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It seems somehow appropriate that my 2000th post is my Wincon report. This weekend has been all about fangirls, and fangirls are the very best part of livejournal. I'm on the airplane right now, feeling sad to be going, but also looking forward to getting back to my own bed and my cat and my kitchen. It was an amazing weekend and I got to spend time with a lot of truly awesome people. It was long enough that I will cut for the sake of your scrolling finger, though.
I arrived about 1:30 on Thursday, with plans to meet up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendy who was due to get in at the same time. When I turned on my phone upon landing, I had a text from her saying she was at baggage claim, and a voice mail from dreamlittleyo saying she'd passed the bar (CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN, DARLING, YOU ROCK), so I was practically falling apart with squee before I even got off the plane. After giggling my way from concourse C to baggage claim due to the hilarious music and ho-down-esque announcer voice on the airport lightrail, I finally figured out where my bag was supposed to arrive and found Wendy. The poor woman had to wait ages with me because someone randomly had taken my bag off the belt and put it in a corner. Same with the bags of two other guys on my flight. We found my bag eventually, though, and made our way out to the shuttle stop. Thank goodness I'd put shoes in my bag and swapped them for the flip-flops I wore on the plane, because it was freezing and snowing and windy and generally miserable. I was also glad to have someone to wait with!
On arrival at the hotel, Wendy and I discovered we were on the same floor only a couple rooms apart and we promptly went up, dumped our bags, and then went back downstairs to start connecting with fangirls and find some food. It cannot be overstated how much better this hotel was than last year's, nor how awesome it was in general comparison to hotels everywhere for the purposes of fangirl meetups. The food available in the bar was delicious and served with cheer. We stuffed our faces with grilled cheese and french fries and tomato soup and started our quest to drink lots of water throughout the weekend in an effort to counteract the altitude. Other fangirls wandered through and chatted, and eventually about 15 of us moved to the restaurant where we ordered more food, even though Wendy and I were stuffed by that point. I can't remember everyone who was there, but definitelycoiledsoul, ethrosdemon, missyjack, and Jen (whose LJ name continues to evade me for the second year in a row) plus her new husband, and their fellow Australian friend whose name I also can't remember because I SUCK at names. After dinner it was time to go up and settle into our rooms for a minute before going up to the con suite to socialize and wait for SHOW to start.
I'm not one who watches show with other people generally, but I'd heard this week's was a more comedy episode, so I figured I'd do the fangirl fun thing. There were about 20 of us, and much squeeing happened. It was good fun, and I'm really glad I went, even though I couldn't hear every word :D I metmemphis86, loony_moony, regala_electra, ignited, sparky_monster, and affectingly, but due to sitting in the corner, missed some of the other attendee's names. Episode was FANTASTIC. Was it the most coherent and logical case of all time? Not really. Did the boys connect in ways I've been waiting for ages to see? Yes they did. Did it have Paris Hilton taking the piss out of herself? MFYES. Did Dean hand Sam his heart keys at the end? YOU BET YOUR ASS.
When show was over, Wendy and I went back to our rooms. About half an hour later, my roomies,lazy_daze (Sam) and balefully (Lucy)arrived, fresh from having watched Show at Lucy's sister's house. They wanted to watch again, and so, as the wi-fi in the room was spotty, we went down to the lobby to find a dl and commence squee. One of the best things about this hotel was that it had tons and tons and tons of seating in public areas, so there were plenty of corners to hang out in even if one is wearing one's pj bottoms without bothering others.
Episode acquired, we retired to the room and cozied up in one bed to watch. there was more squee, and pausing to squee more or re-play parts for the LOLZ or the EEEEEEEE or just because we were too excited to catch it all the first time. I was reminded that it's impossible to keep the full extent of the Sam/Lucy hivemind accurately in one's brain over the course of a year, even when you read their episode reaction posts every week. They are truly amazing. *smishes them all up*
We set up a rota for who would sleep with who, and Thursday was me and Sam with Lucy getting her own bed. Poor Sam hadn't slept well in several days, and didn't have much better luck that night. I was awake a lot too, not due to her, but more to being in a strange place with strange noises. We were up in time to go to breakfast with everyone at IHOP at 10 the next morning, though. We'd been planning on taking the hotel shuttle, but it was running late. a bunch of people left to walk, butdrvsilla, grayscaled, wendy, and omg, name fail again, and I decided to wait a bit longer, fearing cold weather. Eventually we walked, too, though, apparently just missing the shuttle, which finally turned up. It wasn't as cold out as we'd expected.
The place was filled with fangirls, includingbeckaandzac who had just arrived and who I hadn't seen yet, so I ran over and gave her a massive hug before heading to my table and fortify myself with french toast. We had fanish funtimes and talked srs bzns and gulped tea and yet more water.
Back at the hotel it was time for registration to start, and more people had arrived, and I finally got to cling todeirdre_c. I will never get tired of that, swear to god. sadcypress and pkoceres had also arrived, so there were more huggings of awesome, and some watching Sam and Lucy do their SPN word search, and squeeing over the awesome Apocalypse Survival Kits, which came with Peanut M&Ms, booze, a flashlight, a pocket knife, some Band-Aids and a letter from Dean Winchester. I was entertained by the sadcypress and pkoceres show (they have known each other for YEARS and are fucking hilarious together, even if they aren't as hiveminded as Sam and Lucy), hugged Dei some more, and finally got my turn to hug gekizetsu. We went to the roadhouse for a while, tried to find more people to greet/hug/squee at, and then there was the art panel hosted by cathybites, ignited, lostt1, and deirdre_c, which was really awesome and interesting and showed me that I have been failcakes at finding all of Dei's early work, and I need to get on that when I am back to my delicious highspeed broadband. The vid show was next, and I cried AGAIN (for like the 60th time, I swear) at Dei's tribute to Kim Manners set to Mediate. After that it was time for the rewatch of episode. Still just as good on third viewing.
Dinner that night was BBQ, withchemm80, wendy, rhythmsextion, grayscaled, drvsilla, and Sam, Lucy, Becka, sadcypress, and pkoceres, who ate their dinner off a garbage can lid. Dru and Gary (short for grayscaled of course) let me quiz them about big city living for the purposes of verisimilitude in my novel, which was awesome of them, and a good time was had by all, even though the temperature outside had dropped considerably while we were eating. Most of us ended up commandeering sofas and chairs in a corner near the hotel restaurant for the rest of the night where we talked fic and weecest and listened to Sam and Lucy plan their kink panel for the next day. I got to cuddle up with Becka, which made me happy, for she is awesome. I was also glad to get to know rhythmsextion. Sam went to bed first in an attempt to get some actual sleep, and Lucy and I snuck in later after we'd all exhausted our ability to debate who should top and who should bottom at any given age.
Saturday morning was breakfast at the NOMMY buffet in the hotel followed by one of my fave parts of Wincon, writing badfic. Dei and Barb and Dru and Gary and MJ are my FAVORITES TO LAUGH WITH. This year, just like last year, I ended up with my cheeks aching something awful from the laughing/grinning, and there were a couple points that I wasn't sure I would be able to keep oxygenating my brain, and I thought Dei might fall off the bed, and Dru is amazingly patient to be able to type genius badfic with a bunch of people yelling ideas at her. FUN WAS HAD, PEOPLE. I'M TELLING YOU.
That afternoon was the how not to be a dick on the internet panel, followed by the kink in fic panel, which went awesomely despite nerves on the part of the co-mods. You'd never have known they were nervous if you weren't rooming with them, though. They rocked. And it was all audience participation-y and fun and really interesting. Kink, SPN fandom can haz it. \o/
There was awesome and much-needed talking with Dei time, some sitting on yet another sofa of awesome, hanging with fangirls and having snuggling with Dru time (which there seriously should be WAY more of in my life) and more talking about Sam and Dean and life and fic and other very important things, and then there was dinner withdeirdre_c and gekizetsu and girlguidejones and drvsilla and lazy_daze and balefully and chemm80 and weesta and laivine. We all went around and introduced ourselves, explained why we'd chosen our LJ names, and then told everyone what our fave fic of our own was. This last was girlguidejones's idea, and it was brilliant. She's going to be posting a list of all the fic.
After that it was PROM. OMG, so amazing. SO. SO. AMAZING. We got back to the hotel just as it was supposed to be starting, and Sam, Lucy and I rushed up to our room to get prettified. They both looked gorgeous in their dresses, which was a theme of the evening. I was wearing my slinky black trousers and a black lacy corset with my pink Docs. I felt a little like early 90s Madonna, only without the PR talent. (or the dancing etc, whatever *g*)cathybites was an amazing DJ and also treated us to a couple hotass dance routines :D there was dancing, singing, drinking, flirting, awesome decorations, incredible costumes, yummy food, raffle prizes, boobs everywhere, and some absolutely stunning dresses. Best time I've had at a dance ever.
After we were required to vacate the ballroom, we went and changed, and went down to the bar where we had more fangirl time, because there can never be enough of that. I finally gave up the ghost at 2 am and went to bed.
Sunday was almost entirely made up of sofa-sitting and saying goodbye to the people leaving that day. The sofa-sitting fangirl time was wonderful and the leave-taking was very sad. I hated that we couldn't all stay forever. Almost everyone left by supper time went up the road for Mexican food on Sunday night. The poor waitresses were terribly over-worked by our crowd and the food wasn't very good, but I got more time with Dru and Sam and Lucy, and even got a chance to talk withsinoftheday for a bit, so that was good. Because her roomies, beckaandzac and sadcypress had gone home that day and she wanted to stay another night, pkoceres came to room Sunday night with us, and the four of us watched Star Trek. only Sam and I had seen it before, and we'd each seen it five times. We had a great time with it, and then watched some J2 vids before going to sleep.
I was up early this morning to get some last precious Dru time before she had to leave for the airport, and then the four of us from our room packed and checked out and went to IHOP for breakfast again before hanging out in the lobby with the remaining fangirls. Thenpkoceres drove me to the airport and Sam and Lucy back to Lucy's sister's house.
I ended up at the airport very early because my flight was "rescheduled" (read delayed, but apparently they don't like to say that anymore) to an hour later. When I got back to San Francisco I managed to zoom right up and get on the train home without remembering to collect my suitcase from baggage claim. Fortunately I discovered this before the train left the station and not afterwards. Now I am home with all my luggage. And without all my fangirls. I MISS them!
Now to figure out how I am going to see the 11 shows my DVR completely failed to record while I was gone. I don't understand what happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I go out of town that it stops recording, but it's clearly something. It for some reason didn't want to record House or Heroes tonight either. Really, though, it's hard to care as much as I would had I not been spending all weekend with such awesome women. I love Wincon so so much. I've bought my ticket for next year already. More on next year later.
I arrived about 1:30 on Thursday, with plans to meet up with
wendy who was due to get in at the same time. When I turned on my phone upon landing, I had a text from her saying she was at baggage claim, and a voice mail from dreamlittleyo saying she'd passed the bar (CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN, DARLING, YOU ROCK), so I was practically falling apart with squee before I even got off the plane. After giggling my way from concourse C to baggage claim due to the hilarious music and ho-down-esque announcer voice on the airport lightrail, I finally figured out where my bag was supposed to arrive and found Wendy. The poor woman had to wait ages with me because someone randomly had taken my bag off the belt and put it in a corner. Same with the bags of two other guys on my flight. We found my bag eventually, though, and made our way out to the shuttle stop. Thank goodness I'd put shoes in my bag and swapped them for the flip-flops I wore on the plane, because it was freezing and snowing and windy and generally miserable. I was also glad to have someone to wait with! On arrival at the hotel, Wendy and I discovered we were on the same floor only a couple rooms apart and we promptly went up, dumped our bags, and then went back downstairs to start connecting with fangirls and find some food. It cannot be overstated how much better this hotel was than last year's, nor how awesome it was in general comparison to hotels everywhere for the purposes of fangirl meetups. The food available in the bar was delicious and served with cheer. We stuffed our faces with grilled cheese and french fries and tomato soup and started our quest to drink lots of water throughout the weekend in an effort to counteract the altitude. Other fangirls wandered through and chatted, and eventually about 15 of us moved to the restaurant where we ordered more food, even though Wendy and I were stuffed by that point. I can't remember everyone who was there, but definitely
coiledsoul, ethrosdemon, missyjack, and Jen (whose LJ name continues to evade me for the second year in a row) plus her new husband, and their fellow Australian friend whose name I also can't remember because I SUCK at names. After dinner it was time to go up and settle into our rooms for a minute before going up to the con suite to socialize and wait for SHOW to start. I'm not one who watches show with other people generally, but I'd heard this week's was a more comedy episode, so I figured I'd do the fangirl fun thing. There were about 20 of us, and much squeeing happened. It was good fun, and I'm really glad I went, even though I couldn't hear every word :D I met
memphis86, loony_moony, regala_electra, ignited, sparky_monster, and affectingly, but due to sitting in the corner, missed some of the other attendee's names. Episode was FANTASTIC. Was it the most coherent and logical case of all time? Not really. Did the boys connect in ways I've been waiting for ages to see? Yes they did. Did it have Paris Hilton taking the piss out of herself? MFYES. Did Dean hand Sam his When show was over, Wendy and I went back to our rooms. About half an hour later, my roomies,
lazy_daze (Sam) and balefully (Lucy)arrived, fresh from having watched Show at Lucy's sister's house. They wanted to watch again, and so, as the wi-fi in the room was spotty, we went down to the lobby to find a dl and commence squee. One of the best things about this hotel was that it had tons and tons and tons of seating in public areas, so there were plenty of corners to hang out in Episode acquired, we retired to the room and cozied up in one bed to watch. there was more squee, and pausing to squee more or re-play parts for the LOLZ or the EEEEEEEE or just because we were too excited to catch it all the first time. I was reminded that it's impossible to keep the full extent of the Sam/Lucy hivemind accurately in one's brain over the course of a year, even when you read their episode reaction posts every week. They are truly amazing. *smishes them all up*
We set up a rota for who would sleep with who, and Thursday was me and Sam with Lucy getting her own bed. Poor Sam hadn't slept well in several days, and didn't have much better luck that night. I was awake a lot too, not due to her, but more to being in a strange place with strange noises. We were up in time to go to breakfast with everyone at IHOP at 10 the next morning, though. We'd been planning on taking the hotel shuttle, but it was running late. a bunch of people left to walk, but
drvsilla, grayscaled, wendy, and omg, name fail again, and I decided to wait a bit longer, fearing cold weather. Eventually we walked, too, though, apparently just missing the shuttle, which finally turned up. It wasn't as cold out as we'd expected. The place was filled with fangirls, including
beckaandzac who had just arrived and who I hadn't seen yet, so I ran over and gave her a massive hug before heading to my table and fortify myself with french toast. We had fanish funtimes and talked srs bzns and gulped tea and yet more water. Back at the hotel it was time for registration to start, and more people had arrived, and I finally got to cling to
deirdre_c. I will never get tired of that, swear to god. sadcypress and pkoceres had also arrived, so there were more huggings of awesome, and some watching Sam and Lucy do their SPN word search, and squeeing over the awesome Apocalypse Survival Kits, which came with Peanut M&Ms, booze, a flashlight, a pocket knife, some Band-Aids and a letter from Dean Winchester. I was entertained by the sadcypress and pkoceres show (they have known each other for YEARS and are fucking hilarious together, even if they aren't as hiveminded as Sam and Lucy), hugged Dei some more, and finally got my turn to hug gekizetsu. We went to the roadhouse for a while, tried to find more people to greet/hug/squee at, and then there was the art panel hosted by cathybites, ignited, lostt1, and deirdre_c, which was really awesome and interesting and showed me that I have been failcakes at finding all of Dei's early work, and I need to get on that when I am back to my delicious highspeed broadband. The vid show was next, and I cried AGAIN (for like the 60th time, I swear) at Dei's tribute to Kim Manners set to Mediate. After that it was time for the rewatch of episode. Still just as good on third viewing. Dinner that night was BBQ, with
chemm80, wendy, rhythmsextion, grayscaled, drvsilla, and Sam, Lucy, Becka, sadcypress, and pkoceres, who ate their dinner off a garbage can lid. Dru and Gary (short for grayscaled of course) let me quiz them about big city living for the purposes of verisimilitude in my novel, which was awesome of them, and a good time was had by all, even though the temperature outside had dropped considerably while we were eating. Most of us ended up commandeering sofas and chairs in a corner near the hotel restaurant for the rest of the night where we talked fic and weecest and listened to Sam and Lucy plan their kink panel for the next day. I got to cuddle up with Becka, which made me happy, for she is awesome. I was also glad to get to know rhythmsextion. Sam went to bed first in an attempt to get some actual sleep, and Lucy and I snuck in later after we'd all exhausted our ability to debate who should top and who should bottom at any given age. Saturday morning was breakfast at the NOMMY buffet in the hotel followed by one of my fave parts of Wincon, writing badfic. Dei and Barb and Dru and Gary and MJ are my FAVORITES TO LAUGH WITH. This year, just like last year, I ended up with my cheeks aching something awful from the laughing/grinning, and there were a couple points that I wasn't sure I would be able to keep oxygenating my brain, and I thought Dei might fall off the bed, and Dru is amazingly patient to be able to type genius badfic with a bunch of people yelling ideas at her. FUN WAS HAD, PEOPLE. I'M TELLING YOU.
That afternoon was the how not to be a dick on the internet panel, followed by the kink in fic panel, which went awesomely despite nerves on the part of the co-mods. You'd never have known they were nervous if you weren't rooming with them, though. They rocked. And it was all audience participation-y and fun and really interesting. Kink, SPN fandom can haz it. \o/
There was awesome and much-needed talking with Dei time, some sitting on yet another sofa of awesome, hanging with fangirls and having snuggling with Dru time (which there seriously should be WAY more of in my life) and more talking about Sam and Dean and life and fic and other very important things, and then there was dinner with
deirdre_c and gekizetsu and girlguidejones and drvsilla and lazy_daze and balefully and chemm80 and weesta and laivine. We all went around and introduced ourselves, explained why we'd chosen our LJ names, and then told everyone what our fave fic of our own was. This last was girlguidejones's idea, and it was brilliant. She's going to be posting a list of all the fic. After that it was PROM. OMG, so amazing. SO. SO. AMAZING. We got back to the hotel just as it was supposed to be starting, and Sam, Lucy and I rushed up to our room to get prettified. They both looked gorgeous in their dresses, which was a theme of the evening. I was wearing my slinky black trousers and a black lacy corset with my pink Docs. I felt a little like early 90s Madonna, only without the PR talent. (or the dancing etc, whatever *g*)
cathybites was an amazing DJ and also treated us to a couple hotass dance routines :D there was dancing, singing, drinking, flirting, awesome decorations, incredible costumes, yummy food, raffle prizes, boobs everywhere, and some absolutely stunning dresses. Best time I've had at a dance ever. After we were required to vacate the ballroom, we went and changed, and went down to the bar where we had more fangirl time, because there can never be enough of that. I finally gave up the ghost at 2 am and went to bed.
Sunday was almost entirely made up of sofa-sitting and saying goodbye to the people leaving that day. The sofa-sitting fangirl time was wonderful and the leave-taking was very sad. I hated that we couldn't all stay forever. Almost everyone left by supper time went up the road for Mexican food on Sunday night. The poor waitresses were terribly over-worked by our crowd and the food wasn't very good, but I got more time with Dru and Sam and Lucy, and even got a chance to talk with
sinoftheday for a bit, so that was good. Because her roomies, beckaandzac and sadcypress had gone home that day and she wanted to stay another night, pkoceres came to room Sunday night with us, and the four of us watched Star Trek. only Sam and I had seen it before, and we'd each seen it five times. We had a great time with it, and then watched some J2 vids before going to sleep. I was up early this morning to get some last precious Dru time before she had to leave for the airport, and then the four of us from our room packed and checked out and went to IHOP for breakfast again before hanging out in the lobby with the remaining fangirls. Then
pkoceres drove me to the airport and Sam and Lucy back to Lucy's sister's house. I ended up at the airport very early because my flight was "rescheduled" (read delayed, but apparently they don't like to say that anymore) to an hour later. When I got back to San Francisco I managed to zoom right up and get on the train home without remembering to collect my suitcase from baggage claim. Fortunately I discovered this before the train left the station and not afterwards. Now I am home with all my luggage. And without all my fangirls. I MISS them!
Now to figure out how I am going to see the 11 shows my DVR completely failed to record while I was gone. I don't understand what happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I go out of town that it stops recording, but it's clearly something. It for some reason didn't want to record House or Heroes tonight either. Really, though, it's hard to care as much as I would had I not been spending all weekend with such awesome women. I love Wincon so so much. I've bought my ticket for next year already. More on next year later.
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