For those who messaged me asking about meeting Darren:

So during Freelance Izzie (criss-crossapplesauce) and I were looking for Darren in the backstage area, hoping to see if he was actually there or not. The second we actually saw him we decided we would stay afterwards to see if we could get a chance to meet him. So we loitered like lurks on the side by the gate/fence that separated us from the backstage area along with 10 or 12 other girls.  We watched idly for about fifteen minutes, snapping the odd total creeper photo of his shirtless, war-painted self like pros.

We were kind of going to give up because we saw that he had looked over at us a few times and hadn’t moved to come over. But then he looked over one more time and started walking in our direction. In my head i was just like, “oh, see he’s going to walk our way and then stop to talk to a stage technician instead. Don’t even get your hopes up.” But he walked right past the stagehand guys and kept coming towards us.

He called over the gate to us and ushered Izzie, Ariel (Izzie’s sister) and me back behind the fence. We all waved shyly and he immediately jumped into the most charismatic greeting. He was smiling like crazy and just said, “I noticed the shades! Those are so awesome; I can’t believe you’re wearing them! I love them!” And we thanked him, smiling calmly back while trying to figure out how to ask politely for pictures.

But he beat us to it. He pulled out his phone and asked us, completely seriously and in the most humble attitude, “I don’t really have much time, but would it be all right with you guys if I got a picture with you? Is that cool?” So he snapped some pictures with us on his mother flipping cellular device and said something about putting them up on his website later. He thanked us for taking a picture with him. That’s right; he thanked us. Then we asked if he had the time to get some pictures on our cameras, to which he quickly obliged and gathered us all in nice and close and friendly-like.

He clearly was in a hurry to get back to his group but another girl begged to get a picture and he only hesitated for a second before replying, “Of course! Get in here!” And so we thanked him and he thanked us again and told us one more time that he loved our glasses and he apologized profusely and genuinely to all of the other girls asking to get pictures with him. With a last friendly wave and a smile, he turned around and jogged back to the people he was originally with.

And the rest of the day we were in a haze of giddiness and sexual frustration. What?