Polaris 22: The Saturday Report

[theoriginalspy]

Whoever decided to put GDL's talk at 10 a.m. in the morning was definitely a sadist, particularly after the previous day.

Spy and Travellingone had gone to bed around 3 a.m. the previous night and got up at 8 a.m. on Saturday to do things like shower and grab a traditional Canadian Breakfast at Tim Horton's. Spy's invisibility did not disappear during her sleep as four people behind her got their orders before she did, and invisible Spy had invisible bacon on her breakfast sandwich. Spy was not amused, but it's not that anyone could have seen it.

After breakfast, the two made their way to the Gillies Main room for GDL's talk where they met up with elysium1996 and bubbleslayer. They did appreciate the view when GDL walked on stage.

It was pretty obvious that he had this done before because he immediately went into his ice-breaker with some poses for pictures and then commented about being hungover. Problem was, he was clearly not hungover, no bags, no sheen, no squintiness and no sign of Irn Bru. While Spy and Travellingone were all for creating an onstage persona because the Wall of Illusion(TM) is a good thing, blatant lying isn't cool. Despite this, they forgave him because he's still relatively new at conventions (and he's hot).

All in all, the talk was good - nothing groundbreaking, just the traditional embarrassing fanfic questions (which really need to be stopped) but he handled them well.

"I like the Jack/Ianto stuff but mostly because I wrote it," he said, and his favourite pairing is P.C. Andy and the pterodactyl. The answers he gave were humourous but not open to further discussion. Nicely done. The highlight question for Spy and Travellingone was asked by ever-clever assetic who wanted to know How to Get Fired from Torchwood since she would be on a panel with Spy and Travellingone in a little over an hour discussing said topic. GDL asked if he could come to the panel and Travellingone immediately made plans to buy Assetic a drink if in some alternate universe that should ever happen.

GDL gave three answers, starting the list: 1. Smuggle Cybergirl into the basement; 2. Shoot boss in the head; 3. Shit coffee. He then promptly eliminated the first two.

After the talk, Spy and Travellingone wandered down to the dealer's room where Spy was once again disappointed with the lack of trinkets. Spy has a fridge and nothing with which to cover it. She may not be judged for wanting David Tennant, John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd to greet her every morning when she goes to get the milk for her coffee. Spy also enjoyed her first sighting of Legal because he was nice enough to keep randomly wandering by throughout the day. It was nice to know that there were some very hot men at the convention who weren't guests. The pair were also amused by Assetic posing with elizard100's boyfriend, wookiemart who was driving around in a dalek for charity. (He would exterminate for charity, according to the sign.) There need to be more French-Canadian daleks.

At noon, Spy moderated her second panel ever - How Do You Get Fired from Torchwood. Travellingone recorded the list for posterity. Using her experience in crowd control from her job, Spy dealt with the enthusiastic panel and audience. All reasons to be fired were acceptable from awesometastic to epic fail. Free hugs and/or high fives were handed out by Spy for particularly brilliant suggestions. In total, the panel came up with 62 reasons but not all of them upon analysis passed the all-important WMD in the basement test. Several of Spy's favourites included signing a donor card, stealing office supplies, a vow of chastity and being subtle. An audience member who Spy has known for eight years gave the final reason that would make Russell T. Davies proud - bringing God into the atheist Hub. All in all, Spy was very proud of how things went even though two suggestions nearly broke the mod being the vow of chastity and cats are evil. Only Travellingone truly understood the cats are evil. The audience seem to thoroughly seemed to enjoy Spy's lapses in modliness. During the panel a new rule had to be added - do not speak until the mod has swallowed her coffee.

At 1 p.m. while Spy and Travellingone took a break Elysium1996 headed to the If I were an Evil Overlord panel. From all reports things would have been better if she had run it herself. Ely is an evil overlord and ran the dark side as she had cookies.

At 3 p.m. Spy and Travellingone were sitting inside the Stargate. They couldn't travel anywhere because it wasn't working. They were watching the line for GDL's and Jason Dohring's autograph. They wanted GDL's autograph, but were morally opposed to lines. Instead, Spy wrote her rough draft for her story-on-an-index-card entry. Once the line had dwindled to nothing, they sauntered in to get their Torchwood Season one DVDs signed. Travellingone spoke to Metro, who was taking the cash and threatened him once for the previous day's incident. Metro, who we may have mentioned is really mellow and secretly evil, simply smiled innocently in response and took her cash.

Travellingone moved to her right and promptly forgot her name when GDL offered to personalize her DVDs. Spy's autograph signing was much faster probably because he didn't even look up and she was still invisible. Despite the fact that being invisible sucked, it confirmed that Spy in the future may still continue to refer to Ianto Jones as her fictional Welsh boyfriend(TM) simply because it's not like GDL will ever know who she is. The second advantage was that he decided to sign the front of the DVDs thus determining which side John Barrowman will sign this coming Sunday at Maria (please insert your own Jack under Ianto joke here.)

After that they met bubbleslayer in the lobby and the trio went for a drink in Harry's Bar. Spy and Travellingone kept an eye out for Ely and Mr. Ely while jokes were made at Spy's expense (she was the friend who was there to buy drinks.)

GDL and his girlfriend were sitting at the bar, but the trio consciously decided to ignore him because Metro wasn't there and it was clearly his downtime and wall of Illusion(TM), blah, blah, blah.

This was how Polaris attendees were expected to behave. Unfortunately some fangirls missed the memo.

In what was the most cringe-worthy moment of the con, a group of fanbrats came in, loudly discussing how they were there solely to stare at GDL's ass and promptly picked the table directly behind GDL and his girlfriend. At that moment, Spy, Travellingone and Bubbleslayer would've apologized on behalf of people who understand that there isn't a literal cone of silence or wall between the fanbrats and the guests, but that would've made things more awkward. The best they can do is inform the fanbrats through this LJ post that they are fuckheads of the highest order. Spy and Travellingone also wonder if their parents missed teaching them the concept of manners or if they are just naturally moronic. It was embarrassing to watch the quick escape by GDL and his girlfriend. Spy and Travellingone hoped that while GDL picked up on the change of atmosphere he didn't hear the specifics of what was being discussed directly behind him.

Upon the Elys' arrival the quintet decided to go for dinner. Spy made a quick detour and handed in her story on a card entry despite her doubt of the word usage 'hope' instead of 'prayed.' She would like it to be noted for the record that she did not rely on her natural snark and attempted to write something serious.

At the Orchid, the dishwasher and cook clearly switched jobs since three out of the five meals and 100% of the hamburgers ordered were burned.

Running on less than four and a half hours of sleep, Spy and Travellingone napped. Unfortunately Spy had to miss the Sarah Jane panel and she would really like to know if it was awesome. A not-so-sekrit desire of Spy is to be as cool as Sarah Jane, while Travellingone really wanted her boots.

They got ready for the dance and went to hang out at the dark side because they had cookies before heading down for the Not Just a Teaboy panel. While in the dark side, Mr. Ely was entertained by his harem - there are pictures.

At the Not Just a Teaboy panel which was modded by Travellingone, the pair were disappointed that the panel did not run as successfully as the previous three for one simple reason - the panelist with verbal diarrhea (PWVD). Said panelist not only did not know which networks the shows ran on (Torchwood=BBC, Primeval= NOT BBC, in fact competing with BBC and will never cross universes) but also memorization of a couple of quotations and the frequent declaration that PWVD was right about something she never explained does not make a good panelist. Also ignoring the mod, the rules, the other panelists, and the audience does make for a good panelist. Even when a member of the audience asked PWVD to stop cutting off members of the audience and panelists, PWVD still did not cease the poor behaviour. Spy and Travellingone had a much longer list but they concluded that PWVD had the social skills of a pre-teen boy who does not know that he has body odour.

Spy mentally withdrew herself from the panel and plotted a variety of scenarios with sporks. It did not help that another panelist was encouraging the diarrhea by emulating the behaviour to a lesser extent. This was surprising as the second panelist was good on later panels. Travellingone wished she could just moderate the conversation, not babysit adults. As a result, the panel did not always stay on topic because the other panelists forgot it wasn't all about Jack. Quite frankly Travellingone should not have had to use the phrase, "Okay, we get it, you were right. Can we put it to bed and get back on topic?"

After the panel, Spy had her own disappointment as she wanted to introduce someone to someone whose academic and future career involved astrophysics to nexstarman, because he would know where the science and technology panels would be. This was the attendee's first time at Polaris and she would usually bring friends, hence the desire to introduce two people of like interest. Unfortunately the discussion of nexstarman's interests did not go as planned for reasons Spy still does not understand but she chose to blame her invisibility. That was probably not the reason, but she will stick to it. She thought the whole point of conventions was to introduce like-minded people to each other with the hope of future returns. She still wished that conversation had gone better as nexstarman was the resident science expert (as far as Spy knew).

To get over the panel, Spy and Travellingone headed off to the dance with Ely and bubbleslayer. A very specific decision was made to skip the Doctor Who Season 4 panel, because Spy still has two episodes to recap and did not want any unwelcome accusations of stealing theories. She hoped it was awesome for those who attended. On the way to the dance, Spy got to hug all of the Doctors, in order, even though Nine will secretly always be her favourite. The Doctors were really a highlight of the evening! She also heard the shout of "Mrs. Peel!" and finally got to meet the awesome magicom and her sister, magicom jr.

The dance was far superior to previous years and the macro of who's your daddy for Darth Vader and the can of whoop-ass with the Daleks made Spy's evening. Spy enjoyed frequent glimpses of Legal who again proved a point that there are hot guys at a convention who aren't guests. Travellingone hunted down more concom members. After a short after dance hangout with Ely and bubbleslayer, the pair finally went to bed around 4 a.m.