The Witching Hour: Yet Another Recap.
Okay, first of all, I have to do a "who I saw" list for my own memories. There are (::counts::) 51 52 people I remember spending time with, although my definition of "spending time with" ranges from "waved name tags at each other in a doorway" (furiosity) to "shared a hotel suite with" (bowdlerized, idlerat, lolaraincoat, and mulberry_fields)
The people I met for the first time
amanuensis1, arsenicjade, cluegirl, ellid, goseaward, femmequixotic, furiosity, fuschia, gatewaygirl, geoviki, gmth, heidi8, jjtaylor, julian_black, kaiz, kitsune13, lydialovestruck, lurvesnape, merrycontrary, nimori, reddwarfer, roz_mcclure, shaggirl, spiderine, stinaleigh, thetreacletart, venivincere, violet_quill, ze_dragon
The people I already knew, some for very many years
amelia_eve, bksncleverness, bowdlerized, cordelia_v, cursive, dementordelta, ellen_fremedon, idlerat, isiscolo, lolaraincoat, luthien, marksykins, meri_oddities, mulberry_fields, neotoma, serpentjody, smaragdgrun, snapetoy, sociofemme, themostepotente, tiranog, theodosia, titti
I'm not usually much into public love fests. I can't remember ever throwing my name into the ring during those "post your name and people will love you anonymously" threads (and I tend not to comment in those threads either, even though I really *do* love a lot of people on my f'list), but man, what a bunch of lovely people at TWH! Seriously...there was nobody I didn't like, and so many people I wanted to spend more time with. Like...a lot more time. And possibly move in with. And then marry.
(And for anyone I forgot to mention? Please tell me!!)
The thing about having all those wonderful people in one place was that it made it really difficult to (a) spend as much time with anyone as I would have liked to, or (b) shame myself utterly by turning into a complete fangirl (which is probably a good thing, now that I think about it)
Fangirling 101
One thing I've discovered is that there's very little difference between the range of fan responses to celebrities at actor/writer cons and the range of fan responses to other fans at a con like TWH.
There were, of course, a variety of celebrities at this symposium. Chris Rankin (Percy) was around for a few days - although I never did see him, in part because he was staying at the Sheraton in Danvers, and I was in Salem - and by all reports, he had his share of stalkers admirers. There were also quite a lot of BNFW's (Big Name Fantasy Writers) like Charles de Lint and Patricia McKillip and Tamora Pierce - and no, I never saw any of them either, although quite a few of my friends spent time with them. And of course, there was Henry Jenkins, who was the most well known of the celebrity academics (and yes, Jenkins I spent time with before his talk, so yay!).
But there was also a hell of a lot of squealing when fans met other fans for the first time. I know that in my case, there were so many people I'd been looking forward to meeting, and even with the ones I already had a longish relationship with online (e.g,, kaiz or gmth or amanuensis1 or thetreacletart), there was a little shivery moment when I saw their name tags. Because, you know, it's not about thinking someone's better than me (I mean, even with celebrities, I've never felt that), but rather, it's about that moment when someone whose talent I admire and whose work (fiction/art/ideas) has given me a great deal of pleasure becomes entirely real to me for the first time (...which also happened, by the way when I met luthien, snapetoy, and cursive prior to TWH).
And the thing was that everybody was so nice! femmequixotic, in particular, was totally welcoming and lovely (the HP_Dungeons people generally were all really great), and nimori did badge art for me (Snape/Kingsley! I need a scanner!), and...okay, I really can't go through the whole list, but I love everybody!
::takes a Valium::
And speaking of fangirling, I have to mention somebody I never even spoke to, but who was silently fangirled (and not-so silently fangirled) by half the people at TWH, - and who would probably be totally embarrassed by this mention, which is one of the reasons this is all behind an lj cut: Professor S (logospilgrim)
Picture, if you will, a slight, pale, vaguely androgynous woman with shoulder length black hair (slicked for the occasion) and a black priest's cassock (with many buttons). Very evocative of Severus Snape in appearance, but not at all in demeanor. No anger, no bitterness...just this odd sense of peace emanating from her, wherever she went (and now that I've taken a look at her journal, I see that there's that same sort of quietness and restfulness in her writing) That's so unlike most of the people I know that when I see someone like that, they often feel fake (especially when combined with full-time costuming), but somehow I didn't get that fake vibe from her - just a really sincere spirituality and goodness and...
Heh. Apparently I've been crushing on her and didn't even know it. Move over, snapetoy! *g*
Oh, and I suppose I should mention to those of you who didn't attend TWH that, contrary to what you may have been led to believe, there was more than one Harry Potter convention going on in Salem (and Danvers) this past weekend.
Multiple Fannish Dimensions
The con I attended was a combination of a fandom convention and a professional academic conference. Not everybody I spent time with was particularly interested in the scholarly papers, but there was still a shared sensibility about how fandom is defined and a similar sharing of the way we all experience fandom (just the fact that all the people I mentioned have LJ's means that we all travel in each other's territories, even if our specific interests vary).
But this wasn't the only con. There seemed to be quite a lot of people who are fans of the books or the movies (or both), but who didn't appear to have any knowledge of fandom as *I* know it. They hadn't been exposed to the theories which have already been talked to death on LJ and on mailing lists (although quite a lot of them seem to have come up with the same theories independently of organized fandom). They hadn't heard of LiveJournal. They'd never read fanfiction. They didn't know what a drabble was (okay...that's probably true for half of fandom, as well *g*). They were there for...something else. The Ball? The Quidditch championships? The scavenger hunt?
And then there were the folks who really, really cared about the whole House Cup thing. See...part of the registration process for TWH involved taking a Sorting Quiz, but one which seemed characterized chiefly by the utter randomness of the questions and answers. When we arrived at the con, we signed in, and were given a name tag on a colored string - and that string let you know what House you were in (let me just note here that the vast majority of the people who usually think they're Slytherins - and that included a lot of the HP Dungeons crowd - ended up being sorted into Hufflepuff, much to my Ravenclawish amusement). So, all weekend, the various things you did (playing quidditch, volunteering for the con, being generally helpful or amusing or annoying) could win - or lose - points for your House. Almost nobody in my group cared at all about this aspect of the convention, but a lot of people did...and I have to admit that at the leaving brunch (which, yes...we ended up leaving Salem and going over to the Sheraton for the first time), it was kind of fun to watch the build-up to Hufflepuff winning the cup (...although, talk about a non-canonical result *g*)
Sounds like there wasn't any drama, doesn't it? Really, there wasn't...or at least not in my immediate vicinity.
Drama
Okay, so I heard rumors that there was a little dust-up in the Harry/Hermione "Room of Requirement" (and if anyone has any details, I'd be interested in learning what happened)[ETA: See annearchy's reply on page two about the alleged conflict being nothing more than 20 or so fen having way too much fun together], and there was an external kerfuffle prompted by Snapetoy posting a picture of some of the folks at the pornish_pixies get together on Thursday night (short version: a reader of Pornish Pixies took one look at the photo in the community and said something to the effect of "OMG, I've been reading fanfic since I was in 9th grade and I'm 17 now (note: 17 is too young to even be officially *reading* pornish pixies), and I had no idea they were so old!" - followed by a comment in her own LJ which added "...so old and fat and gross and ewww!" which, as you can imagine, didn't exactly thrill most of the members of PP, even the ones who don't actually fall into any of those categories).
Meanwhile, I briefly considered starting a new fic writing community for those of us who aren't yet members of Pornish Pixies, but are "old and fat and gross and ewww!" called porkish_pixies, but then I decided it would be way too much work for a joke. :)
Okay, this is getting really long, so I think I'm going to bring it to a close. I'll probably have more to say in a day or two about the panels themselves and various and sundry bits of randomosity, but for now...buh-bye.
The people I met for the first time
amanuensis1, arsenicjade, cluegirl, ellid, goseaward, femmequixotic, furiosity, fuschia, gatewaygirl, geoviki, gmth, heidi8, jjtaylor, julian_black, kaiz, kitsune13, lydialovestruck, lurvesnape, merrycontrary, nimori, reddwarfer, roz_mcclure, shaggirl, spiderine, stinaleigh, thetreacletart, venivincere, violet_quill, ze_dragon
The people I already knew, some for very many years
amelia_eve, bksncleverness, bowdlerized, cordelia_v, cursive, dementordelta, ellen_fremedon, idlerat, isiscolo, lolaraincoat, luthien, marksykins, meri_oddities, mulberry_fields, neotoma, serpentjody, smaragdgrun, snapetoy, sociofemme, themostepotente, tiranog, theodosia, titti
I'm not usually much into public love fests. I can't remember ever throwing my name into the ring during those "post your name and people will love you anonymously" threads (and I tend not to comment in those threads either, even though I really *do* love a lot of people on my f'list), but man, what a bunch of lovely people at TWH! Seriously...there was nobody I didn't like, and so many people I wanted to spend more time with. Like...a lot more time. And possibly move in with. And then marry.
(And for anyone I forgot to mention? Please tell me!!)
The thing about having all those wonderful people in one place was that it made it really difficult to (a) spend as much time with anyone as I would have liked to, or (b) shame myself utterly by turning into a complete fangirl (which is probably a good thing, now that I think about it)
Fangirling 101
One thing I've discovered is that there's very little difference between the range of fan responses to celebrities at actor/writer cons and the range of fan responses to other fans at a con like TWH.
There were, of course, a variety of celebrities at this symposium. Chris Rankin (Percy) was around for a few days - although I never did see him, in part because he was staying at the Sheraton in Danvers, and I was in Salem - and by all reports, he had his share of stalkers admirers. There were also quite a lot of BNFW's (Big Name Fantasy Writers) like Charles de Lint and Patricia McKillip and Tamora Pierce - and no, I never saw any of them either, although quite a few of my friends spent time with them. And of course, there was Henry Jenkins, who was the most well known of the celebrity academics (and yes, Jenkins I spent time with before his talk, so yay!).
But there was also a hell of a lot of squealing when fans met other fans for the first time. I know that in my case, there were so many people I'd been looking forward to meeting, and even with the ones I already had a longish relationship with online (e.g,, kaiz or gmth or amanuensis1 or thetreacletart), there was a little shivery moment when I saw their name tags. Because, you know, it's not about thinking someone's better than me (I mean, even with celebrities, I've never felt that), but rather, it's about that moment when someone whose talent I admire and whose work (fiction/art/ideas) has given me a great deal of pleasure becomes entirely real to me for the first time (...which also happened, by the way when I met luthien, snapetoy, and cursive prior to TWH).
And the thing was that everybody was so nice! femmequixotic, in particular, was totally welcoming and lovely (the HP_Dungeons people generally were all really great), and nimori did badge art for me (Snape/Kingsley! I need a scanner!), and...okay, I really can't go through the whole list, but I love everybody!
::takes a Valium::
And speaking of fangirling, I have to mention somebody I never even spoke to, but who was silently fangirled (and not-so silently fangirled) by half the people at TWH, - and who would probably be totally embarrassed by this mention, which is one of the reasons this is all behind an lj cut: Professor S (logospilgrim)
Picture, if you will, a slight, pale, vaguely androgynous woman with shoulder length black hair (slicked for the occasion) and a black priest's cassock (with many buttons). Very evocative of Severus Snape in appearance, but not at all in demeanor. No anger, no bitterness...just this odd sense of peace emanating from her, wherever she went (and now that I've taken a look at her journal, I see that there's that same sort of quietness and restfulness in her writing) That's so unlike most of the people I know that when I see someone like that, they often feel fake (especially when combined with full-time costuming), but somehow I didn't get that fake vibe from her - just a really sincere spirituality and goodness and...
Heh. Apparently I've been crushing on her and didn't even know it. Move over, snapetoy! *g*
Oh, and I suppose I should mention to those of you who didn't attend TWH that, contrary to what you may have been led to believe, there was more than one Harry Potter convention going on in Salem (and Danvers) this past weekend.
Multiple Fannish Dimensions
The con I attended was a combination of a fandom convention and a professional academic conference. Not everybody I spent time with was particularly interested in the scholarly papers, but there was still a shared sensibility about how fandom is defined and a similar sharing of the way we all experience fandom (just the fact that all the people I mentioned have LJ's means that we all travel in each other's territories, even if our specific interests vary).
But this wasn't the only con. There seemed to be quite a lot of people who are fans of the books or the movies (or both), but who didn't appear to have any knowledge of fandom as *I* know it. They hadn't been exposed to the theories which have already been talked to death on LJ and on mailing lists (although quite a lot of them seem to have come up with the same theories independently of organized fandom). They hadn't heard of LiveJournal. They'd never read fanfiction. They didn't know what a drabble was (okay...that's probably true for half of fandom, as well *g*). They were there for...something else. The Ball? The Quidditch championships? The scavenger hunt?
And then there were the folks who really, really cared about the whole House Cup thing. See...part of the registration process for TWH involved taking a Sorting Quiz, but one which seemed characterized chiefly by the utter randomness of the questions and answers. When we arrived at the con, we signed in, and were given a name tag on a colored string - and that string let you know what House you were in (let me just note here that the vast majority of the people who usually think they're Slytherins - and that included a lot of the HP Dungeons crowd - ended up being sorted into Hufflepuff, much to my Ravenclawish amusement). So, all weekend, the various things you did (playing quidditch, volunteering for the con, being generally helpful or amusing or annoying) could win - or lose - points for your House. Almost nobody in my group cared at all about this aspect of the convention, but a lot of people did...and I have to admit that at the leaving brunch (which, yes...we ended up leaving Salem and going over to the Sheraton for the first time), it was kind of fun to watch the build-up to Hufflepuff winning the cup (...although, talk about a non-canonical result *g*)
Sounds like there wasn't any drama, doesn't it? Really, there wasn't...or at least not in my immediate vicinity.
Drama
Okay, so I heard rumors that there was a little dust-up in the Harry/Hermione "Room of Requirement" (and if anyone has any details, I'd be interested in learning what happened)[ETA: See annearchy's reply on page two about the alleged conflict being nothing more than 20 or so fen having way too much fun together], and there was an external kerfuffle prompted by Snapetoy posting a picture of some of the folks at the pornish_pixies get together on Thursday night (short version: a reader of Pornish Pixies took one look at the photo in the community and said something to the effect of "OMG, I've been reading fanfic since I was in 9th grade and I'm 17 now (note: 17 is too young to even be officially *reading* pornish pixies), and I had no idea they were so old!" - followed by a comment in her own LJ which added "...so old and fat and gross and ewww!" which, as you can imagine, didn't exactly thrill most of the members of PP, even the ones who don't actually fall into any of those categories).
Meanwhile, I briefly considered starting a new fic writing community for those of us who aren't yet members of Pornish Pixies, but are "old and fat and gross and ewww!" called porkish_pixies, but then I decided it would be way too much work for a joke. :)
Okay, this is getting really long, so I think I'm going to bring it to a close. I'll probably have more to say in a day or two about the panels themselves and various and sundry bits of randomosity, but for now...buh-bye.