Vividcon report, part one: broad picture
I had a very nice time at the final Vividcon. Talked with many people I don't tend to see the rest of the year-there was a sizeable Boston-area contingent that it would have been fun to spend more time with, but I figured that could happen elsewhen-and met some new ones; attended almost all the panels; successfully co-modded one of them; and watched a lot of vids. Premieres and Club Vivid alone added up to 7 hours.
Perspective
It seems my experience at Vividcon, both this year and overall-I just counted and I went 6 times in 9 years-fall into the middle of the road. At the closing panel, some attendees shared passionate stories about meeting life partners at the con, forging their strongest RL friendships, finding their people, being able to be out and open and themselves. Others who spoke outside the session, or were not there to speak, tried the con and found it unwelcoming or a poor fit or were driven away by the accessibility issues that came to a head in 2010. (That was the first year I attended, and I was not plugged in to anyone or anything enough to even be aware the debates were raging. I still don't fully understand what happened and don't know if that Fanlore link accurately conveys people's points of view. I do know that several friends got burned.)
I had some meaningful conversations at various VVCs that will stay with me for a long time, I saw some incredible vids in an irreproducible group environment, and I have made fan friends and acquaintances there that I have visited or can visit in different parts of the world, but I'm not sure I would say the con has changed my life. Nor has it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps that speaks to my naïveté.
I'm glad to have had the opportunities to go to panels that taught me how to think more deeply about and get better at vidding. I've given and received feedback on vids in a way that has strengthened my confidence and my sense of belonging to a community, alongside experiences at other cons and online through Festivids etc. I cherish that first year when I was able to meet a whole cluster of people I'd come to know and admire through Kink Bingo.
And I will always be grateful that the con allowed me to have one-on-one or small-group lunches with three of the four vidders whose work was the most inspirational and influential for me when I was starting out around 2009 and that I continue to love and study today: obsessive24,
hollywoodgrrl and, as of this weekend,
sol_se. newkidfan would round out the set.
Oddnesses
Well, there were a few odd moments.
At a group dinner one night,
cesperanza mentioned in reference to, I believe, "The Greatest," although it could have been "Starships!"-I couldn't quite follow; the conversation kept rapidly shifting-that 'of course' the vid was going to be 'in every book ever' about, I don't know, vidding history? Or something? The subject matters less than how she said it as though it were obvious, when I hadn't known she'd even seen "The Greatest." It got me thinking about disconnects between what may appear to be community-wide conversations, and on- and offline conversations among influencers, and what any given individual fan, including a fanwork creator, is aware of. In this case: If you don’t share your response on Dreamwidth or AO3 or Twitter or Tumblr or by email or in person, I’m not going to know. If you don’t have a public conversation I can discover, I’m not going to know.
On a more jarring note, two separate panels showed clips from the same years-old vid that used footage from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, without warning us. I wish I'd said something the first time, but I was too busy reconciling "sudden Holocaust" with "being at Vividcon." I heard there is some irony here in that the vid may have been involved in that 2010 debate about including warnings?
Lastly, this is not about the con or even about the person but I had a disorienting moment when someone made an offhand comment about my physical characteristics that marked the second time in the last year or so that a fan friend/acquaintance has implied that being Jewish makes me less white. (I am, boringly, really quite white.) I'm lucky things like this have happened rarely enough that I can still remember most of them, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.
At the same time, I was invited to what has become an annual Shabbat dinner with friends on Friday night before Premieres, so, you know, things balance out.
Progress
Listing everyone I was glad to hang out with always feels like name-dropping, so how about we focus on the new people I met this year? Not only
sol_se but also
starlady, who made Galaxyrise,
aurumcalendula, who's been churning out vids for various cons and 'fests since bursting onto the scene a couple of years ago,
gwenfrankenstien, who made my Gods & Monsters Festivid this year,
bethofalltrades, who's diving into a multi-Trek vidding project, and Kandy Fong, credited with starting this whole fanvidding thing with her Star Trek slide shows in the '70s.
I've been thinking about change over time. It took a while to work up the nerve to go to Vividcon, then to talk to strangers and to the people I was (am) a fan of, then to bring vids of my own. Now I do things like walk up to Kandy Fong in the con suite and strike up a half-hour conversation. A cohort of con staff and attendees knows who I am, and sometimes people even ask me questions about vids. This year I approached someone whose work is a level above mine and asked if she'd be willing to do developmental and editing beta work on a tricky project I'm kicking around. (She said yes!) I'd like to do more of that kind of thing going forward; learning not only from watching vids but also by reaching out to the vidders.
Part two: Panel notes and vid recs.
Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/372750.html, where there are
comments.
Perspective
It seems my experience at Vividcon, both this year and overall-I just counted and I went 6 times in 9 years-fall into the middle of the road. At the closing panel, some attendees shared passionate stories about meeting life partners at the con, forging their strongest RL friendships, finding their people, being able to be out and open and themselves. Others who spoke outside the session, or were not there to speak, tried the con and found it unwelcoming or a poor fit or were driven away by the accessibility issues that came to a head in 2010. (That was the first year I attended, and I was not plugged in to anyone or anything enough to even be aware the debates were raging. I still don't fully understand what happened and don't know if that Fanlore link accurately conveys people's points of view. I do know that several friends got burned.)
I had some meaningful conversations at various VVCs that will stay with me for a long time, I saw some incredible vids in an irreproducible group environment, and I have made fan friends and acquaintances there that I have visited or can visit in different parts of the world, but I'm not sure I would say the con has changed my life. Nor has it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps that speaks to my naïveté.
I'm glad to have had the opportunities to go to panels that taught me how to think more deeply about and get better at vidding. I've given and received feedback on vids in a way that has strengthened my confidence and my sense of belonging to a community, alongside experiences at other cons and online through Festivids etc. I cherish that first year when I was able to meet a whole cluster of people I'd come to know and admire through Kink Bingo.
And I will always be grateful that the con allowed me to have one-on-one or small-group lunches with three of the four vidders whose work was the most inspirational and influential for me when I was starting out around 2009 and that I continue to love and study today: obsessive24,
hollywoodgrrl and, as of this weekend,
sol_se. newkidfan would round out the set.
Oddnesses
Well, there were a few odd moments.
At a group dinner one night,
cesperanza mentioned in reference to, I believe, "The Greatest," although it could have been "Starships!"-I couldn't quite follow; the conversation kept rapidly shifting-that 'of course' the vid was going to be 'in every book ever' about, I don't know, vidding history? Or something? The subject matters less than how she said it as though it were obvious, when I hadn't known she'd even seen "The Greatest." It got me thinking about disconnects between what may appear to be community-wide conversations, and on- and offline conversations among influencers, and what any given individual fan, including a fanwork creator, is aware of. In this case: If you don’t share your response on Dreamwidth or AO3 or Twitter or Tumblr or by email or in person, I’m not going to know. If you don’t have a public conversation I can discover, I’m not going to know.
On a more jarring note, two separate panels showed clips from the same years-old vid that used footage from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, without warning us. I wish I'd said something the first time, but I was too busy reconciling "sudden Holocaust" with "being at Vividcon." I heard there is some irony here in that the vid may have been involved in that 2010 debate about including warnings?
Lastly, this is not about the con or even about the person but I had a disorienting moment when someone made an offhand comment about my physical characteristics that marked the second time in the last year or so that a fan friend/acquaintance has implied that being Jewish makes me less white. (I am, boringly, really quite white.) I'm lucky things like this have happened rarely enough that I can still remember most of them, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.
At the same time, I was invited to what has become an annual Shabbat dinner with friends on Friday night before Premieres, so, you know, things balance out.
Progress
Listing everyone I was glad to hang out with always feels like name-dropping, so how about we focus on the new people I met this year? Not only
sol_se but also
starlady, who made Galaxyrise,
aurumcalendula, who's been churning out vids for various cons and 'fests since bursting onto the scene a couple of years ago,
gwenfrankenstien, who made my Gods & Monsters Festivid this year,
bethofalltrades, who's diving into a multi-Trek vidding project, and Kandy Fong, credited with starting this whole fanvidding thing with her Star Trek slide shows in the '70s.
I've been thinking about change over time. It took a while to work up the nerve to go to Vividcon, then to talk to strangers and to the people I was (am) a fan of, then to bring vids of my own. Now I do things like walk up to Kandy Fong in the con suite and strike up a half-hour conversation. A cohort of con staff and attendees knows who I am, and sometimes people even ask me questions about vids. This year I approached someone whose work is a level above mine and asked if she'd be willing to do developmental and editing beta work on a tricky project I'm kicking around. (She said yes!) I'd like to do more of that kind of thing going forward; learning not only from watching vids but also by reaching out to the vidders.
Part two: Panel notes and vid recs.
Originally posted at https://bironic.dreamwidth.org/372750.html, where there are
comments.