Saturday: A tournament and lots of fun in a different universe

Saturday is usually the busiest and longest day on FedCon. It's the first day for the big autograph sessions and in addition you have photo sessions, lots of panels and as a highlight the costume contest in the evening. For the TNE booth, it became an exhausting day. We held a tournament which had to be improvised due to the nature of FedCon: Due to all the events taking place, you cannot plan any specific side-events. People drop in, drop out again and all that's left is a spontaneous tournament you can do. The tournament took place on high noon and started off with twelve participants. Three rounds of Team Deathmatch were to be played, from which the last took place against Jean and me. In the end, we had even a small child among the winner team and the winner of the first prize turned out to be a Battlefield 2 player. As promised, we took some high-res photos of him, since the first prize of this tournament was not only one of our huge TNE posters, but also an appearance as a character in the mod. He chose to be a Sith, so you will most likely see him in a later release of TNE.

The rest of the day turned out be be quite busy as well. Our room was always full, some camera and photographer teams from the press walked through it and the many people and computers caused the room to heat up. Gladly for us, the convention did not take place during July as last year. So opening the window did have an effect.

Some of the more funny action took place outside. Since I know that several of you are gonna ask me in the forums about my force lance, I'm just gonna write a bit about it in this article. If you had read the announcements, you'll probably know that two of the attendees were Kevin Sorbo and Steve Bacic, both from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. Last year's Laura Bertram, the spread word afterwards and those two guys caused much of the German Andromeda fan community to mobilize - myself being part of it. During Kevins panel, the two force lances I brought along served for quite some humor, but the funniest action of the day actually derived from the tellings of Laura Bertram (Trance Gemini) the year before.
The show had been shot in the Bridge Studios in Vancouver which also had a fan shop. One day, Gordon Michael Woolvett (Seamus Harper) went into that fan shop and found a life-size cardboard figure of Kevin Sorbo as Hercules - but with a price tag saying "I'm half-prized because my sword is bent". Due to Kevin's continuous force lance gags, he found that so funny that he took it to work - with Kevin's first reaction being: "I'm not half-priced! And goddamn it, my sword is not bent!"

When a friend of mine and I walked through the corridors of FedCon, we noticed a Hercules cardboard figure with a sword that was damaged as well. So we borrowed the cardboard figure from the merchant, stuck a sign saying "I'm half-prized because my sword is bent" to it and put it onto the stage right before Kevin held his first panel.

It got quite funny during the panel, but afterwards as well. In the autograph session, we asked him to sign the cardboard figure and guess who was sitting two tables away? Steve Bacic, carefully monitoring what was going on with that huge Hercules. When he saw that sign, he called us to him, painted a mustache onto the figure in front of all the people in the queue, took some photos and showed them to Kevin. It was just like back in the days that the series was still being filmed: They were only pulling tricks on one another. Much to the entertainment of the FedCon visitors.

The day continued with a tremendous costume contest followed by a hoax of the Eurovision Song Contest where costumed fans would perform their scifi interpretation of well-known songs. Clearly, the best group was the 501st. Remember the surprise I talked about earlier? They did not only have a huge Wampa with them, but also a three meters long "costume" for two people of an AT-AT. During the contest, they re-enacted the battle of Hoth like that and earned a well deserved massive applause.

But the costume contest had some other highlights as well: A wonderful female Nox costume from Stargate SG-1, a funny Ghostbusters performance and a crossover of 300 and Back to the Future. The latter was a real highlight and also awarded. To sum up the performance: Doc Brown got lost in time and found himself in the middle of the battle of Sparta with bloody limbs flying on the stage. When King Leonidas appeared, Doc Brown asked him where he had landed. After carefully placing him right at the edge of the stage, King Leonidas gave him the famous kick in the stomach, shouting "This is Spartaaaa!" and causing him to fall down the stage.

There wasn't much left to do during the evening, so it was party time! If FedCon is famous for one thing, it's definately the parties. Since the main sponsor was Jägermeister this year, they even had a promo team including go-go-girls heating up the dancefloor. The award for the best dancer however went to Nicki Clyne from Battlestar Galactica this evening. The very next day however, the con staff would have to pull her out of the bed to get her to the autograph session in time.

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