Vancouver Creation Con Report 1/4

[riskinghearts]

Before I begin what has turned out to be a bit of an epic, I would like to add a disclaimer: All of the pictures posted are my own, and every gallery I have linked to are pictures that I have taken personally at the convention. If you do take any for your own personal use, please do not post them on other websites without my permission - the only exception here is Gateworld and I ask that you credit me as the photographer. Also, please do not remove the watermark. If you use them for artwork, I do expect credit even if it is simply in a resources post. I don't want to take away from anyone's enjoyment of the convention pictures, but it only takes a second to give someone credit. Ok, that's it for the tough love, and on with the show!

Part One

Conventions are funny things.

They bring together people from all walks of life. Different jobs, different countries, different shapes and sizes, different social skills. The latter can be a curse - especially at a convention the size of Creation's, but sometimes I think the blessings can outweigh the stupidity of the lunatic fringe... they have to, or why else would we continue to go to them?

Post con blues I'm familiar with, but I'm finding that it's actually not the convention that I miss. It's the feelings, the emotions, the laughter, the adventures, the overwhelmingly good times that I've spent with my friends that I miss the most. Connection is a funny thing. For an only child who learned pretty fast to entertain herself and doesn't much care one way or the other whether or not she has company, I'm sure missing theirs. In the space of a two week vacation I managed to strengthen my friendship with samjackshiplove, I found a long-lost-seperated-at-birth sister in geekysam, and I adpoted an aunt in EH-T. The greatest part of this experience was that I got to spend so much time with these women, and learn so much about them in the process. I only hope I managed to make a fraction of an impact on them, as they did on me. We had a good dynamic, and I think we made a pretty good team. Well... Amanda Tapping did call us "lovely, charming, well-behaved girls" so we must have done something right! Ahem, providing Ms Tapping is a good judge of character.

When we picked up EH-T from the airport on the morning of Wednesday the 1st, I thought it was an April Fool's joke. The woman had brought the snow with her! I forgave her soon enough because her wit and sarcasm far outweighed this climactic inconvenience. However... perhaps it was not the best plan to try and visit the Queen Elizabeth Gardens at this point. Plus we never had to get lost again, as map reading (along with sarcasm and talking to strangers) is part of her super power.

Registration was a breeze. Yes, we sat in line for about 2 hours before opening but there were lots of people to chat and wait with, and the hotel staff kept throwing springrolls at us so we were quite the happy campers. When registration opened at 7.30pm there were only around 20 people in front of us so we were done in no time and were at the Gateworld dinner by 8pm. The first casualty of the con was geekysam's scarf. May it rest in peace.

It was lovely to meet other gateworlder's, and great to meet some of those on my lj f-list. I think a lot of us got very excited when Ryan Robbins and Emilie Ullerup showed up for a visit. And it wasn't long after that Chris Heyerdahl, and later Robin Dunne, arrived. I've already posted my personal pics with the actors in a previous entry, but for some - inexplicable of course - reason I feel the need to re-post this one:



This particular one went up as my facebook picture the following day - a fact that I told Mr Heyerdahl the following day at our Sanctuary set tour and prompted him to write in my Con Journal "Megyn, check out your facebook and I'm there right next to you!"... which in hindsight is fairly creepy given that he plays Jack the Ripper. I can see why AT goes a bit googly-eyed when doing scenes with him, the man has such a mesmerising personality.

All four of the Sanctuary actors who came to the dinner were wonderfully gracious with their time. They were super friendly, chatting and posing for pics. When they learned that the four of us were charity auction winners and would be on set the following day they got very excited - like - more so than we were which amused us greatly (I don't think any of us had quite believed Sanctuary's publiscist when she told us that the cast and crew were really excited about it). They were just as wonderful on set, spending time with us, and joking around. They're so normal. And there's no ego or bravado in any of them. They just - as others have said before me - have really awesome jobs.

Oh yes - one thing I learned from geekysam- everything is "awesome". Damn Valley girl!

Except, clearly, that everything actually *is* awesome!

As a result of the set tour, we missed a lot of Thursday's con activities. But made it time for Gary Jones and Dean Hagland's comedy sketch show "Star Hole". He's a funny guy, and it was amusing to see him mock his own character - he really did sit down and count chevrons!



 

Vancouver Creation Con Report Part 2

Vancouver Creation Con Report Part 3 

Vancouver Creation Con Report Part 4