Comi Con Salt Lake: Day 1

After years of trying to get tickets to Comic Con/BlizzCon, we finally got to go to the very first Salt Lake Comic Con.

The event was held at the Salt Palace, which I'd been to before for a nursing convention. Its within walking distance of Temple Square, so I was able to stroll down there and see the Latter-Day Saint Temple. It was very nice, one of the most beautiful parts of one of the prettiest cities I've ever been to.

When we got to the convention enter, there wasn't a whole lot going on. Vendors and some events open up early for VIP ticket holders. (Which we weren't) And that the schedule of event's had been revised updated COMPLETELY CHANGED!!

So we had about two hours of leisure time before events even started up at 2pm.

We ate at a restaurant called the Blue Lemon. (It's one of my favorites, and it's right across the street from the Salt Lake Temple and adjacent to Ensign books. No one else I've been there with is crazy about it though.) If you ever go there, try the Butternut Squash Soup. I can't guarantee you'll love it, but I do. It's my favorite soup ever. Then we went back to the Salt Palace Convention Center.

I read that Salt-Lake Comicon was the most successful “First” comicon to date. And it was VERY crowded once the event's got started. It was hard to even find a place to sit down. Next year, they will probably have a five-day comicon instead of 3 days next year to accommodate those kind of crowds.

• I really love looking at costumes. So even just watching people walk by is a lot of fun at comicon.

The first day of Comicon, I dressed up as my favorite criminal, Light Yagami. And my friend dressed up as L, the detective out to capture me.

We would be standing right next to each other and people would come up and identify my friend instantly, make a geek connection, and sometimes take a picture.

Normally I don't mind not getting attention in social situations. But it hurt me in this instance. I mean, we would be standing RIGHT next to each other...IN HAND CUFFS!! The two most iconic character's of this series and only L got recognized.

When people did guess at my identity, they usually got it wrong.

Guy: “Are you Mello?”

Me: (hears are you Male, though?) “No, I'm female”

Friend: “She's Light.”

Guy: (Laughs) “Oh, well Mellow and Light look alike”

This is Mello.

(If by "alike" you mean "they are both anime characters" then yeah I kind of see what you mean. But no...not really.)

Another mis identification:

Lady: “Are you Near?”

Me: “No, I'm Light”

Lady: “Oh, Near and Light look alike”

(Now, Near and Light look nothing alike. Near is albino. AN ALBINO WHO WEARS WHITE!!!)

It's fun when you just dress up with the expectation of having a good time, no matter what someone else thinks. Its not fun when you have to compare your costume to someone else's. And its not fair that L got recognized and Light didn't.  It reminded me of how people see me. I felt like a piece of shit.

(Lost respect for my own body image.)

If there was one thing I could change about this day, it would be that I didn't dress up as this character. Or if I did, that I did it by myself, without a partner and without the expectation of being recognized at all. Being compared like that was painful. I never want to go through that again.

• There were some really disappointing panelists from theonring.net 

Disapointment #1 “I know we said we'd be showing a preview of “The Hobbit-Desolation of Smaug, but we're going to save that for tomorrow.”

Disapointment #2 (and this one is worse, really) “Peter Jackson is better then Tolkien because when I was 11 and first tried to read the book I couldn't get past the first 50 pages.” (They weren't joking about this...most of the people on the panel weren't at all interested in the literary aspect of LOTR at all. The moderator tried to get the Peter Jacksonists and the one (ONE???) Tolkienist on the panel to get in an argument with each other. Which was very irritating; a moderator should know better!)

(I really lost respect for theonering.net.)

• Ghost Hunting in Salt-Lake

This panel was pretty good. Not everyone agreed about the origin of ghosts, the focus was more on keeping an open mind. Some cool stories were shared,l and everyone on the panel respected each other. They were even comfortable poking fun at themselves.

(I have gained respect for crackpot ghost-hunters)

• At some point, I was able to walk about the vendor area with L. They didn't have anything really special and all of it was overpriced, but the Weta set up was awesome. I saw a guy at a booth in front of the Weta booth, and his picture blown up behind him. I recognized him from an Entertainment Magazine interview I read. He played Bifur! I got to shake his hand. He was very polite, and asked us how we managed the bathroom with our handcuffs ;)

• The last workshop was with Tracy Hickman deconstructing the “Four Stories” in LOTR using the Cambell Monomyth (which is something I've been studying on my own). Mr Hickman explained how each of the four main story arcs could be their own stories independently (and still be freaking awesome!)

The “Four Stories” he discussed were the stories of Frodo, Aragon, Faramir, and Eowyn.

He broke each “story” down from the literary perspective. The Objective Journey (The struggle of the Free People's of Middle Earth against the forces of Mordor) and the Subjective Journey (dealing with the emotional journey of the main character and his or her role in the struggle against the forces of Mordor). He explained that the emotional resonance of the story comes from the journey that the Main Character and Impact Character (the character who's life is most effected by the main character), take together.

I was surprised when Mr Hickman named Smeagol as the impact character in Frodo's arc (not Sam, which is what most of the audience...myself included...was expecting.)

“In Smeagol, Frodo sees what he will become, and in Frodo Smeagol sees who he might have become if not for the influence of The Ring.”

Although not an entirely new revelation (I wrote a research paper on Gollum in college and his relationship with Frodo is certainly an important aspect of the story) The level of significance was an eye-opener for me and makes me want to re-examine my own writing a bit more.