castalie | Connotations report aka tl:dnr

Hi, flist, hi! Am back from Connotations, where I had the most amazing time! Which I talk about behind the cuts below. When I say I can't write these days? It obviously really just means I can't write fics because give me an event to write about and I'll put War and Peace to shame!

So here's my report. With pictures. Just, not as many as I actually took because many of those had con go-ers on them and I didn't feel comfortable sharing those without their permissions.

Friday

I was pretty excited so I sorta woke up early, ie much earlier than 7.00 AM, which is when I'd set up my alarm. This is what happens when I'm leaving for a con, my brain just refuses to shut up. Not that I'm complaining; the whole pre-con excitement is delicious too :-)

I left Paris at 10.00AM. Arrived in London at 11.23 AM, local time - don't you love how precise they are with their schedules sometimes, btw? I just love it.

Met with

yami_tai at the station - cue happiness. We didn't waste time and we headed immediately to King's Cross to hop in our train for Newcastle, meaning three more hours of train for me, btw. Again, not that I'm complaining. I just love being in a train. Especially when I'm with a friend and we can talk about interesting stuff like con and fics and SPN. And about our lives, because we can talk about non-fannish stuff too. Really, we can!

Oh and it was one of those four seats placement, right? So we had two 'neighbours' - and the man sitting in front of Tai was reading this book. He finished it during the journey and believe it or not but he threw the book away! In a bin! Tai, the girl sitting in front of me and I all went like this : 0-0, I swear. Dude, who throws away book?!

Speaking of the girl sitting in front of me; she reminded me a bit of Torchwood!Gwen and she was reading The Kite Runner. And sucking her thumb, which struck me as a little bit odd because you see few non-kid people sucking their thumbs.

What? No, it doesn't have anything to do with the price of tea in China - or in our case, Connotations. I just felt like sharing pointless details, is all.

Yes, so. We arrived in Newcastle and took another train that brought us to our Tynemouth station - pretty station, too.

That's when we decided to walk to the hotel because, hey, twenty-minute walk, right? Totally feasible? Yes. Except it was windy and cold! And by the end of the little journey, I couldn't move my fingers. Note to self: next year? Bring gloves!

Also, a Lady Bobby on a bike accompanied us for five minutes; till we were on the right path. Oh! And I saw all those kids in school uniforms which was cool as, hi, French girl here, so I'm not used to that. And some of the kids went to a posh school so they had those fancy Harry Potter-like uniforms which made my day.

There, that was another pointless detail. Except not for me because I thought it was pretty cool :-)

I took a couple of pics on the way - because I love to take pictures of, well, pretty much everything when I'm abroad.

Brit houses *cooes*

And look at the background, there's the sea!

The hotel was right across the beach, as it happens, you could see it from the lounge and everything.

We made it to the hotel and ohhhhh warmness! That was the first thing that I noticed, did I mention I was freezing? We went to check-in and Tai and I heard someone coming behind us and it was

turps33! I mean, omg! Terri! For reals! Best welcome ever. I got a Terri hug! It was pretty surreal, I'll tell you that. We've known each for around seven years now and she went from being a-girl-on-line to someone who, like Tai, I consider a 'real life friend', know what I mean? But the both of us had never met each other till that day and wow, talk about a rush!

So I gave her a hug and then, because she's nice like that, she was like 'you can give me your French kisses too' so I did - on the cheeks, I mean - and it was fantastic! To be there and having her in front of me and everything :-)

Tai and I abandoned Terri for a spell so that we took possession of our room and the welcome wasn't that good this times; it was freezing in there! Turns out there was a problem with the window. I'll say upfront that even though I really loved the part of the hotel where the actual con was held - we had a whole part of the hotel just for us, talk about awesome - the rooms themselves left a bit to be desired. Not that we spent that much time in there, admittedly but, yes. First it was freezing, then it was too hot, and we had the hardest time closing our door.

Anyway, we left our luggage there and then headed to the con.

It was around, I don't know, 4.00 PM, or around that time, so even though we'd already missed two panels we could have gone to the last one, but we got distracted.

We went to the registration desk and walked in the, I don't know, Common room? It was one of the three rooms assigned to us - this is where you could sit at tables and write and do whatever. It's also where the coffee and tea appeared all weekend long, as well as the food.

Someone, I think

graculus but don't quote me on that, commented on my Threadless shirt because at a con there're always someone - and usually more than one 'someone' - wearing a Threadless shirt and that made me happy because Threadless rules. The End. Actually, the day after, I was queuing for food and the girl in front of me had a Threadless shirt of her own and - again, I think -

graculus came to us and was like 'hey, we should do a Threadles convention', which, dude, we should, yes!

Anyway, we went to the Vid room to register and insta!love. I just loved that room - when we weren't in the Panel room we were in the Vid room - we sorta had 'our territory' there.

It had what I called the Magical Candy desk in one corner, where candies and chocolate and popcorn would appear all the time out of nowhere, right next to it was the Loot table where all the items you could win at the raffle were exposed:

Nice loot, eh?

And there was the Zine Library desk on the other corner, where you could pick a slash zine and read it if you wanted to:

Then there was the big screen in the middle where one tv show or another was always showing. All weekend long. And the chairs were comfy too, which is a nice thing as we did spend many hours sitting on them :-)

We were given a zine - huge one at that! - plus a couple of sheets ; our schedule and one of those quizzes they always give away at cons and make you sweat over. You wouldn't believe how tough the questions are. We also got a little orange rubber duck and this intrigues me so much. Why a duck? I remember at Wincon 2.0, a couple of people received evil rubber ducks and what's with the duck? I'm afraid I'm missing something pretty big here.

Also, instead of giving a badge already made, this time, we got to make them ourselves. We had coloured pens and scissors and those cute and funny little stickers.

So instead of going to the next panel, Terri, Tai and I sat down at a table in the common room and started on a little workshop. First, the badges. It was quite a lot of fun. Mine said 'Evil Mouse aka Wild Child Alex aka Funky Castalie'. And I put one more sticker, a 'wanted' one, for good measure.

Then we decided to do the quizz and argh, they're always so frustrating! You always end up feeling so lame and shameful because you think you're such a tv buff and then you can only answer like two questions out of twenty! So frustrating. But we did work a lot on those quizzes - I know we're supposed to work on our own but it's just not possible, ok? If you ever played those quizzes, you'd understand. So our sheet was a common sheet... Tai's, Terri's and mine. And

davidbrider's.

Yes, because something awesome about con is how you meet new people, right? And

davidbrider sat at our table at one point - obviously I didn't know his name by then - and asked about our answers and because we needed more of those on our little sheet we decided to share if he helped. Which he did. So when I say it was a team effort, I really do mean the 'team' part lol

We also played a wordsearch game where you had to find interesting words like 'threesome', 'porn', 'wincest', 'kink' etc... This took us some time :-)

After a while we also met

shamus2uk, Terri's kick-ass husband. And I do mean the kick-ass part too! James? Is a little bit Bobby Singer, he's awesome!

By then it was dinner time, so we all headed to the restaurant. I think I was a little too tired to really be hungry and appreciate the food but I was in good company so I can't say I cared either way :-)

After dinner, we went back to the Vid room and some Due South was showing, twas the episode where RayK appears, if you're like me and like details. We more or less paid attention, while talking and just chilling.

Something I loved at the con is the relaxed atmosphere. People were just left to their own devices, no pressure of any kind, know what I mean? There were the panels which attracted a lot of people - for good reasons, as they were quite interesting - and if you wanted to watch some stuff, you'd go the Vid room, where you could, ok, watch stuff, but also just talk and have fun, read a zine, or just go on-line. The vast majority of people had their laptops and the sight was actually really awesome! Girls everywhere, alone or in groups, sitting on seats or on the floor, sometimes sprawled, with their laptops, checking their LJ, cruising the net.

Geeks are just the best, really \o/

By 11.00 PM I was a bit tired and was thinking of going to bed but that's when

seiyaharris, who'd downloaded SPN 4.03 in the morning, announced now would be a good time for us to watch the episode on the big screen and HI! There was no way I felt tired after that! So, of course, I stayed with Terri, Tai and James.

Reaction after the episode was over?

Room: *is completely silent*

Man, no-one was talking! Lol Pretty funny reaction, when you think of it - everyone was still in silent-awe mode. That third season is so incredibly awesome! It's sorta exceeding all my expectations right now. I mean, it started with 4x01 and it feels like it's not going to stop anytime soon. That is, not before next week as 4x04 should be a hell of a ride, too.

We went back to our room after that. As a bedtime story to lull us to sleep, Tai and I read and commented the kink list on the zine. Fun times!

Saturday

Woke around 7.00 AM to the sound of seagulls, feeling wonderfully rested and ready to tackle a whole day of con. Tai and I lazed around in the room a little - we like to take our time - and then we headed to the breakfast room. We're usually some of the last going there - I noticed that the last time too. James and Terri were in the lounge because they're the kind of persons who don't take forever to get up and shower and take their breakfast.

We met them again in the Vid room before we girls left James to his own devices; we and went to the 10.30 AM Panel: Bastard Alien Assbaby Lovechild of the Badfic Panel managed by - I'm hoping I'm not mixing up names -

moonlettuce. I just couldn't imagine Terri missing that panel, dude! And it was a lot of fun - albeit a bit traumatising sometimes; badfics can be scary!

Always a good thing; none of my own stories were used as an example. Talk about a relief :-p Because, as Claire said, if it turned out someone in the room had written one of those stories? They would have been mercilessly mocked. We didn't want that, did we?

After the panel we had coffee and tea and the three of us went back to the Vid room - I did mention we loved that room, right? - where we met with

krazykipper who'd arrived in the morning. It was lovely seeing her again.

I know I'm focusing on just our little group here but to put things in context, you have to imagine a gazillion people always coming and going around us, standing in groups, sitting in groups, walking around, cruising LJ, knitting, drawing, writing, laughing, sometimes singing, too, all kinds of -inging. It was never dull or quiet or silent. It's incredibly lively and I love the energy that is in the air.

Also, you can find some pretty interesting stuff like this Comic Strip or the Tentacles Tales Corner. [Disclaimers: I'm sharing those because I assume they're up for public consumption but in case they're not - I mean, you never really know? - I'll just delete them, no problem.]

Or you can come upon that kind of scene :

From a different and closer angle:

Slash convention, remember?

Okay so, anyway, back to what we did after the panel : we retreated to 'our' corner of the Vid room to drink our tea/coffee/coffee with milk and chatted some more before heading to the third panel of the day: RPS/RPF what is that about? by

airinshaw. Obviously we couldn't miss a RPS panel, right? Right.

Another hit. Those panels are always so much fun; you laugh your ass off because some of the things those girls - and guy, okay, let's not forget David - come up with is always so hilarious, but there're also some very interesting points thrown in the midst and you sometimes go 'hey, I hadn't thought of that!'

The panel ended and it was lunch time - I just love how very HP-like the food was during the weekend. Food would appear out of nowhere all the time! Sandwiches! Crisps! Chicken! Salad! Quiches! Ohh, cakes!

We were in the Vid room again to eat and discuss our schedule in the afternoon because, see, we had a busy time ahead of us. Terri and Tai had decided to pimp me into Merlin so the plan was to watch the first two episodes via James' laptop on the big screen in the afternoon. Go to the 4.00 PM panel. Chill around. Then watch the new Merlin live at 6.00 PM, before going to dinner and then attend the Vid show at 8.00 PM.

Never let it be said that we're lazy bums!

If I remember correctly, during our little eating-and-chatting-up session, The Covenant was on. We were told that Teh Pretty makes up for Teh Bad and I'm not disagreeing but wow was that a lot of badness in just one film! And how long did those fight scenes last? They just never stopped!

And, actually, it felt like the Never-ending Film because when it was over,

seiyaharris popped out of nowhere and put it back on again... except she chose the scenes this time and we got to see Teh Gay that goes with Teh Pretty. And it was pretty slashy, yes, no-one can deny that.

Anyway, after that, James Took Control of Things and we started watching Merlin - thank you BBC iPlayer.

We watched the two episodes in a row and I completely fell for the show, hook line and sinker. I think it might belong to the guilty pleasure category but those are delicious too! Also, watching any kind of show with slashers always makes thing better. Hail to slashers and Arthur/Merlin! ;-)

When it was over, we still had time before the 4.00 PM panel start so Tai and I tried The Lair - as bad as Dante's Cove. Or worse, maybe, I'm not sure. All I know is that it was bad. Really bad. Not even The Covenant came close to its badness.

Though I have to say Tai seemed pretty into it and was theorising about what came next and what she thought was going to happen to the characters and that cracked me up.

I'm sure she made a huge sacrifice when we left for the next panel: the fannish tipping point : what takes something from being 'that thing I watch/read' through to obsession (and maybe back again) by

graculus. Which was right up in my alley.

We got a diagram! I love diagrams. And we had a Fandom hierarchy! And lists! I love those too. It was just a really good panel - talking about obsession always please me, anyway :-)

After that, we went back to the, wait for it, vid room and chatted and chilled some more. I think by then

davidbrider had joined us again. No, I know he did because when we left to our room to watch Merlin live, he was with us.

So off we went - meaning

yami_tai,

turps33,

shamus2uk,

krazykipper,

davidbrider and me - to our room for some new Merlin.

Again, there's nothing better than watching a show with fellow slashers. We're always on the same page and it's such a load of fun! I fell for it a little bit more even. Then the trailer for next week happened and as Kip quite aptly said 'this is going to be the best episode ever! I can't wait *bounces*

Then dinner came and Kip had to go back to

decor_noctis' place, so she abandoned us *sad face* The five of us found a table with , IIRC,

almell, and kept the good convo going.

After dinner a Vid show was held and I'll always be grateful to

theoret for teaching Tai and me the beauty of vids at Wincon 2.0, because we were able to really appreciate what we were seeing. I had a lot of fun. I wrote down the titles of some vids which I have to have on my HD because some were just too awesome for words! Among those was a XF/SPN Krycek/Dean vid with one of those clever cut made in such a way you can 'watch' the guys fucking and omg, so hot!

We also went through a very painful moment when someone decided to share William Shatner's The Rocket Man 'speech' and it was cringe worthy! I didn't know whether to die of embarrassment for him or just die laughing. That was epic, no other words for it.

Oh and there was this Tremours Tyler/El Blanco vid and after watching it, I finally understood why Tremours was at the very, very, very bottom of the lowest low in the fandom hierarchy thing. Wow! It did put things in perspective, though, cause after that, I didn't think The Lair was that bad, you know? lol

Anyway, here ended our Saturday.

Sunday

Sunday came and I didn't feel as rested as the day before. It took Tai and me longer to get ready and when we arrived in the breakfast room there were just two ladies left.

The day before I wanted to attend the 'Oh John Ringo, no! John Ringo, venom!cock and the Twilight phenomenon' panel because I wanted to know about this Twilight business but it was just too early for us, I'm afraid - yes, 9.30 AM can be considered 'too early' in some particular cases, ush. We lazed around in the common room till the 'Secret life as a slasher' panel by

pomkeygeekange, though like Tai said 'secret? My life as a slasher isn't secret at all'. Twas another interesting panel.

Then coffee and tea time. Still in the Vid room. Someone had put The Middleman and we started watching and before you know it, we'd watched three episodes in a row and

fides had burnt the whole thing on a DVD for Tai.

Why it's so funny is because I tried to get into The Middleman not once but twice. Each time I thought that, yes, I did enjoy the characters, I liked the premise but there was something missing, that little spark that makes me go 'hee I love that show!' Well, whatever it is that was missing was found in the Vid room because I watched the episodes and when it was over I felt like I needed more. So I'll download the whole season today. Again.

At a moment there was a bit of a commotion when James - who's been outside for a little while - came back to the room and talked about Red Arrows in the sky. Tai got all excited, then a bunch of people got excited too and they went outside. I had no idea what those 'red arrows' were but I followed because I didn't want to miss whatever it was I could be missing if I stayed inside.

Turns out the Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team and I'm certainly glad I followed everyone because it was a very nice show we got to see.

I wish I'd been able to take the pic of that moment when the planes flew just above our heads because it was quite impressive.

I also took advantage of our being outside - see, we did leave the hotel once \o/ - to take some pics of the beach. All weekend long surfers were in the water. Those guys are dedicated because even though Sunday was a beautifully sunny day where we were, it was still cold and I can only imagine how freezing the water was.

Nice view, isn't it?

We came back in after that, chilled some more in the Vid room, got to talk about kinks with

davidbrider, handed in our quizz answers - even though we had shame and thought we wouldn't win anything - were offered chocolate homemade cookies by SadlyIdon't KnowHerName!Girl, which were delicious and watched some more of TMM.

Things flew by after that as Tai and I had to leave at 2.15 PM to catch our train that would bring us back to London. I had to take my Eurostar after that.

I gave some more recomendation to Terri and

seiyaharris about the things I did.not.want from the Loot table, should I win something at the raffle, meaning the High School Musical stuff, btw, but Becca assured me I wouldn't get them, so it was all fine ;-)

James, being the sweetheart that he is, drove us to the station and off we went, leaving him and Terri and Connotations behind us, a very sad state of affair!

Then it was Tai I had to leave behind - sad things come pair don't they? - and went to catch the Eurostar and that's when I had a lovely surprise. Because of the incident/accident in the channel they're still having problems with train and stuff so they had to cancel some trains and give us new seats. Turns out I got a new seat in a new coach... in first class! Which, wow, is certainly different from second class! First, the seats are much comfier and so much roomier, they give you drinks and food! Just like in a plane. I got to drink apple juice and I was able to have dinner.

Awesome way to end my weekend, believe you me :-)

Though speaking of surprises, turns out Tai and I won something at the raffle. And, even more surprising, we actually won the quizz! And we weren't even there for our Moment of Glory, how unfair!

The quizz prize was - I thought it was nicely ironical seeing how much we'd mocked it - a box set of Dante's Cove, which, jokes aside, is a lovely gift to give! Since we'd ~~cheated~~ done the quizz as a team and there was only once price, Terri decided to let David get aforementioned prize. To which, I say, good move, sis ;-)

In conclusion and to make it short - yes, I can do that, it's just not my preferred method, is all - I: had a fantastic weekend, spent time with my friends which is always the best thing ever, went to great panels and had mucho fun there, got pimped into Merlin, dragged back into The Middleman, flailed over SPN, ate too much candy, drank too much coffee-milk, and just fell in love with cons a little more. Like my love for Dean, even when I think I can't love cons more, I actually do ♥ ♥ ♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

janedavitt.livejournal.com

I come from the other Newcastle (Newcastle under Lyme) and we have no sea, sadly :-)

Awesome report and pictures and I'm so glad you had fun! ::hugs::

From:

You Don't Go to Hell for a Being a Lesbian or a Slasher. Only for Being Lame

Connotations report aka tl:dnr

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