This is not a con report.
I'm beginning to come down from my WisCon high. I definitely had more of a lobby con than a going to panels con, but it was absolutely the weekend I needed to have.
Thing one. Mary Anne Mohanraj's GOH speech is one of the best speeches I've heard in the last couple years. I can't wait until she posts the text, because I want to re-read it and spend more time thinking about it. Among other things, I have a brand new respect for Frodo as a hero in the context of impostor syndrome. I am starting to get a good set of reminder resources for when my anxiety and impostor syndrome get out of control, and I am definitely adding this speech to my arsenal. Edited to add: link to the speech oh em geee.
Thing two. I find it fascinating that, especially on Friday, the theme of my convention seemed to be "hey other person from the Bay Area, I'm glad we have come to Madison so we can hang out together." For instance, Janet and I figured out that the last time we saw each other was Potlatch '09 ::facepalm::. On the bright side, I've now got dinner plans with some of the people I have been missing, and I'm in the process of making plans with others.
Thing three: fangirls: AWESOME. Meeting new people and following them back to DW/LJ: AWESOME. Meeting people like bluestalking who I have online friendships with but hadn't really met in person before? And unexpected friends-of-friends? Even better. Being at tables full of brilliant women talking intelligently was like coming home. (The increasing quantities of MHC-WisCon cross-pollination helped out with that sense of coming home, although I did get a little bit Needy Alum in the direction of aamcnamara. "Tell me about your dorm! Tell me how the math department is doing! Blah blah blah.") The same group piled into a hotel room listening to podfic was pretty great too.
Thing four: I wound up doing a whole lot of thinking about my own fannishness. I strongly identify with transformative fandom, despite being incredibly unproductive as a transformative fan. I don't really identify as a media fan, even though I consume media and book and and comics and historical fandoms with about the same voracity. I haven't finished the processing I'm doing there, but I've started something on that front this weekend, and I'm probably going to be thinking about it a lot more over the next several days.
Thing five: I'm starting to get really excited about FOGCon, and I'd really love to repeat some of the key parts of my WisCon experience there. It would be even better if we could start putting into place some of the fixes we've talked about for WisCon next year in time for WisCon--the key fix we talked about that I'd like to see would be more specific topics for transformative works panels than things like "Fanfic 201." It sounds like panels about online-fandom-style meta are much more in scope for FOGcon than panels on fic or vidding, but even that could be awesome.
Speaking of online fans at offline cons, today's lunch conversation led to the creation of
transformal, a community for figuring out who is going to what con, in the hopes of planning meetups and also working on encouraging our sort of interests at the cons we attend. Think of it as a community for all of us scary princess monster ponies oh no who want to have our cake and eat it too. Join! Promote! In places less obscure than this comment buried in a cut post.
Thing five: Oh Jasper Fforde no. At least the subject matter of your writing is such that statements such the following could never in any way, shape or form could ever look hypocritical:
My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want to copy or 'augment' someone else's work when you could expend just as much energy and have a lot more fun making up your own.
Note to self: it's ok for me to write stories about Miss Havisham, as long as she is not driving around in speeding cars. Having her drive around in speeding cars would be COPYING SOMEONE ELSE'S IDEA, which would be NAUGHTY AND WRONG. Having her hanging out in rooms filled with cobwebs and broken clocks would be cool though.
Thing six: for someone who is in no way, shape or form writing EITHER Dragon-Waiting-verse Lionheart/Saladin or a Leverage/Vorkosigan AU where all of Leverage takes place on Jackson's Hole, I do seem to be doing a whole lot of research and plotting for both. But since I never have any follow-through we can trust that none of these things are going to get beyond the couple of scenes stage. Besides, if there are no religious wars, how do I even get Richard to what isn't the Holy Land in his world? No amount of reading about the actual Crusades will answer that question for me. Maybe Parker, the escaped clone, or Eliot, who left Barrayar after his romance with a Vor lady fell apart, knows the answer. I should ask one of them.
This post crossposted from Dreamwidth (
comments) Here's a Dreamwidth invite code, if you'd like to use it: W79RAWPH6PPYNAAABBBS
Thing one. Mary Anne Mohanraj's GOH speech is one of the best speeches I've heard in the last couple years. I can't wait until she posts the text, because I want to re-read it and spend more time thinking about it. Among other things, I have a brand new respect for Frodo as a hero in the context of impostor syndrome. I am starting to get a good set of reminder resources for when my anxiety and impostor syndrome get out of control, and I am definitely adding this speech to my arsenal. Edited to add: link to the speech oh em geee.
Thing two. I find it fascinating that, especially on Friday, the theme of my convention seemed to be "hey other person from the Bay Area, I'm glad we have come to Madison so we can hang out together." For instance, Janet and I figured out that the last time we saw each other was Potlatch '09 ::facepalm::. On the bright side, I've now got dinner plans with some of the people I have been missing, and I'm in the process of making plans with others.
Thing three: fangirls: AWESOME. Meeting new people and following them back to DW/LJ: AWESOME. Meeting people like bluestalking who I have online friendships with but hadn't really met in person before? And unexpected friends-of-friends? Even better. Being at tables full of brilliant women talking intelligently was like coming home. (The increasing quantities of MHC-WisCon cross-pollination helped out with that sense of coming home, although I did get a little bit Needy Alum in the direction of aamcnamara. "Tell me about your dorm! Tell me how the math department is doing! Blah blah blah.") The same group piled into a hotel room listening to podfic was pretty great too.
Thing four: I wound up doing a whole lot of thinking about my own fannishness. I strongly identify with transformative fandom, despite being incredibly unproductive as a transformative fan. I don't really identify as a media fan, even though I consume media and book and and comics and historical fandoms with about the same voracity. I haven't finished the processing I'm doing there, but I've started something on that front this weekend, and I'm probably going to be thinking about it a lot more over the next several days.
Thing five: I'm starting to get really excited about FOGCon, and I'd really love to repeat some of the key parts of my WisCon experience there. It would be even better if we could start putting into place some of the fixes we've talked about for WisCon next year in time for WisCon--the key fix we talked about that I'd like to see would be more specific topics for transformative works panels than things like "Fanfic 201." It sounds like panels about online-fandom-style meta are much more in scope for FOGcon than panels on fic or vidding, but even that could be awesome.
Speaking of online fans at offline cons, today's lunch conversation led to the creation of
transformal, a community for figuring out who is going to what con, in the hopes of planning meetups and also working on encouraging our sort of interests at the cons we attend. Think of it as a community for all of us scary princess monster ponies oh no who want to have our cake and eat it too. Join! Promote! In places less obscure than this comment buried in a cut post.
Thing five: Oh Jasper Fforde no. At least the subject matter of your writing is such that statements such the following could never in any way, shape or form could ever look hypocritical:
My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want to copy or 'augment' someone else's work when you could expend just as much energy and have a lot more fun making up your own.
Note to self: it's ok for me to write stories about Miss Havisham, as long as she is not driving around in speeding cars. Having her drive around in speeding cars would be COPYING SOMEONE ELSE'S IDEA, which would be NAUGHTY AND WRONG. Having her hanging out in rooms filled with cobwebs and broken clocks would be cool though.
Thing six: for someone who is in no way, shape or form writing EITHER Dragon-Waiting-verse Lionheart/Saladin or a Leverage/Vorkosigan AU where all of Leverage takes place on Jackson's Hole, I do seem to be doing a whole lot of research and plotting for both. But since I never have any follow-through we can trust that none of these things are going to get beyond the couple of scenes stage. Besides, if there are no religious wars, how do I even get Richard to what isn't the Holy Land in his world? No amount of reading about the actual Crusades will answer that question for me. Maybe Parker, the escaped clone, or Eliot, who left Barrayar after his romance with a Vor lady fell apart, knows the answer. I should ask one of them.
This post crossposted from Dreamwidth (
comments) Here's a Dreamwidth invite code, if you'd like to use it: W79RAWPH6PPYNAAABBBS