the party, she did indeed bitch
I came into Bitchin' Party straight from the airport after an exhausting three-day trip to Chicago during which I had to face down my worst academic inadequacies, fend off my mom's guilt trips about how little time I was able to spend with them, and write a forty-minute radio script I had to coordinate over e-mail with my co-mod. (More on that anon.) I'd had an average of four hours of sleep per night that week, and my luggage handle was broken, making it a pain in the ass to drag around on public transit. Also, my hockey team had just been eliminated from the playoffs. When I showed up, I was not in a good place.
A granola bar, a few minutes of hiding in
pi's neck, and a chance to put down my stupid broken luggage made a world of difference to my mood, and the rest of the weekend was great. So many cool people to meet! So much wonderfully substantive conversation about fandom! So many compliments on my work, oh my god. A lot of Saturday was spent finishing up and practicing the script for the Night Vale panel with
torra, who is awesome. I got a chance to sit in on a live podfic recording, and
klb was apparently impressed by my heretofore-undiscovered ability to eat silently. Go me? XD I didn't really go to panels the first day, although I snuck in for the end of the podfic how-to panel and ended up winning the mic raffle (w00t!). There was also Fannish Pictionary, which... I dunno, it's not how I would have gone about it, but people had fun and I got to draw a cock ring made out of Kaner's terrible mullet.
The vidshow was Saturday evening, and I was way more nervous than I thought I would be about premiering my Nathan Fillion penis vid. Sorry, everyone I complained at about how nervous I was. But then it went ridiculously well, and people laughed SO MUCH, and the applause started before the vid was even done, and everyone I'd been complaining at just sort of raised their eyebrows at me all "now what was all that fuss about?" and it was great.
pi's vid went over well too, like I knew it would, because it's fucking awesome. It's called Wings, it's about women kicking ass without violence, and you should watch it.
I didn't go to the dance party because I wanted to get everything all done for the Night Vale panel. I did that in my room, which had become the low-key party room for people who didn't want to dance. I actually managed to finish everything up in a couple hours, so I headed over to the non-low-key party room and stayed up until 3 in the morning having deep Truth-or-Dare-inspired discussions about how fandom had affected our lives. (I had a lot to say on the subject of reality not always being as important as the things we create. It's a bit fuzzy now, but I remember having a lot to say.) And then I wrangled
fiercynn (who was so drunk she tried to claim
marianas's shoes, ahahaha) back to our room, and managed to snag three and a half hours of sleep before my body was like NOPE, DONE SLEEPING, UP NOW. Urgh, body, why.
Okay, so, the Night Vale panel.
torra originally proposed this panel, and then asked around for a co-mod. I was like, hey, I can talk about Night Vale until basically the end of time, why not. And then we started bouncing ideas off each other about how to run the panel, and then Torra suggested being in-character as representatives from the Night Vale Tourism Board, and then all of a sudden we were doing ALL THE THINGS. We ended up with a full episode script, including call-in segments, weather (performed by the lovely
pi), and a trivia quiz with prizes (speedily graded by our fabulous intern
bessyboo). We recorded it all, and it's going to be online eventually, although editing might take a while. People seemed to like it, and a lot of them said they would have participated more in the call-in segments if it hadn't been the earliest panel slot when they were still bleary. There was exactly one person there who wasn't already familiar with Night Vale, and they said our performance made them text their partner in the middle of the panel saying they needed to download this podcast, so: success! Shoutout to Torra's fucking awesome outfit ( the one in the tie).
I ducked into a couple more panels on Sunday afternoon--the polyamory one, briefly, and then the one about adaptations (pretty much centered around the sentiment of this tweet), and then I stuck around for all of the feedback one. They were all enjoyable, but the feedback one was great--well-modded, well-structured, and people had tons of interesting things to say. Someone pointed out that regardless of personal feelings on kudos as a creator, they're undeniably a good way to sort through AO3 and find good fic when you get into a new fandom, which is a great point I hadn't considered. There was a good discussion about concrit where a lot of people seemed to share my current opinion that the best concrit comes from people who know you, and almost all of the negative feedback that comes from random readers is unhelpful. Like, I'm with Darwin and all, I want to be sure not to dismiss anyone who disagrees with me, but those drive-by concrit comments are almost never actually constructive. And at this point I'm not in fandom for the writing training wheels, anyway. Then I brought up the issue of the "I'm not usually into Thing X, but I liked this instance of it" comment, which I've noticed is extraordinarily polarizing--some people think of it as the highest possible compliment, some people process it as nothing but an insult to everything they love. The mod had us all indicate via thumbs up/down/sideways how we feel about that type of comment, and indeed the room was very much split on the subject. Data!
At this point I was thoroughly worn out, and went back to the con suite to eat something while hiding under a table (to avoid getting kicked out by the hotel staff, since we weren't supposed to have outside food) and play Fandom Cards Against Humanity, which I actually hadn't managed to play a single hand of all weekend despite the games constantly going on around me. Bessy's deck was originally the same as mine, but it's morphed over time, which is a cool statement of transformativity. Like, her deck is a remix of my deck, which is an AU of the published Cards Against Humanity, which is fanfic of Apples to Apples. Pretty awesome.
It was great to meet so many of you! I was so zonked that I failed pretty hard at matching names to faces, so if you're one of the many people I had excellent conversations with and then promptly forgot how to find, please do drop a comment and remind me who you are. Especially the person who was being awesome in the Page to Screen panel (I asked their name in the middle of the panel so I could track them down later to talk about the concept of fanon as a remake of canon, and then forgot) and the person who brought cookies to the Night Vale panel (who I actually had several conversations with, and made sure to note their badge name, and... forgot). And thanks so much to
brynnmck for organizing everything like a boss! ♥
A list of my favorite quotes from the con:
me, right after stumbling in: "Hey, um, I think I recognize your boobs. Are you Bessy?"
(She was.)
"Shakespeare... cowboy Shakespeare."
"Wouldst that I could quitteth thou."
rivers_bend: "Your kink is not my kink, but your kink for your kink is my kink."
bessyboo (in a game of FCAH): "God damn it, my Old Spice Guy fic got jossed."
me: "Turned out your man couldn't smell like him?"
torra: "Dracco Malfoy..."
bessyboo: "Dracco?"
torra: "Draco. Pardon my years of actually learning fucking Latin."
And in conclusion, a summary of the weekend:
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/97265.html.
A granola bar, a few minutes of hiding in
pi's neck, and a chance to put down my stupid broken luggage made a world of difference to my mood, and the rest of the weekend was great. So many cool people to meet! So much wonderfully substantive conversation about fandom! So many compliments on my work, oh my god. A lot of Saturday was spent finishing up and practicing the script for the Night Vale panel with
torra, who is awesome. I got a chance to sit in on a live podfic recording, and
klb was apparently impressed by my heretofore-undiscovered ability to eat silently. Go me? XD I didn't really go to panels the first day, although I snuck in for the end of the podfic how-to panel and ended up winning the mic raffle (w00t!). There was also Fannish Pictionary, which... I dunno, it's not how I would have gone about it, but people had fun and I got to draw a cock ring made out of Kaner's terrible mullet.
The vidshow was Saturday evening, and I was way more nervous than I thought I would be about premiering my Nathan Fillion penis vid. Sorry, everyone I complained at about how nervous I was. But then it went ridiculously well, and people laughed SO MUCH, and the applause started before the vid was even done, and everyone I'd been complaining at just sort of raised their eyebrows at me all "now what was all that fuss about?" and it was great.
pi's vid went over well too, like I knew it would, because it's fucking awesome. It's called Wings, it's about women kicking ass without violence, and you should watch it.
I didn't go to the dance party because I wanted to get everything all done for the Night Vale panel. I did that in my room, which had become the low-key party room for people who didn't want to dance. I actually managed to finish everything up in a couple hours, so I headed over to the non-low-key party room and stayed up until 3 in the morning having deep Truth-or-Dare-inspired discussions about how fandom had affected our lives. (I had a lot to say on the subject of reality not always being as important as the things we create. It's a bit fuzzy now, but I remember having a lot to say.) And then I wrangled
fiercynn (who was so drunk she tried to claim
marianas's shoes, ahahaha) back to our room, and managed to snag three and a half hours of sleep before my body was like NOPE, DONE SLEEPING, UP NOW. Urgh, body, why.
Okay, so, the Night Vale panel.
torra originally proposed this panel, and then asked around for a co-mod. I was like, hey, I can talk about Night Vale until basically the end of time, why not. And then we started bouncing ideas off each other about how to run the panel, and then Torra suggested being in-character as representatives from the Night Vale Tourism Board, and then all of a sudden we were doing ALL THE THINGS. We ended up with a full episode script, including call-in segments, weather (performed by the lovely
pi), and a trivia quiz with prizes (speedily graded by our fabulous intern
bessyboo). We recorded it all, and it's going to be online eventually, although editing might take a while. People seemed to like it, and a lot of them said they would have participated more in the call-in segments if it hadn't been the earliest panel slot when they were still bleary. There was exactly one person there who wasn't already familiar with Night Vale, and they said our performance made them text their partner in the middle of the panel saying they needed to download this podcast, so: success! Shoutout to Torra's fucking awesome outfit ( the one in the tie).
I ducked into a couple more panels on Sunday afternoon--the polyamory one, briefly, and then the one about adaptations (pretty much centered around the sentiment of this tweet), and then I stuck around for all of the feedback one. They were all enjoyable, but the feedback one was great--well-modded, well-structured, and people had tons of interesting things to say. Someone pointed out that regardless of personal feelings on kudos as a creator, they're undeniably a good way to sort through AO3 and find good fic when you get into a new fandom, which is a great point I hadn't considered. There was a good discussion about concrit where a lot of people seemed to share my current opinion that the best concrit comes from people who know you, and almost all of the negative feedback that comes from random readers is unhelpful. Like, I'm with Darwin and all, I want to be sure not to dismiss anyone who disagrees with me, but those drive-by concrit comments are almost never actually constructive. And at this point I'm not in fandom for the writing training wheels, anyway. Then I brought up the issue of the "I'm not usually into Thing X, but I liked this instance of it" comment, which I've noticed is extraordinarily polarizing--some people think of it as the highest possible compliment, some people process it as nothing but an insult to everything they love. The mod had us all indicate via thumbs up/down/sideways how we feel about that type of comment, and indeed the room was very much split on the subject. Data!
At this point I was thoroughly worn out, and went back to the con suite to eat something while hiding under a table (to avoid getting kicked out by the hotel staff, since we weren't supposed to have outside food) and play Fandom Cards Against Humanity, which I actually hadn't managed to play a single hand of all weekend despite the games constantly going on around me. Bessy's deck was originally the same as mine, but it's morphed over time, which is a cool statement of transformativity. Like, her deck is a remix of my deck, which is an AU of the published Cards Against Humanity, which is fanfic of Apples to Apples. Pretty awesome.
It was great to meet so many of you! I was so zonked that I failed pretty hard at matching names to faces, so if you're one of the many people I had excellent conversations with and then promptly forgot how to find, please do drop a comment and remind me who you are. Especially the person who was being awesome in the Page to Screen panel (I asked their name in the middle of the panel so I could track them down later to talk about the concept of fanon as a remake of canon, and then forgot) and the person who brought cookies to the Night Vale panel (who I actually had several conversations with, and made sure to note their badge name, and... forgot). And thanks so much to
brynnmck for organizing everything like a boss! ♥
A list of my favorite quotes from the con:
me, right after stumbling in: "Hey, um, I think I recognize your boobs. Are you Bessy?"
(She was.)
"Shakespeare... cowboy Shakespeare."
"Wouldst that I could quitteth thou."
rivers_bend: "Your kink is not my kink, but your kink for your kink is my kink."
bessyboo (in a game of FCAH): "God damn it, my Old Spice Guy fic got jossed."
me: "Turned out your man couldn't smell like him?"
torra: "Dracco Malfoy..."
bessyboo: "Dracco?"
torra: "Draco. Pardon my years of actually learning fucking Latin."
And in conclusion, a summary of the weekend:
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/97265.html.