So. Dash-Con.
Jul. 15th, 2014 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaThe short version: the panels were good, sometimes excellent. The attendees were great. The hotel, as a hotel, was wonderful. But the con staff failed at communicating - to each other and especially to the con-goers - and at general con organization. They didn't pay one of their primary attractions (Welcome to Night Vale). And even though I understand why WtNV walked, it was still a bitter disappointment and pretty much ruined the con for me.
Tanya and I had spent most of a week visiting her mom, so we drove up to Schaumburg from the middle of Ohio. This wasn't too bad, except for arguing with Jarvis (our GPS) over what route to take (he wanted to send us via 90, straight through the middle of Chicago, and no). We got there early in the afternoon, and Tanya crashed in the room while I went to registration to pick up our badges.
They let me pick up both my badge and Tanya's, no problem - I'd paid for them, I had the invoice number, all was well. The first catch came when I asked about the reserved seats for the Welcome To Night Vale show (and the Q&A on Sunday). They could find Tanya's name no problem, but not mine, nor any indication that she'd even gotten two tickets - not on their list, anyway. The guy behind the table sent me off to another room to check in with con Powers That Be.
Second small catch: he sent me to the wrong room. The door was locked, and nobody was there. I found the right room by snagging another staffer as she passed by, and asking. Ta-da, found the office I needed, and the people there had a solution (albeit a solution that basically meant 'here's my name, invoke me if the people checking IDs at the show still don't see a (2) after Tanya's name and they'll let you in.')
I went upstairs again, retrieved Tanya, and we headed to our first panels. I went to a panel on the Many Lives of Sherlock Holmes (which did their best to cover all the many, many various takes on the character, and loved on all of them), and Tanya went to a Teen Wolf panel (which also was apparently quite good). Afterwards we went to dinner, jazzed and in a good mood. The con boded well.
Our after dinner panels weren't quite as successful - Strong Female Characters wound up derailed into a discussion/rant about Steven Moffat, for example. But I went upstairs, and changed into my cosplay, because we were headed down to the Night Vale listening party/meet-up, and it was gonna be great.
Y'all should be hearing ominous music right about now.
The Night Vale listening party ran into problems almost immediately, but they were the prosaic sort of convention problems - nobody had brought the equipment to play the show on. There wasn't even a staffer there to tell us what was going on at first. Finally, maybe fifteen minutes in, someone showed up with the speakers, and started taking suggestions as to what episodes we should listen to. (She was very confused, as she wasn't a fan, and what did we mean that X happened?) We finally got an episode started, and suddenly the doors banged open. Everyone had to go to the main ballrooom right now, no exceptions.
For those of y'all not on Tumblr, here was the situation: according to DashCon staff, the hotel had called them into a meeting and said they needed the rest of the money ($17,000) for the convention before 10 PM Friday. DashCon staff said this was because the hotel didn't like the con-goers, and please please please could we all donate. This was first posted to Tumblr, then repeated to us in the ballroom - eventually, after we'd all been standing around for ten minutes wondering WTF was going on. People were getting kicked out of their rooms, the staff said. The con won't go on without the money, the staff said.
Rather than stay in the chaos, Tanya and I retreated up to our room, which we had paid for and were unlikely to be kicked out of, and sat down to figure out what to do. End result: we doubted that the situation was as represented, but we could afford a small donation. That way, if the con failed to go on, we wouldn't feel guilty. I will admit that I donated for one reason and one only: I wanted to see Welcome To Night Vale the next day. That was the entire focus of the con for me.
...yeah, in retrospect, the ominious music should've been deafening me.
Anyway. Got up the next morning to the news that yes, enough money had been donated, the con was still on yay. Tanya and I went out to breakfast (the Wildberry Cafe, which has amazing pancakes), then came back to get into cosplay again and head out to a panel on AUs And Crossovers, which turned into more of a workshop sort of thing where you chose a fandom and got an AU or fusion prompt and tried to decide what to do with it. (The Teen Wolf group came up with an amazingly detailed Mafia AU which I sincerely hope someone will write, actually, and I wouldn't say no to the Welcome To Night Vale Circus AU either.) Then we headed off to wait in line for Welcome To Night Vale.
The line for reserved seats was longer than the unreserved, and they didn't even start checking IDs until around 11:30. I didn't mind too much, as our costumes were getting flattering amounts of attention. After about fifteen minutes, they apparently gave up, and just started sending people in. We wound up at one end of the third row back, where my tentacles wouldn't obstruct anybody. And we waited.
And we waited.
Nobody came forward to tell us what the hell was going on. Someone in our row accosted a staffer, who said that Welcome To Night Vale was in the hotel but just somehow...not here. For some reason. Someone stood up and tried to organize a pizza run: she was shut down by staffers. It wasn't until over an hour late - past 1 PM, shortly after the time the show should have been over - that someone from the con committee finally got up on stage and told us that Welcome to Night Vale had wanted their money up front (not surprising, given Friday night's events), and they hadn't had it. They hadn't gone to the bank yet, the staffer said. They'd totally had the money, really they did! But Welcome To Night Vale hadn't been willing to wait, those meanies. The con was on the phone with Welcome To Night Vale, and they hoped to get things rescheduled for later. In the meantime, who wanted to stick around for Doug Jones? He was a really sweet guy and we totally should!
No. It was now 1:30, we'd been waiting for over two hours, and while I'm sure Doug Jones is a great person, he wasn't who we'd paid extra to see. Most of the audience streamed out of the room.
We headed for the Dealer's Room first. We'd stopped by on Friday to check out the merchandise, but hadn't bought anything. Now we went for retail therapy. T-shirts, fanart (including free WTNV fanart, handed out to anyone who was looking shell-shocked by one sympathetic artist), ceramics - let's just say that we came home with a lot of Christmas presents for people. :-) I commissioned a chibi picture of myself in cosplay, which is adorable and which I will scan and post when I can.
That evening...um. I'd still been hoping against hope that they were telling the truth and something would be worked out with Night Vale, y'see. Let's just say that I don't deal well with disappointment, and my wife knows how to deal with me melting into a crying puddle of Thia, and move right along.
Sunday we went to more panels: first How To Write Circular Gallifreyan for Tanya, and a random panel on the mythology of Merlin for me, which was of interest mostly because the panelists did in fact know their Arthurian mythos; then a panel on movie adaptations of books (or comic books), which was interesting both because Mark (of Mark Reads Stuff and Mark Watches Stuff) was on the panel, and also because the panelists freely admitted that adaptation is not an exact art, and also that it's possible for something to be a bad adaptation but a good movie, although it're more fun to rant about the times when it's a bad adaptation and a bad movie. We came out of that to word-of-mouth that there was going to be a Welcome To Night Vale fan panel, to make up for the lack of the Q&A, but we chose not to stay. Welcome to Night Vale fandom is a scary place, and even in the best case scenario where the panel did not degenerate into wails over what had happened the previous day, it could go all kinds of places I didn't want to go. Also we had a long drive ahead of us, so we checked out of the hotel and headed out instead.
Some links with more details:
On what exactly went down with Welcome To Night Vale, claim and counter-claim. I'm inclined to believe the counter-claim myself, especially as Jeffrey Cranor has said the same thing.
Mark (see above) writes up his experience at the con, complete with death threats because the internet is not always so much with reading skills. Spoiler: he had a better time at the con than I did.
A follow-up masterpost on the various rumors regarding Dashcon. There's a link to the first one, which is a good overview of what all was being said.
ETA: One more post! The official press release from DashCon to Explain All. Especially worthy of note is how they go into passive-voice 'Mistakes Were Made,' and blame the really egregious stuff (the part where they drew up a contract with the hotel without a clear payment schedule, thus creating the clusterfuck of Friday evening, and the part with Night Vale's payment) on different people who are now (of course) no longer with DashCon. Of interest mostly for those who would like the official coda to all the shenanigans.
Tanya and I had spent most of a week visiting her mom, so we drove up to Schaumburg from the middle of Ohio. This wasn't too bad, except for arguing with Jarvis (our GPS) over what route to take (he wanted to send us via 90, straight through the middle of Chicago, and no). We got there early in the afternoon, and Tanya crashed in the room while I went to registration to pick up our badges.
They let me pick up both my badge and Tanya's, no problem - I'd paid for them, I had the invoice number, all was well. The first catch came when I asked about the reserved seats for the Welcome To Night Vale show (and the Q&A on Sunday). They could find Tanya's name no problem, but not mine, nor any indication that she'd even gotten two tickets - not on their list, anyway. The guy behind the table sent me off to another room to check in with con Powers That Be.
Second small catch: he sent me to the wrong room. The door was locked, and nobody was there. I found the right room by snagging another staffer as she passed by, and asking. Ta-da, found the office I needed, and the people there had a solution (albeit a solution that basically meant 'here's my name, invoke me if the people checking IDs at the show still don't see a (2) after Tanya's name and they'll let you in.')
I went upstairs again, retrieved Tanya, and we headed to our first panels. I went to a panel on the Many Lives of Sherlock Holmes (which did their best to cover all the many, many various takes on the character, and loved on all of them), and Tanya went to a Teen Wolf panel (which also was apparently quite good). Afterwards we went to dinner, jazzed and in a good mood. The con boded well.
Our after dinner panels weren't quite as successful - Strong Female Characters wound up derailed into a discussion/rant about Steven Moffat, for example. But I went upstairs, and changed into my cosplay, because we were headed down to the Night Vale listening party/meet-up, and it was gonna be great.
Y'all should be hearing ominous music right about now.
The Night Vale listening party ran into problems almost immediately, but they were the prosaic sort of convention problems - nobody had brought the equipment to play the show on. There wasn't even a staffer there to tell us what was going on at first. Finally, maybe fifteen minutes in, someone showed up with the speakers, and started taking suggestions as to what episodes we should listen to. (She was very confused, as she wasn't a fan, and what did we mean that X happened?) We finally got an episode started, and suddenly the doors banged open. Everyone had to go to the main ballrooom right now, no exceptions.
For those of y'all not on Tumblr, here was the situation: according to DashCon staff, the hotel had called them into a meeting and said they needed the rest of the money ($17,000) for the convention before 10 PM Friday. DashCon staff said this was because the hotel didn't like the con-goers, and please please please could we all donate. This was first posted to Tumblr, then repeated to us in the ballroom - eventually, after we'd all been standing around for ten minutes wondering WTF was going on. People were getting kicked out of their rooms, the staff said. The con won't go on without the money, the staff said.
Rather than stay in the chaos, Tanya and I retreated up to our room, which we had paid for and were unlikely to be kicked out of, and sat down to figure out what to do. End result: we doubted that the situation was as represented, but we could afford a small donation. That way, if the con failed to go on, we wouldn't feel guilty. I will admit that I donated for one reason and one only: I wanted to see Welcome To Night Vale the next day. That was the entire focus of the con for me.
...yeah, in retrospect, the ominious music should've been deafening me.
Anyway. Got up the next morning to the news that yes, enough money had been donated, the con was still on yay. Tanya and I went out to breakfast (the Wildberry Cafe, which has amazing pancakes), then came back to get into cosplay again and head out to a panel on AUs And Crossovers, which turned into more of a workshop sort of thing where you chose a fandom and got an AU or fusion prompt and tried to decide what to do with it. (The Teen Wolf group came up with an amazingly detailed Mafia AU which I sincerely hope someone will write, actually, and I wouldn't say no to the Welcome To Night Vale Circus AU either.) Then we headed off to wait in line for Welcome To Night Vale.
The line for reserved seats was longer than the unreserved, and they didn't even start checking IDs until around 11:30. I didn't mind too much, as our costumes were getting flattering amounts of attention. After about fifteen minutes, they apparently gave up, and just started sending people in. We wound up at one end of the third row back, where my tentacles wouldn't obstruct anybody. And we waited.
And we waited.
Nobody came forward to tell us what the hell was going on. Someone in our row accosted a staffer, who said that Welcome To Night Vale was in the hotel but just somehow...not here. For some reason. Someone stood up and tried to organize a pizza run: she was shut down by staffers. It wasn't until over an hour late - past 1 PM, shortly after the time the show should have been over - that someone from the con committee finally got up on stage and told us that Welcome to Night Vale had wanted their money up front (not surprising, given Friday night's events), and they hadn't had it. They hadn't gone to the bank yet, the staffer said. They'd totally had the money, really they did! But Welcome To Night Vale hadn't been willing to wait, those meanies. The con was on the phone with Welcome To Night Vale, and they hoped to get things rescheduled for later. In the meantime, who wanted to stick around for Doug Jones? He was a really sweet guy and we totally should!
No. It was now 1:30, we'd been waiting for over two hours, and while I'm sure Doug Jones is a great person, he wasn't who we'd paid extra to see. Most of the audience streamed out of the room.
We headed for the Dealer's Room first. We'd stopped by on Friday to check out the merchandise, but hadn't bought anything. Now we went for retail therapy. T-shirts, fanart (including free WTNV fanart, handed out to anyone who was looking shell-shocked by one sympathetic artist), ceramics - let's just say that we came home with a lot of Christmas presents for people. :-) I commissioned a chibi picture of myself in cosplay, which is adorable and which I will scan and post when I can.
That evening...um. I'd still been hoping against hope that they were telling the truth and something would be worked out with Night Vale, y'see. Let's just say that I don't deal well with disappointment, and my wife knows how to deal with me melting into a crying puddle of Thia, and move right along.
Sunday we went to more panels: first How To Write Circular Gallifreyan for Tanya, and a random panel on the mythology of Merlin for me, which was of interest mostly because the panelists did in fact know their Arthurian mythos; then a panel on movie adaptations of books (or comic books), which was interesting both because Mark (of Mark Reads Stuff and Mark Watches Stuff) was on the panel, and also because the panelists freely admitted that adaptation is not an exact art, and also that it's possible for something to be a bad adaptation but a good movie, although it're more fun to rant about the times when it's a bad adaptation and a bad movie. We came out of that to word-of-mouth that there was going to be a Welcome To Night Vale fan panel, to make up for the lack of the Q&A, but we chose not to stay. Welcome to Night Vale fandom is a scary place, and even in the best case scenario where the panel did not degenerate into wails over what had happened the previous day, it could go all kinds of places I didn't want to go. Also we had a long drive ahead of us, so we checked out of the hotel and headed out instead.
Some links with more details:
On what exactly went down with Welcome To Night Vale, claim and counter-claim. I'm inclined to believe the counter-claim myself, especially as Jeffrey Cranor has said the same thing.
Mark (see above) writes up his experience at the con, complete with death threats because the internet is not always so much with reading skills. Spoiler: he had a better time at the con than I did.
A follow-up masterpost on the various rumors regarding Dashcon. There's a link to the first one, which is a good overview of what all was being said.
ETA: One more post! The official press release from DashCon to Explain All. Especially worthy of note is how they go into passive-voice 'Mistakes Were Made,' and blame the really egregious stuff (the part where they drew up a contract with the hotel without a clear payment schedule, thus creating the clusterfuck of Friday evening, and the part with Night Vale's payment) on different people who are now (of course) no longer with DashCon. Of interest mostly for those who would like the official coda to all the shenanigans.
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Date: 2014-07-15 11:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-16 01:04 am (UTC)