VVC 2015: people

[heresluck]

A few (ha!) notes, more or less in chronological order:

• This year's VVC involved more travel than usual: instead of road-tripping directly to the con, I flew to
  renenet's place so we could drive to the con together. Yay!
• I had signed up to take con suite treats, so we went out grocery shopping to pick up stuff for Rice Krispie treats and coconut truffles (vegan!), both recipes chosen because they require no actual baking. In retrospect I should not have bothered, because sheafrotherdon was a baking fiend. I am still dreaming of her cranberry-orange shortbread. OM NOM NOM.
• I got to help
  renenet test some of the new tech: HDMI-ready projectors (so shiny!) and an HDMI splitter and audio splitter to go with them. Whee!
• I also got to watch
  renenet fight with the printer as she tried to prep mailing labels for the supporting member DVDs. This is one of those things I never thought much about until my favorite became the con chair. VividCon is a shit ton of work, you guys. I am more and more amazed that it happens at all, let alone that it goes as smoothly as it generally does.
• On Wednesday, a couple of movers came to load up the minivan with... the con, basically: speakers and projectors and cables and DVD players (dear god so many DVD players) and con suite stuff and, of course, the DVD sets themselves -- both the 2015 sets and the VVC library. They did a terrible job, which meant it took a while to wedge our own stuff in there. Including, in my case, an entire carryon bag filled mostly with vegetables. *facepalm*
• When we got to the VVC hotel on Wednesday evening, a ton of people were already around and helped me unload the van!
  bradcpu,
  milly,
  elipie,
  kiki_miserychic,
  pipsqueaky,
  trelkez, possibly other people I am forgetting? It was so nice not to have to unload all by myself. ♥
• ...and then we ordered Chinese for delivery, which since we were all tired and having trouble making decisions took at least as long as just driving to the restaurant would have. Oops? But I got to give shoulder rubs while we waited for the food to arrive, which always makes me feel useful. And I got to have a meal at VVC with Milly and Brad, which I have never done before even though we have been swearing to find time to hang out for like six years now. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. \o/
• On Thursday,
  renenet and I went out to lunch and she let me tell her student stories pretty much the whole time because she loves me. :D
• That afternoon,
  jetpack_monkey and
  elipie and I worked out the new tech setup, which... took a lot longer than I have just made it sound, ahahaha. We actually had a good time, though, or at least I did.
  elipie in particular is A Hero Of The Revolution, because she is not officially on the tech team and yet she stuck it out with us, organizing cables and helping test stuff.
• Thursday night,
  kass and I dressed up and went out to dinner, and by went out to dinner I mean we went out for ONE OF THE BEST MEALS I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE, OH MY GOD. We went to Topolobampo to celebrate (a bit belatedly) Kass's 40th birthday, and in the spirit of the evening we decided to do the seven-course tasting menu -- with a wine pairing for each course. My favorites were probably the three little arrangements of tamal colado, each with a different sauce; the smoked duck and duck carnitas with black beans (I would not have said I like duck much, but wow, I was wrong); the homemade tortillas that came with a couple of the courses; and the carne asada with a 28-ingredient Oaxacan black mole that came with a Zinfandel I am seriously considering ordering a case of from the winery. And then, after the last course was over, we each got a homemade blackberry gumdrop and a sea salt chocolate truffle. I was in actual raptures for a not insignificant percentage of the meal. In between bites, we talked about... well, okay, we spent about half the time talking about the food, because it was amazing and deserved a lot of attention, but also about the things we're struggling with right now -- life stuff, work stuff -- and the things we're doing to restore and take care of ourselves, including the con itself and the shows we've been watching leading up to the con.
• Friday was lunch with
  norah: I brought veggies and she supplied bread and cheese and prosciutto and some sort of fancy salami, and we talked about vidding and writing and Yuletide and Festivids and family and her Club Vivid outfit. Also, we agreed that Dragon's Egg cucumbers really ought to have fire lizards inside them. :D
• I will have more to say in the panels post about
  sisabet's Buffy panel, but for now I will just note that I was both startled and delighted that she showed "Superstar"! I hadn't watched that vid with a group of vidfans since... well, since the 2003 Premieres show, and it was a lovely experience to have. Also, after the panel, out in the hallway,
  bradcpu leaned over and said "You know, I think that vid is going somewhere; I think it's really going to catch on," which made me laugh and laugh. It's funny -- the positive responses to that vid caused me so much anxiety at the time; I was paralyzed for months, unsure that I'd ever be able to top that vid. Twelve years later, I've made vids I think are better, but I've also realized that, with the possible exception of "The Test," I have never made a vid that hit the vidding/fandom zeitgeist quite like that one, and I may never do so again -- and I'm okay with that. If "Superstar" is the vid of mine that I'm associated with forever, well, I can think of worse ships to go down with. Brad, bless his heart, said that he will remember me for "New Frontier," which would be my own first choice if I got one, but this is the sort of thing we don't, in fact, get to choose.
• I sat with
  grammarwoman at the Make Mine Multi and in the course of the panel started recruiting her to collaborate with me on the multi-source vid I have been thinking about, and then retreating from in terror, for a couple of years now. I really want to make this vid, but I haven't made anything involving more source than a half-season of TV in years, and by years I mean a LOT of years, so the idea of making a multi vid is exciting for about seventeen seconds and then I need a drink and a lie-down.
  grammarwoman has made not one but TWO multi-vids, which means she has expertise (and source!) that I do not. Also, she has a spreadsheet system ready to go. SCORE.
• Friday night I once again exploited having the keys to the kingdom minivan:
  thuviaptarth, vonniek, katie_m and I drove a short ways up the road to an Indian restaurant and ate piles of samosas and an assortment of curries and talked about Orphan Black and Sense8 and The 100 (and they very kindly did not spoil me for the end of S2 of The 100, which I did not get to finish before the con). Also, Vonnie and Katie and I bemoaned our not-readiness for the Big Hike that we are doing later this fall. And then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for...
• CLUB VIVID! Which is always one of my favorite nights of the year: so many awesome women (and a carefully curated selection of delightful guys) celebrating our own and each other's creativity with drinking and dancing and singing and shouting and increasing amounts of drunken flailing as the night goes on. Everybody looked awesome, as usual. sheafrotherdon made a gorgeous Peggy Carter;
  bironic was a delightful Winter Soldier;
  bradcpu and
  milly were Kirk and Spock; a whole group of people came as Clone Club, including
  cesperanza as Cosima,
  melina as Alison, and
  killabeez as Helena; and
  norah's hair lit up, which was mesmerizing. As always, I drank a lot of grapefruit juice, not enough water, and no booze; one of the many amusing things about CV for me is staying stone-cold sober while pretty much everybody else... doesn't.
  cee_m said really nice things to me at some point, though possibly that was because she was very, very drunk.
• I jumped around with jarrow a lot, especially for "Give It Up," and we also got to have a lovely post-CV conversation in which he told me all about some of the awesome things that happened at the most recent Faberrycon, which made me so, so happy for him -- and also so proud of everything he's accomplished with that con. ♥
• This year, I made my best Club Vivid decision EVER, which was to wear a top that, while relatively fancy, allowed me to wear a sport bra underneath it. I AM SO SMART. The leather corset was fun while it lasted, but this getup was much more comfortable.
• Once again,
  norah held a lovely low-key post-CV room party with fancy food. New this year: she stuck the glowy things from her hair in MY hair, to the evident amusement of everyone in the room. Once again, we stayed up too late. Oops.
• Saturday morning was kind of a blur, as usual, but I think I ended up having breakfast with
  par_avion? And... other people? I have mostly given up making breakfast plans, honestly; I just slouch downstairs, grab a waffle, and attach myself to whatever group of friendly people has an open seat in the vicinity.
• I got to have lunch with sheafrotherdon: I brought veggies and she brought wine and crackers and yummy cheese with cranberries in it, and we talked not only about work stuff (though that always comes up -- it is so nice to chat with someone who understands but isn't in the middle of the details) but about fannish stuff and especially about the writing she'd done that morning; I am always curious about how writers come up with their stories, or how the stories find them, and so hearing about the ficlet she'd just written and where it fits into what she hopes to do in MCU was super-interesting for me.
• After jarrow's Collaboration panel, about which more in a later post, I went and hung out in the con suite for while -- for much of the rest of the afternoon, in fact.
  par_avion and I swapped bodywork, which was wonderful; she's so good at what she does, and in some ways it's easier for me to relax under the hands of someone who's trained in a different tradition than I am. I finally had a chance for a proper chat with
  cesperanza,
  melina,
  geekturnedvamp,
  cathexys. I made Melina listen to the Lito vidsong that I am trying to give away (and which it looks like I am going to have to make myself, dammit).
• After a brief interlude of tech setup to get the rooms switched over for Premieres, I headed to
  morgandawn and
  xlorp's room (bearing vegetables again: Dragon's Egg cucumber, Beit Alpha cucumber, Ronde de Nice zucchini, assorted tomatoes), where a small group had convened with assorted take-out -- I know cherryice was there, and maybe jackiekjono and
  par_avion? I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE. I amused
  morgandawn by producing the vegetables one at a time rather than just dumping them all on the table. (This is a deliberate strategy: sometimes people get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of vegetables I bring to a room party.)
• I will write more about the Premieres show (and attendant technical difficulties) in another post, but for right now I just want to observe that at some point in the middle of it, I realized that my job was not really to deal with the tech (though there was some tech to deal with) so much as to be the person on the tech team who wasn't freaking out. Which, I mean -- given the kind of OH SHIT THINK FAST situations in which I routinely find myself in the course of my day job, the VividCon hotel would pretty much have to be on fire in order to reach that level of stress. Neither the hotel nor the tech was actually on fire, so -- we handled it, everybody got to watch awesome vids, yay.
• 
  renenet and I sat with
  cesperanza and
  astolat for Premieres -- well, for a while; I ended up bailing on them to sit nearer the tech. I think it was as we were waiting for the vidshow to start that I attempted to convince cesperanza to try Sense8, though it was ultimately
  butterfly's vid in Premieres that convinced her (FAIR ENOUGH).
• Another night, another room party -- this one with absinthe, which I did not try. Watching
  geekturnedvamp try it was pretty hilarious, though.
• Sunday morning I had breakfast with vagabondage. People kept coming us to the chairs next to us and saying "Is anyone sitting here?" and I would respond "No, but Zen and I are HAVING A BREAKFAST DATE," which scared them off pretty effectively. File under things that are hilarious: Zen's Hello Kitty backpack. I was not completely surprised -- I've seen Zen in pigtails -- but I was definitely delighted.
• 
  killabeez and I had lunch plans, but then we both wanted to go to Zen's celebratory vidshow, so instead of going out we went up to Killa's room and I supplied cucumbers (so many cucumbers, you guys) while she and her roomie provided hummus and pita and similar stuff.
• I honestly cannot remember what I was doing for the Challenge vidshow. Possibly hanging out in the con suite again? It's all a blur! I did make it in for the discussion, though, and caught up with the vids afterwards.
• And then there was tech takedown, ahahaha. Nate and I had such plans for organization and then by Sunday afternoon we were so freaking fried.
• But Sunday dinner was awesome! I had my standing Sunday night dinner with
  fan_eunice,
  luminosity, and sisabet, plus this year
  renenet and vagabondage joined us, and we talked about -- god, everything: family, forgiveness (of self and others), therapy, history, healthcare, politics, pets, TV, Premieres, Vid Review. And also steak, since we were at House o' Meat. Lum and I ordered two bottles of wine for the table. We shut the place down.
• 
  joyo had appeared at some point near the end of dinner, and after the group disbanded she and I went for a walk, which was lovely -- we hadn't had much chance to hang out up until that point, plus it was a nice night and I badly needed some physical activity after a day of mostly sitting around.
• After we got back to the hotel, I went looking for
  the_shoshanna and got waylaid by Milly on the way, so I got a chance to talk with her again! And then Shoshanna and
  grammarwoman found me as they came walking along the hallway to their room and we went inside and flopped around their coffee table and had a lovely long cathartic post-con conversation, as is our wont: vids, fandom, conventions, family, romance and partnership, children, childlessness, creativity.
• I saw them again the next morning when they accompanied me and
  renenet to Mac's for breakfast (hash browns FTW!). After which Shoshanna caught the shuttle and grammarwoman helped me load the con back into the van, I did a round of hugs in the lobby while renenet dealt with con bureaucracy, renenet said her goodbyes, and then she and I rolled out and VividCon 2015 was over.
• ...except not really, because we spent most of the drive talking about the con -- some stuff about vids and panels, a lot of tech stuff, some general concom stuff, a lot of Things To Accomplish Before (or Do Differently At) Next Year's Con.

In conclusion, I really love VividCon.

Panel and vidshow notes coming soon!

Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth