The Road So Far/ The Road Ahead (aka in my head as Supernatural) con in Charlotte is one of my favorites. It’s an easy ninety minute flight, which I value more and more every single year (and my knee values more every single day) and SO many of my friends planned to be there. It felt a lot like the early days of Supernatural cons, when everyone knew everyone else because there were only a few to go to, so me and my friends were all there at one or the other.
It was clear that this was going to be a fun con because it was also “Spatula Con” – which meant that many fans actually brought spatulas with them, for all kinds of photo fun and shenanigans. (If you’re wondering why, it’s in honor of Jared and Gen’s appearance on Celebrity Family Feud, where the thing they’d bring from the kitchen to the bedroom was – you guessed it – a spatula). Hence, Spatula Con!
It was also gorgeous weather and the con hotel (a brief walk down the hall from the convention center, which made me very very very happy) had a lovely outdoor patio where we could all hang out and eat and drink and be merry. There was a lot of merry at this con!
I was a bit uncertain about how the con itself would go since because of the SAG and WGA strike, the actors can’t talk about any struck work – including the vast majority of their projects. I’m that fan who always has a burning question about the show I love, and is less enthralled by “what’s your favorite color?” type questions, so I wasn’t sure what this would be like. Of course, I should have trusted all these actors – because they can all think on their feet and tell a hilarious story, and that’s pretty much what they did. I laughed my way through most of the panels I saw, and so did the actors!
There inevitably are comments online about drama at every con, but this con was pretty much drama-free for those of us who were there. The fans had fun, the actors had fun, everyone was happy to be able to get together and share some good times and funny stories. The actors were diligent about not breaking any strike rules and the fans were conscientious in helping them do that, and all of that felt pretty damn good.
I didn’t have anyone to help me at the vendor table on a regular basis (shout out to all the friends who hopped in to let me run to the bathroom all weekend!) so I missed the Friday panels, which meant I missed a lot of my favorite people – Gil McKinney, David Haydn Jones, DJ Qualls, Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster – and Nate Torrence (who played Sully in ‘Just My Imagination’) who I REALLY wanted to get to see. I hear his panel was awesome, and just seeing him coming and going, he seems like such a nice guy.
I did make it into the ballroom finally for Misha Collins, since I try to never miss his panel. He and Rob reminisced about some early panels, including for some reason the one when they did the “Eiffel tower”. Don’t ask.
Everyone onstage struggled with the limitations of the strike in trying not to say the names of actual shows, but it’s undeniably difficult.
Misha: We’re organizing a little strike picket for S-P-N and Kripke sent out an organizing thing – but it says the actual name on it!
