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schmericaI wrote my whole con report up on the train, and I'm trying to type it up as fast as I can now that I'm (finally!) home. Hopefully my bizarre sleep-deprived ramblings actually make sense now that I'm typing them up.
Wednesday and Thursday
I mentioned the early bits some in my loast entry, but yeah. I left Evergreen before nine am on Wednesday morning, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dine and thessaliad and I were on I-5 south by three p.m. The down was very very long, but there was enough giddiness and excitement that it actually seemed to go fairly quickly. We stopped a lot to eat and rest, so it was about 24 hours later when we actually arrived at the hotel.
Livia (liviapenn) pounced on me and freaked me out while we were still unpacking the trunk, and after I took a shower and got a little more civilized I went off with her to explore. Brief lunch at a mexican joint, then camping out in the lobby with all of her many action figures and comic books. There were a whole lot of people around at this point, but all the nametags weren't out yet and I was still feeling pretty shy, so I mainly went between listening to Livia's pimping (something that would quickly become one of the weekend's recurrent themes) and listening to other people's conversations around me -- I think gblvr, arallara, smallbeer and a lot of other people whose names I didn't catch were all around at least a little.
Livia and I ended up going off to dinner in the hotel restaurant with Jintian (hesychasm), Kest (kestrelsan), and someone whose name I didn't manage to catch. The food is way overpriced, but the conversation was way interesting -- although all I actually remember about it now is Alan Rickman and really old kerfuffle gossip.
At some point Thursday evening I know we ended up in the con lounge, where Livia pimped some more and I settled in for this cool long discussion with Jintian about schools, poly- and mono-fannishness, Everwood, and all sorts of stuff.
There was probably more to Thursday, but I wasn't taking any notes and thus have lost everything else.
Friday
Friday mornings the panels started; first on the list was the one on kinks and squicks, which turned out to be a really nice beginning, as it was fun, loud and rowdy. Right after that I attended The Tao of Benton Fraser. That was a totally different experience, of course, all intimate and intense, instead. It was actually one of my very favorites of the weekend, just because, dude, a room full of smart, cool women discussion every minute detail of one of my adored characters? Count me in.
After that I had lunch with Dine, and went off to wander by myself and try to be social. I foundsabine101 out in the courtyard, and hung with her for a while, which was cool -- although, what the hell did we talk about? Um. There was stuff about Sab's crazy small fandoms made up solely of young Scandinavian girls, and quite a lot of Firefly also, I think. (I'm not sure if I talked to anyone this weekend who didn't get either the "The world needs more Firefly femslash, dammit!" speech or the combo blinding grin/high pitched noises/incoherent babble that came anytime I talked about due South. Many people probably got both, I expect.)
After that was the defending slash panel, which was very very good, and was probably the least of the panels I would have expected to cause a stupid uproar, frankly. [I'm not going to get into the discussion, but the thing about the response to this panel that bug s me basically comes down to the feeling that in order for people to take a few sentences of hastily jotted notes about an in-depth, hour long discussion featuring several dozen loud, opinionated, intelligent women and come to certain conclusions -- I just don't see how you can get there without having the assumption somewhere, conscious or not, that you're smarter, more logical or rational, or better than the others. And yeah, that rubs me the wrong way.]
I can't remember what I did between Defending Slash and Heroes and Sidekicks at all. Heroes and Sidekicks had some interesting points, but didn't really grab me -- the discussion was a different place than I thought it was going to go, and yeah, I don't know, it just wasn't quite my thing. Right after that waselke_tanzer's recs sites and archives panels, which went completely over my head. It was entertaining anyway, though. I had a neat chat with justacat afterwards while I wandered up to check out the con suite.
By the time I grabbed a burrito and checked my email and livejournal on Dine's computer, it was almost eight, so I headed down to the dS party. I mostly sat on the floor and watched songvids. (Apparently a very high proportion of dS vids are vids of pain. Particularly those with F/V flavoring.) I did get to meetshrift and nestra, and probably scared shrift a little with my level of excitement over the story she was discussing writing.
After the party I met up with Livia for the Escapade party in the lounge, and we began the long task of corrupting me properly. First up was the liquor, as she bought me something sour and green, and then we went up to the top floor and found where the gay porn dvds were playing. Those enthralled us for, uh, quite a while. Eventually we did head down back to the lounge, and Livia went off to the hot tub while I watched more vids on the giant huge TV. Sheila (mimesere), zvi (witchqueen), Cassandra (geekturnedvamp), and silviakundera were sitting in the lobby planning out the panel on minorities, and I joined them for a while. I'm not sure exactly when the focus shifted from the panel over to mocking every single show and fandom possible, but dude. Those girls (and LaT, too, who showed up later) are seriously fucking funny. I may have hurt myself.
Saturday
Saturday I went to a lot of panels, all of which I really enjoyed: "When Minorities Attack!" with Sheila andpierydys; "Slashing the Slashers" with Cassandra and Jintian; "RPS and Ethics" (which was eighty times more interesting than I thought it would be, given the discussions on the topic I've seen on lj and various mailing lists) with Dale (viggorlijah), amatia and I think zeldachilds?; the age of consent panel with Amatia and Melle and finally "Beyond the Envelople" with Dale and Melle. At some point during the day I actually started speaking up once in a while, which I felt kind of proud of (although I couldn't say how much of a contribution any of my comments were.)
Between panels I spent a bucnh of time with Livia in the con suite looking at zines and meeting people -- I think we got involved in some long discussion with Amatia andrsadelle and I don't know who else, and Amatia made me sign her con book. After the panels, Livia and I were about to go out to dinner when we were pounced by Cassandra so Livia could go pimp Justice League and Teen Titans in the lounge. I watched yet more vids on the giant tv for a while, and got to talk with katallison, sanj, cereta, and kassrachel.
The vid show was Saturday night, too, and I really, really enjoyed it. Many of the vids I either didn't have enough context to appreciate or just didn't *get*, but liked on the visual level anyway. But I adored both Smallville vids, and the due South one.laurashapiro's Farscape vid was amazing, and the Angel vid to "My West Hollywood Lifestyle" was very, very funny.
After the vids, I put my hair up and put on a sparkly dress, and headed to the Order of Glitter party with Livia. It totally rocked. It was loud and crowded and Livia was still feeding me liquor (which I have determined has the main effects of making me sleepy and making my face very hot), so it's all run together quite a bit. I know I remember conversations with Sheila, LaT,jennyo, zvi, Nestra, shrift, Cassandra, Silvia, and khaleesian, in topics ranging from Sparrington to Angel to Gollum the drama queen to personal Mary Sue fantasies. There was watching of the adorable Charlie Brown "Hey Ya" vid.
I also very clearly remember talking with Livia and Khaleesian and expanding on differences I'd noticed between dS and SV fandoms so far, beyond the lack of Frasercest. I haven't noticed some of the major SV badfic genres yet, for example -- I wouldn't be surprised if there was "finding out the other guy is secretly a slasher" stories, but I haven't run across any. Plus, no bizarre alien genitalia! (I just like an excuse to use the phrase "prehensile penis", I think.) Of course, this inspired Livia to make up a story in graphic detail just for me. I wish she had taken notes so she could tell it again for all of you, but it culminated in the phrase "taste like maple syrup", and I laughed hard enough that I nearly fell off the bed.
Sunday
I slept through the special breakfast on Sunday, but I got up to catch the tail end of the art show, and then the vid review (mm, intelligent critique). The panels on people's outness as slashers and on tiny fandoms were both fairly interesting. For lunch, I somehow attached myself to Sheila, LaT, Angela and Silvia, and we hiked a ways in the rain down to some restaurant, disturbing traffic and almost getting run over several times. LaT and I played the old-school SV bitch game (always fun!). Over lunch the talk drifted over to the fuckedupness of the TV industry, Joss Whedon, whether vids and fic had a responsibility to work free of deep familiarity with source material, and, of course, Sparrington. Dude, the power of Sheila's and LaT's pimping is a thing to behold. I don't see the pairing at all, and I'm now awaiting links. Man.
I hung out at the dead dog party for a bit, which was lovely, as I got to chat with_aerye_, Kat Allison, Dine, and someone whose name I didn't manage to catch. I'm mostly remembering that conversation now for the discussion of the Canadian-American War, and for when the_star_fish came in and told us there was a sign saying "Joe Dick coffee", and she wasn't sure if it meant it was really really strong, or that someone had pissed in it. After the party I mostly spent the evening vegging out, watching the SAG awards in the room and then one or two episodes of Ultraviolet in the lounge.
(The other item of note for Sunday, of course, is that I spent the entire day in a shirt with a missing button. Because a) I didn't bring that much clothing with me and b) if you're going to have occasional flashes of your bra and tummy, what more appropriate place, right?)
Wrap-up
Everybody was mostly gone by the time we left Monday morning, but I did get a chance to say goodbye to Cassandra, which was nice. (And you know, after meeting her, I'm even more bummed the hetcest panel didn't make it onto the schedule. It would have been fascinating to get to talk River/Simon with her.)
Dine, Thessaliad and I zipped home really amazing quickly -- we left the hotel around eleven am, and were in Portland by 4.30 am. I slept for long portions of the trip, and spent most of my time awake either thinking about the con or listening to the music playing and making really really retarded discoveries. You may not know this, for example, but "Like a Prayer" is totally a Clark/Lex song. I have too much shame to share with you the other discovery, but it involved a Backstreet Boys song and a fannish character who, um, is really, really inappropiate for the Backstreet Boys. Also, Dine gave me shiny dS pictures, which made me all sorts of happy.
I crashed on Thessaliad's spare bed for a few hours, and then we had lunch at the train station with Livia, and Livia lent me her copy of Hard Core Logo and the Ray Kowalski episodes of due South (squeeee!). And then they sent me off, and now I am home.
I can't believe it's over, man. I'm already plotting out how many bank I'll need to rob or babies to kidnap in order to manage to get back for next year, because, wow. I can't imagine not doing this again.
General random notes:
--There are few things cuter than mutual fangirling. Hee.
-- I apparently served a valuable function at the con by being so young, because every time it came up, it seemed to make the people around get happy and go "Whee! Somebody younger than me!"
--I already mentioned how heads over heels I am for due South at the moment, but dude. I'm kinda in love with the fandom, too. I mean, I was already shocked by the generosity and niceness and welcoming of the place, but all of that has only increased by getting to meet fans, who are apparently required by law to be smart and interesting and cool. I have a crush on the entire community.
--There were other people I met! I remember at least getting to greet or hug or say hi toastolat, Elke, Mairead/Aristide, and Laura Shapiro, which was nice, and there were a lot of other people who I only just barely saw or came across (or didn't at all, actually). Which is another reason to come back, I suppose.
And, wow. I think I need food now.
Wednesday and Thursday
I mentioned the early bits some in my loast entry, but yeah. I left Evergreen before nine am on Wednesday morning, and
dine and thessaliad and I were on I-5 south by three p.m. The down was very very long, but there was enough giddiness and excitement that it actually seemed to go fairly quickly. We stopped a lot to eat and rest, so it was about 24 hours later when we actually arrived at the hotel.Livia (
liviapenn) pounced on me and freaked me out while we were still unpacking the trunk, and after I took a shower and got a little more civilized I went off with her to explore. Brief lunch at a mexican joint, then camping out in the lobby with all of her many action figures and comic books. There were a whole lot of people around at this point, but all the nametags weren't out yet and I was still feeling pretty shy, so I mainly went between listening to Livia's pimping (something that would quickly become one of the weekend's recurrent themes) and listening to other people's conversations around me -- I think gblvr, arallara, smallbeer and a lot of other people whose names I didn't catch were all around at least a little.Livia and I ended up going off to dinner in the hotel restaurant with Jintian (
hesychasm), Kest (kestrelsan), and someone whose name I didn't manage to catch. The food is way overpriced, but the conversation was way interesting -- although all I actually remember about it now is Alan Rickman and really old kerfuffle gossip.At some point Thursday evening I know we ended up in the con lounge, where Livia pimped some more and I settled in for this cool long discussion with Jintian about schools, poly- and mono-fannishness, Everwood, and all sorts of stuff.
There was probably more to Thursday, but I wasn't taking any notes and thus have lost everything else.
Friday
Friday mornings the panels started; first on the list was the one on kinks and squicks, which turned out to be a really nice beginning, as it was fun, loud and rowdy. Right after that I attended The Tao of Benton Fraser. That was a totally different experience, of course, all intimate and intense, instead. It was actually one of my very favorites of the weekend, just because, dude, a room full of smart, cool women discussion every minute detail of one of my adored characters? Count me in.
After that I had lunch with Dine, and went off to wander by myself and try to be social. I found
sabine101 out in the courtyard, and hung with her for a while, which was cool -- although, what the hell did we talk about? Um. There was stuff about Sab's crazy small fandoms made up solely of young Scandinavian girls, and quite a lot of Firefly also, I think. (I'm not sure if I talked to anyone this weekend who didn't get either the "The world needs more Firefly femslash, dammit!" speech or the combo blinding grin/high pitched noises/incoherent babble that came anytime I talked about due South. Many people probably got both, I expect.)After that was the defending slash panel, which was very very good, and was probably the least of the panels I would have expected to cause a stupid uproar, frankly. [I'm not going to get into the discussion, but the thing about the response to this panel that bug s me basically comes down to the feeling that in order for people to take a few sentences of hastily jotted notes about an in-depth, hour long discussion featuring several dozen loud, opinionated, intelligent women and come to certain conclusions -- I just don't see how you can get there without having the assumption somewhere, conscious or not, that you're smarter, more logical or rational, or better than the others. And yeah, that rubs me the wrong way.]
I can't remember what I did between Defending Slash and Heroes and Sidekicks at all. Heroes and Sidekicks had some interesting points, but didn't really grab me -- the discussion was a different place than I thought it was going to go, and yeah, I don't know, it just wasn't quite my thing. Right after that was
elke_tanzer's recs sites and archives panels, which went completely over my head. It was entertaining anyway, though. I had a neat chat with justacat afterwards while I wandered up to check out the con suite.By the time I grabbed a burrito and checked my email and livejournal on Dine's computer, it was almost eight, so I headed down to the dS party. I mostly sat on the floor and watched songvids. (Apparently a very high proportion of dS vids are vids of pain. Particularly those with F/V flavoring.) I did get to meet
shrift and nestra, and probably scared shrift a little with my level of excitement over the story she was discussing writing.After the party I met up with Livia for the Escapade party in the lounge, and we began the long task of corrupting me properly. First up was the liquor, as she bought me something sour and green, and then we went up to the top floor and found where the gay porn dvds were playing. Those enthralled us for, uh, quite a while. Eventually we did head down back to the lounge, and Livia went off to the hot tub while I watched more vids on the giant huge TV. Sheila (
mimesere), zvi (witchqueen), Cassandra (geekturnedvamp), and silviakundera were sitting in the lobby planning out the panel on minorities, and I joined them for a while. I'm not sure exactly when the focus shifted from the panel over to mocking every single show and fandom possible, but dude. Those girls (and LaT, too, who showed up later) are seriously fucking funny. I may have hurt myself.Saturday
Saturday I went to a lot of panels, all of which I really enjoyed: "When Minorities Attack!" with Sheila and
pierydys; "Slashing the Slashers" with Cassandra and Jintian; "RPS and Ethics" (which was eighty times more interesting than I thought it would be, given the discussions on the topic I've seen on lj and various mailing lists) with Dale (viggorlijah), amatia and I think zeldachilds?; the age of consent panel with Amatia and Melle and finally "Beyond the Envelople" with Dale and Melle. At some point during the day I actually started speaking up once in a while, which I felt kind of proud of (although I couldn't say how much of a contribution any of my comments were.)Between panels I spent a bucnh of time with Livia in the con suite looking at zines and meeting people -- I think we got involved in some long discussion with Amatia and
rsadelle and I don't know who else, and Amatia made me sign her con book. After the panels, Livia and I were about to go out to dinner when we were pounced by Cassandra so Livia could go pimp Justice League and Teen Titans in the lounge. I watched yet more vids on the giant tv for a while, and got to talk with katallison, sanj, cereta, and kassrachel.The vid show was Saturday night, too, and I really, really enjoyed it. Many of the vids I either didn't have enough context to appreciate or just didn't *get*, but liked on the visual level anyway. But I adored both Smallville vids, and the due South one.
laurashapiro's Farscape vid was amazing, and the Angel vid to "My West Hollywood Lifestyle" was very, very funny.After the vids, I put my hair up and put on a sparkly dress, and headed to the Order of Glitter party with Livia. It totally rocked. It was loud and crowded and Livia was still feeding me liquor (which I have determined has the main effects of making me sleepy and making my face very hot), so it's all run together quite a bit. I know I remember conversations with Sheila, LaT,
jennyo, zvi, Nestra, shrift, Cassandra, Silvia, and khaleesian, in topics ranging from Sparrington to Angel to Gollum the drama queen to personal Mary Sue fantasies. There was watching of the adorable Charlie Brown "Hey Ya" vid. I also very clearly remember talking with Livia and Khaleesian and expanding on differences I'd noticed between dS and SV fandoms so far, beyond the lack of Frasercest. I haven't noticed some of the major SV badfic genres yet, for example -- I wouldn't be surprised if there was "finding out the other guy is secretly a slasher" stories, but I haven't run across any. Plus, no bizarre alien genitalia! (I just like an excuse to use the phrase "prehensile penis", I think.) Of course, this inspired Livia to make up a story in graphic detail just for me. I wish she had taken notes so she could tell it again for all of you, but it culminated in the phrase "taste like maple syrup", and I laughed hard enough that I nearly fell off the bed.
Sunday
I slept through the special breakfast on Sunday, but I got up to catch the tail end of the art show, and then the vid review (mm, intelligent critique). The panels on people's outness as slashers and on tiny fandoms were both fairly interesting. For lunch, I somehow attached myself to Sheila, LaT, Angela and Silvia, and we hiked a ways in the rain down to some restaurant, disturbing traffic and almost getting run over several times. LaT and I played the old-school SV bitch game (always fun!). Over lunch the talk drifted over to the fuckedupness of the TV industry, Joss Whedon, whether vids and fic had a responsibility to work free of deep familiarity with source material, and, of course, Sparrington. Dude, the power of Sheila's and LaT's pimping is a thing to behold. I don't see the pairing at all, and I'm now awaiting links. Man.
I hung out at the dead dog party for a bit, which was lovely, as I got to chat with
_aerye_, Kat Allison, Dine, and someone whose name I didn't manage to catch. I'm mostly remembering that conversation now for the discussion of the Canadian-American War, and for when the_star_fish came in and told us there was a sign saying "Joe Dick coffee", and she wasn't sure if it meant it was really really strong, or that someone had pissed in it. After the party I mostly spent the evening vegging out, watching the SAG awards in the room and then one or two episodes of Ultraviolet in the lounge.(The other item of note for Sunday, of course, is that I spent the entire day in a shirt with a missing button. Because a) I didn't bring that much clothing with me and b) if you're going to have occasional flashes of your bra and tummy, what more appropriate place, right?)
Wrap-up
Everybody was mostly gone by the time we left Monday morning, but I did get a chance to say goodbye to Cassandra, which was nice. (And you know, after meeting her, I'm even more bummed the hetcest panel didn't make it onto the schedule. It would have been fascinating to get to talk River/Simon with her.)
Dine, Thessaliad and I zipped home really amazing quickly -- we left the hotel around eleven am, and were in Portland by 4.30 am. I slept for long portions of the trip, and spent most of my time awake either thinking about the con or listening to the music playing and making really really retarded discoveries. You may not know this, for example, but "Like a Prayer" is totally a Clark/Lex song. I have too much shame to share with you the other discovery, but it involved a Backstreet Boys song and a fannish character who, um, is really, really inappropiate for the Backstreet Boys. Also, Dine gave me shiny dS pictures, which made me all sorts of happy.
I crashed on Thessaliad's spare bed for a few hours, and then we had lunch at the train station with Livia, and Livia lent me her copy of Hard Core Logo and the Ray Kowalski episodes of due South (squeeee!). And then they sent me off, and now I am home.
I can't believe it's over, man. I'm already plotting out how many bank I'll need to rob or babies to kidnap in order to manage to get back for next year, because, wow. I can't imagine not doing this again.
General random notes:
--There are few things cuter than mutual fangirling. Hee.
-- I apparently served a valuable function at the con by being so young, because every time it came up, it seemed to make the people around get happy and go "Whee! Somebody younger than me!"
--I already mentioned how heads over heels I am for due South at the moment, but dude. I'm kinda in love with the fandom, too. I mean, I was already shocked by the generosity and niceness and welcoming of the place, but all of that has only increased by getting to meet fans, who are apparently required by law to be smart and interesting and cool. I have a crush on the entire community.
--There were other people I met! I remember at least getting to greet or hug or say hi to
astolat, Elke, Mairead/Aristide, and Laura Shapiro, which was nice, and there were a lot of other people who I only just barely saw or came across (or didn't at all, actually). Which is another reason to come back, I suppose.And, wow. I think I need food now.
