VividCon 2014: what I most want to remember

[heresluck]

Last year was the first year in an embarassingly long time that I actually managed to post any sort of comprehensive con report, and I did it by spreading it out over weeks and tackling one thing at a time. So I'm gonna try that again this year and see how it goes. I will be posting some notes on vidshows and panels (mostly panels), but I'm starting with people, because people are the most important aspect of the con for me.

VividCon was one of the first fannish things I ever did. Before Nummy Treat, before the BMVD, before I got an LJ, I went to VividCon. And that first year was a little weird, honestly, because the only people I knew were
renenet and
luminosity -- and Lum had so many friends there that she didn't get to see very often that renenet and I felt awkward about imposing on her! But by 2003 we'd met so many amazing people (via Nummy Treat and LJ), and many of them came to VividCon, and I got to hug them in person for the first time! It's just kind of snowballed from there. I love showing up at this con where I am so happy to see everybody, either because they're personal friends or because they're going to be helping create the communal awesomeness of this event I love so much.

So here are the things I most want to remember from this VividCon:

• Driving to the con with
  lapillus and jackiekjono in a car with an iPod jack, which meant we weren't fighting with the radio transmitter every 40 miles or dealing with static once we got within 30 miles of Chicago. \o/
• First round of hugs and hellos in the hotel lobby, including the traditional spinny hug with jarrow. :D
• Providing
  thuviaptarth and
  laurashapiro with emergency pre-grocery-run tomatoes.
• Dinner with
  kass at Frontera Grill, because I know so few people who will properly appreciate real Mexican food with me. We got all dressed up and accessorized in fancy shoes (her) and fancy necklace (me) and drove half an hour into central Chicago, talking nonstop the whole way. The menu was overwhelming in the best possible way -- we wanted to try pretty much everything! We decided against entrees in favor of an assortment of small plates: habañero guacamole with chips, smoked chicken taquitos, fried shishito peppers, smoked pork and black beans for making little tacos with warm flour tortillas. And then, once we'd polished off all that and nearly licked the plates, we finished up with a dish of crispy kale and one of plantains. Totally worth the extra travel time. We now have extra-special plans for dinner next year. :D Talked about fandom and vidding, but also family and work (both of us have major stuff coming up that we're preparing for) and what we're looking forward to in the coming months.
  kass is one of the people I feel luckiest to have found through fandom: someone with whom I share fannishness and even, sometimes, fandoms, but also so much more. Our dinner was the perfect deep breath before the plunge of the rest of the con.
• Back at the hotel, we went and hung out with
  cesperanza,
  astolat,
  gwyn, and more... until astolat got sleepy and kicked us out. There was happy Winter Soldier burbling, and at some point I found myself talking, at higher volume and with more vehement gesturing than was perhaps strictly necessary, about Glee's and Nashville's different approaches to music.
• Staying up way too late talking with
  renenet. Pretty much every night. We make good life choices!
• Chatting with
  kouredios. So many awesome people at VVC that I never thought I would get to see at VVC! This con is magic, you guys.
• Friday breakfast with vonniek and
  thuviaptarth. We burbled happily about Orphan Black, Arrow, and The Flash -- they've both watched the leaked pilot and very kindly refrained from spoiling me.
• Lunch with
  norah in her room. I brought veggies from my garden (cucumbers, seven or eight kinds of tomato, three kinds of summer squash) and she supplied bread, cheese, wine -- this was the pattern that many of my lunches followed, and it was awesome.
• Friday dinner with
  fan_eunice,
  luminosity, and
  sisabet. We gathered in my room and snacked on veggies and chatted; Lum and I talked Farscape a bit, and I may be sending her some vidsongs, woo!
• Eating pre-Club Vivid pot stickers and trading cat stories with
  melina123 (and admiring her fancy handbag, which appeared to be made entirely of glitter).
• Club Vivid was amazing as always.
  astolat was Wonder Woman,
  cesperanza was femme!Bucky, bradcpu and millylicious did Sleepy Hollow cosplay,
  laurashapiro and
  kass did Night Vale cosplay (and seriously, Laura in a tie is so freaking hot),
  norah had blue hair that lit up. I think I did less dancing than I usually do -- well, I'm sure, actually, because my feet weren't screaming by the end of the night -- but it's because I kept running into people I really wanted to talk to. At one point, jarrow and
  klb and I were actually standing on the dance floor shouting at each other about Glee because we were too wound up to go find a quieter corner. *facepalm* (But it was so awesome to find another Kurt/Blaine fan at the con, even if we didn't get to talk much!)
• Post-CV room party at
  norah's, for very low-key values of "party" (which honestly is all I'm ever up for after CV): norah and Kass and
  sanj and sheafrotherdon and I hung out chatting and drinking white wine and eating fancy crackers and other delectables provided by norah. Unlike last year, we adjourned at a late-but-not-totally-unreasonable hour -- and then once again I stayed up for another hour talking with renenet. *facepalm*
• sheafrotherdon and I had a nice quiet lunch in my room on Saturday. Both of us had brought provisions from home: veggies, wine, cheese. It's so nice to compare work stories with someone sympathetic without getting sucked into the details of departmental politics. We talked a lot about the value of saying no and letting go of commitments that are interfering with our real work: the work of making change in the world by helping students transform into their best selves.
• Saturday dinner with
  laurashapiro: she brought amazing sourdough, Humboldt fog cheese, chocolate-covered shortbread, and I supplied more tomatoes from my apparently inexhaustible supply. We talked about fandoms, vids, the con so far, the frustration of having lots of vid ideas and life circumstances that keep us from working on them.
• Post-Premieres vid DVD checkout, where not one but two people checked out
  gwyn's Teamy Goodness show saying some variation of "I need something uplifting."
• Retreating with
  laurashapiro to her room to try to explain the structure of Western pop music to
  thuviaptarth using
  dualbunny's God Is A DJ. I swear that made more sense at the time than it does as I'm typing it.
• Fantastic long conversation with
  cesperanza. Also a shoulder massage for her, because my massage therapist training kicked in: she was carrying around so much tension in her shoulders that it kind of hurt to look at her (which, fair enough -- nobody should have the spring and summer she's been having), so I worked on her for a while as we chatted with sheafrotherdon and
  grammarwoman. I even got some help crowdsourcing the multifandom vid that I am contemplating trying to pull together for next year's Premieres show. And then they and Kass and
  the_shoshanna wandered off to bed, which I really should have done as well, but I ended up sticking around with
  norah and
  thefourthvine listening to hilarious kid stories and facepalmy parent stories and contemplating a career change to be the Earthling's minister of vegetables. Except I would not move to California to do it, so I think that plan is doomed.
• Sunday morning, vagabondage and I met up for a nice long walk through the suburban neighborhood across the street from the hotel. I so seldom get a chance to really talk with Zen, and man, it was a delight. We made judgmental comments about house architecture and stupid landscaping choices, compared notes on family stuff, talked about getting older and taking control of our health. And then, at breakfast, she told me stories about taking her niece out for go-kart rides that had me cracking up and cringing at the same time.
• Another indoor picnic for Sunday lunch, this time with
  killabeez. I realized at some point during this lunch that I'd been hearing (and talking) a lot about family stuff, work stuff, other Life Stuff over the course of the weekend. It seems that a lot of us haven't been posting about the things that are wearing us out these days, not least because when we do have time to post/chat we want to do fannish stuff, not explain why we've been gone -- and yet this stuff is getting to us, and it can be such a relief to talk about it, and also to listen, to be able to support each other.
• Really interesting conversation on Sunday afternoon -- started with
  klb and I talking about Klaine vid ideas, and then we accumulated
  bessyboo,
  tinyattacksquid, demonicsymphony, and I think some other people? (sorry, I was so fried at that point) -- turned into a conversation about in-depth vid review, which then transitioned to conversation about how the con could facilitate more social connections: giving people who don't already know each other a chance to get to know each other, talk about general fannish stuff as well as vids and vidding. VVC is so tightly programmed and so focused, which is one of the things I love about it, but I do remember what it was like to come to VVC for the first time and feel really unsure about how to get to know people. We kicked around some ideas, which I've mentioned on the VVC LJ and... was going to post about for further discussion, which I just realized I totally forgot to do, oops. Will fix tomorrow!
• Hangout time with
  arduinna and
  therienne! I am enormously pleased with myself about this, because while I have admired them and their vids for years -- twelve years, actually, since I saw "Kryptonite" back in 2002 -- and have interacted with them online and been in the same room with them many times, we have never actually hung out and talked! So this year I emailed them and asked if they would hang out with me and they did! I should have done this years ago. Unsurprisingly, we mostly talked about cats: my Grumpy Plushie and
  therienne's Angry Plushie are practically twins, big black cats are the best, and stupid cats who catch mice are hilaaaaaarious. Next year I will probably make them talk with me about home renovations.
• Dinner with
  morgandawn &
  xlorp: they listened very patiently while I bitched at length about the big work project that is currently eating my life, but mostly we talked about gardening and house renovations, specifically the house repair domino effect that both they and I are dealing with right now.
• Customary Sunday evening conversation with
  the_shoshanna: fandom history, anon memes, separating from toxic people, the evolution of fannish friendships, becoming good at things we never thought we could be good at, discovering talents we didn't know we had. Cathartic and restorative, as always.
• Monday morning breakfast at Mac's talking about vidshows and vidshow ideas.

I came home physically exhausted, as always, but emotionally and fannishly replenished in ways that are hard to articulate. I really, really love this con, and I am so grateful to everyone who makes it possible --
renenet, obviously, first and foremost, because she is my favorite!, but the entire concom and everyone who runs panels and curates vidshows and makes vids and talks about vids and staffs the consuite and dresses up for Club Vivid and -- all of us, is what I'm saying; the con is a machine that runs on us, and I am so grateful that we keep coming together to do it.

Next year is the 40th anniversary of vidding. I can't wait to see what we do with it. :D

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