In Closing...From Milrath

Milrath would like to take a moment to thank all for his great time at Dragon –con 2011.

Where do I start that is easy? Thank-you to Mistress Dawn & Master John for making me feel at home. Thank-you to the staff at the highlander for making our first night at the con a great feast. Thank –you to all the people who stopped and would talk for a bit and share with me their con stories. Thank-you to James and Nicki for spending time with me and bringing me cookies (fastest way to my Dark heart). To the staff of the con you caught me off guard by knowing all the answers to any questions I might have had. Dragon-con did not let me down in any manner. From the check-in to the parade, the venders to any of the panels I attended. All done well all worth the con experience. I saw time and time again people going out of there way to help each other and the way the gaming community treats each other. I only wish others could see us in that manner.  I most enjoyed talking to the (what I will call younger gamers) I see that the next age of RPG’ers are looking well. I see the spark that makes us all gamers is still burning in the hearts of the young. It was great to see whole families that could come to an event such as Dragon-Con and spend time together. I hope all that I met had a safe trip back to where ever they had to go. In closeting I am already making plans to attend Dragon-con 2013. I hope to see all of you again. Be safe and Keep the dice rolling.


                                                                                 Forever Dark Milrath
                                                                                  (AKA DARKCHILD)

In Review

So other than the two things I actually wanted to make sure I saw and completely missed, William Shatner and Carrie Fisher, I would say that Dragon*Con 2012 was a resounding success. I seemed to have screwed up everything I had planned but for me that's normal. I suppose it can't be Dragon*Con unless you're floundering around chaos in a sleepless, drunken haze. Hey!! I did accomplish that.

So let's see. I wrote an entire page on things to have on hand. How well did I do?

1. Badges on lanyard...check. And I don't think anyone lost their badge.
2. Water....check. That was one thing I did remember each morning.
3. Caffeine....not so much. As we know on the first day I forgot the caffeine. I did remember it the rest of the time though.
4. Snacks...blew that. I don't think we took any snacks.
5. Something to write with and on...check. Only because Master Johnathan remembered.
6. Cell phone and charger...thpppp. I didn't forget my cell phone but as you know on Sunday I did take it without charged batteries and forgot the charger. And no charged cell phone might as well be a forgotten cell phone.
7. Business Cards...check. I think Darckchild even ran out.
8. Misc....mmmm. There wasn't anything specifically listed there but I do know we forgot drugs. We forgot most of what we should have and we definitely didn't bring anything extra.

As far as the survival tips go all was good except for me and for food thing. But then anyone who knows me knows that Vodka and Red Bull is a food group, at least it was for me for three days.

What we learned? We learned that Darkchild can't be trusted to hold onto his ID but we forgave him due to his resourcefulness. We learned that when we come home all exhausted Kevin will still fire up the grill and cook us dinner. We learned Master Johnathan is our ticket to brushes with fame (having had Lou Ferrigno trip over him and all). And the biggest lesson I learned is that caffeinated pixies sticks are the bomb. Without those I would never have made it.

Zombies and Storm Troopers and Super Heros Oh My!

Kevin had a very new, nice, shiny camera and proceeded to take a million pictures. All the pictures from the parade are his.

Darkchild found the perfect spot to people watch. His position near the exhibit halls allowed him to interact and take pictures of everyone.

Master Johnathan managed to find all the "18 and over" costumes. Maybe I should rephrase that. He was the only one that had the balls to take the "18 and over" costume pictures. Considering I was with him for the majority of the time, I still can't for the life of me figure out when he managed to take them all.

Normally I would have attempted to keep each set of pictures with each day. but the time stamps didn't always follow the pictures correctly. And there were so many pictures I was unable to upload them all because I was running out of room on my google account but here is the best accounting of all the pictures. Master Johnathan's are the slideshow at the very bottom if you just want to skip there.

Last Day

Robot BattlesTM Competition
Now this is the big boys Robot battle competition. Located in a huge ballroom, competing on a raised platform and no sissy bullet proof glass. Muaaaaaahhhh. The rules are to just push your opponent off the platform, any side, any way. Not as many spinning blades as the micro battle but lots of mallets a smashing. Because again....it doesn't matter if the robot is in one piece when you push it off, just that you push it off. It's actually a nice place to sit back and nurse a late night partying binge. Well if you tune out all the cheering fans and pounding metal.

Awesomely BAD Japanese Music Videos
How bad can Japanese rock videos actually get? Come plumb the dismal depths of J-pop visual art.
Ok now I didn't go to this one. I was busy watching cool robots. This was all Kevin and Darkchild. I bring it up because when they got back they described it as the most raunchy, sometimes disgusting, in poor taste and somewhat just plain wrong but funniest thing they had ever seen. They said it was a definite "must see" for us for next year. It was also, apparently, standing room only.

Now at this point Dragon*Con Fatigue is kicking in. What we've noticed over the years is on Friday you look at your schedule and go: "Hey, let's go to this panel in that hotel two blocks over." On Saturday you look at your schedule and go: "Hey let's go to this panel in the hotel just next to us." By Sunday you look at your schedule and go: "Hey, is there anything in this hotel we can go to?" By Monday you're thinking: "Oh god please let there be something on the same floor I'm on."  Master Johnathan and I were sitting outside and a man walked over to a group of us and said they were shooting a scene for a movie around the corner could we all come over and just look up to the sky for the camera. No one moved. See....Dragon*Con Fatigue.

Working Memory Training; the New Neuroplasticity of the Brain
Cogmed, working memory, and changing the memory capacity of your brain. 
We don't get to this room much. It's two doors down from the JPL room and I think we get sidetracked. This is the next to the last event before the end of Dragon*Con. Kevin, Master Johnathan and I all have this and the lecture afterwards in this room on our schedule. We decided to hook up and finish out DC here. Probably had nothing to do with the fact that this room is in the hotel right next to the parking garage where our car was. It was an interesting lecture if you're into this sort of thing. Problem was it's the last day of Con and the room is small and packed with people sitting in the aisles and leaning against the walls and it's getting really warm....The three of us kept falling asleep on each other.

Needless to say we bailed on the second lecture and called it...well not a day yet. We still had Meaticide Atlanta to attend. See we had a reservation at a Brazilian Steak House to be joined again by Mistress Niki and Master James. Now....it's a day.

The End

*applause here*

Darkchild Has Forsaken Us

Darkchild decided to stay home this day. I think we wore him out. He had already obtained the autograph of Charlaine Harris for his daughter, which was his main mission, and had done all his shopping so he was good. I did leave him with a large bottle of wine, and the pizza delivery number( I'm not a totally bad hostess ). And as we walked out the door for the day we said for him to call if he needed anything and that we'd see him at dinner.  

Parade Day

 
Today is parade day. A day where Storm Troopers in kilts can march down Peachtree Street with their heads held high to the cheering throngs of thousands....as it should be. And today we welcome Mistress Niki and Master James for the day. I also had some last minute additions of two Non-Dragon*Con friends and their two small boys. Thankfully Mistress Niki scoped out the perfect spot where several store fronts had put in a 5 step rise with a rail to separate themselves from the sidewalk. This allowed us to be a couple of feet above the crowd and allowed the boys to sit on the rail so they could see. It was fun watching the boys explain to their parents who all the characters were.

How to Avoid ‘Spouse Aggro’

So how do you avoid critical hits from a fire-breathing significant other while playing your favorite MMO?  Ask the experts.

Master Johnathan and I game. He games waaay more than I do, but when possible we game together. We don't play MMOs (like Mistress Niki and Master James) but any game we can network together at home (LAN Party!), such as Borderlands, we try. So we figured, same diff, what advice would they have for us?

The panel was comprised of a husband and his wife (she's really cool she writes for gaming magazines for a living) and another man who does game but his wife does not. It was the first time they had had this panel so it was a bit of an experiment. It turned out not only to be informative for couples who game together but those where one does and one doesn't or how to handle gaming matters with room-mates, family members or co-workers.

One question came from a girl who gamed but her boyfriend did not. She said she was fine with that but that he would always seem to want to "spend time with her" (for you slow people that means sex) right when she was in the middle of a Raid.  (Honey, that's nice,  but I've got to help heal the tank, or the Dragon will ROAST us!) The woman on the panel responded "Dump him. He's being passive aggressive. He's doing it on purpose."   Anyone who can't respect your need to raid, can't respect YOU. 

Another person said he wanted to try to get his wife to understand about gaming but she didn't understand why he was so interested. The panels' response was to have her play the games that are on Facebook. As one panelist said "Those games are like crack for baby gamers." Once you get her hooked then you can ease her into the other things.

The panelist whose wife didn't game, told the crowd, to their amusement, that "If you want your partner to share in your hobbies, like gaming,  you'll have to share in THEIR hobbies as well.   Even if it's mind-numbingly boring, like a "Dancing-With-The-Stars"  marathon!  Maybe then you'll know how they feel when you're explaining all the advantages of the new gear you just picked up.   And for the record,  yes their eyes ACTUALLY glaze over."  :-)

There was a girl whose mother wanted to play WOW with her but her mother was so bad at it, that the girl was embarrassed to take her on campaigns with her and her regular group. The suggestion was to take her out at other times, and other places and bribe friends to go with the two of you and just watch mom, face plant around until she gets better, or gives up.   Remember we weren't all born to be epic.

The married couple had the issue that both of their computer systems were in the same room, like us. And like me she also has a tendency to yell at the computer screen when something isn't working like she wants. Her husband( because men like to solve problems ) decided to solve one of her problems by stepping on a person in the Guild that his wife was complaining about because he was the Guild Master. I explained that I had similar issues with men wanting to fix problems, and not just let us vent,  and what was her solution while I'm pointing to Master Johnathan. So the entire audience had to turn and stare at Johnathan while the panel explained to him about the differences in men and women gaming. I think it's the only time I've seen his ears go such a flattering red.

But of course the most important thing I learned was the use of some new vocabulary words and phrases. After much discussion with Kevin and Darckhild later we decided that the first phrase "Douche Canoe" was meant to be used as a derogatory noun.  It is used like:  "I can't believe that Bill was being such a "Douche Canoe", just because we gave the Epic Gear to Emily!"  The second phrase, TwatWaffle,  even though it is a noun, was most decidedly better used as a verb. To use in a sentence as a verb:   "Would you stop TwatWaffling around and just KILL IT ALREADY!?!?!"  Finally there was "drama llama", which is an expression for a person for whom every action invokes drama,  and they seem not to notice,  unlike the "drama queen" who needs to be the center of attention in the drama.  The "Drama Llama"  generates drama, and watches it unfold around them.

In the Beginning There Was Chaos

There were two things I wanted to make sure I caught at Dragon*Con: William Shatner and Carrie Fisher. Just so happens that William Shatner was giving an opening address at the start of DC. All I needed to do was get there about an hour early and I figured I'd be fine. HA

My first issue was getting everyone's schedules into Google calendar for the day and then printed out. First issue was the printer was uncooperative. The second issue is Google calendar sucks when printing out schedules. Once you have more than about 5 items for the day it doesn't print what it shows you, it prints what it wants and sometimes actually leaves stuff off. Unfortunately 7:30-8 in the morning was not the time to solve this problem. Now frustrated and running late I was having trouble packing my backpack for what I needed during the day which caused yet further delays.

When we finally arrived and split for the morning, I was indeed late for the opening address. *Sigh* Well that's why you make out your schedule with multiple options. I decided to grab some caffeine from the backpack and move to another event. Next drama, in my haste I didn't pack any of my caffeine options. Not such a stellar start to the convention for me.

Badges...We Don't Need No Stinking Badges

As expected there were many many many people lined up early (probably all day) to get their badges.And like the troopers we are, we were there bright eyed and bushy tailed...quit laughing....come on.....we weren't up drinking that late the night before.....oh wait we were. As I was saying, like the troopers we are, we were there, outside in the big blue room, standing like zombies, in line, too damn early. Could have had something to do with Mistress is a harsh Mistress.

But this is the new and improved badge pickup and, as promised, the line is moving really quickly. Soon we move from outside the building to inside but you know this is just too good to be true and we hit the first snag: Darkchild has forgotten his ID. For those of you following my twitter feed you already know this. Dragon*Con was very clear about this: no ID no badge. So after several minutes of convincing me that they aren't just yanking my chain, a strategy is hatched if we have to bring him back. I think it involved driving him back later and booting him out of the moving car. Hey, we would have at least slowed down.

Then comes the second snag, about 100 people from the front of the line the computers go down. That probably cost us about an hour delay. After the line starts moving again and we get our badges, turns out,  Darkchild  was able to obtain his badge. How? you might ask (as did we)? He happened to have his military ID on him. Now, for any that know him, he hasn't been in the military in mrphl some odd years (and mrphl some odd pounds tee-hee).  I think the gentleman behind the desk said something to the effect of: only the actual person would have 1. the balls to whip out a military ID and 2. actually use an ID that out of date so he must be telling the truth and gave him his badge. Should anyone be surprised?

Now with badges in hand....Let the Games Begin!!!

It's All About Highlander

So you're in Atlanta and thinking...there's more to Con then Cosplay. I want to get out of downtown and do something local....enter the Highlander. Mentioned in Food Networks: Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  Ahhhhh we luv, luv, luv the Highlander. Deep fried tater tots smothered in cheese and sour cream, mmmmmmmm
So let me introduce you to our first waitress( yeah we were there a while), let us call her Blue Panty Girl.

We call her that because of her Dragon*Con story. She did not know what Dragon*Con was last year but her boyfriend was a vendor and told her to come down. Let's see, there was lots of drinking in a hotel the first night, half sobering somewhere but not remembering where she started, getting a cop to buy her some food, I forget how she back to where she started...anyway I digress. So the second day....apparently she didn't know this was multiple days, she realized she had no change of clothes but that apparently half naked women running around was ok soooo she ran around the rest of Con in her....you guessed it, blue panties.


So several hours later( and several/many pitchers of beer....) enter our second waitress.

If you have ever been to Highlander than you know all the wait staff has a three tattoo and two piercing minimum. Luv the people, Luv the food. We will call her Babe cause that's all Darkchilde remembers calling her. She helped us to more pitchers of beer,  our second supper and shots all round. And lamented that she needed to work all weekend so couldn't attend Dragon*Con this year. We will carry her with us this weekend in spirit.

And we can't forget the shout out to Jeff the owner.  Who, yes Annette, did give Darkchilde his Highlander glass. Apparently he spent too much money last year at Con and said he couldn't afford to do it again this year....then something about saving for a nursery and having to act like adult...blah blah excuses...

So after stumbling to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning we will all dream sweet dreams about Dragon*Con because, what is now today, is badge pickup day and the fun can really begin.

And We're Off

So let's see how things are moving this morning....

1. Get up by 6am to start getting ready? Nope
2. Get to the car rental place by 7:30? Nope
3. Pick up friends at airport at 8:46?
    Nope, the flight got diverted to Tennessee( And not due to Darkchilde and Kevin I was assured).

Hopefully the rest of the day will go a little more to plan......Rental cars guys were a trip. Two 20 somethings who were apparently very familiar with Dragon*Con and hadn't realized it was this weekend. One gentleman told us tales of drinking all night with a girl dressed in a slave Leigh costume. The second guy said he was getting married this Saturday so he'd have to miss it. And then asked "Well what time exactly is the parade?". I would luv to see that conversation with the new wife: "Sorry I'm late for the wedding but you see there was this really cool parade...."

Ok so just as we pulled into the Airport baggage claim I get the text they are outside waiting....Darkchilde's impeccable timing as always. And away we go off to breakfast. Everyone remember....this is the "Before" picture.






Next it's off to Dekalb Farmer's Market fill my fridge with more food than Master John and I eat in a month....it is vacation after all. My poor little fridge....and no room left for beer. Well that's what coolers are for. The idea is no dealing with meals during Dragon*Con....we prep it all before hand.

It's off to Highlander...will our guests behave? Hopefully not...what fun would Highlander be with behaving patrons.