Dragon*Con 2012: Nerdgasm!
September 5, 2012 4 Comments
You’d think after several consecutive years of Dragon*Con attendance, I might tire. I might find some things too repetitive or some of the offerings beginning to stale. How can one event hold the interest of 50,000 people for four straight days? Well, then it sounds like you don’t know Dragon*Con.
The annual collective of nerds and geeks (MY PEOPLE, I LOVE YOU!) creates a four day, all day, all night, round the clock festival of of entertainment and intellectual indulgence like none-other. Dragon*Con is a Geektopia of costumes, panels, markets, concerts, and parties that change each year and stay in step with new all-consuming fandoms. Especially since geek became chic (again) thanks to the incredible success of LOTR and more recently, Batman:DNR, and The Avengers (Oh, did I mention Stan Lee attended this year?); more folks than ever are hitting the Atlanta skywalks to join fellow fans in nerdy revelry. So many more folks in fact, Dragon*Con will be expanding into a sixth building–The AmericasMart–for D*C 2013!
This year, I attended the annual parade on Peachtree St. as well as the True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Buffy & Angel, & Reading Rainbow panels! They were all so good, very fun, and each a unique experience. Everyone was in great spirits and this year (as opposed to last year’s Buffy panel) all of the fans were respectful! Check out videos and live tweets below.
If you’re ever in doubt as to what to buy for that nerd in your life, a membership to Dragon*Con will always be a winner!
You may have noticed a picture of J. August Richards & I! We’d been facebook buds for a while and finally got to meet! He was so nice and down to earth. I was incredibly nervous! Our little conversation was definitely the highlight of my weekend. The Buffy & Angel Q&A he co-hosted was really delightful. I truly hope he returns next year, maybe I’ll be less nervous!
I also had chance to meet the impossibly talented Nelsan Ellis. I don’t understand why he isn’t sleeping on a pile of awards every night.
I had been thinking for a while what I would say, but whatever I came up with just totally left my mind. I babbled big time! I flitted from subject to subject: the weekly live threads I hosted on G+, a fellow fan who was really inspired by him, his work on his short film Page 36 and an upcoming portrayal of MLK. Before I was gently ushered away by his assistant I asked him if he knew how to twerk.
In the last episode of the most recent season of True Blood, Lafayette dipped a hip in such a way I just wondered! Nelsan was a good sport, but said he didn’t know what twerking was and then asked me to show him! I was slightly taken aback, but quickly explained I was not blessed with tool-set required to twerk well (noazzatall). My friends maintain he was trying trick me into twerking at Dragon*Con!
click on the picture to see it bigger!
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J. August is so damn fyne.. Even tho in the long run it didn’t fit him to be “lawyer” Gunn, I still loved that versatility of his character in Angel.
Haaaa! He wanted you to twerk at Dragon*Con! Very nice article Maria. Wish I could have been there with you.
Wiggy: Madeline and I were hyper-conscious of the way that women are portrayed in the Song of Ice & Fire series. There are some moments in those novels where women are totally equal players, and others where sexism is the driving force, and we wanted to address that by encouraging those playing female characters to be strong and sexy, and have agency. I think it’s especially great for our female-dominated genre to be exploring some male-based narratives and characters, since in those books, males are often subjects while women are objects. The stories we (women) often hear do not have women as agents in their own lives, even if they are the main characters of the books, movies, or shows we watch. Writing and performing our own stories, even if they are based on characters from elsewhere, is a fantastic and potentially empowering exercise. Taking male and female characters out of those novels, giving them agency, and telling a story about them can recontextualize them, and that is really important for women to be doing in particular.
You may have noticed a picture of J. August Richards & I! We’d been facebook buds for a while and finally got to meet! He was so nice and down to earth. I was incredibly nervous! Our little conversation was definitely the highlight of my weekend. The Buffy & Angel Q&A he co-hosted was really delightful. I truly hope he returns next year, maybe I’ll be less nervous!