+ Welcome to Santa Barbara Comic Con! - MINGLE LOG +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE
Where: Santa Barbara Comic Con!
When: 8/3 - 8/5
Rating: PG-13, warn if going higher
Summary: A mingle log for the Psych event - Welcome to Santa Barbara Comic Con! This would be an absolutely terrible time to get mixed up in a horrible murder!
The Story:

Welcome to Santa Barbara! Nicknamed the American Riviera, it's a cozy seaside city that can often feel like a small town. And you get to be here during its most exciting weekend - the Santa Barbara Comic Con!

Whether you come from out of town or are a Santa Barbara native, there is plenty to do in the convention center and surrounding city. Maybe you are there to cosplay, attend panels, or meet your favorite comic book creator. You might even be a guest yourself, be it a well-known illustrator or an easily overlooked character actor.

If conventions aren't your thing, there are plenty of other activities around town, whether you want to run one of the food trucks down by the pier or take advantage of the tourists with expensive tchotchkes. You could use the weekend to pick up extra hours at your comfortable pharmaceutical company job. If inclined, you can help out convention security as one of Santa Barbara's finest, the totally and completely 100% competent officers of the SBPD who do not at all whatsoever rely on a psychic to help solve a staggering percentage of crimes.

There's more to Santa Barbara than just surf and sun, though. You might be more drawn to the seedy underbelly of the city and make your living smuggling drugs, stealing cars, and robbing department stores. In which case, the convention could prove to be a convenient cover for your clandestine operations!

No matter what, you can look forward to a relaxing weekend of beautiful beaches, fun cosplay opportunities, and delicious street food. All you have to do is ignore Santa Barbara's disturbingly high murder rate.

Easier said than done, though, since day two will bring about, you guessed it - death!

When a fanmade, life-sized statue of the coolest new superhero, the Blue Revenger, falls and kills one of the convention's headlining guests, some assume it's an accident while others suspect something far more sinister. Where do you stand? Are you one of the police officers on the case, or would you rather offer your assistance as a consultant? Will you ignore the yellow tape and enjoy your weekend? Or are you just going to take advantage of the chaos to help nudge the murder rate up a tad on your own?

Are you destined to be the next victim, or will you be one who survives... under Santa Barbara skies?

Comments

Dale Barbara | Actor

[theenforcer]

Dale Barbara is not a major superstar but he definitely has a following. He's done several series, some more than a season, wherein he plays the kind of strong jawed soldier that takes chances and risks his life and disobeys his command to save others.

Then he had done a three season series of what hadn't been a full hit at the time, but had become a cult favorite given it gave a new story twist to a long time horror franchise. Maybe he wasn't a major superstar, but he's recognized. He's liked. He has a solid 100k on Instagram! Sure a lot of that is because he has a tendency to post shirtless pictures of himself in low slung jeans and often wet from some body of water wherever he is, but the numbers are real!

Which is why Santa Barbara is a huge thrill for him. Stunning beaches. A good con. And it tended to be exciting.

So throws himself into it. Sitting in on several panels, putting in a lot of hours at his booth and giving every fan a lot of time, talking with them about their favorite role he's done and signing tons of pictures. He's even willing to take selfies, even when his handler gives him hell for it.

On Saturday he even comes in the BDUs and skin tight tee he wore in one of his shoes, combat boots and all, and maybe there's a Magic Mike moment or two.

He's even there when the accident happens. Holy shit, but they really should be more careful with things.

SO when, on Sunday, he finds himself pushed down a flight of stairs? He knows it's no accident, and his leg is definitely broken. At least he's not dead though, right?

(ooc Open to just about any scenario throughout the event, up to and including someone trying to kill him. He'll still be around for the end of events on Sunday after getting his cast. He wants the sympathy! And cute girls signing his cast!

Can write starters or will go along!)

after he breaks his leg

[thereporter]

It was becoming a little hard to keep up with everything going on at the con, and Julia wasn't exactly in a position to get as much information out of the investigation as she would have been a year ago. The SBPD had its own political agenda run, in turn, by the personal agendas of its members, and it wasn't free of sin. Julia knew for a fact she wasn't the first person to nudge an investigation in a direction it should have naturally gone. She was just one that got caught.

Even though she knew there were probably as many officers who quietly supported what she did than didn't, her being around still didn't make her popular. She had help sticking it out - growing up in a town where your dad played golf with the police commissioner could be a career saver. And when mixed with a good police scandal out of San Fransico that kept her off CNN's landing page was just enough to get her through it with a slap on the wrist and a demotion. Outside of the sneers from the most hard-nosed justice jockeys of the precinct, things went back to normal pretty quickly.

Of course, that didn't mean even her friends were floating her any information about the investigation that wasn't already within her purview. They might not have disagreed with her choices, but they weren't putting their ass on the line to sate her curiosity, either.

Still, she isn't entirely unsurprised when she pops into one of the con suites to check in with the staff (and grab a donut, I mean, really, she's not trying to be a stereotype here, but donuts) and finds a man with his casted leg propped up on a stool. She nabs the first glazed she sees and saunters over to him, giving him a proper look-over.

"Looks new," she says, gesturing to his leg with a raise of her chin before biting into the donut.

[theenforcer]

It's still all kind of crazy to Barbie. Sure, he could accept that the truth is that he fell, just tripped at the top of stairs, and the fall is nothing more than that. Except he knows what he felt, he felt the hands just above his hips, hitting him hard so he can't regain his balance. He knows one of the bruises at the smell of his back is not from the fall but from someone pushing him. And he knows what he's hearing sitting there.

The Blue Revenger statue crashing down on someone really doesn't feel like an accident. Some are whispering there's been more deaths than just that one as well. Not to mention there suddenly seems to be a lot more cops around, and hanging around. Would they do that if it is just an accident?

Barbie's beginning to think he's damn lucky to just have a mild concussion, a broken leg, and enough bruises to make him look like a Dalmatian.

Glancing up, he pauses as he looks Julia over before shifting, moving to sit up more fully in the chair without making a face at the pain that shoots through his leg.

"Brand new but not keeping me from the con," he says, reaching over to the table beside him and picking up a Sharpie. "Want to sign it for me? I figure everyone's always asking for mine, it's kind of fitting I start asking others."

[thereporter]

She chews thoughtfully, albeit a little confused. Julia is pretty sure no one has asked her to sign a cast since middle school.

"Seriously? You don't even know me." That is some dedication, though, showing up to a convention even after having your leg broken. She can't really fault him that.

"And I have no idea who you are. You one of the guests?"