I love everyone in this bar. Or, Vividcon 2013 Con Report

[anoel]

Vividcon this year was AWESOME. I decided to spend my evening tonight capturing all my favorite memories from it. My memory is not super great so I'm sorry if I forgot anything and please let me know if I got anything wrong. Also I used LJ identies here for the most part so I didn't have to spend more time editing posts on each journal, let me know if you want it to be DW instead. Here goes...



So my journey began on Thursday morning as I took the Flyaway bus to LAX and took my ONE carryon backpack (so proud of myself for packing lightly) on the plane. I mostly slept and wrote up my vid post notes for my vid while catching up on some Teen Wolf. I arrived at the shuttle spot (Door 2!) to find franzeska, mresundance and destina. I got to talk to destina about Spartacus as I have just seen S1 and fell in love with it and was warned off watching the vids because of spoilers which I had planned anyways. I also caught up with franzeska on the shuttle and enjoyed seeing mresundance again after he visited us in LA a couple weeks ago. I went inside the hotel to find cherryice and hollywoodgrrl sitting on the couch and I went over to them and joined the conversation. I remember showing off my new Game of Thrones hoodie and getting a chance to meet findthesea who showed off her beautiful Lannister hoodie. Game of Thrones REPRESENT! (this is a theme)

I don't remember everyone I met at this point but there was a lot of HUGS. I particularly remember getting to talk to celli about Adam/Blake and my Voice feels. I also got to tell flummery how much I love their OUAT vid from last year and how it inspired me to get into the show. It took awhile before I could get into my room but I got to see my roomie, par_avion while I was waiting and catch up a bit with butterfly. I hung out on the lobby couch a lot, welcoming people coming into the lobby. Finally at one point, a group of us went to get dinner and I finally got to meet my roommate, gigglemonster! She is super awesome and a fellow Game of Thrones person <3 So we all went to my favorite Thai restaurant and I got to eat dinner (late lunch in my case) with lolachrome, ua_the_terrible, elipie, mreseundance and gigglemonster who are all super fun and awesome people. There was some Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones talk and of course vids and Vividcon came up a whole lot. It was a lot of fun and omg the pad thai still tastes delicious and perfect.

Next we went to early registration where I met a WHOLE bunch of people, too many to remember. Let's see, I remember hugging bradcpu, milly, fan_eunice, dualbunny and introducing gigglemonster to a bunch of people. I also got to see killabeez again and got to meet frayadjacent who is wonderful. Also got to see jarrow and jspencer1986 and talked about how they are NOT the same person or brothers contrary to some opinions. I also got to hug bessyboo and podklb (who missed my shuttle by 5 min!) and talk a bit with a fellow Glee fan. I said hi to revolutionaryjo and lunate8 and told them I was excited about their CVV outfit (more on that later...).

I went to the Welcome to VVC panel with gigglemonster for the first time and got to see that presentation and even learn a couple things myself. I don't remember well what I did after that but I think I went back to my room with gigglemonster and hung out with my roommates, par_avion and talitha78. I also got to have a fun chat with geekturnedvamp and aruan who it was great to meet. At some point, fairly early by VVC standards (1 am?), I went to bed although I think this was the night I talked to gigglemonster about Game of Thrones and the books and it was super fun to have someone to talk about it :D

The next morning I went down to breakfast and ate with people I'm forgetting, sorry. I then went upstairs to say hello to everyone (who I now forget). I almost forgot about VJ training but someone mentioned it and reminded me. After that and more talking with people, I went to the History of Challenge vidshow which was a lot of fun seeing older vids I haven't seen in awhile like So Real, Lucky You and Milestones on the big screen. I also got to sit next to gigglemonster while she watched I Swear for the first time which was hilarious and amazing in person as usual. Then I finally got to introduce gigglemonster to hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna and findthesea! It was awesome for all of us to talk a little about Game of Thrones and how excited we were for hollywoodgrrl's Game of Throne vids! I next went to the Infinite Diversity in Vidding panel led by the wonderful lolachrome and bradcpu where it was great to see some other vidding styles, I only wish it was longer! There was a great video by kiki_miserychic covering Tumblr and the styles of vids and gifs prevalent on there.

For lunch, I went to the Lord King Bad Vid party with gigglemonster in svmadelyn's room where we watched some hilarious vids and had some pizza. Then I went to the Chill the Fuck Out panel which was HILARIOUS, unsurprisingly because it was led by sisabet where we learned that vidding hates us (except jetpack_monkey) and that if you need stress relief, playing with Adele paper dolls is an acceptable outlet. I could use a stress reduction workshop with sisabet every day honestly, it was such good fun. Next up was the Song Choice panel with absolutedestiny which was my favorite panel of the con. SO much interesting discussion regarding the pyramid of vid awesomeness and there was a lot of thinky thoughts regarding picking the right song and using the song with edited footage and intent to make it clear. After that I went to Also Premiering where I got to see lots of new vids! I particularly love obsessive24's Elementary vid which was the first time in awhile I've been interested in watching Elementary, if only for Natalie Dormer. I hung out a little bit with findthesea, gigglemonster, hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna talking Game of Thrones and then went to help set up Club Vivid with the usual suspects: bradcpu, milly, pipsqueaky and way2busymom. I then went to my room to change into my costume which was helped by the generosity of mresundance, astolat and cesperanza who saved me when I forgot an important component at home.

I went down to Club Vivid with gigglemonster and then got to see everyone's amazing costumes. I was dressed as Alex Vause from Orange is the New Black and a few people knew who I was so that was cool. I tried only to eat a little bit because last year I was too full to drink but couldn't resist some of the delicious food. There were some great costumes this year but mainly I was completely bowled over by revolutionaryjo...who came out in Leslie Knope's wedding dress complete with feminist newspaper articles!!!! I was so shocked I didn't even have words and then I just started crying because WOW. It was so perfect and made me so happy and FAVORITE character ever <3 So yeah, revolutionaryjo and lunate8 (who helped) basically won Club Vivid out of that. I remember getting a chance to talk to hedrahelix and laurashapiro which is always great.

Finally it was time for The Joxer Dance! Someday I will have that dance memorized. My vid was close to the beginning so I found podklb and got to dance to my Glee vid with her, which was super fun! There was many hugs afterwards and I was happy to hear later that lolachrome enjoyed it as well :) My next favorite vid was The Evil Queen (Ms. Mills If You're Nasty) which I had been DYING to see all day on basis of the title and name and it did NOT disappoint. One of the highlights for me was being able to dance to it and WOOO during all the Swan Queen parts because my GOD are they sexy together. Super good times :) I also got to dance to frayadjacent's wonderful Buffy vid and give her hugs afterwards <3 I enjoyed dancing a little bit to astolat's Bohemian Like You and then I had so much fun dancing to elipie's The Middle vid with lots of hugs at the end! And then fan_eunice made me cry at her Times Like These vid omg why must she kill all the dogs :(

Soon after that was my Like a G6 vid which I was super happy to get to dance to again especially with hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna who I was very pleased to hear liked it so much the previous week. Then after that was SMELLS LIKE WESTEROS SPIRIT!!! The vid I have waited soooo many months for and it did not disappoint, OMG SO AMAZING! I got to dance with gigglemonster along with findthesea, hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna and give hollywoodgrrl a big hug afterwards for letting me dance to one of my favorite songs set to my favorite show from one of my favorite vidders and having it be AWESOME. So many parts blew me away. Then right after that was Sabotage, ohvienna's amazing Mission Impossible vid that was fun to dance to! I also enjoyed seeing a Veronica Mars vid by grammarwoman after having rewatched it and being in a VM mood after the movie announcement.

mresundance was wearing an awesome Will Graham costume and it was fun dancing with him to his great Hannibal vid. Then it was time to dance to my favorite Fringe vid and one of my favorite Club Vivid vids, Boom Boom Pow by hollywoodgrrl! And right after that I danced with gigglemonster (and other GoT friends) to her first live vid showing at Vividcon, Power! I looove that vid and it was fun to sing/rap all the words and see it on the big screen. Later I had fun dancing to Let's Go to the Mall with jetpack_monkey and elipie (and others) which was the perfect song choice. At some point kiki_miserychic showed up and then I had a great time dancing with her and screaming the lyrics of I'm on a Boat. I had fun dancing to bradcpu and milly to Party in the Midlands and Firework.

Earlier I had gotten a chance to tell astolat how much I loved her Would You...? vid and how cool it was to see the fountain in the vid when I actually went to Vegas and then I got a chance to actually dance to it with elipie who I had just been to Las Vegas with. I then danced to jarrow's Telephone with dualbunny and jarrow and others I'm forgetting, having fun singing the lyrics. I was so happy that they played If I had You and it reminded me of my Adam Lambert days. Then I danced more with elipie when her Less Plot More Stripping vid came on. The final highlight of the night was when I Wanna Dance came on and I got to dance with jarrow, jspence1986, podklb and other Glee fans to it. I was running out of energy at this point but I was dancing and jumping up and down to this amazing vid anyways. It was so fun to dance with podklb to this song with our shared love of Glee.

Once Club Vivid was over, I had a more serious heart to heart conversation with podklb about Cory Monteith's and my mom's death and it was nice to have a real conversation with podklb. I then went to geekturnedvamp's room to chill out there and eat pizza (although I didn't, stomach wasn't feeling good all night). I got to talk more with nc and svmadelyn which was super fun and then I got to meet some new people including aruan (again), spatz, cienna and others. We had a lot of fun talking about our fandoms and fannish histories and talking about vids and such. Then I headed out to hang out cherryice, gigglemonster, findthesea,hollywoodgrrl, kiki_miserychic and ohvienna where we talked vids, Game of Thrones and read a HILARIOUS horrible T:TSCC fic that left us all in stiches. I also got a chance to have a good talk with findthesea who was having her first Vividcon and it was great to get a chance to get to know her :)

For the last room party of the night, I went to hang out with nc, mresundance, bessyboo, war_kitten and svmadelyn where we watched vids including Bad Romance and talked a bit. I was pretty tired at that point so I headed off to my room and then watched hollywoodgrrl's vid a few more times before bed. It was even more amazing when I could actually see and hear all of it and caught all the amazing things she did with it. I woke up a little early the next morning and had to watch it a few more times too :) I was going to have breakfast with cesperanza but she was too sleepy so I instead ate with deejay, Candy and ? (I forget). I do remember I did get to share a little more feedback with hollywoodgrrl about her amazing CVV vid <3

First up on Saturday morning was the Critique panel. It was good to hear people talking honestly about how to give feedback both good and critical and what were the best ways to approach that. I then went to the Brand New Classic Hits panel (although my battery ran out and I had to run up to get my cord) and got to hear some interesting discussion about dealing with older sources. Next up I didn't have lunch plans and was kind of in the mood for the Taco Lunch so nc was kind enough to give me her ticket. I got to talk to sweetestdrain in line about Spartacus and Game of Thrones as well as with hedrahelix. In the con suite, I saw elz coding away so I had to sit down next to her and talk Ruby on Rails which was fun. gigglemonster finished her ticket taking duties and joined us and we talked for a bit with frayadjacent and others I'm (sadly) forgetting.

Then I went to the What's My Motivation panel run by the awesome joyowhich I was really looking for as my motivation goes up and down and I'd like to keep it up as much as possible. It was great to hear the different ways people dealt with this. Then I saw fan_eunice before her Real Person RPF panel and told her how much I was looking forward to it since I still want to vid Adam/Blake from The Voice. It was fun to hear people talk about the different kinds of sources and some of the way we can handle vids to them. Next up was my vidshow, Not Just For Laughs featuring comedy TV shows which went pretty well with no tech trouble. jetpack_monkey was nice enough to make a premiereing vid for I Love Lucy and it was great to see Fly up on the big screen. Then I went to Fancy Credits where dualbunny helped show everyone how to make cool credits with After Effects. I haven't touched the program in a year so it was good to get another intro into it. I did wish we had time to cover masking though!

Next I had dinner with gigglemonster, rhoboat, morgamdawntalitha78 and xlorp and we talked about Vividcon, vids, fandom and other things. I went back to my room and hung out a little bit with par_avion, nc and gigglemonster watching some Club Vivid vids and talking. We then went down to Premieres and got in line and I talked a bit with rhoboat about our vids. I then went over to hollywoodgrrl to tell her how excited I was for her Game of Thrones Premieres vid and talked with ohvienna, findthesea, gigglemonster and kiki_miserychic.

I went to go the bathroom and of course that's when the line went inside but I managed to grab a seat with my Game of Thrones peeps. I talked a bit with futuresoon and kiki_miserychic who were sitting next to me and then the Premieres show started. I will talk more about my favorite vids in an upcoming recs post but I was glad my vid played well and mresundance and absolutedestiny reduced me to tears in a good way in the first half. During the intermission, I was happy to hear people liked my vid and enjoyed the song and style of my vid. I managed to tell a few people how much I enjoyed their vid and then got ready for the second half with hollywoodgrrl's vid. IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT OMG! I will talk more about it in my recs page but basically Run Boy Run is SO PERFECT IT HURTS! Literally hurts because hollywoodgrrl broke my soul into a million pieces and then blew me away with her freaking fantastic editing.

There was also sockkpuppet making me cry with her vid and absolutedestiny, joyo, bradcpu and milly making me laugh with their vids and it was overall a great year for Premieres. After it was over, I gushed at hollywoodgrrl at how amazing her vid was and talked with a lot of other people about how much I enjoyed their vids. I talked a bit with echan and mresundance about how great their vids were and cracked up over hearing sisabet's Teen Wolf smurfs. I went back up to my room and hung with par_avion, talitha78 and gigglemonster a little before I got hungry and went down to get a plate for some leftover pizza.

On the way there, I talked to tencel about her vid, Game of Thrones and a few other things. I then just went directly to Vid Karaoke since I was already running late and was able to listen to the vidders of I Swear sing it, shati sing along to her hilarious literal Total Eclipse to the Heart which had the room cracking up and then see elipie and jetpack_monkey do an amazing job of doing Martin Scorsece. After that I went up to deejay's The Hobbit party and was finally able to eat and have a delicious alcoholic drink. I talked a little bit with deejay, lapillus, slasher69 and a couple of other people I'm forgetting before we put on the movie. It was fun to watch it with a group and make fun of some of the funny things in the movie. Eventually I got tired and went down to hang out in bradcpu and milly's room.

Of course I walk in while they're watching the Club Vivid vids and my Like a G6 is on RIGHT then. After that, hollywoodgrrl's Smells Like Westeros Spirit came on so I had to go over on the bed next to hollywoodgrrl and give her live feedback to the vid. We talked about the Theon and Cersei and then just talked a lot about Game of Thrones along with gigglemonster with findthesea and bradcpu talking on one end of the bed and on the other bed, ohvienna, jetpack_monkey, kiki_miserychic and cherryice talked about film with hollywoodgrrl having to add some comments once in awhile.

hollywoodgrrl and I talked about the Game of Thrones books and how we got into the show, her vidding process, vidshows, what she thought about the Premieres vids and other random things. bradcpu brought up how he and Milly came up with the idea of a Vera girl or the stereotypical girls that hollywoodgrrl loves which was just too accurate. There was a bunch of other people watching vids on the other side of the room and I briefly talked with all of them before I left. It was a super fun party to end the night and I enjoyed getting to know hollywoodgrrl better. Then I went up to my room with gigglemonster and watched hollywoodgrrl's Game of Thrones Premieres vid a couple more times until I couldn't stop crying and had to go to bed.

I was running a bit late for breakfast on Sunday and wasn't feeling hungry so I just drank some juice and talked to a couple people I'm forgetting. I went up to Vid Review and took down all the notes I could catch on it (except Spartacus, I had to leave because spoilers). There were some great comments on the vids and some interesting discussion about them. I was really sad I didn't have a clone and so I couldn't go to the more informal vid discussion talk and take notes as well but that's Vividcon for you. For lunch I talked a little bit with elipie and a few other people and then I saw cesperanza and was able to grab lunch and get to have a good talk with her in the con suite about our lives, Ruby on Rails and the AO3, vidding and Sherlock in which we had a group table conversation about how Sherlock would be a Brooklyn hipster. I remember talking with sisabet, wickedwords, sockkpuppett, nc and others I'm forgetting. Sadly I had to say goodbye to gigglemonster who was leaving early and was an amazing roommate all con. I then talked with elipie and almost forgot to go back in for In Depth Vid Review.

There we went into talk about absolutedestiny's Life of Pi vid and sockkpuppett's Beast of the Southern Wild vid which were two of my favorite and most emotional vids of the Premieres show. Ian's Life of Pi vid broke me even more the second time watching it when I thought about how much my mom loved tigers and then the tiger was GONE and just :( There were lots of interesting comments and it actually made me want to make a movie vid or two, gasp, I know lol. After that was Challenge and I sat with ohvienna, findthesea, mresundance and hollywoodgrrl as we waited for the TWO Game of Thrones vids including one for Cersei. The Challenge show was great, I enjoyed both of the GoT vids and absolutedestiny's last vid gave me so many vidding fandom feels with the Adobe Premiere 6.5 and CS6 versions <3 So much history and vidding fandom love!

I made a Wire vid and was guessed for it but was happy to hear that heresluck enjoyed it after she broke my heart last year with her Wire vid. I so called joyo making the great Rumple vid as well and of course bradcpu and milly (with help from Ollie) made all the vids. Next up was Auction which had a lot of great vids and I was so happy that my OC vid got a big awww at the end of it :) I then talked to a lot of people talking about their vids or vids/Vividcon in general. I got a chance to say goodbye to podklb along with findthesea, hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna. Then heresluck came over to talk about my Wire vid and give me a hug and I was happy to get a chance to talk about my boys and the emotions I went through making that vid. cherryice came over and we started talking about a cool professional thing of heresluck's that I'm super looking forward to seeing.
I then went down to have dinner at the House O' Meat for the first time all con and went to stand in line with the rest of the con. I got a chance to talk with par_avion and killabeez while we were waiting and then went to our table with platinumvampyr, mresundance, war_kitten, cherryice, butterfly and rhoboat where we talked vids, various fandoms including Game of Thrones and Hannibal and drank delicious milkshakes. butterfly and I had a chance to talk about Spartacus (S1 is SO good omg) and Supernatural and how it changed in recent seasons. After that I went to talk to Candy about Once Upon a Time and various other TV shows and then I went down to jarrow, jspencer1986 and ua_the_terrible's room and was shown some hilarious, awesome videos from FaberryCon and talked Glee a bit. laurashapiro came in and I got to talk to her about TV and our future TV watching plans.

Then jspencer1986 was super awesome and put on a show for a bunch of us with his guitar playing some Faberry songs, making milly cry and playing one of my favorite songs, The Remedy by Jason Mraz. I also got to hang out on the bed with bradcpu and talk a bit while catching up on Twitter. After that I got a chance to talk a little bit with cherryice and bananapyjamas before going to check into see how jetpack_monkey's Fiasco game went. It was over but I heard a couple fun stories about it. I then went back to my room and hung out with par_avion, talitha78, geekturnedvamp, aruan and maybe others? just talking about vids, different fandoms, fic and RL. I was tired so I went to bed early but first had a great talk with talitha78 about RL and such. I have the best roommates <3

I went to bed VVC early but of course my brain woke up early so I listened to some future vidsongs and then watched hollywoodgrrl's Premieres vid a few more times. I went to breakfast pretty early and just had some fruit while I got a chance to have a good talk with frayadjacent and say goodbye to people before they left. I got to hug celli before she left and talk a little about The Voice and then I got to run by a panel idea for next year with fan_eunice. Then I left with a bunch of people to go to the diner and have a real breakfast. I talked to jspencer1986 along the way about his music and FaberryCon which sounded fun. I then had breakfast with jackiekjono, lovelokest and ladysorka where we talked about the con and various fannish and RL things.

I then went to get my stuff and check out of the hotel. I hung out in the hotel lobby and talked vid ideas and TV with kiki_miserychic and thuviaptarth, the latter who may have convinced me to try certain episodes of Person of Interest. kiki_miserychic told a hilarious story about the stuff her family is going through (on Facebook!) and then we both headed out to get lunch from the Thai restaurant. We had a fun walk there discussing future vid plans and general RL life stuff and I was able to get 2 pad thais which were fucking amazing as usual. I came back and hung out in the lobby some more, I know I signed up for FaberryCon (supporting) at some point and we talked about Fringe and some of the vids that showed at Premieres. Soon it was just rhoboat, franzeska and myself left and we talked about the Bay Area.

I was going to start working on my con notes but decided to check my flight time...thank god I did because I had gotten the wrong time and my plane was two hours early. The shuttle had just left so I decided to just take a cab so I wouldn't be anxious about missing my flight. I gave some goodbye hugs and then left. Of course then I found out my flight was 45 minutes later but whatever, it was fine in the end. Then I worked on my con notes and watched vids on the airplane instead of working on my con report, oops. I missed the Flyaway by 5 minutes but I still made it home at a reasonable time and was able to post my con notes and my CVV vid before I had to crash.



So that was my con. There was a LOT of amazing moments, many I've probably forgotten and I wish I could remember everyone I got a chance to have a great time with. I was really happy that people liked my vids and I loved so many of the vids that premiered. In the end, my favorite part of Vividcon is the people and everyone was SUPER nice and awesome. I feel so happy, rejuvenated and full of love for everything right now and I want to continue that feeling and leave ALL the comments. Not to mention, make ALL the vids and be more a part of the community, including posting to DW/LJ. Vividcon truly is my favorite con and as always, the highlight of my year. Til next year...

Comments

[revolutionaryjo]

Aww, thank you for saying lovely nice things about my dress! Your expression upon seeing it made all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making it worth it. :)

I'm bummed I didn't get to say goodbye to you properly, but we took off rather early Monday morning. Until next year!

[anoel]

IT WAS SO PEFFECT!!!! Ahhh man I never thought I'd ever cry over a Club Vivid costume but it was such a huge surprise and I never suspected...I thought you would do something different than last year! It was just so epically wonderful :)

I know! I meant to say goodbye to you and didn't get a chance. Definitely next year! We should also find time to actually talk at some point :)

[revolutionaryjo]

Haha, yes. Actual talking would be awesome. Sometimes that's tough to get in at VVC. :)