tl;dr, Giddy's Con.txt report

[giddygeek]

Um, really, this is all so long and there's 98472342 names in it.





Before the con, I hung out with bayleaf and lightgetsin, who are both awesome and make really good cookies. Mmm, cookies. Plus they have Leo and Tara, who are insanely adorable--when I crawled out onto the couch at far too early on Thursday, Leo climbed on me to purr and purr and purr, and Tara brought me a flip-flop and was all excited about it--look, the best gift a dog has ever given!

Thursday afternoon, bayleaf and I headed to DCA to pick up the_shoshanna, and then we went to Dulles to pick up katallison. It took 4 hours to get them and then get to the hotel, but they were great hours! Plus we talked about blue alien ass babies and fried apples and lava lamps and diapers and other hallmarks of Really Bad Fic, which is never not fun.

The four of us and lightgetsin met up with 7 other people in the lobby, and we all walked a couple blocks down to have dinner at a Vietnamese place. It was the 5 of us, plus bethbethbeth, shayheyred, reginagiraffe, the_star_fish, ellen_fremedon, and aerye, I think. Wicked fun dinner! I think my favorite part was all 12 of us crammed in an elevator...and continuing to discuss alien ass babies. Oh, slash fans. *hearts*

Registration was a riot. I ran around visiting all these awesome people I already knew and was excited to see--misspamela, brooklinegirl, estrella30, dsudis, etc--and met a ton of interesting new people, including uschickens who, we've had each other friended for years, and neither one of us clicked on 'oh, that's Uschickens!!' or 'oh, that's Giddygeek!!' until the next day. Bwah. We rock!

The best part of con.txt registration Thursday night was the choir of schoolgirls in plaid skirts singing religious songs in the lobby while they were waiting for the elevators. At that point I was standing in between the two groups so on one side it was all innocent schoolgirl!ness, and on the other side it was PENIS! PENIS PENIS! Paul Gross arms! Hi, I'm Garrett's intern! PENIS! I almost laughed myself unconscious, man. Too funny.

Then bayleaf, lightgetsin and I went back to their apartment to recover and get ready for the con proper!







We got back to con.txt only, um, 15 minutes late for the first panel that lightgetsin was modding. Oops!

I headed for the con suite to meet up with sanj so that we could try to come up with some sort of plan for the Crack!fic panel. It went kind of like this:

Giddy: So hey! Crack!
Sanj: We should plan!
Giddy: We should!
Giddy and Sanj: *talk about other things*
Sanj: Plan!
Giddy: Right!
Sanj: *starts a plan*
Giddy and Sanj: *get distracted by all the shiny people, say screw a crackfic plan, and wander off like kids at a carnival*

We were somewhat lacking in focus. ;-)

I finally found arallara and trixiesfic and GLOMMED them. So happy to see them both again! I'd only met Trixie once before, but Aral, bayleaf, giglet and I used to have popslash gatherings on a very regular basis, and I've missed them.

We wandered off for lunch and arallara, trixiesfic, dsudis, reginagiraffe, uschickens, bayleaf, lightgetsin and a couple other people whose LJs I can't remember right now posed around this...Disco Turtle in the shopping plaza. I wanted to take it back to the hotel with us, it was so random and shiny. It was a 4 ft tall silver turtle standing on its hind legs, and covered in bits of mirror. I got a great photo, and we went back to the hotel just in time for misspamela and brooklinegirl's Dr. Who panel.

This was the first fan panel I had ever attended, and it rocked! Misspamels and Brooklinegirl were well-prepared, the people who came were all funny and smart, and it was a ton of fun. Lots of interesting talk on the Doctor and sexuality, of course. ;-) Lots and lots of talk about what seemed to be everyone's OT3--how anyone could resist the Doctor/Rose/Jack is beyond me.

From there I went immediately to the first panel I had ever modded. Yes.






Max occupancy was 60. More than 60 people went to crack!fic.

Can I just say that again? More than 60 PEOPLE went to crack!fic. That means nearly half the con attended, if not literally half the con. It was AMAZING.

So, Sanj and I walk in and we are planless, and the room is already full. Gulp. And then the room KEEPS FILLING. I start writing down some stuff on crack and when I turn around, every seat is full and people are sitting on the floor, standing in the back, etc, etc. Sanj and I introduced ourselves, I took a photo of the room because holy cow, my first panel, OMG LOOK AT EVERYONE. So exciting!

We spent about 30 minutes trying to pin down a definition of crack!fic which was totally and utterly impossible. Eventually we decided that whether something is crack is in the minds of the reader--the writer--the reader--actually, we didn't reach a consensus on that either. *Grins*

We discussed the difference between crack and badfic, crack and AUs, crackfic and a long joke, trust between readers and writers and what makes us willing to suspend our disbelief in order to go where the writer wants to take us. Plus an incredible number of other topics--we all just kept TALKING.

I don't even have words to describe how great the Crack!fic panel was. It was so so funny, and went so smoothly, and I only wished that we had 3 hours to spend. I think we could've, because we never got the chance to call on everyone who wanted to talk, and people just kept raising interesting points.

After crack!fic, I needed to pass out for a while in a quiet place. Me and lightgetsin collapsed in our room, and I totally forgot about the Being Better Betas panel that the frabjous bethbethbeth was modding, which sucks because I was so excited about it. But my brain was fried and I had the Why SGA panel at 4, so.

ETA: Before the panel, I got the best present EVER. lilac_one had made 'bad day' presents--a personalized Zebra finger puppet, a squeezebox of juice, and a sheet of Due South pictures that don't suck. I can't even MAKE enough hearts to describe the love I have for this present. There aren't enough hearts IN THE WORLD. Cesperanza's With 6 You Get Eggroll is one of my favorite stories in all of fanfic, and that is my FAVORITE part. Lilac rocks A LOT. " "








Why SGA was fairestcat's first time co-modding, and my second. At least I had sanj, who had experience with panels--poor fairestcat only had me! *grins*. But this panel also went really, really well. We had ~50 people attending, which was a great number for a really fast and furious conversation. We could call on pretty much everyone, which hadn't been the case in crack!fic.

We got to spend a lot of time talking about the darker tone of SGA S2 and really, SGA as a whole, when compared to SG1. We also discussed when the Wraith are effective villains vs. when they're silly Disco Catfish Vampires. We talked about why we identify with the Atlantis expedition members as geeks and also-rans.

We talked about Rodney being an asshole (and why we love that about him/want to smack him/both), and if John is really suited to be military head, if Carson should ever be allowed to treat patients again, if Weir is ever going to be as cool a character as she could be (and the coolness of Torri), and why Teyla seems to be the only one who didn't act like an idiot in S2. We talked about how the actors and writers seem to be having a lot of fun with the show, and where we think it could go.

It was a really great discussion all around and people had a lot of interesting points. I felt like I'd stepped on fairestcat's toes a few times but I'd given her permission to hit me and she didn't, so. *grins* All in all, a fantastic experience. Hurray SGA!

After the panel was an SGA pizza party. I had a ridiculously upset stomach so instead of eating I sat there and grossed everyone around me out by telling them the Story About the Bug in Our Room. But seriously! When we'd gone to our room between the two panels, I'd walked into our bathroom at this really nice hotel and found an enormous bug on the counter. I thought it was dead so I used some toilet paper to pick it up, intending to flush it down the toilet, and it wriggled! I shrieked and dropped it and then lightgetsin and I spent some time grossing out and telling Huge Horrible Bug Stories while I covered the bug with a plastic bag and tried to kill it with the soapdish. And FAILED. The thing had a metal carapace, I swear.

So then I hit it with the iron.

What? It was huge and scary!! It had to die!

Then I flushed it, and lightgetsin called someone to tell them and I insisted she mention how Brave I was *G* and as I put the iron away, I accidentally stepped in Tara's water bowl and scared the shit out of myself. Yeah. ;-)

So anyway, that's the story I told at dinner. Haha!

arallara and trixiesfic and uschickens had me, bayleaf, and dexwebster visit them for a couple hours. ttrixiesfic's dog Mia showed off how brilliant and adorable she is. Such a sweetie! And then we talked about bad BDSM fic, with examples! and we talked about a crazy fan person, and uschickens did a dramatic reading of an awesome, brilliant story from SeSa a couple years ago. It was hysterical and we were all late getting ready for the Disco Duck because it was popslash! and other fandoms! and so much fun! But there was to be food and alcohol, and we didn't want to miss out.




BOOBIES might have been the official theme of the Disco Duck, too.

The mixed drinks weren't so much. They were pure alcohol, with a kind thought for mixers. The dance floor was full of fangirls, including some who were kissing. On either side of the dance floor were these screen showing stills and photos and manips from various fandoms, and lots of people were playing a sort of 'cross these fandoms!' game, which was hysterical. I danced for a while, badly of course, but was having a problem keeping my skirt up and so eventually went back to drinking. ;-)

ETA:I think this was when I met isiscolo and norabombay and a bunch of other really great people, but I, um, was drinking. Isis had awesome hair though, I remember that! *grins*

The end result was drunkenness. Um. Me and uschickens were fairly well trashed when we headed up to visit apetslife and her roommates. We might have done our Paris and Nicole impersonations until Pet put her head under a pillow. *cough* Possibly we had only had like, 3 or 4 drinks each. I mention again, PURE ALCOHOL. *grins*

I left Pet's room early because I was afraid of stumbling into my room trashed and waking up my roommates. eleanorlavish came with because I was sending stuff back, so, I stumblingly led her to 805 and spent a couple minutes trying to get the door open quietly before calling bayleaf and saying, 'Um?' to which she replied 'that's not our room.'

*wince*

So, we get to 905, then realize eleanorlavish will need to be walked back because she doesn't have her keycard and the elevator won't work without one. I drop her and the stuff off at Pet's room, then head back for my room...

And get lost again.

Somehow I ended up in the lobby. Don't even ask me how, I have no idea. From there I managed to get back to 905, but omg, I ONLY HAD 4 DRINKS.

Back in 905, bayleaf, lightgetsin and the_shoshanna all have their laptops out and Tara has someone's sneaker. This is actually the THEME for our room. Some rooms the theme is 24 boxes of wine, some rooms the theme is, like, pacifiers. *grins*







So, I get up at ass o'clock to go down for breakfast, and wasn't sure what I was going to do afterwards, maybe go up for more napping. But there's the Supernatural panel at like, 9am--seriously, ASS O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. I have not watched an episode of Supernatural. I don't even know which is Sam and which is Dean, and am very proud of myself for knowing there IS a Sam and a Dean.

But estrella30 is modding and if you have to be up at ass o'clock in the morning, you might as well be looking at Estrella. She's shiny. So I go to the Supernatural panel. Estrella is wearing a fringed t-shirt with the car on it, which brooklinegirl later said 'she made the fringe herself!' and that's just, so perfectly Estrella. SHINY. ;-)

There was heated but interesting and well-behaved discussion of John. There was earnest discussion of the pretty. There was talk of scariness and woobies and then someone mentioned the CAR and the whole room went NUTS. I was dying of laughter. As soon as the panel was over, I was arranging to watch episodes. I was HUNTING THEM DOWN. Fortunately, uschickens had them on DVD and apetslife had them on her laptop, so we arranged to meet Pet sometime after lunch for a viewing party. Squee!

After that, I volunteered at the Art Show for 2 hours. the_shoshanna kept trying to work and people kept coming over to the table and I made them all watch the SGA Season 3 promo with John Sheppard in the pool hall or just blabbed away 'cause that's what I do, and then uschickens came by and we went and stood in the middle of the art show and talked because God knows, the two of us hadn't been talking to each other for pretty much 24 hours straight or anything. ;-) So all in all I was a bad Art Show minion, and it was very nice of the_shoshanna to NOT kill me dead, PLUS lead me to her Space: Above and Beyond novel, which I am excited to read as soon as my brain stops churning.

Then a bunch of us had lunch at the hotel restaurant. The service was INCREDIBLY SLOW (every time we ate there, it got slower!) but the food was good and the conversation was GREAT, as usual. We called Pet and me, bayleaf, dexwebster, uschickens and dsudis headed up there to watch Supernatural.

Okay, so the thing is that I'm REALLY EASY. One time I went to misspamela's house and within 5 hours she had pimped me into Rome, Entourage and Invisible Man. Even her HUSBAND noticed I was a total pushover. So the Supernatural panel? Guaranteed to suck me in. It was a given.

But the SHOW. OMG. So much pretty! So easy to mock! So creepy! SO PRETTY. Dean and Sam's little thinky faces were like, one of the highlights of the con for me. LOVE.

After 1 episode, bayleaf, dexwebster, uschickens and I headed down to our room and watched the Pilot and Scarecrow episodes and now I'm totally converted. The show is awesome. I don't know if I'm going to be like, part of the fandom (I say that at the con, hysterical laughter and a chorus of 'famous last words' breaks out, ahahaa). But it sure is pretty. Pretty pretty pretty.

Anyway.







We had set 5pm as a time to hang out for Sparkly footage but I totally forgot. The Supernatural knocked it clean out of my head!!! So I called and told misspamela that I'd be going to Due South dinner, which I'd cancelled on earlier, and that I was going to be bringing my roommates, plus uschickens and dexwebster.

I changed into a red cami with like, lace and beads and stuff because I KNEW who we were going to dinner with, but grabbed a sweater because we were going to be walking a reported 6 blocks to the restaurant and if my bare skin is exposed to the sun for longer than .5 seconds, it burns.

Sweater--good idea AND bad idea. Good idea because the walk to the restaurant turned out to be a DUE SOUTH FANGIRL DEATHMARCH of seriously more than 6 blocks, bad idea because it was 80 degrees and I was wearing a sweater. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

32 people went to fangirl dinner. I met lyra_sena, who was insanely beautiful hair and was so, so nice. I darted back and forth between tables, talking to as many people as possible. We lost dexwebster because she was going to another party with people who weren't at the con, and then uschickens got beeped and had to hoof it back to the hotel, but seriously. 32 people at DINNER. And the restaurant gave us a ton of free food, and had very reasonable prices, and didn't mind at all that we were doing Paul Gross arms in a WAVE, over and over again, and every 3 seconds someone would say something funny and there would be spontaneous Paul Gross arms, and sometimes someone would just say 'Paul Gross Arms!' and everyone would do Paul Gross Arms. \o/ SO Funny.

Then arallara and trixiesfic called, wondering where we were. I SUCK. I'm sorry! I just, I totally forgot. There was so much PRETTY and I'm so WEAK.

But I was punished for forgetting, no worries. After dinner, when I was logy and full of bread and mushrooms and spinach ravioli, we had to do the DEATHMARCH back to the hotel. Meep.

After dinner, I went back to our room with lightgetsin and we ran into the_shoshanna and lanning, who I was so happy to meet. Shoshanna did a reading of Jane of Australia's swan song letter and we sat around contemplating entitlement, stalking, and insanity for a while, which was both hysterically funny and kind of frightening. Then I headed down for the vid show.







There was no way I could be quiet for vids, and I knew it. *grins* I sat with bayleaf and arallara and trixiesfic, who are really great people to do anything with, but vids were particularly fun. uschickens and I ate cookies and talked about what base to use for our 'That's sooooo hot' icons, and then we watched a million fantastic vids.

My particular favorites were the I-Man Kryptonite vid, which never gets old for me, and the Kirk/Spock 'Closer' vid, which broke my brain and I totally loved it. I enjoyed the Man video for the Sentinel, the Queer as Folk 'Elevation' vid (post-vid, uschickens: Wow, did you notice how quiet it got in here? Me: What? I'm sorry, I was in my bunk). I also enjoyed the Pros ones and resolved to look up the source because when Bodie and Doyle smile I smile too and that's all it takes. ;-)

The Due South vids made everyone SO HAPPY. We've all seen the footage a hundred million times but watching them STILL made us all go 'aaaw!' and 'eeep!' So much love.

uschickens and I know all the words to the Discovery Channel song. That's all I have to say about that.







After vids was...the Spelling Bee.

Dun dun DUUUUUUUUN.

First off, dsudis had been threatening me for hours. "You're going down!" she said on the DEATHMARCH. We won't repeat what I said back, but suffice it to say, THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT. Anyway, so they asked me to sit on the other side of the row of chairs from Dira. WISE MOVE. ;-)

minotaurs went first and got 'juncture' of all things. Dammit! Then it was my turn and I got what sounded like 'kive'.

"Kive?" I said. "Um, use it in a sentence? Um, okay....what fandom is that from?" And I knew there was no way I could spell it. Originally my plan was, if I got stumped or tired or bored, I would say "P-E-N-I-S" and sit down. Alas, since it was only the SECOND WORD in the whole spelling bee, I gave it a shot.

Turns out? Kythe. Madeline L'Engle. I've read a lot of those books, but that word meant NOTHING to me. FIRST OUT, second word.

It was a good thing because I was super tired and not at all in the mood to be the center of attention, but I literally RAN away from the spelling bee--a little too relieved. I felt bad after. And I didn't get to see Dira lose! Damn and blast!

I don't mean that, of course. dsudis is our champion, no matter where she puts the E. ;-)

So it's like, after 10 o'clock. bayleaf, lightgetsin and I head to our room and change into PJs and chill for a few minutes, then head up to the 15th floor for brooklinegirl, ilexa, misspamela and estrella30's pajama party.






We walked into the room and I immediately stopped to take a picture and count heads--I have never seen a room so packed with people in all my life! The thermostat on the wall read 88 degrees--with an open window and air conditioning--which isn't really a surprise because there were 30 people in the room. The 1 small hotel room. 30 PEOPLE. They were packed on the beds, on the floor, in the corners, in the bathroom, in the closet--people EVERYWHERE. It was so funny! But SO HOT. We stayed and chatted for about an hour, then lightgetsin had to leave, then bayleaf wandered off.

I stayed for a while and talked to reginagiraffe, who is insanely nice and very funny and was at every meal I was at, till it got to the point where we were like, UNABLE to eat at different tables. *grins* But anyway, eventually I got too hot and wandered away to watch Popslash with arallara, trixiesfic and uschickens, who were also overheated.

Seriously, when we were leaving the room, it was 92 degrees in there and SO humid. A drop of sweat rolled off my eyelashes and I'm sorry, but I don't do drops of sweat. This would in fact be part of why I have a weight problem. *grins*

No popslash footage was viewed, yet again. It was discussed. Many things were discussed! If there are easier people in the world to discuss things with, I don't even want to know them, because I was already losing my voice. ;-)

It was late when I went back to our room after checking to find that yes, the party room was still too, too full of people for my comfort, but the_shoshanna and lightgetsin were lounging in bed with their laptops. Tara was lounging with a sneaker. I crawled into bed and got my laptop and we were all quietly clicking away for a while, until I suddenly realized, "Hey, bayleaf is the last one back. What's up with that?"

It was after 1am. Since she's notoriously an early, early bird and not known to be awake after 10pm, lightgetsin was like, "She's probably asleep on someone's floor."

I immediately sprawled all over the bed, put my laptop on bayleaf's pillow, and settled in to read fic. Ain't no flies on me, man!

So of course, bayleaf comes back like half an hour later. She had not actually fallen asleep, she had just found people interesting enough to keep her awake! *g*







It was our last night, and I was taking misspamela to the airport in the AM, so I went to sleep. When I woke up, the_shoshanna was laughing--"Laptop, laptop, laptop, laptop, sneaker," she said, pointing, and I had to laugh too. Seriously, a room of dorkitude. We showered and got dressed and went to the con sweet--at 8am, before breakfast was even going to start.

I sat around like a lump, getting directions and eating and talking to people until 9am, when misspamela came down, and then we headed to Dulles. We concluded that Dr. Who and Life on Mars are really THAT GOOD, and that reginagiraffe is really that cool, and then said goodbye--sniff!--and I went back to the con.

I got back just in time for dsudis and lynnmonster's Life on Mars panel, which was fantastic. I was too tired to have a smart brain, but people brought up all kinds of fascinating details and we had some great speculation, and I think I was the only person who voted for Sam being crazy AND in a coma AND in 1973, so I win. If you're not watching Life on Mars, you SHOULD. It's just that damn good!

Plus, I was making fun of bayleaf and she started laughing, and dsudis yelled at her, not me. Neener! :-p

Not that Dira really yelled. She did the raised eyebrow and said 'Something to share with the class?' jokingly, but that's still good enough for me. I take my small victories where I get them!

After that, a final lunch. I started my goodbyes, then went back up to the con suite and said goodbyes again, then followed everyone into arallara and trixiesfic's Race panel and totally disrupted it so I could get the last of my hugs goodbye. And then, finally, I managed to make myself go, and I was sad and woeful all the way out to the car.

And then it took me 11.5 hours to make the 8 hour ride home, but really, whatever. It was worth it. I had ALL THIS FUN, and I love EVERYONE, and I'd do it again tomorrow.

Well.

Not tomorrow, maybe. *grins* But I'll be YEARNING for it by 2008 and hope to see everyone again before then!

*gloms everyone, particularly the concomm, everyone who went to Crackfic! and Why SGA, people who organized lunches and dinners, party hostesses, everyone who said they liked my stories, and all the people I hung out with. So, really, gloms everyone* You all ROCK.

THE END.