#'and their hands met over the boltcutters' that sort of thing you know. do you see.

[korrasamibottles]

Good morning. Consider the unexplored geek4geek potential of Asami/Zhu Li

[thatonezombiecosplayer]

Wasteland Weekend 2017 Report

Many pictures ahead. And words. Prepare yourself.

TUESDAY

The event hadn’t officially started yet, but Clan of the Boltcutters got a number of its members accepted for early entry to build our camp before the unwashed masses started coming in for the event proper. @primarybufferpanel, @fuckyeahisawthat, @sacrificethemtothesquid and husbandthing, @yourdykeinshiningarmor, and @bethagain had met up at Borax Bill’s the evening before, and after some of us made a trip into town to grab some last minute things, we trickled in to Wasteland Weekend to meet up with @sheliesshattered and Jack.

We were located on the very edge of the themed zone, and while they were busily paving the main streets with gravel to cover up some of the soft sand, they hadn’t quite made it to our street (nor, as it would turn out, would they ever get to the end of our street). So, of course, here was a lot of soft sand at the end of our street, and we started off our day by having to dig both of our RVs out of the sand.

…And then a few other vehicles. Included in our list of vehicles rescued while we were setting up was a packed full uhaul that did not want to come out. After much digging and pushing and piling wooden planks under the wheels, we eventually called for help, and the vehicle that showed up was a deuce and a half named Little Draggin’ which seemed like a sure-fire solution, but even that took a couple running starts (which was terrifying and we were gradually backing away farther and farther) until by the third running start, the uhaul was finally tugged (violently - I’m a little surprised the driver didn’t get a neck injury) out of the hole it had dug itself into.

Eventually we got sick of pulling cars and trucks out of the sand and took matters into our own hands.

WEDNESDAY

We had set up most of our camp the previous day, but a bit of wind kicked up near the end, so we left the side panels off of our shade tent just to be safe. It just didn’t look like our shade tent, though, so Wednesday morning we put them on first thing, did some decorating, and our camp was complete!

And we looked awesome.

The official gate opening ceremonies started at 1, and Jared, one of the co-founders of Wasteland Weekend, had invited me a couple weeks earlier to play a part in it as Furiosa. His goal was to sort of re-create the end of Fury Road, and I was both excited and terrified to be part of it. I showed up early with @primarybufferpanel playing the part of my Vuvalini support (with The Potato tucked safely into a pocket), met the man who would be playing Immortan Joe for the ceremonies, and after a bit of prep and waiting for the official go-ahead, we put Joe on the hood of a beautiful replica of the Interceptor, covered him in a bloody sheet, and I climbed in the passenger seat, with PBP walking scout beside.

People and vehicles were gathered at the city gate, and they had been riling them up for a while with taiko drums and entertainment, but the gates remained locked and under the careful watch of the official guards. The Interceptor came around from the side and stopped in front of the gates. Acting injured, I slowly climbed out with the help of my Vuvalini comrade, and looked up at the war boys standing guard atop the War Rig that made up part of the city wall.

“Remember me?” I shouted to them, and then yanked the sheet off of Immortan Joe, revealing him laying still and dead on the car. The war boys reacted with shock and anguish, some yelling, some putting their heads in their hands.

Now, at this point Jared had hoped that the crowd would start chanting “Let them in!” which would prompt the gate guards to finally open the gates. Unfortunately such a chant didn’t really cross people’s minds. The plan had been to have Boltcutters in the crowd seed the chant, but as it turned out, most of the Boltcutters present had gone to climb on to War Spawn’s vehicles to enter the city when the gates opened. Only a few remained in the crowd, and they hadn’t been fully updated on the plan. There was an awkward beat of silence, which stretched longer and longer, until finally someone shouted “Let them in!” and the shout spread gradually through the crowd. One of the guards banged on the wall, the gate opened, and I climbed back in the Interceptor. We were the first through the gate, with Joe still lying across the hood and windshield.

But Jared’s plan wasn’t finished yet. We circled around and came back out the side of the wall and approached the gate as we had done the first time, and stopped in front of it once again. Victor, a friend of ours who had a fantastic Organic Mechanic costume came running out of the crowd, shouting “Immortan Joe! No!” He checked his pulse, then held up his arm as Joe sat up, and yelled “He’s alive!” to the war boys atop the War Rig, who rejoiced.

(Frankly, I was all for Joe staying dead, but he was part of War Spawn’s ensemble, and would spend a lot of time over the next few days sitting on a throne in a very prominent spot in the city, so I guess Jared figured we shouldn’t start out with that contradiction.)

After opening ceremonies we met up with War Spawn to do some line entertainment. Last year it took some of our tribe members (and a ton of other people) basically all day in line to get in, and we figured this year we could mitigate some of the boredom by doing a war boy vs Vuvalini chase up and down the line. We piled on top of a few of their vehicles and headed out.

… To find there were basically only 5 people in line.

Kudos to the entry gate people for getting people in so quickly so nobody had to suffer in line for hours on end but… we kind of wanted to entertain the masses. Oh well.

After that we crashed at camp for a little while, painted up signs for the events we would be hosting throughout the weekend, and added a bit to our steering wheel for War Spawn’s wheel altar, then took a nice threatening stroll into the city with guns to drop off our event signs and wheel. En route we met a really fantastic Max cosplayer (whose name was actually Max) and he agreed to do the “Don’t Breathe” scene with me, which was pretty damn awesome.

That evening we had a nice Vuvalini campfire gathering where we met the first of our new friends. We had a number of songs that some of the Boltcutters had filked to be Vuvalini songs, and it was really beautiful hearing them sung around the campfire.

Being the Party Mild types we are, around 10 or 11 (when most wastelanders are just starting to party) we left the fire to go start a puppy pile in our shade tent. Laying across our pile of pillows, hiding under blankets from the cold and giggling about one thing or another, we suddenly see a light come bobbing around the corner of our camp, and somebody calls out “are you Vuvalini?”

Us: “…Yeees?” (Who’s asking?)

Them: “We’re invading you.” And suddenly we had about 20 war boys, Imperators, and V2A piling into our shade tent.

Unexpected, but fantastic.

One of them immediately opened up conversation, in true war boy fashion, with “Do you have booze?”

We weren’t sure if our Healthful Herbal Hooch was quite what they were expecting, but it was what we had, so we passed it around. Included was @sacrificethemtothesquid’s Weed Juice, an unholy concoction of cheap alcohol and lemon balm (which grows as a weed in her back yard, thus the name), and the ginpricot grenades (dried apricots that had fully rehydrated after being soaked in pure gin), which we had been saving just for such an occasion.

The war boys finished them all.

The Weed Juice had actually gotten a little better over the last year, but judging on Ace’s face upon taking a swig, it was still pretty strong. He recovered nicely, though, wiping the look off his face with a nonchalant “Not bad.”

THURSDAY

Thursday morning started with a visit to the Bazaar, an area where anybody could bring their wasteland wares and barter and trade with other people. It was cool, but I didn’t have a lot to offer, so I eventually moved on.

We Bolties have made a habit of doing Motherings, as we call them, where we check in with each other, make sure everyone’s hydrated and wearing sunblock and has eaten enough lately. Back at camp we had a drive-by Mothering by someone we didn’t even know, which tickled us.

Him (without even stopping his car): “ARE YOU HYDRATED?”

Us: “YES! YOU?”

Him: “YEAH.”

And that was that.

Thursday we hosted our Vuvalini Stitch and Bitch, which was pretty successful, and we got to hang out with some new friends again. Most of us were quite happy just doing the stitching part, but one woman came and provided the bitching in the form of a kind of hilarious and long-winded story about her husband’s creepy friend. At least it was a proper stitch and bitch.

The Farlanders visited us and gifted us some records! We had a nice hand-cranked gramophone, which had been providing the music in the evenings and at gatherings in our shade tent. Their contribution became a nice addition to our little collection, and was a favorite of many.

Later that day we had our big Vuvalini gathering which was another success!

Lots of people showed up, we had a professional photographer to take pictures of us, and then we took a Nice Threatening Stroll through the city. Sometime during this stroll, one of War Spawn’s vehicles drove by with Ace and a number of war boys piled on the back. Upon seeing us, Ace called to the others “Vuvalini! Eyes right!” and then there was a bit of pointing of guns before we each headed on our way.

I feel safe in saying we succeeded at looking as badass as we felt, because at one point walking through the main gates, 3 people simultaneously turned with cameras of varying degrees of fanciness, and started taking pictures of us.

Along our stroll, we visited War Spawn, though most of them weren’t there. We tormented the war boys a bit with our bloody Joe mask (with jawbone still inside!) then moved on to visit CimotA, our sister clan.

We retired that evening to a nice playtest of our custom-made Wasteland/Mad Max Cards Against Humanity game. It needs some tweaking, but we still had a good time.

(One of the hands I’m remembering off the top of my head asked the question “Max Rockatansky/____, one-sided pining” to which one of the answer cards was “three consecutive seconds of happiness.”)

FRIDAY

Friday started out nice and slow. A bit of sleeping in, a bit of hanging out, a bit of Cards Against Humanity, and then a bit of wandering. Today was our BPAL meetup, which I unfortunately can’t speak much on because I was out and about at the time, but it looked like it had been a success when I trudged back into camp.

Today we attempted a bit of a scenario with War Spawn, partially for fun and partially to add some character to the world of Wasteland City and an interesting thing for some people to remember.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite go as planned. Mostly because it was thrown together at the last minute… We were expecting a couple war boys from War Spawn to come kidnap our Capable (@primarybufferpanel) in Barter Town, and then one or more of them would get away with her while we captured one, and then we were going to meet just inside the gates of the main city and play out a tense hostage exchange.

This is not what they understood from our planning.

So a couple war boys show up in Barter Town. Capable is wandering around looking at wares and pretending to not notice, and the rest of us Bolties were standing around the edges trying not to look conspicuous. They wandered up, and down, and up again, and I asked a Boltie who wasn’t directly involved in the scenario but was there to watch if they could just go check with the war boys on what was going on.

As it turned out, they were expecting us to grab one of them first? Didn’t make sense to us, but we went with it. There was a shout of “WAR BOYS! STOP RIGHT THERE!” and then came the pointing of guns and yelling and generally just making a scene. Then both of them booked it. We picked one, and chased him, full speed, yelling and waving guns, through Barter Town. And dear god was that guy hard to catch! He went around the loop street in Barter Town, then slipped between a crate and a trailer and was just gone.

Eventually we managed to run him down and threaten him enough to get him to stop running. @livia-lerynn, our Furiosa for the day, made him do some pushups in the middle of the street (pretty sure this poor guy had no idea what he had signed himself up for, but he was a good sport) and then we walked him toward the city gate surrounded by guns to keep him from running off again.

Once there, we had a bit of a predicament. We had their war boy, but they had nothing to offer us in return. Capable started wandering toward their side, and we’re standing there going “oh, she’s going to go negotia— oh, nope. Just got herself captured. Okay then.”

But at least we had proper prisoners to exchange at that point? The war boys tried to make trouble and get behind us with guns, but we had our fair share of guns too, and managed to get them to back down. Each party backed away, not willing to trust the other to not start trouble again, and then eventually we turned and went on our way.

SATURDAY

Saturday was another Furiosa day for me, and I started out the day with a nice wander with @sheliesshattered to go see some of the rest of the city we hadn’t ventured into yet. Later, with some other Bolties, we went to return the gun we had accidentally stolen from the war boy we had captured the previous day (it was a slight misunderstanding) with a peace offering left with it.

One of my missions for today was to do a bit of barter. I had seen a post on the Wastelander Central facebook where people were sharing what they were bringing for barter, and one person had neat patches that said things like “Aro Ace Assassins” and “Gender Nonconforming Squad” (among others, but those were the two I was after). Unfortunately we had no idea where to find the person with these patches, other than that they were with Northern Exposure. When we eventually found them (after accidentally tracking down the wrong Canadians first), I traded for one patch, but she didn’t have the other, but mentioned that a camp mate did, and that said camp mate was spending most of her time in (mumblemumbledon’tremember) camp that-a-way.

I didn’t hold much hope of finding said camp, but by luck we wandered straight past it on our way back to our camp. They were a pretty suspicious of us asking around for a specific person (I expect they had a bounty out for them), but eventually they let us into the camp and I managed to get the second patch. Mission accomplished!

Saturday was our fanfic and fanart meetup, which was another success! @thebyrchentwigges and myself had printed books and zines which I had brought, and they all went almost immediately. We also started a little round robin fic which can be found here. At that point I and a few others wandered off to go have Potato Adventures (see last year’s potato story) which will be chronicled in another post.

Okay, the next part requires a bit of backstory. I might have some of these details wrong, but there are two tribes: The Rustorationists, who have a pantheon of gods but above all worship Dation, the god of dirt, and then there are the Dead Crows, who adopted Clor, the god of cleanliness as their god. Needless to say there was a bit of a holy war between these tribes.

So I walk back into camp later, and those who had stayed behind after the fanfic meetup were still sitting around writing.

“What are you writing?”

“There’s a holy war, and we’re helping.”

As it turned out, they had written slash fic of Clor and Dation, and then had copies of the fic sent to both the Rustorationists and the Dead Crows. I don’t think we ever heard from the Dead Crows, but the Rustorationists, so we heard later, LOVED it. They made their mail courier wait while they read it aloud, laughing their asses off all the while. They apparently promptly added it to their apocrypha, and are now talking about reading it at a peace-making ceremony next year.

The day wound down with another Nice Threatening Stroll down to the costume contest (which I did not participate in this year because I had entered the exact same costume in last year - though after seeing the fucking amazing trophies, I kind of wish I had tried), and then we gathered for the All Wastelanders Group Photo which is done every year and attempts to capture as many wastelanders in one shot as possible.

And with that, the weekend was over. Sunday morning we woke up and started tearing the camp down and fitting it all into our little storage trailer. It’s always sad parting ways from these people who have come to mean so much to me, and I may have cried. But there’s always next year to look forward to, when I can see all their faces again.