London Film and Comic Con

6am: wake up and hop in the shower. 
7am: have some kind of breakfast (yogurt)
7:45-8:15am: Piccadilly line ride to Earl's Court
8:20-9:05: Queue up with thousands of other people outside of the Earl's Court Convention Center.
9:10am: almost run into Chewbacca full on as we enter the Con. He pat's Danielle on the head and roars. She got photos. I was a too stunned to move for a bit.

I lost track of time after that as we meandered through the throngs of fans and cosplayers, geeking out all over everything. My goal was to get to the Book Zone. Turns out this was the first ever Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC), and was basically a trial run set up by the UK's Children's Lit Laureate. Very cool. We got into a workshop about how to write a YA novel, instructed by C.J. Skuse, which was really interesting. I mean, I have a degree in creative writing, but it's always nifty to hear how published authors do it. Everyone does it differently, and I like to hear their tips and tricks. 

Following the workshop, we had some time to kill before the panel I wanted to attend was up, so we wandered around getting pictures of amazing cosplayers:

(From left to right: Fem. Bucky Barnes; A duo of Doctors; Osgood from Day of the Doctor; Emmet Brickowoski; A gang of Judge Dredds; Cather Avery of Fangirl)

Listened to Rainbow Rowell and a couple other authors talk about what it's like to be a fan and how fanfiction and original fiction writing differs, and then headed out to see more cosplayers and have lunch. Danielle and I were sitting and chatting when I saw this guy walk by:
I dropped the conversation, shot up, shouting "Oh my cabbages!" and chased him down. He kindly posed for me to get his picture. 

There was some madness with the Game of Thrones Screening queue after the main Con ended. We headed to where it was going to be shown and waited there, where we'd have gotten really good seats assuming it was first come, first served. Then they told us they needed everyone to exit the building to queue up. So we got pushed to the end of a short line. But then that line was not considered to be an official line, so we were moved to the end of a longer queue. We waited there for a long while, before being told that we were going to be let in based on our ticket numbers, and we needed to group up by the hundreds. There was a crew member who looked like Jeremy Renner. His name badge even had Renner written across it (which, after hearing another crew member tell some folks that someone on the Showmaster's crew had a famous doppelgänger, was probably a poke at that).

Eventually, the 400-450s were called (I was ticket 450), and we were let in. The Battle of Blackwater was the episode selected for the screening, and the actors who were doing commentary on it were Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne), Finn Jones (Loras Tyrell), and Kristian Nairn (Hodor). It was amazing. Much like with Wicked, I don't even have the words to express it. It was just something one had to experience. 

I was in the middle of the room, hence the crappy nature of the pictures. Still... closer than some other people were, and I was glad to have done it. Afterwards, I got home and was super exhausted. The day was wonderful, but completely overstimulating, and I just needed to crash. So glad I was able to sleep in today.

Joke of the Day:

What do you call Stormtroopers playing Monopoly?

Game of Clones.