These are my personal memories of Starfury’s Witchbomb 2. I didn’t get to see as much of Lyne and Kandyse as I did last year, when I was at their every panel and fan meet. So that skews what I experienced. But these are stories from the fan meets and the panels I did get to.
I have to write about cat hair, which seemed to be a feature of my Saturday. I had brought jackets that I wanted Taylor and Amalia to wear for the photo op Saturday morning. I have two black and white tuxedo cats and so cat hair is a fact of life. I used over half a roll of lint roller in making sure these jackets were cat hair free and had them in suit covers, everything. But, as any cat owner knows, cat hair gets everywhere!
As soon as I walked into the photo room and saw that Amalia was dressed all in black, and my first thought on seeing her was ‘cat hair’! Black is the absolute worst when your cats have white fur. I did check with the stewards if Taylor and Amalia were OK with putting on jackets and were either of them allergic to cats. Luckily they were fine with it. Amalia did take her black jacket off for the photo, there was no way that dress blues jacket would fit over the top.
So far, so good until we got to the Raylla fan meet. Amalia was no longer wearing the black jacket, but was in a T-shirt. First thought, ‘cat hair’. Despite my efforts, had she got cat hair on her black clothing, had she been forced to put on a T-shirt to cover up cat hair on her black top. So, of course, I asked her. She assured me that she had simply put on a T-shirt to be more relaxed.
My follow up was ‘how do you cope with those sleeves?’ They are very tight, they feel like wearing a blood pressure cuff. Taylor’s response was that their jackets were made specially for them, and they were made so that they looked good in them. I responded that they certainly looked hot in them. Taylor’s mind clearly works differently from mine because she took it that I meant sweaty. Which, of course, I didn’t!
I had clearly been far too memorable with the cats, because when it got to the autograph session later in the day, Amalia wrote ‘meaw’ on the photo. Then she checked that I could read it.
When you go to a fan meet, the tables are arranged in a square and there are a lot of sweets on the table. Before Taylor and Amalia arrived, we were discussing the sweets. Particularly parma violets, which are a sweet that many of the Brits there remembered as childhood sweets.
We were still discussing this as Taylor and Amalia arrived. And they each grabbed a pack to try them. Taylor clearly didn’t like them, immediately making an unhappy face and taking it out of her mouth and putting it back in the packet. Amalia liked them. Taylor couldn’t believe that they were popular kids sweets here. Then she reminisced about sweets she ate as a kid, particularly something called ‘soapy chews’ IIRC.
In the Taylor fan meet, I asked Taylor about audition tapes. Amalia and Jess have put their original audition tapes online. Did Taylor still have her original audition tape and would she put it online? She didn’t know other people had put theirs online. She also didn’t know if she still had hers. She said she would look. Knowing Taylor’s memory, she might need reminding.
Watch Amalia’s audition tape at:
Jess, and Arlen’s auditions are at:
(Start watching from about 19.30, first is Arlen’s audition, then Jess’s. The very first performance of ‘Is It Shiny?’)
In the Amalia fan meet, she was asked ‘if there was a Bollywood version / continuation of Motherland, would she be up for being part of it. She definitely would be.
The matter of the kiss in 2.10 came up. Amalia said that she had decided to put her tongue in Taylor’s mouth, but she hadn’t asked Taylor’s consent in advance and afterwards she wondered if she had crossed a line. Had she done something that Taylor wasn’t comfortable with. (This kiss did come up again in the panels). She was unsure what Taylor thought about it. Two of us had been at the Survival 5 convention in 2002 when Taylor first did a Starfury convention. She was asked about it then, so we both assured Amalia that Taylor was absolutely fine with it.
That was also the convention when I decided that I needed a phone with a better camera.
I asked about the pilot episode and wanted to know if there was any particular back story to the animosity between Scylla and Anacostia. Had she been given a reason for Anacostia being so determined to keep her away from Raelle? Amalia hadn’t been given a specific reason, but she felt that Anacostia was more aware than other drill sergeants and felt that she knew there was something off about Scylla. So she wanted to keep Scylla away from her recruits.
It is interesting that in the original audition tape, Scylla is described as a ‘reprobate’. Clearly there was some early character development in her character.
I was expecting to do this in one post, but there is so much that I have split it. There will be part 4 coming soon.
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