Entry tags:
wiscon!
Belatedly, a WisCon post! I keep putting it off because it's so damn hot out that my brain doesn't really want to string together articulate sentences; this post may therefore be a bit scattered. But I had a really good time -- it was fun showing Emma around, and getting to see all my WisCon buddies, and rediscovering that this con really is one of my happy places.
Emma and I got in Friday afternoon, too late to stop by the Gathering (which makes me a bit sad, both because I love the clothing exchange and because I saw a bunch of people sporting calligraphy art on their arms that I think was this year's version of Gathering-time face painting, which I would have loved to get). Instead we met up with a bunch of people in the lobby, made a mostly-coordinated effort to get dinner to go from Noodles, and returned to help set up the vid show.
Vid show was predictably delightful -- particular highlights for me were the premier of The Skins, which I have since watched a ridiculous number of times, and the experience of watching Emma's face while she witnessed I Swear for the first time, plus seeing Blow convinced her to give Revenge a try. Alas I didn't end up going to the discussion panel the next day, but it's been nice to see various write-ups of it.
Saturday we had a leisurely morning and attended two afternoon panels, What Makes a Great Transformative Work and Fans Fix SF, both because they were relevant to my interests and because people I liked were on both. The Transformative Works panel ended with a really great round of recs (which![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trinity_clare has posted here). The fix-it panel also had a lot of good stuff going for it, though it got briefly and mildly derailed by a woman who wanted to talk about the problems of slash, which she described in terms of things like the "we're not gay, we just love each other" trope, and generally drew her discourse from older slash fandoms. Post-panel oliviacirce and I talked about how we really need to have a proper designated slash panel, about the evolution of slash as a genre and the shifting of tropes based on decade or specific fandom and the differences between gaying the text vs queering the text and &c &c.
(Between Saturday panels I briefly ended up in Olivia's room, where she gave me celebrity trivia that exploded my mind and gave me a horrible Tom Hiddleston/Chris Hemsworth/Elsa Pataky tinhat. WE HAVE VISUAL AIDS. But I still have a few lines to which I'm clinging desperately, and I-won't-write-RPF is one of them. /ridiculous parenthetical aside)
The party circuit was lovely; I went to the Haiku Earring party, of course, and ended up with a lovely new pair called Landing Beacon. I also stopped by Andrea Hairston's party, where we briefly caught up and she gave me a big hug before running off to ... get more mead, possibly. (It occurs to me that I also got an enthusiastic Debbie hug on Sunday morning at Michelangelo's. All the Guest of Honor snuggles! \o/) We also stopped by the Chicks Dig Comics party, where they had superheroine-themed shots in test tubes; I tried a She-Hulk and drank two Jean Greys, resulting in the really bizarre moment where I kept insisting to people, "I really liked Jean Grey." I also had several really great fanpeople encounters. One was with one of Olivia's New York fanbuddies, whose name I can't now recall (I blame Jean Grey) -- she told me that the first Harry Potter fic she'd ever read was Snapdragon and Prongs, the absurd Lily/James epic I wrote at thirteen. "I would apologize," I told her, "but it was probably awesome a decade ago." So that was delightful! I also had a hilarious encounter with a woman who recognized me in the elevator just as she was getting off at her floor; both of us were half-convinced that we'd never run into each other again, but lo, we did, so I ended up having plenty of party-and-lobbycon hangouts with![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
hatalie. We mostly yelled about Loki, as one does.
Sunday I tragically missedepershand's guerrilla Twilight panel because I made the really awesome mistake of having a mocha with breakfast, and instead of trying to sit still I had a walk with Emma down to the lake. Afternoon panels were It's Hard to Rip a Bodice, which was reasonably interesting (fun fact: kids were totally calling things "groovy" in the 40s) and mostly avoided fail, and Not Another Fucking Race Panel, in which I basically convulsed with joyful laughter for an hour and a half. Sunday afternoon also featured lovelokest coming up to my room, where we demolished a bottle of wine and watched an episode of Highlander for old times' sake.
The dessert and Guest of Honor speeches were lovely; I'm sure I had articulate thoughts at the time, but mostly I just loved the speeches a whole lot, and the desserts were delicious, and everyone's various states of dressing up were really fun to see, and I was very polite and didn't throw water at anyone when Andrea used the phrase "apocalyptic arias" in her speech and everyone at my table automatically glanced over at me. Instead of ending the world, I had some wine from a bottle with a horse on, and Emma had Lord Nelson rum, and we lobbyconned some more and had Avengers opinions with everyone else in the lobby.
This particular con felt really fast, maybe because we didn't turn up until Friday evening, maybe because it was just a really fast year. Anyway I loved it. As usual I did this WisCon as a fanpeople hangout con with occasional breaks for thoughtful meta; as usual seeing all my con buddies was far and away the best part. It was really delightful to be hanging out with up to a dozen people, never exactly the same configuration of people, and always know and want to hang out with at least a handful of them. WisCon buddies, you guys are kind of the best.
Emma and I got in Friday afternoon, too late to stop by the Gathering (which makes me a bit sad, both because I love the clothing exchange and because I saw a bunch of people sporting calligraphy art on their arms that I think was this year's version of Gathering-time face painting, which I would have loved to get). Instead we met up with a bunch of people in the lobby, made a mostly-coordinated effort to get dinner to go from Noodles, and returned to help set up the vid show.
Vid show was predictably delightful -- particular highlights for me were the premier of The Skins, which I have since watched a ridiculous number of times, and the experience of watching Emma's face while she witnessed I Swear for the first time, plus seeing Blow convinced her to give Revenge a try. Alas I didn't end up going to the discussion panel the next day, but it's been nice to see various write-ups of it.
Saturday we had a leisurely morning and attended two afternoon panels, What Makes a Great Transformative Work and Fans Fix SF, both because they were relevant to my interests and because people I liked were on both. The Transformative Works panel ended with a really great round of recs (which
trinity_clare has posted here). The fix-it panel also had a lot of good stuff going for it, though it got briefly and mildly derailed by a woman who wanted to talk about the problems of slash, which she described in terms of things like the "we're not gay, we just love each other" trope, and generally drew her discourse from older slash fandoms. Post-panel oliviacirce and I talked about how we really need to have a proper designated slash panel, about the evolution of slash as a genre and the shifting of tropes based on decade or specific fandom and the differences between gaying the text vs queering the text and &c &c.(Between Saturday panels I briefly ended up in Olivia's room, where she gave me celebrity trivia that exploded my mind and gave me a horrible Tom Hiddleston/Chris Hemsworth/Elsa Pataky tinhat. WE HAVE VISUAL AIDS. But I still have a few lines to which I'm clinging desperately, and I-won't-write-RPF is one of them. /ridiculous parenthetical aside)
The party circuit was lovely; I went to the Haiku Earring party, of course, and ended up with a lovely new pair called Landing Beacon. I also stopped by Andrea Hairston's party, where we briefly caught up and she gave me a big hug before running off to ... get more mead, possibly. (It occurs to me that I also got an enthusiastic Debbie hug on Sunday morning at Michelangelo's. All the Guest of Honor snuggles! \o/) We also stopped by the Chicks Dig Comics party, where they had superheroine-themed shots in test tubes; I tried a She-Hulk and drank two Jean Greys, resulting in the really bizarre moment where I kept insisting to people, "I really liked Jean Grey." I also had several really great fanpeople encounters. One was with one of Olivia's New York fanbuddies, whose name I can't now recall (I blame Jean Grey) -- she told me that the first Harry Potter fic she'd ever read was Snapdragon and Prongs, the absurd Lily/James epic I wrote at thirteen. "I would apologize," I told her, "but it was probably awesome a decade ago." So that was delightful! I also had a hilarious encounter with a woman who recognized me in the elevator just as she was getting off at her floor; both of us were half-convinced that we'd never run into each other again, but lo, we did, so I ended up having plenty of party-and-lobbycon hangouts with
Sunday I tragically missed
epershand's guerrilla Twilight panel because I made the really awesome mistake of having a mocha with breakfast, and instead of trying to sit still I had a walk with Emma down to the lake. Afternoon panels were It's Hard to Rip a Bodice, which was reasonably interesting (fun fact: kids were totally calling things "groovy" in the 40s) and mostly avoided fail, and Not Another Fucking Race Panel, in which I basically convulsed with joyful laughter for an hour and a half. Sunday afternoon also featured lovelokest coming up to my room, where we demolished a bottle of wine and watched an episode of Highlander for old times' sake.The dessert and Guest of Honor speeches were lovely; I'm sure I had articulate thoughts at the time, but mostly I just loved the speeches a whole lot, and the desserts were delicious, and everyone's various states of dressing up were really fun to see, and I was very polite and didn't throw water at anyone when Andrea used the phrase "apocalyptic arias" in her speech and everyone at my table automatically glanced over at me. Instead of ending the world, I had some wine from a bottle with a horse on, and Emma had Lord Nelson rum, and we lobbyconned some more and had Avengers opinions with everyone else in the lobby.
This particular con felt really fast, maybe because we didn't turn up until Friday evening, maybe because it was just a really fast year. Anyway I loved it. As usual I did this WisCon as a fanpeople hangout con with occasional breaks for thoughtful meta; as usual seeing all my con buddies was far and away the best part. It was really delightful to be hanging out with up to a dozen people, never exactly the same configuration of people, and always know and want to hang out with at least a handful of them. WisCon buddies, you guys are kind of the best.