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replicarters · 5 years

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i was at northeast trek con this weekend, if you couldn’t deduce it from my posts that must have sounded like they were coming from some sort of hallucinatory trip. to say i had fun would be a wild understatement. if you slot this con on an alignment chart, it would be wall-to-wall chaotic good. the theme advertised was celebrating the 25th anniversary of ds9... and boy did we celebrate.

what follows is everything i feverishly tweeted about the wildest 72 hours of my life.

the only reason i went to this con at all was @thylekshran, who wanted to see one mr. jeffwey combs very badly. @jadziadax happened to say to me one night, “hey you should go to this con happening where you live to see nicole,” and i said, “wait a minute, isn’t this the con dylan wants to go to? what if i actually Did go to this?”

friday: i grabbed dylan, somehow, from the bus stop that i think didn’t quite exist on this plane. we get to the con and we walk into the exhibit hall. nicole is right by the door and i cannot look at her, so we beeline for vendor tables, and suddenly before me is an extremely familiar spread of colorful images. it takes me a minute to process it, and then i’m pointing to this table and rushing toward it going, “OH MY GOD. IT’S HER! FROM TUMBLR! OH MY GOD WHAT.” it was none other than @abravenoise selling prints!!!! i had no idea she would be there since i didn’t look at anything before i left the house. just fyi she is irl just about the nicest person i’ve ever met!!!!!! and i’m so glad we got to hang out as much as we did!

we spent the day mostly going to panels and being big baby chickens regarding jeff’s and nicole’s tables, respectively. we did end up at jg hertzler’s table A Lot, because dylan, like, is recognized?? by him and his wife??? idk dylan’s just out here charming the pants off everybody, so i was like, okay cool, this is the first thing that is Totally Fine, just chilling with martok. we also met two cool dudes through jg who really enjoyed hanging out with us, and that was great! making friends all over the place! not the first and not the last!

one thing dylan and i were bummed about was that the klingon meet & greet party that night (where jg and robert o’reilly would get in costume as martok and gowron and duel to the death) was sold out. we really really really wanted to go... so dylan just... straight up asks jg if he can get us in dhfklshdfd. and you know what? he fucking does. just... put our names right on that list! O K A Y!

the friday panels were a sign of what would be to come, every one we went to was crazy. this was my first real trek con, so of course i have never seen hertzler and o’reilly in a room together, but now i have and my third eye is open and all that. not to mention: learning that garrett wang plays pokemon go, nicole cracking up at poop jokes like i said, hertzler doodling a little shran with glasses on jeff’s sign, the con’s power point file just being named DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. everything that was happening was so good.

chase masterson had a panel about her pop culture hero coalition, and currently working for a non-profit myself, i was really curious about what kinds of programming they do, so i went to her table to talk to her about it. chase ended up talking some about the why’s of starting the coalition, what it meant to her, her own struggles with depression, and i’m thinking to myself, “uhhhhhh well if chase is gonna share about her mental health struggles, then... i... will also do this.” the nanosecond i said something about experiencing difficulty with self-love, she was zeroed in on me like a cruise missile. i spilled everything to her about my job and how my old boss was basically the meanest, most miserable person alive, and how much she got into my head and how now that i was out of that department, i had to pick up the pieces and it was proving to be much harder than it has been in the past. well, god almighty, chase just had the nicest things to say in return, and we commiserated over being your own worst critic, and how ridiculously hard it is to have this fight against yourself over and over again, but that we deserve so much and going forward is worth it. jesus christ! i got a big hug and said to myself, “holy shit i can’t wait to tell my therapist that a star trek actor talked to me about mindfulness and now i want to learn the hell out of it.”

oh but then it was time for the klingon party that we were now going to thanks to jg hertzler. this thing was off the chain immediately, martok and gowron had their duel, first with sparkling bat’leths that fell apart, and then with whole baguettes, and i can’t believe i got to watch this with my eye parts. and that was the beginning; the party would go for another 3 hours, almost all of which i spent dancing with the most generous people i’ve ever met, who went out of their way to welcome everyone they could onto the dance floor, regardless of physical ability or skill level. there was one woman in particular who, if she saw even the slightest twinkle in your eye and you weren’t already dancing with her, she’d be like, “you, get over here!” i don’t know how my body did that for all that time without falling apart.

our esteemed guests began showing up, and garrett wang leapt into the middle of our jump around circle and gave each one of us a vulcan high five. jeffrey combs showed up which of course sent dylan over the moon, and he said, “you go, girl!” to her dancing. max grodenchik gave dylan one of his drink tickets and then asked us whether or not we thought the existence of god could be proven. chase found us and reached out her hand over a couple people’s heads to give me a supportive hand squeeze (!!!???). aron eisenberg, i don’t know what the hell he was doing, but i feel like maybe somebody asked him about terry, because all of a sudden i hear something like, “terry left because she was in love with nog and couldn’t take it anymore.” garrett has three pokemon go accounts, which he showed off at my urging, and let me tell you, don’t encounter him at a gym because he has three dragonites, two tyranitars, a monster blissey, and god knows what else. dancing, dancing, more dancing. then it was time for it to be done, and time to go home. we watched reanimator. i was wired as hell and barely slept.

and THAT. was only friday.

saturday: i had kept my eyes open for a copy of the lives of dax the day before, but didn’t see anybody selling one. this morning, i walk by a booth we went to the previous day and all of sudden, on top of a bunch of other books in a big tub, there it was!!! couldn’t have forked my money over faster if i tried.

then i had this bright idea. hey... here’s a copy of lives of dax... and nicole is here... and she should sign it... and then in the future i can get terry to sign it... boom, bang, let’s do it, right? i had dylan drag me to nicole’s table because i was like, “i am never going to make even eye contact with her if you do not physically take me there,” and one of us brought up that we missed her at the klingon party. it’s cool, we all gotta sleep, right? well, it turns out nicole had gone out with the gaaays in spaaace people to the bar where they were going to have their party later. so she says garrett texts her, “uhhh hey you know you’re kinda supposed to be making an appearance at this thing, right?” nope! no clue. so she texts him back, “hmmm uhhh well,” takes another sip of her drink, “i think i’m doing good work here.”

the thing about nicole that i somehow missed in my drinking in of all ds9 actor content is that she embodies pure shitposter energy, but if the shitposts were coming from a wine mom. she’s hysterical, 50% intentionally and 50% unintentionally. an extremely excellent human. she signed lives of dax, i had my tribble photo op with her later (that i almost missed due to getting into a conversation with larry nemecek!) and she said she was going to the gays in space party later. helllll yes. i hope somebody puts up her q&a because she told a RIDICULOUS story about auditioning for ezri and creeping on jeri ryan on a plane. i can’t do it justice, there are movements that have to be seen.

we went to combsland finally, and i grilled him about whether or not herbert killed the cat, and we learned jeff has two cats! show them off, man! where are the vids! then, and i had never planned to do this, i bought an autograph from him, and the shran i bought it on ended up selling out! crazy.

hertzler had doodled a martok above his table, and so this combined with the little shran from yesterday led me to these words coming out of my mouth: “can i pay you for a drawing? can i pay you for a drawing of jadzia and martok brofisting?” he gave it very serious thought, said he was gonna have to look at a lot of pictures of terry (relatable), and told me to give him my e-mail. between him and his wife, i hope to god one of them remembers my e-mail is in his wallet. let me give you money!!!

my next tweets jump right to gays in space - again, dylan knows a lot of the gis folks, so i didn’t feel like i was going into this totally unawares. we’re chilling at the bar, i’m drinking my cranberry juice, and then o’reilly, aron, and nicole arrive, telling everybody that jg’s probably going to be late because a bouncer pushed his wife and he might go to jail. like, kidding, but also... it’s jg hertzler and he could legitimately fuck you up. so he was gonna be late, regardless.

nicole sees dylan and me and comes to say hello (????!!!!!) and somebody ends up saying, “get this lady a drink!” yeah, dylan and i were on that. in fact, i pulled my credit card out like i cared not one bit about identity theft, fico scores, my own personal finances; i would purchase this alcohol in an alley from a guy using a card skimmer. few minutes tick by and then i’ve officially bought a drink for nicole de boer (?????????!!!!!!!!) and i’m giving it to her (????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and we’re clinking our glasses together (?????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) i’m clinking glasses with nicole fucking de boer and somehow managing to be normal about it. i’m not altogether convinced i didn’t exit the universe entirely by this point and end up in another one.

the gays in space party was AMAZING, it was just as fun as the klingon party! if you have a chance to go to one, please do, there’s like no way you could ever regret it. you get treated to star trek-themed drag shows, get to mingle, there was a raffle, the people were just as friendly as the previous day, it was so great. we were out very late for my old lady body clock but it was worth every bit of exhaustion we felt the next morning, after the saga of actually getting home past a blocked off road and dylan slicing herself open on the bottom of my passenger seat.

sunday: nicole sees me, mid-yawn, and gives me one of those, “eyyy you and me went through some shit last night huh?” looks and tells me good morning. ( ? ? ? ? ? ! ! ! you know this drill.) combs ended up on the escalator behind us after his panel and i turned around and i said to him, “hey jeff, you got any pictures of your cats with you?” (no, but he has a black cat and a very vocal calico.) i went to chase’s table again and got another hug right out of the gate, we took a pic together, and she told me i was powerful! yo! or rather yooooooooooooooooooo!

the con was winding down at this point, but there was one more thing left: jeopardy. the jeopardy game was done at the first northeast trek con and was so popular they did it again, and i really, really hope someone uploads it to youtube because it is beyond description. first of all, the whole draw were the contestants: you could enter a raffle to end up on either hertzler’s, aron’s, or garrett’s team. the champion from the last game ended up buying half the tickets, so he was on it again, and not on aron’s team, much to aron’s annoyance because god almighty did he want to win. he was about to commit murder in there. someone said nicole was upset that she wasn’t in the game because she really wanted to play, lmfao. so the guys running it were like, “well, go get her, she can be on garrett’s team!” which sent aron into a fucking tailspin. now we got a team with two people on it?! they got nicole and drew the other winners, and the game began.

one of the rules was “this isn’t going to be fair. at all.” actually, it was two of the rules. despite this, you’d have thought aron was bitten by a rabid raccoon. every lost question almost got him flipping the table over. nicole belatedly, i’m talking like 5 minutes into it, realizes she doesn’t understand the rules of jeopardy and can’t figure out why “their” question was answered by someone else. she can’t believe someone knew what voyager’s registry number was. one of the questions was, “a young kid called ensign kim this name instead of ‘ensign’,” and with no hesitation, she answers, “asshole,” and wasn’t even joking, that was her actual guess. R E A L W I N E M O M H O U R S

the winner was hertzler and the previous champ. aron wants to ban the guy from buying tickets ever again. we head to the closing ceremony but it doesn’t happen? lmfao. well, guess the con’s over!

@abravenoise, one of our other con pals, and dylan were all taking the same bus that night, so we all went to grab dinner with two other guys, one who was a con pal and one i hadn’t encountered at all, and halfway through our dinner larry nemecek strolls in and sits down with us. things just keep happening, huh? the guy i hadn’t encountered at all was really impressed with me unhinging my jaw to consume my burger, and halfway through doing this i have to stop because he says, “hey, why the HECK did jadzia die?!” ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh here go hell come. my time to shine.

larry like looooves asking people what brought them to star trek, and this time he was asking us the -whys- of what brings us to star trek. i said the characters, for sure. he asked us about our favorites. i told him mine had changed throughout my life, but that when i was a kid, dr. crusher was my first favorite. he said, “in high school?” i said, “no, i mean, when i was REALLY little. like 4 or 5.” he asked me, “wow, have you ever met gates at a con and told her that?” pfft well, no, but first of all, now you got me wanting that, second of all i said what i really wanted was to swap cat pictures with her.

that was the end. i took everybody to their bus, went home, snuggled up in bed, and just asked myself, “what the fuck happened?” i still don’t know! but it was fun as hell, and amazingly impactful, if i’m being honest with you. i was surrounded by so many people brimming with enthusiasm, so many people who were happy. then there’s me, a curmudgeon who’s done everything in her power to stamp down her happiness all in the name of being ~cool or whatever. and it hasn’t made me very happy. i mean, i am also clinically depressed, there is that. but i’ve stopped sharing the things i enjoy with others, especially in recent years. i’ve closed myself off, mostly out of fear and attempting to survive my old job, but even here, i tend to keep myself at a distance, and i thought it was just because i’ve run the whole gamut of loving something before and just want to hang out with my friends. i think it’s more than that, though. i think it’s more of a defensive posture, and it’s that same posture which is running my life right now. it’s exhausting. this weekend wasn’t exhausting. it was in the sense that the human body needs rest and sleep and food and i wasn’t getting nearly enough of any of it, but emotionally, i was unburdened.

it would be nice to be that way all the time. i don’t know if it’ll be possible to be happy again like the people i met this weekend, but i do know that i want to experience this over and over and over again.

now, next time, maybe @rootmacklin and @jadziadax will be with me and we’ll be showing off our friendship necklaces to a very tall lady. that would be a good step toward unlocking my happiness...

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misscaller-blog · 5 years

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MOUNTAIN ASKS Taken from cottoncookie’s post here, and done in reverence of Chels’ childhood in Appalachia. Answered in third person, in character.

moon: what is your astrological sign? Chelsea is a Gemini, born 31 May. She doesn’t place a great deal of importance on this fact, though, because if she was born prematurely or had been conceived later, she might be something else entirely.

gingerbread: your moral alignment At the moment, she’s best described by the true or chaotic neutral alignments. While her attitude to ‘evil’ is staunchly against, she does break a great deal of moral codes by profession.

birdseed: family or friends? Absolutely friends, even if she’s mostly lacking in them.

sheets: your sexual orientation Bisexual, though to date she’s exhibited a slight preference for men (which may be the lingering results of the Wrath’s general homophobia and societal and Iona’s pressure to be heterosexual).

warm milk: when do you usually fall asleep? She’s a night owl, and does not sleep early or soundly. Her average sleep time is around three or four am, if she has to guess.

pot of honey: your gender identity At the moment, she identifies as female, which is her birth-assigned gender, though in the future she may explore demi-femininity and use of they pronouns as a way of distancing herself from her complicated feelings about her gender (feelings mostly instilled by Iona).

snow: what is your favorite time of year and why? It used to be and is mostly still winter, though in New York it’s much bleaker and less warm than it was in the mountains, and she loathes the Christmas season now.

yarn: what are your most enjoyable hobbies? Plant-care and ice-skating, which she’s just picked up in addition to her love of swimming laps.

bicycle: what are you talented at? Unlike most of the others on Roman’s crew, she wasn’t scouted for a particular develop-able talent, which is something she struggles with continuously, so she would loathe the answer that ‘being the distraction’ is something she’s talented at. The answers are probably the same as her hobbies, she’s quite good at plant-care and swimming and is working on improving her ice-skating (she’s working up to landing axels).

folktale: what stories remind you of your childhood? Iona mostly told her local folklore, which ranges wildly from ‘appropriate for children’ to ‘war propaganda’ to ‘these were your ancestors’ to ‘nightmare inducing’. She can recount many of them by heart, but no one has ever asked her to.

woods: where do you feel at peace? She feels most at peace when she’s alone, somewhere secluded, preferably with a great deal of plants or water nearby. At the moment, that place is the pool before it opens for the general public at nine am.

chicken feet: what is your emotional "flaw"? She has far too many to count. Her lack of expressed emotion would probably be first, though.

red cheeks: what makes you nervous? A great deal more than she would like to admit. At the moment, the Spy, the Forger, and Hazel are the most easily named things.

sunflower: what do you love and cherish? Her plants. They all have names. Also, solitude, and her library, which often go together.

bells: what sounds are your favorite or calm you the most? Silence is a kind of paradox in that it makes Chelsea both on high alert and soothed. Dog whistles and their corresponding barks, maybe. Appalachian lullabies and harpsichords, formerly.

turnip: what is a food you could eat everyday? She really, really loves salty things, so something like pretzels or crisps would be her first choice, if she knew she wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of subsisting on a diet of them.

spit: do you get jealous easily? Definitely, and that is a trait her mother instilled in her.

mushroom: list unique things you like about yourself A brief list: ... (She couldn’t answer this. It’s too much too soon. And the word ‘unique’ is stupid.)

cupboard: a good childhood memory The day Easton brought Salacious home. She loved that dog at first sight.

eyebags: what do you think makes a person attractive? Attractiveness is definitely most evident in the way someone carries themselves to her, but that’s because she won’t admit that it is something latent. The Forger, for example, is hugely attractive, but Chelsea likes to deny that with a hand-wave that their personality sours them.

fallen log: something you've gotten over that you never thought you would Nothing would particularly come to mind for her. Maybe — losing a stuffed toy dog from her childhood, which Iona had been threatening to wash for months prior when she was five. She had cried for days when she couldn’t find it. Savoir-Faire and Éclair entered her life shortly after that, and they were much better than any toy, living, breathing flesh and blood, not toys.

dagger: your worst fear Oblivion, like being in a coma and being unaware you’re in a coma you won’t ever wake up from.

whisper: do you have any secrets? They’re less secrets and more that fact she doesn’t volunteer the information without being asked directly, but a great deal of her childhood and family history are not known by the rest of the heist group.

wild boar: which person do you feel closest to? At the moment, it’s either the Getaway Driver or the Spy, depending on whether the closeness referred to is physical or not.

sweet: what candies or cakes are you fond of? She likes sticky ginger cake, which Iona’s maid taught her mother how to make while she was pregnant. Chelsea also likes fruit pastilles and opera cake.

footprints: do you remember your past lives? In the sense that she remembers being Savannah Whichillow, yes. In the sense that she remembers being some kind of Roman courtesan before Christ or a young, plague-ridden widow in Ravenna in 1629, for example, no.

fur: name an animal you feel connected to (Trigger warning: snakes, death, decapitation.) She definitely feels connected to snakes. One, she thinks it was poisonous, got into the conservatory when she was young and Iona sent the gardener to behead it with a garden hoe before it could strike. It was one of her mother’s first true and obvious acts of cruelty carried out under the guise of protection, and in the time since, Chelsea has come to see snakes as being very much like her, especially the one Iona warned her about in Eden. She also has an endless adoration for dogs, due to the three that ruled her childhood with their soft fur and wet kisses.

(Trigger warning: alcohol.) vodka: do you drink? Yes, she drinks heavily, she’s an alcoholic but is deeply in denial about this fact because she is high-functioning, like her mother and ancestors before her.

sour cherry: an obscure tradition from your family? The Wrath had a few holidays related to the blood feud the town was founded on, and which Iona’s Carnathan ancestors took part in. On one of those holidays, Founders Day, the estates whose borders form the town’s boundaries would open up to the public, and the town centre becomes a carnival ground. A similar occurrence happens for the Fourth of July.

pine needles: what is your favorite scent? She loves the smell of mountain smoke, light rain, and a good bourbon, though her most-worn perfume has notes of neroli and orchid.

heart-shaped: do you believe in love? are you in love? Those are both difficult questions. She’s very decisively not in love with the Spy, but she is a little bit with the Getaway Driver (granted, a more platonic and less carnal love). She doesn’t know if she believes in ‘love’ in the sense most people mean it, and is the sort of person to cynically and coldly attribute it to chemical receptors and biology and evolution rather than anything else.

home: where do you dream of living? She would love to live in the mountains. Or on a desert island. Somewhere deep in seclusion.

spice: list your favorite herbs Dried flowers, mostly, if those count. She also likes sage. Peppermint, ginger, sorrel, lemongrass, chilies, and saffron round out the list.

mud: something you're insecure about but trying to love She’s insecure about the entirety of her existence. Her appearance most of all.

tobacco: do you have any addictions? (Trigger warning: alcohol.) Alcohol and denial are the two most damaging, though fucking the Spy probably also qualifies.

sock: how would you describe your clothing taste? She wears what she likes and that’s where her ability to describe her dress sense ends. ‘Cool’, but what is coolness anyway?

cuckoo clock: are you a morning, a noon, or an evening person? She is definitely an evening person, going further and saying a night person because even in the evening she’s not quite at her full powers yet.

wooden fence: a favorite memory She (mercifully) has several. Recently, it would be the conversation she had with the Getaway Driver about ranking fast-food french fries. They’re going to do a taste test of every fry in the city sometime soon. She pinky swore they would.

#d.

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