Got moving earlier in the day. Went to a few panels, and picked up lunch from Hospitality. Talked to a couple of random fen there, mostly about Westercons past. Lots of people recall Westercon 44, in Vancouver.
Went to a fairly interesting panel or two on gaming run by Ogre and Mickey – lost both their last names. Dustin (Gibbit’s husband) was supposed to be there, but couldn’t make it. Regardless, they went well, and both had some interesting advice about how to structure long and short campaigns, and how to build game worlds. I wished Bob were along. He would have gotten more from the discussion, and might have added to the panel. I shared a couple of his best techniques.
I went to a panel on Chinese Dragons, and one of the panelists was someone I haven’t seen in twenty years, Jonalynn. She’s going by Wolfcat now, and I hope to try and have a word with her. She looked well, and had a cute child (see “Tudor Toddler”) below.
John Bradley took all of these excellent photos; mine were awful. He had better gear, a better location, and did all the hard work and was then kind enough to share them! Many thanks to John for sharing his pictures!
Went to the Masquerade. There were only nine entries, but all of them were quite good. Three were not-for-competition.
One was a group piece with Chris and Jackie’s son Eli and some others. Eli’s a perfect David Tennant doctor, and there was a big TARDIS on stage, so they decided to run with that. It was fun. 
So was “Egyptian Barista” 
and an excellent Xena 
costume.
There was “Junior” costume “Tudor Toddler” 
who was a toddler in period clothes, and adorable.
There was a Lord Zuko (couldn’t remember his name!) 
from Avatar, who had excellent choreography and streamers for fire.
“The Eight” was Henry The Eighth and all his wives, all well done. They had a little routine to introduce them all, set to some good filk but the on-stage pictures didn’t show the whole group. Here’s a posed one from afterwards: 
There was a Will-o-the-wisp with glowy red eyes, 
very cool.
There was a jellyfush with EL wire and black-light activated streamers and gauze, 
which was very unusual and pretty.
UPDATE: I found someone who went! The one I forgot was the Fallen Angel. 
How could I forget her, when she had a kitty familiar? Yes, a live cat.
The half-time show was some filkers called Jeff and Maya Bonhoff, who I enjoyed. They have a concert tomorrow and discs in the dealer’s room. I may go.
More if I remember it, and maybe some pictures from the Masquerade.
Tags: westercon2012