and not just Pi Xar Person because I had my hair out in the front and I guess he was the only one who really had his like that in the show as well? But yeah lol me and Robert ummm cool.) He was not super articulate about it though he was just like "That's...so awesome. Like that's really good and just awesome." and HE wanted a picture with ME oh how the turntables, so Kelsey took one and tweeted it at him and the tweet literally just said "Heyyo." cacklin about it. He looked super exhausted/semi-hungover/jetlagged lmao bro was really out of it.
We split ways from Rob and the next thing we did was Snape: Not The Hero We Deserve AKA THE SNAPE'S A DICK PANEL. GOD BLESS AMERICA. Or well Canada the dude who was running it was from Canada and like we barely got in because I guess we were running late bc lol EKG/Jade/Rob times but YEAH and like, Kelsey didn't come in? :(? She was trying to do her makeup I guess and felt kind of awkward so she just stayed in the hallway oh no friend. :( BUT ANYWAY this panel was so great like idk it wasn't a whole lot of panel-panel it was just the dude running it basically reading aloud an essay/presentation that he had written about everything that was wrong with Snape, and since it was pre-written it sounded a little bit prosey/obviously scripted but it was like literally just like. A SERMON. About how Snape is shitty like we were clapping and shouting at the appropriate times and everything was perfect. He opened it up for input at the end and everyone had gr8 things to say EXCEPT ONE WOMAN... And like panel dude had indicated even in the con manual/panel description like, If you love Snape and want to come to the thing you are also more than welcome! To come and argue your point! Not tryna exclude folks, but he had also indicated "booing and hissing encouraged" so this one Snape-Lovin Older Lady comes up to the front to kind of speak her piece and oh god. She was like "Snape behaves the way he does because he never grew and matured emotionally he was stunted! He makes bad choices because he doesn't know any better because he never learned! I mean, when the first time you try to forge a deep emotional connection with someone or something, it goes HORRIBLY WRONG, doesn't that encourage you to never make a connection like that again? He didn't know how to love!!!" OR SOME SHIT LIKE THIS and we literally just booed her and made her sit back down. I was like u know who never learned to grow up and make adult decisions but WASN'T an asshole child abuser? Sirius Black!! WOW cool story bro!! And then literally just the capstone of this panel was Mark Oshiro gets up there and says "As a person of color: SNAPE IS A RACIST." and then basically just...dropped the mic. God it was so affirming to be in a room full of badass Snape haters god Snape what a piece of turd amirite.
I guess we migrated off to StarKid photobooth after this? I forget if all 5 of us went to this or? I think so because I remember talking about like groups of five/groups of seven or something with the pics. When we got there a line was aggressively Not Forming Yet so there was a lot of loitering in big groups and I was able to reconnect with some cosplayers I'd seen just for a second or two earlier, other people from Twisted! for pics! There was a Scheherazade + Flashback Jafar duo and then just another Scher by herself and I took pics for me and for a bunch of strangers with both of them, Super Fun. So much StarKid cosplay at this con! It was great!! Then a real-ass line finally starts forming for real and we snaaaaaked~ through the line forever, and people would keep like, just then noticing my sign and getting into it. hehehe I'm such an attention whore I was living for this. Meredith also instagram'd a picture from this line and you can totally see us in it! Me especially but also Kelsey and I think almost Hannah right next to us hehehe. Freakin' great.
When we finally got to the front I think some of the StarKids like, kind of reacted to the costume? Which was the whole point of me even going to the photobooth at all was so everyone saw it and knew hehe but I think a lot of them weren't super able to process it right in that moment because everything was moving so fast so that everyone could get through the line. Jim I think definitely went "oh, tiger fucker!" though which was great. Then pics and then we're clearing out and Pat Brady catches sight of the costume and asks for a pic!! Pat Brady!!! She was like, "Oh, I am texting Joe Walker so many things from today" and I was like !!!!! IS PAT LEGIT SENDING WALKER A PIC OF ME RIGHT NOW so much was happening!! Aahhhh a good. Also Kelsey tells us right after this that apparently when she was getting into the pic, since she was closer to Denise, she heard Denise say something like "Okay, who here is a Crip and who's a Blood?" and we were like ???!!! DENISE ARE U OK. wtf even was friday afternoon man ahahahaha.
We had some time to waste so we wasted it, maybe we ate some snacks or something I don't even remember, just chillin doin' stuff, and then Hannah and I (and I'm PRETTY sure Sera? Look Friday is messy) went to Greg Laslo's wandlore panel and almost didn't get seats which was rough. They had to turn some people out of the room even because of capacity and stuff and ugh it was like the least air-conditioned room in the con or something it was so hot in here, also some super rudeness from some girls dressed as house-elves about saving seats, there was a Situation. fuckin house-elves. WHATEVER. I love Greg Laslo he's so baller and I'm so glad we went to the panel bc I love to hear him talk, he honestly cares so much about his work and the part of the fandom that he's attuned to and it was greeeaattt, I'm glad I took Hannah to it :3 BUT THEN WHEN HE OPENED UP FOR QUESTIONS people were asking really fucking dumb questions. Like, stuff where they were tryna front like they knew more than him? that awkward situation? Like sit your ass DOWN dude he MAKES WANDS HE KNOWS ALL OF THE WAND THINGS. smh. His panel last year was way more civilized. But overall still super glad we went because his drive and devotion just makes me so happy.
Although not happy: It was during this panel that I received the text from my mom that our cat, Isabella, whom we've had for a good eighteen years, was living her last day and would no longer be with us come tomorrow. Like, super sad. She's been a family pet since I was in elementary school and she was old for a kitty, and sick too, but no one ever wants to hear that news. It wasn't quite as hard on me as the death of our other cat was though because Sylvia was "my" kitty and Bella was much more "my mom's" kitty. I was mostly worried and sad for Mom. :( tragedy here in the middle of my fun vacation. No bueno.
Anyway, recovering from all of that, we went back to the vendors' room to scope out The Things. I kept telling myself I was going to get a Greg Laslo wand but every time I was in the area I was kind of like, The time is not right yet, idek haha. So of course we just ended up back at Ann Arbor Tees. A bunch of starkids were there!! I think we were kind of looking for Dylan but he vanished like an IRL fucking wizard somehow so mostly we talked to Denise hehehe. DENISE WAS SUPER INTO MY COSTUME AS SOON AS SHE FINALLY LIKE COTTONED ON TO IT. She saw the sign and parsed it and just GASPED ahaha omg like "!!!! tiger fucckerrrrrr!!" and she actually took the sign out of my hands and held it up to herself and was so about the whole thing. I took a couple pics with her that I think she was super excited about omg denise is The Cutest, she was having Ricky set her aside a couple shirts off the discount rack, so much was going on, I love her Forever. Also Corey was there still handing out his TCB trading cards like he'd had at the meetup, and he was like "Ironically, I am out of...the Corey ones" and I was like "Lol ur soooo popular!" and he was like "Omg I know right." so fab. Also Julia was apparently there but before we could find her we already lost her?? Like WHERE IS JULIA ahaha that was the game of the whole con basically. Valentina especially was on a Julia hunt and idk if she ever even found her at all. The last person kind of there was Jim and I talked to him a second about the costume and he was like "Oh yes. Tiger fucker." and I took a pic of him with the sign and we all kind of pal'd around with Jim and that was fun.
Then there was. A situation? about the paper hats world record thing? Wherein like, some people needed to go to that in order to crash in the room and still be there for a Hannah Hart thing that was happening after it was over, so we were trying to work out what was going on with that, but before that could even unfold there was a lineup for the StarKid signing. And so we had to basically hop from thing to thing to thing but we were all also SUPER HUNGRY so it was like, we have to be in StarKid line EARLY so we can clear out of it to line up for hats thing and in the meantime can someone go get food? I WAS NOT INVOLVED IN...ANY OF THESE THINGS...it was all kind of vortexing around me haha. But I decided to keep people company in the StarKid signing line just not actually line up, just kind of being in costume and being silly and waving my sign around, and so I was holding down the fort while I think Sera and Hannah ran back to that McDonald's for food - LOOK I TOLD YOU FRIDAY AFTERNOON IS A MESS - and Gabi and Kelsey waited in this line... and eventually what happened was here's a thing that happened:
Ricky was walking through/around the line trying to hock posters. He was like "COOL POSTER ONLY $10! Or, if you hate the artwork, flip it over and it's totally blank! Create your own poster for $10!" What a NERD. So I was like, for $10, will YOU create me a poster? And he was like "...Badly drawn cat posters, $10!" And Gabi was like "Whoa whoa wait, draw me a cat, if I give you money will you draw me a cat?" But somehow this worked its way around to not wanting it on a poster, just on something, and that something became a person's arm, and from some dumb shit Gabi and I just started casually trolling Ricky about, this eventually turned into Ricky taking my Sharpie and my other colorful markers and drawing a ton of people fake tattoos. #CattoosAndTattoos THAT'S RIGHT FRIENDS. Gabi got a Mickey Mouse/alien hybrid thing?? People got cats and snakes and dragons? I GOT A DOG. IT WAS ACTUALLY A PRETTY LEGIT DOG, and I made him sign it so his handiwork would be properly attributed. If I were more casual about the idea of getting tattoos I honestly might have tried to save it on there long enough to get it as a real tattoo because if you just kind of glanced at it it almost DID LOOK REAL it was pretty legit, thanks Ricky, you big fuckin dweeb.
When the line kind of started moving For Real they made us move off to the side if we weren't actually in the line proper, so I kind of chilled over there and waved my sign back at the line and waited for people to be done. And this staff person kept YELLING at us like ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOMEONE U NEED TO MOVE and ugh she was the worst, like yes, we've told you every damn time that we are in fact waiting for someone, this has not changed since you yelled at us four minutes ago? smh. Eventually Sera and Hannah returned with food and Hannah was like HERE'S THE THING THO I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO GET MY PAPER CROWN SO WE'RE GONNA MAKE ME ONE OUT OF THIS MCDONALD'S BAG. Basically we sat there and made Hannah and Kelsey crowns for the thing out of our reject supplies that we happened to have, and I just gave Sera mine to wear because I had un-committed from the idea of really going my own self, and we just sat there and did this and ate our McDonald's and we were a mess. Friday was MessDay. Arianna was in here somewhere too? according to my notes? A LOT WAS HAPPENING???? yikes.
So like I was also trying to stay in communication with Lucie and Megan bc we were I think going to try to go out to dinner that night? But Megan had to cancel bc she's moving away to grad school so it was just me and Lucie and I had no idea what her timeframe was which was frustrating but totally not her fault, there was some crazy traffic shenanigans I guess plus I was misinterpreting some messages or something ANYWAY what this led to was like, everyone else had another Thing or Things they were doing but me, so I was just going to chill on the floor in the general area of where I was expecting Lucie to arrive and just wait for her with my slowly-dying phone, cool story bro. A couple people walked past who either did or did not recognize my sign and I could always kind of hear their reactions which was funny, one person was like "I'm guessing that's a reference to a show I have never watched before" lol. At one point a total stranger sat down next to me for some unknown reason and attempted to talk to me about a whole bunch of stuff and like Intensely Befriend me, but she was weirding me out, so I made up some excuse to leave her and then I was like welp, now I have to go somewhere else, so I wandered aimlessly a little bit until some girls who liked my costume were nice enough to let me bum a phone charger from them for a while, and I sat in the corner with them and chatted a bit and mostly just spaced out.
THIS WAS WHEN I FINALLY SAW FUCKING BRANDON?? The Brandon mystery omg. I was honestly not even sure he was in the convention proper until he'd tweeted something about the vendor room, but he was in another kind of cluster of people Aggressively Not Lining Up for a thing, and I called him over and we chatted for a bit and it was great. Dude Brandon is such a cool guy I'm real bummed we didn't hang out more. But he asked me about StarKid stuff and I asked him about Hannah Hart stuff and I guess the line thing he was Not In was for a John Green thing which was cool cool. (He tweeted later like "@threepwillow found me out as a secret John Green fangirl" ahahaha bless ♥) So that stuff happened, and I watched a bunch of stuff for these girls as they CHASED after the Warbler boys who randomly appeared (nothing came of that I guess), and then the line ACTUALLY started forming for the John Green thing and they had to get into it so I gave them their charger back and began to wander aimlessly again, and I saw Dylan! I really wanted to talk to him but the people that were already there were talking to him A Lot and I couldn't really cut in except to ask for a quick picture, which I really wanted of him and me and the sign but he said no to the sign, blush blush. What a cute dumb FACE he has, overwhelming, I love him.
Still hadn't heard a whole lot from Lucie but she was running late I guess and it was already time for TRIVIA!!!!! WHICH I HAD TO go get in line for because my buddies were still stragglin in from all the other stuff they were doing. The line situation here was REALLY shitty and people were yelling and blech LineCon 2014 status okay whatever BUT they almost didn't let my friends over to me? They were like ARE YOU LINING UP FOR TRIVIA THE LINE ENDS OVER THERE >:||| and I literally yelled "HEY THAT'S MY TEAM!!" back at them to get them to get up in the line with me. Too much was happening. Then we eventually get into the trivia room and I guess the setup is "no more than 6 to a team" so we kind of shouted out like "Hey anyone who wants to play but is by themselves can join our group of 5 we guess haha" and we recruited a small stranger named Melissa and then THE GAME. WAS ON!!!
TEAM LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER READY TO FUCKING GO omg it took us forever to come up with a team name but when we finally did we were like, oh, duh. The setup of the whole thing was really great, not much like my own trivia gigs but I liked it!! Basically there were 6 rounds and each round addressed a different fandom. We were told up front that one round was audio, one was visual and one was multiple choice, and that each round was 8 points but two of the six rounds would be double (16 points). IN ADDITION, for exactly 1 round, you had the option to circle this lil joker guy on your answer sheet and all your answers in that round would count double. SO you could joker one of the already-doubled rounds and get QUADRUPLE!! Damn son.
The first round was Doctor Who questions and it was like baby round, even I knew some of those. I don't think we got any wrong except for maybe one that was about Old Who that our team couldn't scrounge the knowledge for. But like, your standard Tumblrite could've gotten the majority of them. Then round 2, the audio round, which turned out to be one of the double-points rounds, was GET THIS: THE MUSIC OF JOSS WHEDON. I kind of snatched the answer sheet over like "I GOT THIS" and I think it was really this round, plus some ass-pulls in other places and our general HP badassery, that really squeaked us by in this game. Every question was two parts: 1) identify the song and 2) another question about the song. I think I maybe missed 3 or 4 out of all 16 on that one. SOME OF THEM WERE REAL ASS SONGS? Like the ep of Angel where everyone is singing and it was like, I Will Survive, and who is the original artist, or Giles playing in the coffee shop and it was Behind Blue Eye and who is the original artist. BUT SOME PEOPLE WERE BABIES AND LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW GLORIA GAYNOR. wowwee. so yeah we kicked that round's ass and by we I mean I. I kicked that round's ass. God bless.
Round 3 was the multiple-choice round and it was Game of Thrones, which we trusted to Sera. Each question was literally just is it A or B and she felt pretty good about almost all of them, so god bless. That was really our downfall was we were not SUPER-diversified in the fandoms that we had knowledge about, which we proved in round 5 when it was all obscure-as-fuck Lord of the Rings stuff and we literally got...three. (And a half but not credit for it.) LOL EMBARRASSING.
Round 4, which it may look like I skipped, was actually the visual round, which got passed out at the beginning, and we had till the end of round "5" (which came fourth) to complete it, and turn it in along with the LOTR stuff. The visual round was MCU!! And me and Sera literally PULLED THIS OUTTA OUR BUTTS WE WERE SO IMPRESSED W OURSELVES. Basically it was like, eight pictures depicting scenes where MCU characters had died, only the dying character was replaced with Deadpool, and you had to identify who Deadpool was replacing. We got I think five of them straight away; another we kind of fumbled our way to, but felt decent about; and then the last two, we knew exactly who they were, but could not for the life of us remember their goddamn names. It was the bad guy from Iron Man 2 and the bad guy from Iron Man 3. DESPERATION. So we spent the whole of the first four rounds trying to scramble these guys' names from our brains. I got real hung up on the IM3 dude. I was like, Isn't his name Pierce? or like NO Pearce, with an A? His first name or his last name I do not even know? And Sera was like, No, that's not it, and finally she dug it out of her brain what his real name was, which was like Killian, and we spelled his first name totally fucking wrong but we knew what it was SUPPOSED to be, so whatever. And IM2 guy we were like, Russian guy wtf!! And I was like Or WAIT, isn't his super alias like, Whiplash? I think it's Whiplash! And Sera was all, I don't fucking know did they ever call him that??? AND WE WERE SO PATHETIC ON IT so finally when we had to turn it in I just wrote "...Russian guy from IM2 (whiplash?)" and called it a fucking day.
So after we turn in round 4 and round 5 at the same time, the host guy has to take a break to keep score before we move into round 6 which is of course Harry Potter. While we're taking this break Sera googles it up these dudes' real names and is like "EMILY. GUY PEARCE. PLAYS HIM IN THE MOVIE." SO THAT'S WHERE I WAS GETTING PEARCE FROM at least I am not totally insane hahaha!! And then our dude is announcing out the correct answers to all the rounds up to that point, and he totally DID take Whiplash for other guy!!! So all in all we got 7/8 in the visual round because we just goofed ONE, which was the red herring that in the Wolverine one Deadpool was replacing...Deadpool. And we put Sabertooth. BOOOOO. But HONESTLY it was the grace of fucking god on that. So I'm like casually tallying the ones we know we got right and it's looking PRETTY good but not PERFECTLY good...
BUT THEN HE ANNOUNCES THE TOP TEN AND WE ARE IN FIFTH PLACE!!! HOLY SHIT we were so proud of ourselves because honestly we TANKED the LOTR round and the MCU one had us all shook up. So now all we have left is HP and like, A) we saved our double-bonus joker for this round because obviously, but B) it's also ALREADY a double round so we're technically capable of getting THIRTY TWO more points. shit son. We felt REALLY good about the HP round like we pretty much knew all of them although we worried about some spelling and idk but WHATEV but then he's reading out the correct answers and we
fucked one up.
There was a question like "What did the boggart become for a) Parvati Patil and b) Dean Thomas" and we GOT THEM BACKWARD!! WE PUT THE WRONG BOGGARTS W THE WRONG PEOPLE and Gabi and I were LIVID with ourselves and everyone else was like "calm down" and we were like "noooooo we hecked up." Also there was one that was like Repello Muggletum and I think I put Repellum Muggleton?? And we didn't know if he was going to take that or not aaahhhh so he's reading off the top 10 again and it's NONE of the same people who were in the top 10 before the HP round, and he's not calling our name, and we were like shit, did we heck up THAT badly?
BUT WE GOT THIRD PLACE!!!!!! THIRD PLACE OUT OF SIXTY-FOUR TEAMS!!!! HOLY SHIT we were SO proud of ourselves omg we NAILED it and next year we are going to go back and nail it even HARDER bc now I wanna WIN. Now that I know we CAN do that well, I think we SHOULD!! Omg it was the fucking coolest. And lol because the two teams ahead of us both had Whedon-inspired team names so I'm pretty sure ONLY people who nailed that Whedon round as hard as we did were able to get to the top. God bless. I love trivia so dang much. It was just infuriating to know that like there was only a 1-point difference between first and second, and between second and third, so if we hadn't botched that boggart question WE ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE WON. Still so mad at myself tbh aahhhhh boo.
Lamesauce there were no prizes for third place, only first place actually got anything, but I holla'd at the host dude from one trivia host to another and thanked him for a lot of fun, and we actually ran into winning team The Reavers outside the room and took a pic of the four of them together for them, so they took pics of us, and all in all a game well fucking played. God we were so hype on this for the rest of forever. THIRD PLACE. OUT OF SIXTY FOUR.
Once that was over I had finally sorted out my Lucie shenanigans! Gabi and Kelsey were going to Walgreen's for their own run I think(? --NO, THEY WENT....SOMEWHERE.....Food was involved idk) and Hannah and Sera were going to stick around for some WRock, so Lucie and I walked back to the hotel room so I could change out of my costume and give her the presents I had for her ♥ and also do some Good Talk about Klaine/the fandom/the dumb internet and all that stuff hehe. And I showed her my klaine book~ and stuff~ LUCIE'S THE GREATEST. And too much stupid shit has happened to her lately and that is just Unacceptable, universe :< I felt a lil bad though because I was so high off the convention and kicking trivia ass that I was kind of bouncing off the walls, I felt hyperactive and annoying and Too Much for sweet sick lucie and I didn't want to be bothering you aww friend :( so I hope everything was all right. After some chitchats and nice things she had to head out so I walked her back most of the way to her car and was going to go reconvene with Sera and Hannah at the WRock concert but they were already leaving!! Lol we must have JUST passed each other. I'd walked up past Gabi and Kelsey and Arianna's crew playing games in a floor circle with some folks I did not know at all and I stole a granola bar from them lol and then I walked ALL the way up to mainstage only for Sera and Hannah to not be there. whomp whomp. So they waited for me in their trek back to the hotel and I caught up with them and we walked the rest of the way back together. And I think it was at this time when we walked past a couple girls singing Big T's Temptation in the dead-empty wing of the OCCC that the con wasn't in lmao and I sang it back at them and it was delightful. WHOOOO'S THAT BOY~ lmao best.
Then as we were leaving, gearing up to hike across that freaking skybridge back to our hotel, a rad person in a golf cart type thing came and retrieved us and drove us all the way back instead! WINNING. So back to the room to crash whooo. Except idk I guess I REALLY WANTED some milk to go with my poptarts? So I went on a lil quest down to the restaurant/convenience store area inside the hotel and bought a tiny carton of milk haha success. So yeah then milk+poptarts+hanging out just the three of us 5ever before sleeping and we were all just the best of buds and I loved everything. We had a gr8888 conversation about which StarKids we'd most like to get high with and I think our general consensus is like...Nick Strauss, Rachael Soglin, and then either a TalkFine double-team or a Dylan/Watsky double-team. yes please. I LOVE MY FRIENDS WHY DO WE NOT JUST HANG OUT LIKE THIS FOREVER IT ISN'T FAIR :( THE WORLD IS CRUEL The world is wicked etc. etc. sad times. I must have been asleep or very close to it by the time Gabi and Kelsey came back from their separate adventure which is A BUMMER because I just want all the friend time forever. Obvi. But like honestly sleeping was also really good at this point so.
CONCLUDED IN V.1C