Lumos, Take Six: Summary. Part Three: Saturday.

[valis2]

Ah, more fun stuff to remember.

I must mention that I keep updating the earlier entries because I keep remembering things. Like how I met rexluscus on Thursday, Snape and his luncheon, and what Dementors do to Bellatrix (that happened on Friday). If you're really bored and wanting something to do, you can always reread the earlier entries. So if you see something missing, please remind me!

Saturday

Saturday dawned with the hope that I would get to breakfast in time to actually snag a muffin. I was successful, thank goodness, and ended up sitting with marginaliana, bronze_ribbons, catrinella and thermidor. I'm lucky that Marginaliana has already posted her writeup, because she mentioned this hilarious moment where Catrinella is talking about her Whomping Willow/Giant Squid fic and how Neville transplanted the willow so that they could be together, and then said "Neville Longbottom...Plant Yenta", which made us all laugh.

I sat around and talked to these lovely ladies for awhile, and then took off for Byronic Snape (you have no idea how many times I almost said Bionic Snape when telling others where I was going). Everyone else was in line before that to see Snape's Eyes, but not everyone got in, me included, so I sat and waited for Byronic Snape. I was pretty intrigued about this presentation, but I have to say (shamefully) that I kept falling asleep. The girl giving the presentation was apparently nervous, and she ran through it so quickly that I had trouble storing any information. In fact, I can't tell you much about it, other than it had a couple moments where I was interested, including one where she described the Byronic Hero and it sounded lovely, dark and such. Other than that, I can't remember a thing.

After that, I went to the keynote luncheon, The Education of Harry Potter. I wasn't really expecting anything, honestly, especially after the Snape Lite luncheon. In fact, had someone offered me an alternative, I would probably have skipped it. I didn't see anyone I knew there, and ended up sitting with people whose names I don't remember, except OhGoddess, who I think said she does not have a LJ.

I must digress here for a moment and mention that the menu listed that "vegetarian versions of the entreés would be available". OhGoddess asked for one, and they ended up (after many delays) just bringing her a salad. She said the same thing happened the first day. She also mentioned that she was really excited about trying the cornish dish/shepherd's pie and that she was quite disappointed. I totally understand. I would have been pretty pissed as well.

Anyway, on to the discussion. It was far better than I expected (though my expectations were low). They approached Hogwarts and the character of Dumbledore from litcrit and philosophy positions, and I was quite fascinated. One guy was explicating Dumbledore's character and making postmodern and Aristotlean comparisons. The other was also arguing about Aristotlean Dumbledore as well, but from a philosopher's view. I loved it.

Then I thought I was going to attend a discussion about Peter & Percy, but somehow I kind of spaced on where it was. I ended up going to logospilgrim's presentation on Teaching Obedience: Dumbledore as Starets to Snape, which was wonderful. Logospilgrim has a fantastic speaking voice, a wonderful reading talent, and she's quite literate and well-spoken, so it was extremely enjoyable. At the end she began to read a story, and after the first sentence I knew I was in trouble, as it was one of my favorite stories, and extremely emotional. It was the story of the statue of the prince, and the sparrow who helps the statue to give away all of its finery to the poor folk of the city, and then the sparrow dies at the feet of its master. Logospilgrim was becoming emotional towards the end of the story, and not only do I cry if someone else cries, but to think of the parallels of the story to Dumbledore and Snape made me even more weepy. So it was a good experience, but a bit difficult. It's here if you'd like to read it. Here is the other presentation she made, which I missed.

There was a special repeat presentation of Snape's Eyes, but I couldn't go to that, as I wanted to attend sigune's Slytherin Question presentation, which was excellent. She also was an excellent public speaker, and put together an excellent, cohesive presentation about Slytherins and Snape, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I sat with seaislewitch and we were both very happy with it. The crack!panel was happening nextdoor, and the cheers and laughter kept breaking through, until Sigune finally said, "I'm sorry that I'm not funny!", which, of course, was very funny. Her presentation was great, and the information was very useful. She's put it up here if you'd like to read it.

Okay. So after Sigune's lovely presentation, I decided to hike over to the What Does the Future Hold? Predictions and Theories for Book Seven roundtable.

Yes, I said roundtable. I did not, unfortunately, learn my lesson the first time around on Thursday.

So. Instead of boring you with what is essentially nearly the same experience as the first (waaaah HBP waaaah HBP My fic blah blah blah), I will tell you about the Carpet Civilization that I created instead of listening to my fellow participants.

(Some of you may know that I have a bit of hearing damage in one ear that can make it extraordinarily difficult for me to hear people speaking in situations where there is a lot of background noise. At this roundtable the people sitting behind me talked to each other through approximately two-thirds of the discussion. Despite being shushed at least twenty times by other participants. So I couldn't hear much.)

So the carpeting had two distinct warring cultures. One set of islands had high walls guarding a secret garden city within each island, and elaborately landscaped hedges edging the rest of the island. Family groups stayed in the same homes for centuries, and retractable bridges connected all of the Orderly Society islands with each other. They had Moon Jewels set in the garden walls, and only the ruling families of each island could travel to the secret garden city and live amongst the delicate shimmering pools and night-blooming jasmine therein. The Nouveau Islands, however, were more obsessed with water, and used boats as their primary means of transportation, as the curls of their islands sometimes came very near each other, making it easier to reach by water than land. They had no secret center to their islands, and no retractable bridges. Each family lived where they chose, and each section of the island had a very different, yet vibrant, set of families. Eloping was common.

You just read as much useful conjecture about book seven as I heard during the roundtable.

Oh, and there were handouts for the discussion, but I never ended up getting one, somehow. And the roundtable started ten minutes early, so I never got to hear her opening comments, because I got there five minutes early. And I sneaked a peek at my neighbor's handout, and found out that it was based on a tarot card session someone did at the Witching Hour.

Also, the Lumos volunteer who was guarding the door was holding it closed, because it was a full session. Suddenly the door gets yanked open with the force of a small supernova, and her arm nearly gets pulled off. It turns out to be none other than Mr. Clueless, and he barrels right through the door. She has to put her other hand up and physically stop him. He was completely surprised by this. She sent him out, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

After that, I ended up meeting up with larilee again, and she kindly accompanied me to Starbucks, where we procured more fuel. And then she went with me to what was probably my favorite presentation, The Importance of Being Snapey. I really enjoyed that presentation tremendously. It wasn't earth-shattering, really, but it was so well-done, so cohesive, and had some interesting insights into Snape. It was great to hear someone conjecturing about Snape's past and present, and his character. They put up excellent quotes on transparencies.

My only sadness was that it was too short by far! It was only 25 minutes long. They should have done an hour, honestly, so we could have asked questions. They had to hurry a bit, and I really wanted to hear more. It was run by two Australian college students, and they were so well prepared, and they spoke well, and I enjoyed the presentation thoroughly. Larilee and I both commented about how much I liked it. And I said I had forgotten to attend the Canon Compliancy panel put on by SHers that morning...and get this...Larilee just gave me her notes for it without batting an eyelash! How sweet is that?

Okay, so after this I ended up doing something I don't remember. And then I had dinner with bronze_ribbons, gatewaygirl, and gmonkey42 at the Japanese restaurant. Mmm sweet shrimp heads! It was quite yummy. I also drove Gatewaygirl totally insane by babbling again about how I had to change the name of my fic. Poor thing. We talked about lots of interesting things, such as women in science classes and legendary Mary Sue comics, and then Gmonkey and I took off to meet up with sylvadin.

Sylvadin invited us to a male strip revue called "Thunder from Down Under", and we all took off in a cab, speeding towards the strip---er, well, driving slowly through construction towards the strip. lydialovestruck also accompanied us. We talked about so much during the trip...original series Battlestar Gallactica slash, h/c (except NPD! NPD!! (no permanent damage) If you cut off a limb I will stop reading!), and many other strange subjects, but the cab driver just looked bored, honestly, as if he hears stories about limb removal all the time.

So we arrive at the Excalibur, which houses the TfDU boys, and I have my first glimpse at tacky opulence. My eyes still haven't quite recovered. We wandered about because we had some time, and found out that Galahad has decided to give up that whole Grail nonsense and just open a Prime Rib House instead. Easier to figure out the taxes at the end of the year, I guess.

So we're looking at the wares on display, and we find a place selling lucite cubes with three dimensional holographic impressions of your head inside of them. They're rather freaky looking. The guy behind the counter asks me if I have any questions, and I ask him if these are trapped souls. Bet he never heard that before. Or maybe he has, because this is Vegas, after all.

Then Gmonkey says that we need to have one made and we should make an expression of abject terror while it's scanning our faces. Then she wonders aloud if we can trap Voldemort in one of them.

I said, "These are all Carrot Top's victims, actually."

So then we checked out the Luxor. We found out what Snape smells like because they had zodiac perfumes. Apparently he smells the same as Voldemort! And Gmonkey, for that matter.

We arrived in time to have a nice pre-sweaty men drink, and we sat down to await the spectacle. About ten minutes before the show, they began to show some sort of film.

I must mention, at this point, that I am not really a strip club kind of girl. So, of course, while the bridal parties filled with half-drunk girls in the audience are hooting and hollering about the half-nekkid men in the films, I'm thinking all sorts of bizarre and tangential questions. For example, I'm wondering what they pay the guy who oils up the nekkid guys. And whether he minds using a squirt bottle to spray nekkid men. The photographer looked weird and was wearing a horrible shirt with these random round things on it that made me think of the Dark Mark every time I saw it.

The other HPers immediately concoct fic ideas, pointing out that this could be Draco's summer job, now that he's on the run. And that the men have to shave each other.

The last scene was mind-boggling. They were at a construction site of some sort, with giant tractor tires, and the men were standing on the tires. Nekkid. And the squirt bottle boy was spraying them down.

I, of course, wondered aloud, "What happens if he slips and falls? Can you imagine writing the accident report out for your workers' compensation claim? Slipped and fell on oily patch on giant tire while prancing about in the nude."

I think Lydialovestruck pointed out that it wasn't that big a deal...after all, it was Vegas, and there were probably stranger accident reports listed every day.

So some guys come out and start dancing (poorly), and lo and behold, we all turned and gasped.

Because Sirius Black fell through the veil and came to...Vegas. To do a strip show. Seriously. Though he does go by the name of Stubby Boardman now. (Photographic evidence to follow soon.) He danced this yummy solo dance and they called him the Wild Child, and mmm, he was quite delicious, with nice black hair and a decent face. He did this thing where he whipped his belt around...it was quite...yummy.

He also slipped once, though he covered it admirably, and he forgot the words of the song he was lip synching to as well.

One of the first numbers was announced as a "Pirates of the Black Pearl" dance, and the guys came out in horrible Renfest pirate garb and danced to the fifteenth century strains of...AC/DC. Later on, one of the guys dressed in drag and looked just like Paula Abdul. Polka dots and everything.

We had a very close table, and they were bolted down, which I couldn't understand at first, until one of the guys jumped on one and did a nice bit of pelvic thrusting in some excited, shrilly shrieking blonde girl's face.

Later on in the evening, after the pirates, the Village People (bwah?), the firefighters, and the fighter pilot, one of the guys came out and was doing his little thing, and then he jumped on one of the tables and did this hot predatory thing on all fours. I was like, yum! And then he looked up at me and made direct eye contact and I thought, oh, hell. Sure enough, he leapt onto our table and took my glasses off, and proceeded to wipe them on his crotch. Seriously. Not that I could tell because I did not have my glasses on. Did anyone else in the crowd find this little ocular cleansing in the least bit sexy? I'd really be surprised. I mean, they're not even tortoiseshells.

We got back to the con in time to watch GoF with lots of people..._grainne_, julian_black, seaislewitch, the irrepressible lewlinx, and more. It was so much fun! During the dancing scene, a few costumed couples got up and danced underneath the screen, which was cute. I loved seeing Snape, and everyone shouted whenever he was onscreen. It was awesome. Everybody was screaming and laughing about the Cedric/Harry egg conversation, and there were many comments about Barty Crouch Jr and his fabulous leather coat.

And then off to bed for a well-deserved rest.

Whew! Just one more entry to go.

Pics Part One (Costumes)
Pics Part Two (More costumes)
Pics Part Three (Funny)
Summary Part One (Thursday)
Summary Part Two (Friday)
Summary Part Three (Saturday)
Summary Part Four (Sunday/Monday)
Pics Part Four (More Funny)
Pics Part Five (LJ People)

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

YAY! I'm glad that somebody liked the Carpet Civilizations. I really put a lot of thought into them. There was nothing else to do at the moment!

So glad you're enjoying these!