Iapos;ve been put to shame twice already by Darda in terms of posts this week, and my sister PMed me at work to ask where the hell my LA post was on my journal (she didnapos;t say hell, sheapos;s much too nice for
crassness), so I figure that I should finally get on that. ...Even thought Iapos;m a week late and the timing now seems horribly skewed.
Anyway California
...seems pretty rad. Thereapos;s something about being IN America that gives off a totally different feel than being in Canada, and I canapos;t quite put my finger on it. Itapos;s maybe the lack of French everywhere. And the letter U. And everything is spelled ER instead of RE. What is up with that.
Getting to the convention centre the first morning was pretty cool, even if it was at an obscenely early hour. Itapos;s a nice building, and weird in that it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting it to feel like. Plus there was a lot of random
RP conversation and people were all keyed up and fiddling with loot.
In terms of the convention itself, I remain pretty spoiler free I didnapos;t play ANY games the entire time I was there, and with the exception of one lore spoiler, the only other ones I ran into were game mechanics based. The panels were awesome, I didnapos;t fall over inexplicably or walk into any doors or say anything TOO stupid, which was something of a surprise, and all in all the first day was pretty great after getting over some of the intimidation factor.
The second day, besides various panels and taking ridiculous pictures with Darda and Ephe, I tried to charm the ladies at the recruitment booth. The guy behind me in line was a mechanical engineer and the guy in front was some kind of crazy rocket scientist (almost literally), so it was something to listen to them. I bet the rest were Nobel prize winners and PhDs, goddamn.
I kind of felt a little hack when I finally got up there (especially because I forgot my portfolio page with ALL of my isometric architectural icons from the past year and the rest of the work didnapos;t turn out very well in print), and she gave me the very optimistic and diplomatic version of, "Youapos;re not really what weapos;re looking for here, but thanks for coming out". I know this angle pretty well because Iapos;ve given it to a couple of applicants this past year. Coupled with the fact that there were these GIANT banners of this amazing art all over the place, well... That stuff is a confidence killer if I ever saw one. Art slumps tend to be a gradual thing, but this time was like being smacked in the head with one.
So I was half trying to wrap it up with the recruitment gal, half trying to slink away into the darkness when Pimp Thrall was suddenly RIGHT next to me, and hitting on the Blizzard woman like it was going out of style. It was like summoning a life-sized BA. Only made of green rubber and foam, not rage and metal. I shouldapos;ve hugged him. Bet he totally wouldnapos;t think that was creepy.
I was pretty low the morning after it wrapped up (due to the lack of TBers and I misplaced those stupid Diablo mints somewhere in the room) and not feeling particularly Disney-like, but that was until we got to the iHop and found it was FILLED with people in Blizzcon shirts, talking really loudly about Stuff, so it was like the whole con had just moved across the street and set up shop with the pancakes. Itapos;s a little weird to realise that hey yeah, people do play this game in a way that isnapos;t based around RP, so itapos;s always cool to see what non-RPers are interested in.
Disney was much more fun than I thought it would even be, and Iapos;ll sort through Dardaapos;s pictures tomorrow to see what she has. More Blizzcon folks were everywhere Also, tiny girls in pastel princess dresses. What a bizarre mix.
All in all, despite the Great Ticket Battle of apos;08, the airport headaches and various and sundry other small things, I would so do that shit again. We probably canapos;t, due to work contracts and the like, but still. STILL.
com whirlpool, doing unto others, doing unstuck, doing u, doing two things at once.
