Sunday was the last day of SVCC, and it was the first day that I was able to hit the floor! I always like to see what's available, but this floor fell a little flat to me. I did find a few artists and things that I loved, so there's no hate there, but something that was a glaring misstep for me was the notable absence of major comic book publishers. Like if you attend WonderCon or SDCC, you see the tables for IDW and Skybound and places like that, and there was none of that at SVCC. And my favorite clothing companies weren't there either (Her Universe and We Love Fine). To me those are all convention staples, and they were sorely missed.
There were pluses though, like how cosplayers got a dedicated alley of their own (much like artist's alley), it was even marked on the map so you could find them easily. And they had the Stan Lee Museum and the Star Wars Rancho Obi-Wan Museum, so that was fun.
I liked the art at Tinysnails a lot. I wanted to buy everything at her booth! She had so many cute prints.
Steph Lew was another one of my favorite. Her booth was so busy, almost everything was sold old. I did manage to snag a cute Ursula postcard though.
I also got an adorable R2D2 watercolor by Levi Craig and a super cute R2D2 Jesus candle (I don't know how else to describe it)by JesseJFR.
Oh! And we purchased an ocarina for our son from STL Ocarina. The people at the booth were the nicest! They really explained all the different types of ocarinas that they had, and you could tell that they love the products they sell.
During our booth hopping adventures, we got our picture taken with Peter Mayhew. That was pretty cool! He has wild hair, just like Chewbacca lol.
After hitting up the booths, we went down the cosplayer alley. I only took pictures of a few of the girls that were there, but would end up seeing all of them later at a panel.
Two out of the three girls I got to meet and take pictures of were very sweet, although I have to say that Alexandria was by far the nicest! My husband was my mouthpiece throughout the weekend, and he basically fronted me out and said that I was shy about talking to people, and she was really kind and understanding about the whole thing. And let me just say, the creep factor was high around Jacqueline. The guys were trying really hard to touch her and to get her to come out from behind the table, and it was just wrong on so many levels.
After the floor, we went to some panels. Since it was the last day, things wrapped up early, which I appreciated since I wasn't feeling so great. The first panel we went to was with Studio C and Jon Heder. Studio C calls themselves the clean Saturday Night Live, and its something you can get behind. They're all very funny, and actually employed by BYU to create these videos. Jon Heder was great as a moderator, still very funny and a touch Napoleon Dynamite-esque. And if you're thinking you've never heard of Studio C, if you've seen the Scott Sterling soccer video on You Tube, then you've heard of Studio C! That's their video, and its the one that made them famous.
Some of the Studio C players with Jon Heder.
Being an angel.
We rushed over to the stars of cosplay- the ladies panel right after, and it was a packed house. The day before was the panel where they'd focused on the men of cosplay, and I was sorry I missed it. I would've loved to have heard how they answered some of the questions that the ladies got. But the panel was very interesting, and basically all the girls said that you should just cosplay for yourself, and not listen to the haters, Body positivity was another big theme that they all pushed, so it was really disheartening to me when they opened it up to audience questions and the first one they got was from a women who basically said that, they need to tone down the sexiness for the little girls that look up to them. I have issues with that because they questioner put a parenting spin on it, like as a parent how do you explain it to your child. And the girls were like, we cover as much as a bikini at the beach does, so whats the problem? And the questioner got really indigent. To me, as a parent, I say this- you don't let your little girl wear what the women wear, you tailor it to your child's age. Like I take my children to conventions sometimes. My daughter is six and my son is ten. If my daughter is interested in a girl's costume, I would help her find one that's appropriate for her age, and if my son is interested in what's being displayed by that costume, well, its time to have that talk lol. But my point is, to me that questioner asked that question to start a fight, like she didn't listen to anything that had been said during the whole panel, and that sucked.
The final panel of the day (and weekend) was the closing address with Steve Wozniack and Stan Lee. Stan Lee is hilarious, but he didn't stay on stage too long, so they had Jon Heder come and be his "Stan"in. They opened up to audience questions and you could tell that most people had questions for Stan Lee, but they tried to ask them anyway, and Jon answered them as best he could as Stan.
After that, we hit up Pizza My Heart one more time, then started our four hour drive home. It was then, first in the car (and in my purse- destroyed everything), then on the side of the highway, that I truly learned my stomach flu status. So not fun. Super sorry to anyone that might have seen that Exorcist act on Sunday night.
Make sure to read Friday and Saturday's coverage, and I'll have one more post up soon talking about a few of the things I liked and didn't overall about the convention. Thanks for reading!
Ugh, sounds like that one person at the panel was trying to ruin it for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAnd it really sucked because the panel ended up capping out, so there were people in the hallway that actually wanted to get in and hear what the girls had to say. I hate when people come into something for the sole purpose of hating on it. Like, they could've done that out on the convention floor or on social media if they really felt that need to be a Bitter Betty.
ReplyDelete