the last snowflake challenges of the year, sigh
today a lot of snow melted and i got a haircut and i signed up for spn-j2-bigbang and my writing group gave me a lot of ideas for my tristan and isolde retelling, and one of those ideas is "there was only one bed!" :D and i thought of all the fangirls i know.
snowflake is officially over, but i missed two fun challenges, so here they are. better late than never, right?
challenge #13 - a favorite fandom memory!
oh, i have a lot of these, and a chunk of them are win(chester)con related.
jenna_thorn putting her foot in my back and yanking on my corset laces to tighten them right before the prom at wincon pittsburgh. playing cards against humanity with my roommates at wincon orlando and when it was my turn to draw the black card i got "why am i sticky?" and almost fell off the couch laughing, i mean i couldn't breathe. (this is the best one. it still makes me giggle and i still have no idea why that card was so funny to me.) the fried butter i ate at the texas state fair which was one of the most incredible things i ever put in my mouth and which caused me to spend most of wincon dallas telling people about it. the ghost tour at wincon chicago when twenty fangirls packed into a van that seated sixteen so every time we got out to see something and got back on there was a chorus of "who's got a spare lap?" and "i have a lap" and when the tour guide introduced himself and gave us an overview of the tour and said we'd get to hear tales of murder and mayhem we LOST OUR SHIT because it was at least in spirit still partly a winchestercon and the vast majority of us had gotten there through spn and we were fans of the death and destruction and otherworldly violence. he was taken aback at how excited we were to hear stories about ghosts and murder. going to see red during that same con with a bunch of fangirls. buying cigarettes for missyjack at winchestercon la because the cashier at the convenience store needed an american driver's license number to enter into the register and missy didn't have one, being australian. the bracelet bryn gave me at the last wincon for reasons i don't remember - she made a bunch of them i think for raffle prizes and i think for the con comm, and i don't know why she made one for me but she did. it had ten dimes, one for each con year, and ten charms, one for each con city, and it was dimes in case you were ever stranded somewhere and didn't have a cell phone but did have access to a pay phone, because you could call someone to come get you or just talk to you, and they would. because fangirls look out for each other.
my first couple years in spn fandom, when everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, except when it did. i felt like i was going crazy but so was everyone else, so it was ok. it really was a glorious couple-three years.
about five minutes after the end credits for the premiere of buffy s7, my friend jesse called me and as soon as i picked up the phone he said "ok, rant and rave". and i did. for AN HOUR.
my favorite fandom memory which is less about being a great memory and more about being a good story is from wizardworld philly in 2016, at the panel with the hotter hemsworth and tom hiddleston, when i got up to the microphone and asked chris about the difference between playing thor (big, buff, super masculine, a literal god) and playing kevin in the new ghostbusters (none of those things), and he said he didn't have to go to the gym to play kevin, i forgot to apply an inner voice filter and said, out loud, into the microphone, in front of a ballroom full of people and two actors whose work i enjoyed, "we like that you go to the gym". because sometimes i am mortifying in public. some time later i think wrenlet pointed out to me that someone giffed that particular exchange, and i was thus a very mild version of anonymously tumblr famous for like fifteen minutes. and it was still mortifying.
but my first favorite fandom memory is the sacrifice of the blessed virgin larry at wizardworld chicago in, oh god, 1999? 2000? the third year i went. (i went five years in a row to be with the guild, aka the poison elves mailing list, my first online fandom. the second year we all stayed at sandy's house and i shared an air mattress in a corner of the kitchen with mary from pennsylvania and we all went to a late showing of the blair witch project and the shaky cinema verite camera and a ridiculous number of pixy stix combined to make me super nauseous altho at least i didn't throw up, altho i did lock myself out of the rental car. and i rented a car so i could go to oak park and see frank lloyd wright houses, because i wasn't about to pass up that opportunity. i think that was the year one of the johns - there were two, john-who-cosplayed-as-the-purple-marauder and john-who-was-a-rocket-scientist, and this one was the rocket scientist - followed me to the airport so when i returned the car i'd have someone to drive me back. but the sacrifice of the blessed virgin larry was the third year, when we stayed at a hotel near the convention center.) duchess_webb wrote up a ceremony that included kind of psychically repairing poor larry's hymen, because he'd slept with his girlfriend in the time between volunteering to be a sacrifice and actually showing up at the con. he felt bad about it. he was eighteen and adorable, and a whole procession of us, led by duchess_webb and me as the high priestesses, snaked around the tables by the poison elves booth, chanting and pretending to sacrifice the blessed virgin - duchess_webb had a plastic knife with a retractable blade - to the dark lord drew hayes, who wrote and drew this comic we were all fans of. his fellow comics creators who were published by the same company told him he had the weirdest fans, and we were so proud of ourselves. somewhere there are pictures. the elves in pe have very tall ears, and i'd made myself a pair out of papier-mache and armature wire, and after i bought an appropriately priestessy cloak at a local costume shop i had to cut holes in the hood for the ears. it took three people and three different kinds of fasteners (i had a headband with velcro, jola had double-sided tape of the kind you use to stick your shirt to your chest so your boobs don't pop out, and someone else had glue for probably the same purpose) to get them to stay on. i couldn't sit up in the backseat of duchess_webb's car but had to lean sideways so as not to wreck the ears, or knock them off my head.
challenge #15 - create your own challenge!
this was one of my challenges last year and the year before but it bears repeating - embrace your weirdness. own your fannishness. don't ever let anyone shame you for the fannish pursuits that give you joy. love what you love and hold your head high.
snowflake is officially over, but i missed two fun challenges, so here they are. better late than never, right?
challenge #13 - a favorite fandom memory!
oh, i have a lot of these, and a chunk of them are win(chester)con related.
jenna_thorn putting her foot in my back and yanking on my corset laces to tighten them right before the prom at wincon pittsburgh. playing cards against humanity with my roommates at wincon orlando and when it was my turn to draw the black card i got "why am i sticky?" and almost fell off the couch laughing, i mean i couldn't breathe. (this is the best one. it still makes me giggle and i still have no idea why that card was so funny to me.) the fried butter i ate at the texas state fair which was one of the most incredible things i ever put in my mouth and which caused me to spend most of wincon dallas telling people about it. the ghost tour at wincon chicago when twenty fangirls packed into a van that seated sixteen so every time we got out to see something and got back on there was a chorus of "who's got a spare lap?" and "i have a lap" and when the tour guide introduced himself and gave us an overview of the tour and said we'd get to hear tales of murder and mayhem we LOST OUR SHIT because it was at least in spirit still partly a winchestercon and the vast majority of us had gotten there through spn and we were fans of the death and destruction and otherworldly violence. he was taken aback at how excited we were to hear stories about ghosts and murder. going to see red during that same con with a bunch of fangirls. buying cigarettes for missyjack at winchestercon la because the cashier at the convenience store needed an american driver's license number to enter into the register and missy didn't have one, being australian. the bracelet bryn gave me at the last wincon for reasons i don't remember - she made a bunch of them i think for raffle prizes and i think for the con comm, and i don't know why she made one for me but she did. it had ten dimes, one for each con year, and ten charms, one for each con city, and it was dimes in case you were ever stranded somewhere and didn't have a cell phone but did have access to a pay phone, because you could call someone to come get you or just talk to you, and they would. because fangirls look out for each other.
my first couple years in spn fandom, when everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, except when it did. i felt like i was going crazy but so was everyone else, so it was ok. it really was a glorious couple-three years.
about five minutes after the end credits for the premiere of buffy s7, my friend jesse called me and as soon as i picked up the phone he said "ok, rant and rave". and i did. for AN HOUR.
my favorite fandom memory which is less about being a great memory and more about being a good story is from wizardworld philly in 2016, at the panel with the hotter hemsworth and tom hiddleston, when i got up to the microphone and asked chris about the difference between playing thor (big, buff, super masculine, a literal god) and playing kevin in the new ghostbusters (none of those things), and he said he didn't have to go to the gym to play kevin, i forgot to apply an inner voice filter and said, out loud, into the microphone, in front of a ballroom full of people and two actors whose work i enjoyed, "we like that you go to the gym". because sometimes i am mortifying in public. some time later i think wrenlet pointed out to me that someone giffed that particular exchange, and i was thus a very mild version of anonymously tumblr famous for like fifteen minutes. and it was still mortifying.
but my first favorite fandom memory is the sacrifice of the blessed virgin larry at wizardworld chicago in, oh god, 1999? 2000? the third year i went. (i went five years in a row to be with the guild, aka the poison elves mailing list, my first online fandom. the second year we all stayed at sandy's house and i shared an air mattress in a corner of the kitchen with mary from pennsylvania and we all went to a late showing of the blair witch project and the shaky cinema verite camera and a ridiculous number of pixy stix combined to make me super nauseous altho at least i didn't throw up, altho i did lock myself out of the rental car. and i rented a car so i could go to oak park and see frank lloyd wright houses, because i wasn't about to pass up that opportunity. i think that was the year one of the johns - there were two, john-who-cosplayed-as-the-purple-marauder and john-who-was-a-rocket-scientist, and this one was the rocket scientist - followed me to the airport so when i returned the car i'd have someone to drive me back. but the sacrifice of the blessed virgin larry was the third year, when we stayed at a hotel near the convention center.) duchess_webb wrote up a ceremony that included kind of psychically repairing poor larry's hymen, because he'd slept with his girlfriend in the time between volunteering to be a sacrifice and actually showing up at the con. he felt bad about it. he was eighteen and adorable, and a whole procession of us, led by duchess_webb and me as the high priestesses, snaked around the tables by the poison elves booth, chanting and pretending to sacrifice the blessed virgin - duchess_webb had a plastic knife with a retractable blade - to the dark lord drew hayes, who wrote and drew this comic we were all fans of. his fellow comics creators who were published by the same company told him he had the weirdest fans, and we were so proud of ourselves. somewhere there are pictures. the elves in pe have very tall ears, and i'd made myself a pair out of papier-mache and armature wire, and after i bought an appropriately priestessy cloak at a local costume shop i had to cut holes in the hood for the ears. it took three people and three different kinds of fasteners (i had a headband with velcro, jola had double-sided tape of the kind you use to stick your shirt to your chest so your boobs don't pop out, and someone else had glue for probably the same purpose) to get them to stay on. i couldn't sit up in the backseat of duchess_webb's car but had to lean sideways so as not to wreck the ears, or knock them off my head.
challenge #15 - create your own challenge!
this was one of my challenges last year and the year before but it bears repeating - embrace your weirdness. own your fannishness. don't ever let anyone shame you for the fannish pursuits that give you joy. love what you love and hold your head high.