an account of Prophecy 2007
Prophecy 2007: A Harry Potter Symposium. Aug. 2-5, 2007
THURSDAY:
I went after work to the Sheridan to sign in and get my pass and such. It wasn't very crowded yet, so i decided to check out the vendors and art work and the HP Memories room. The vendors were selling pretty awesome looking wands, and i was reaallly tempted to buy one, but then i remembered Ariel's and Helen's plans of finding a woodworking shop in MTL, so I decided to go w/ them and just try to craft a wand myself. :P
There was some really good fan art. I must say that the highest quality was found in the 18+ smutty section of the gallery. Holy shit, some of it was really dirty. If I had had any company we would have had such a laugh. I still did, but in my head. But the thing was, that the artist that drew the most horrific slash pairings or incestuous situations actually was the best at drawing the characters as they were described in the books, rather than how they appear in the movies. I know you want the details of who was involved in the slash pairings and incest. Obviously. The ones that were burned into my memory was 1) naked Filch w/ naked Dumbledore behind him, peering over his shoulder w/ his grandfatherly grin 2) Two red headed boys, naked, holding eachother (so def two weasleys but i don't know which) 3) (this one was pretty hilarious) A man, naked, with a slit/gap in his neck and then the same thing on the head of his penis. After some puzzlement, I realized this must be the artist's interpretation of Nearly Headless Nick. After all, why should we assume that he isn't headless in two places? 4) Shit man, this one was grotesque. It was Petunia and Vernon naked, in what seemed like post-coitus.
Others included Sirius/Lupin, Snape/student, Harry/Snape matches, or else just characters masturbating and stuff. I wanted to take pics but then i didn't want to appear creepy. So i just took pics of the PG art.
There was a craft room, which on Thursday was empty, so i went to scope it out. They had a tub of little coloured craft puff/fuzz balls and googly eyes and i realized that they must be for the manufacture of Pygmy Puffs!! awww. So I made a pink one because I think Arnold, Ginny's Pygmy Puff from the books is either pink or red.
So here I am walking around with this pink little puff, wondering what to do w/ it b/c it will not last a second once I put it in my bag. And then I found the answer. I found the the Hall of Reflection where they had set up shrines for all the characters that have died throughout the books. There were already some little artifacts under the shrines but the idea was that the guests of Prophecy would add more. One of the best ones was Snape's, where fans had thrown their little complimentary bottles of hotel Shampoo.
I came up to Fred Weasley's shrine where there was a toilet seat among other things. and then I knew what to do w/ the pygmy puff. There was a random piece of velcro on the toilet seat lid, so I stuck the little Pygmy Puff on it, for Fred Weasley. RIP.
That was it for Day 1.
FRIDAY:
Came down after work and attended some presentations. The presentations were essentially 50 minute lectures on a topic relating to HP in some way. On friday actually i think i mainly went to some workshops. One on how to draw fan-art, which was pretty disappointing b/c they didn't teach you how to draw it, just how to read the books and pay attention to description so that you can imagine their features better. How enlightening.
I also went to a "how to invent your own fantasy world" workshop, which was pretty helpful/fun. Just helped you realize and think of all the info and backstory you should have about any setting and character when you are writing a book.
SATURDAY:
I went down in the morning to hear a talk on the "literary influences seen in HP". That was pretty good. The presenter talked about how Jane Austen's narrative style in Emma was similar to that found in HP. The woman presenting basically went through a list of books that JKR recommended reading and talked about how aspects of each can be found in the HP stories.
I went to one of those Keynote Luncheon things, where you get lunch and listen to a panel talk about a subject. That was kind of a mistake. Firstly, the lunch was mediocre.. it was just a pretty yucky veggie wrap + an apple + sihlouette yog, and secondly, the topic of discussion was something i wasn;t very interested in/don't like: Fandom (mostly fan fictions). It had to do w/ fanfics and if the panel thought they would continue to be written with the same vigour as before HP ended etc. (Obviously they will, what with the end of the series and all, which leaves open so many possibilites for shitty fanfic spinoffs. This was also the panel's opinion, but they phrased it in a more positive way.)
The best presentation that i saw came after the luncheon. by a US Prof named John Granger. It was about the alchemical processes that underly every HP book, especially the 7th. Granger intro'd us to the term "alchemical drama and lit" and explained how JKR used it in her books. It was so fascinating that I can't begin to reiterate it here. I took lots of notes so maybe one day i'll type them up. The prof has a book as well that i think i will be purchasing soon.
That was like the highlight of the conference. Made it all worth it. After that I went to a Latin workshop that was fun and interesting -- this linguistics/latin prof taught us how we would formulate our own spells etc.
For the ball, I wore a black dress and Sara lent me a Gryffindor scarf that she'd made [i didn't finish mine! :( ] and I wore it as a shawl. If I had a full-out costume i would have worn it, but alas, I didn't have one. I should just add now that for the entire weekend I was in the minority by dressing in my "muggle clothing". SO many people dressed up. It was great at the Sheraton hotel. Witches and Wizards mixed w/ stuffy business folk.
Sara and I stayed at the bar pretty much the whole night, there were so many good drinks. I have the drink list and the components of them all to recreate them! I had a butterbeer (cream soda + caramel liquer -- soooo delicious), Wolfsbane (like a manhattan), memory freeze (citrusy + gin-y), and one more that i don't remember but will when i have the list infront of me. Seems like a lot of drinks, you may think. It was really lucky that the barman forgot to take my drink ticket TWICE, so i really had 2 free drinks out of those 4.
The conference ended on Sunday in the morning, but there wasn't really anything going on, only an auction that I decided to skip so that I wouldn't spend anymore money. For my first ever conference, it was great. The only thing I will do differently next time is to make sure I have someone else there to experience it w/ me.