WorldCon

[dalThor]

I love all of the pics and praise to those who did some captions. (I know it takes a long time and sucks but it really helps trying to put a name to a face.)

Loved your review Paedar.

If you haven't read his book you should really do so.

[Mr. X]

I just remembered the Absinthe Bar with GRRM. Did anyone get any pictures there?

Two of the four or five pictures I took the entire weekend were at the absinthe bar.

[Myrddin]

Oh damn, I think I described the Writing for a Living Panel. Oops.

That's ok. Still interesting. :)

Why weren't there panels like these last year... Most of the ones I went to were quite elementary.

[BlueRose]

BlueR,

Wonderful photos. You really did take a ton, didn't you?

Yes, I did! I took 370 photos, and 260 or so of them made the photobucket :) I will do the rest of the captions, cause I agree it is a huge help.

Every single panel I attended this year was excellent!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I find it quite amusing that no less that three different photo collections have shots of Limecat and me doing tape surgery on the trashcans to keep the garbage (not rubbish you eurocommie language freaks :P ) bags in place. I can't fathom why that moment was so worthy of documentation.

:)

For example.

[Lucky Pierre]

Con Reporter HERE links to our very own EHK/Worldcon Gallery with a note that Gaiman directed them to it!

;)

[BlueRose]

I find it quite amusing that no less that three different photo collections have shots of Limecat and me doing tape surgery on the trashcans to keep the garbage (not rubbish you eurocommie language freaks :P ) bags in place. I can't fathom why that moment was so worthy of documentation.

I took a picture of it for 2 reasons. One, it took you two about 20 minutes to finish the surgery, and two, Limecat was just standing there directing you while you did all the work. And he's the construction worker!

[Kat]

Um...panels. I'm trying to remember which panels I went to. I think I went to 2 con events per day but I should have written stuff down, since half the ones I have circled on my schedule I did not actually attend.

Thursday:

Werewolves of Brigadoon

The Life and Work of John M. Ford-- went to this one with Luga because she wanted to hear Neil Gaiman, and the panel was full of publishing all-stars and had a surprise appearance by Robert Jordan's wife; I had only heard of the author (who died in 2006) but listening to the anecdotes of his life made me really want to read some of his books.

Friday:

Relativism and the Superhero. Not sure why I went to this one as I know nothing about comics.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Little Gender Variant Metaphor

Preparing to Write a Series- George was on this panel. A lot of people left partway through to go to Peadar's reading, but Mentat and I stayed til the end. During the Q&A, a guy went on with this longwinded set of questions (he was an aspiring writer) and then at the end tacked on a question about Jon's parentage. George said he would not answer that sort of question. So apparently, one of Yagathai's friends was in the panel (was it Kyle Cassidy?) and texted him that someone had asked for spoilers in the panel. Yags then texted Xray and Luga(?) and so when we came out from the panel, we got jumped on in the hallway and asked who was the guy who had asked for spoilers, and could we please go beat him up? :P It took me a little while to piece together what had happened, and I had been in the panel. Worry not, there were no spoilers, and the immortal question remains, does R+L=J?????????

Saturday: Luga decided the night before that we should have a BWB group shot by Kyle Cassidy (Neil Gaiman's photographer) at 10am. Um, after a night of partying, we were a little late to show up, and had expected that everyone else would be late, or not show up at all. We were surprised to find out that EVERYONE had been there 20 minutes earlier. So we got our picture taken and headed off to thhe Archetypes Without Stereotypes panel, which was hilarious. I wanted to take all the panels home with me.

Fantasy=Realism- A few of us discussed going to this panel, and Mina and I went in thinking it could be interesting. Unfortunately, only one of the panelists showed up, and she invited two people from the audience to be on the panel with her. So you know all those discussions we have in the Lit forum about trade routes in fantasy, etc? It was the live version of that. It even had a Bakker fanboy on the panel. :P Mina got bored and left, I stuck around, MG showed up, and then we left because it was a terrible panel, "That Guy" was in the audience (he took over every panel discussion and the moderator did not know how to shut him down), and I could have had a better discussion on the board.

The Knights who Say #$^*- Excellent panel, already described by other people.

Sunday:

Writing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Geographic Terms- This panel was interesting, except...hmmm... Some people here probably know about RaceFail'09, a big long multi-website argument amongst fans and some writers. The moderator and one of the other panelists had participated in that. One of the other, more vocal panelists, was pretty clueless, and so a lot of the time spent during this panel was panelists arguing with each other on tangential matters, something which I felt should have been addressed BEFORE the panel started so that they could have talked about the subject more. I wish I had taken notes, though, because there were a lot of book recommendations that sounded interesting and I had no writing utensil and wasn't sitting near anyone else. And I learned some interesting things as well.

SF and Fantasy and Human Reproductive Variants: Pretty much what it sounds like. Babies in tubs, male pregnancy, etc.

Monday: Er...I think all I did on Monday was go to Pat Rothfuss's reading. My flight was too early to go to George's. Alas.

[Kat]

Other stuff (should have written it all down):

Wednesday: After getting lost, managed to find Mandy et al. at the pizza place. Had some beer, had some pizza, and then we moved on to a pub which Pat directed us toward. Apparently, not eating all day and barely getting any sleep makes one prone to getting drunk after one and a half beers. Who knew? So we then moved on, like locusts, to the hotel bar (where we found the train people) and then the Reno party (where everyone got tickets to the LP&Kat GUN SHOW to which there may also be pics :P) and then moved on to the hotel bar. This is where I first tried tenalpia's Whiskey and Soda, Tall Glass, No Ice. I like whiskey, so having what amounted to whiskey-flavored soda was awesome. :thumbsup: This drink gets :thumbsup: from the Kats.

Thursday: The theme for my mornings, every day, seemed to be Rolaids and Breakfast. Um. I believe we all ran into each other at registration and gradually the BWB came together. We also ran into George and Parris for the first time here. Later in the day, we declared the 1st floor couches to be the new Bear Crotch, and thus our meeting place was established. That afternoon, 15 of us wandered downtown looking for the other brew pub that Pat had mentioned the previous night. I don't know if we ever found it, but we did find a brew pub (well, someone found it, while most of us loitered on the corner for a while wondering what to do). The pub, despite having a massive number of empty tables, did not want to seat all of us at first, but we persisted, and got a long table. As soon as we were about to leave, it started pouring. Truth about Montreal: Umbrellas are impossible to find. Some of us waited at the pub for a while for the rain to let up. Later that day, Sophelia and Mentat arrived from Quebec (the city) and I went to dinner with them and MG and we were later joined by Pebble. (Had a hard time finding a suitable restaurant in the Old Quarter. I don't know why restaurants are so hard to find whenever I'm looking for one.) After that we went to the party hotel and went to the bid party for Texas 2013 which had free GOOD food (argh! Why did we not just eat that free food!), and the Tor party, where the BWB had taken over a corner. I stayed at that party for the rest of the night, and MG(?), Mormont and I were the last people left. At one point, we talked to some random con dude and introduced ourselves. This would not be notable, except I immediately forgot who the guy was, while he saw me at parties every night after that, and would say "HI KAT!". I hate people who remember my name. Unless they are people I already know.

Friday: Hmmm. More rolaids and breakfast. More panels. At lunch, I met Limecat. Pod and Ser Scot got accosted by the Sitting Down Police. (The security guard did not like it if you tried to eat while sitting on the ground, or standing near a bench. You had to sit ON the bench.) Went to another panel, I think. I had arranged that if anyone wanted to play Mafia, we would be doing it at my hotel at 5pm, first meeting at the meeting spot. So we got there and practically the whole BWB was there, and I was not prepared for that. Eventually Mina Martell (Montreal local, a lurker on the board who plays mafia with us in Forum Games) showed up with beer, and we had a slow walk to the hotel, during which we lost some of our number, which is fine. Every army on the march loses some. :pirate: I think we had 10 people playing total: me, Soph, Mentat, Blue Rose, Lany, Mina, Pebble, Tycho, Limecat, and MG. MG and Tycho left after one game, and the rest of us played another. Then we left to go find dinner, and ran into another roving gang of BWB folks on their way. So we roved together toward another pizza place (my 3rd night of pizza) and then split up and roved toward either parties, or other places. That night I went to the Chicago bid party and got a smoothie, the Japanese fan party and Ser Scot, Pebble and I picked up ninja headgear. Then we went to the UK party and had towels thrown at us. Then a few of us heard rumors of an Angry Robot Party. None of us knew what that meant, but we were intrigued, and went in search of robots. The robot turned out to be awesome. I had a long conversation with it and had my picture taken. Angry Robot turned out to be a new SF/F publisher or imprint, and the next day I found out it was aimed toward the "post-YA" crowd, or kids who don't like to read fancy prose who grew up and want to hear lots of knights who say #$%^. :P But the robot was awesome.

Saturday: Rolaids and breakfast. Panels. Set up for party in the afternoon, with a theme of "blue". You know, I have noticed that each con I attend, the themes are less and less intricate. Is next year's theme going to be "there is a carpet in our room"? ;) But anyway, the party was awesome. I did not have the blue drink, since I needed caffeine desperately, and I stuck to whiskey&coke. I chatted up a bunch of Real Authors™ who were at our party--the Real Author™ who I met last year (who recognized me when he came in) and about 5 other people, one of whom was possibly the Canadian author who asked Chat if she knew where to get drugs. But I won't mention any names. :lol: I think I gave a speech when I was promoted to nobility, but I don't remember any of that--the Gaylaxicon party next door had given me beer, whiskey, and maple liqueur after we started running out of drinks, and I blame them for any problems with coherence that I may have demonstrated. Never let me be a door person again, by the way. I am significantly worse than average when it comes to recognizing faces, which leads to issues like this:

Luga: So, there was this creepy guy in a backpack who just left. Don't let him come back in. *points to person across hall*

Kat: Hmmm, ok.

<a few minutes pass>

Luga: That was the creepy guy!

Kat: Where??

Luga: The guy who just went into our party! :angry:

Kat: Oops.

I was at the door with Chataya for a while as well. I left her for a piece of meat. Actually, 3 pieces of meat. Gotta love the con suite.

The quest was great. Mostly because they brought back poutine, which is great after you've been partying all night. Scot, the poutine got put in the room with the bar, where the food had been in there.

After the party was over George stuck around for a while and we talked about how they choose cities for conventions, what goes into planning them, etc. Considering the SMOFs all kind of hate it, it's good to hear about it from someone.

Sunday: I slept through party cleanup because I left my phone on vibrate. :( A lot of us went to the Hugos that day, some of us more dressed up than others. MG and I predicted 9/16 correctly based on wild guesses, but Mich was way better at her predictions. We went to more parties after this, then went to the X's room, then went to hang out in the con suite for a while, then a few of us went to MG and Pod's room to see Blue Rose's scrapbook from Denver.

Monday: Got emo about people who were leaving. :(

[Kat]

By the way, I just wanted to reiterate how excited I am for Reno in 2011! If Seattle had kept their bid, would we be having TIM POWERS as the Guest of Honor??? I expect everyone to start reading his books now, so you can join me, Xray, and Mr. X in our fangirl/boyism. You have two years. Go!

[Regina]

Saturday: Rolaids and breakfast. Panels. Set up for party in the afternoon, with a theme of "blue". You know, I have noticed that each con I attend, the themes are less and less intricate. Is next year's theme going to be "there is a carpet in our room"? ;)

The theme wasn't simply "blue" fwiw. It was about the recycling of decor and suplies from previous cons. There were complex themes of fiscal and environmental responsibility being explored here!

;)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kat,

Thank you for letting me know what happened to the Poutine. Though I didn't get any of the quest poutine I did have poutine on several occasions over the long weekend. It's a heart-attack on a plate, but a dang tasty heart-attack on a plate.

[Xray the Enforcer]

And you'll be seeing some of that stuff again, although I might splurge and buy a few more strings of Christmas lights on discount in other colors, and there will be no more blue curacao for awhile because I hate the shit. In any case, the theme was loosely "The Iron Islands." George serendipitously wore his Greyjoy shirt and the drink was the Blood of the Kraken.

George and Parris were the ones to break the news about Tim Powers to me on Sunday. George gave me a bit of good-natured shit for fangirling Tim at WFC when he introduced the two of us. :lol:

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I was looking at MG's photo gallery and I noticed something. In this photo even with Mr. X down on one knee. His head comes up to my shoulder. I am a short man.

[Arlingzen Bill]

By the way, I just wanted to reiterate how excited I am for Reno in 2011! If Seattle had kept their bid, would we be having TIM POWERS as the Guest of Honor??? I expect everyone to start reading his books now, so you can join me, Xray, and Mr. X in our fangirl/boyism. You have two years. Go!

I am MEH over Tim Powers. I have tried two of his books. Anubis Gate was much better than the other one, but nothing i'd freak about. If anyone comes to DC and wants my copy of Expiration Date... just let me know.

[Mr. X]

If anyone comes to DC and wants my copy of Expiration Date... just let me know.

I'd offer to take it, but I already have three copies. :)

[mormont]

Kat: :lol: I had forgotten that guy. The one that did improv poetry on the streets, allegedly including Paisley and Slough. Who had that plan about how the highways should all be raised ten feet to avoid death by deer. Yeah, he was amazing.

[Sis Who Swears]

Awesome report Kat! :lol:

'That Guy'... there always seems to be one of 'em eh?

[Lucky Pierre]

SSE-I am guilty of eating a *lot* of poutine... I mean I didn't sit on the floor in front of the table and eat an entire container like Mina (who declared it to the best shes ever had-and shes local) but I did stand there and just eat and eat and eat. It was heaven in a to go container!

[Lucky Pierre]

Awesome report Kat! :lol:

'That Guy'... there always seems to be one of 'em eh?

His name was Darryl and he fucked up every panel he attended... luckily I only had him at the beginning of one before he left. Lany had him in mutiple ones.

At our party he wanted everyone to leave to watch the fireworks-and I refused him entry at least once.