WinchestMidwest 7 -- Days 1-3
Normally I post my LJ entries from the con at the end of each day, but this year winchestmidwest happened to be the same weekend as New York Comic Con, so when I wasn't squeeing about Supernatural, I was scouring Tumblr for Teen Wolf and Sleepy Hollow spoilers (because I am a multifandom ho'). It was kind of like attending two cons at once, and while all that squeeing was epic, it was also exhausting and left me with no time to post anything about winchestmidwest. I shall rectify that immediately.
This is not a huge con (attendance has ranged from 15-25 in the years that I've gone) and there are a lot of repeat attendees (this is my sixth), so most of us know each other by now. Many years the attendees are all female, but this year we had a record three men in attendance. The party favors this year included a tote bag, a Men of Letters ribbon to stick on our con badges, a Men of Letters fridge magnet, a grey lanyard with the show's name and Men of Letters symbol on it, a large button of this year's cast publicity photo, two small randomly chosen individual cast buttons (choices were Dean, Sam, and Castiel--I got Sam and Dean), and another fridge magnet that I somehow managed to lose. I hope it's in my car somewhere. ETA: Found it! It had somehow migrated from my swag bag into my sewing bag.
Friday started with a pizza party accompanied by cupcakes with the Men of Letters logo on them and discussion of season 8 in general. Then asyouleft, who couldn't make it in person this year, gave her presentation from home via her laptop on the portrayal of angels on the show compared to traditional Judeo-Christian portrayals. Way to go above and beyond, asyouleft! After that, we watched the season 9 premiere again, and kalliel did an in-depth analysis of the episode and what it may mean for the characters going forward.
On Saturday, ant3ka did a panel on how the show develops the characters' backstories over time and the difference between continuity flaws and deliberate retconning. Then we did our annual "script-to-screen" panel where we assign parts and read each act of a script out loud, then watch the same act of the episode to see how what ended up on screen differs from what was in the script. Sometimes it isn't much; sometimes it's a lot. Either way, much of the fun comes from reading the notes from the scriptwriters.
This year's ep was "Time Is On My Side" (the Doc Benton episode) by Sera Gamble. When Doc Benton's first victim (the plastic surgeon from the health club) staggers into the ER and the nurse says, "Don't you worry, there's nothing I haven't seen," Sera's notes in the script say:
ON THE NURSE'S FACE as she beholds the (WAY TOO FUCKING GORY TO SHOW THE AUDIENCE) wound with UTTER HORROR - as -
LOW ANGLE. Behind Jules, his legs in focus FOREGROUND, as his innards SPILL OUT onto the floor in an INDISTINCT (but very red and wet) HEAP with a heinous WET SLAP SOUND -
As the nurse COMPLETELY LOSES HER SHIT - apparently she's never seen this...
OFF THE NURSE'S HYSTERICAL SCREAM -
BLACKOUT!
Hee.
After lunch, queeberquabbler gave her annual panel on how gods are portrayed in Supernatural vs. how they're portrayed in mythology. As you might guess, Show tends to cherry-pick what it needs for the story and discard the rest, but not being into mythology myself, I never would have noticed that certain gods shouldn't have appeared in the same episode because they weren't alive at the same time. We also had a general discussion on the pros and cons of interacting with cast and showrunners on social media.
Then we had our first craft project of the weekend. We made bookmarks by tying beads onto the ends of cloth strips, then ink stamping them with supplies provided by alcorandmizar. She also ironed the bookmarks for us to set the ink. I think mine turned out pretty well:
(It's not that yellowed in real life; I just haven't figured out how to set the white balance on my camera yet and the picture was taken in my kitchen.)
After dinner, we had a guest come in to do individual tarot card readings. Those who weren't participating watched some episodes of Show and talked amongst ourselves. I was also cross-stitching much of the day.
Saturday ended (yes, all that was on Saturday!) with another panel by queeberquabbler on why Supernatural seems to inspire so much more fan fiction than other shows and what about the show motivates the writers to write.
Sunday started with the annual spoiler panel, which I skipped because I don't do spoilers for this show, even though I do them for some of my other shows (go figure). Then agent_jl36 gave a talk on cursed objects in the show and objects believed to be cursed in real life (like the Hope Diamond). Then we made our own curse boxes like the ones John Winchester and Bobby Singer had to protect the world from cursed objects. I got as far as painting mine matte black and putting in a blood red liner (I'm really pleased with how the lining turned out), but then it got to the 'draw intricate protection symbols freehand' part, which is when this particular craft abruptly exceeded my skill set. I didn't take a picture because a solid black box wouldn't look like much on the monitor. I still want to work on the box some more, but I think a trip to Michael's for stamps or stencils or something is in order.
After lunch, alcorandmizar gave a brief talk on the brothers and hero archetypes. The main focus was on how there are different hero archetypes and Sam and Dean are different hero archetypes from each other, and how that may unconsciously be the cause of some fandom strife and dissatisfaction with the roles the brothers play on the show. What if you like Hero Archetype A, but your favorite brother is Hero Archetype B? If your favorite brother isn't getting the journey you want him to have, even though it's consistent with the archetype he is, that could definitely be frustrating. I never thought of that before, and looking back on it, it's only an occasional problem for me on this show, but I can see where I'm having that issue in a major way on one of my other shows.
We wrapped up with a raffle (I wasn't picked last this time! And I won a Supernatural-themed necklace), then a general discussion of anything we hadn't covered that people wanted to talk about. Some years we just kind of look at each other, decide we've been discussing the show for three days already, and leave. This year the discussion ran for an hour, including discussion of the potential spin-off.
All in all, another fun weekend with fun people.
This is not a huge con (attendance has ranged from 15-25 in the years that I've gone) and there are a lot of repeat attendees (this is my sixth), so most of us know each other by now. Many years the attendees are all female, but this year we had a record three men in attendance. The party favors this year included a tote bag, a Men of Letters ribbon to stick on our con badges, a Men of Letters fridge magnet, a grey lanyard with the show's name and Men of Letters symbol on it, a large button of this year's cast publicity photo, two small randomly chosen individual cast buttons (choices were Dean, Sam, and Castiel--I got Sam and Dean), and another fridge magnet that I somehow managed to lose. I hope it's in my car somewhere. ETA: Found it! It had somehow migrated from my swag bag into my sewing bag.
Friday started with a pizza party accompanied by cupcakes with the Men of Letters logo on them and discussion of season 8 in general. Then asyouleft, who couldn't make it in person this year, gave her presentation from home via her laptop on the portrayal of angels on the show compared to traditional Judeo-Christian portrayals. Way to go above and beyond, asyouleft! After that, we watched the season 9 premiere again, and kalliel did an in-depth analysis of the episode and what it may mean for the characters going forward.
On Saturday, ant3ka did a panel on how the show develops the characters' backstories over time and the difference between continuity flaws and deliberate retconning. Then we did our annual "script-to-screen" panel where we assign parts and read each act of a script out loud, then watch the same act of the episode to see how what ended up on screen differs from what was in the script. Sometimes it isn't much; sometimes it's a lot. Either way, much of the fun comes from reading the notes from the scriptwriters.
This year's ep was "Time Is On My Side" (the Doc Benton episode) by Sera Gamble. When Doc Benton's first victim (the plastic surgeon from the health club) staggers into the ER and the nurse says, "Don't you worry, there's nothing I haven't seen," Sera's notes in the script say:
ON THE NURSE'S FACE as she beholds the (WAY TOO FUCKING GORY TO SHOW THE AUDIENCE) wound with UTTER HORROR - as -
LOW ANGLE. Behind Jules, his legs in focus FOREGROUND, as his innards SPILL OUT onto the floor in an INDISTINCT (but very red and wet) HEAP with a heinous WET SLAP SOUND -
As the nurse COMPLETELY LOSES HER SHIT - apparently she's never seen this...
OFF THE NURSE'S HYSTERICAL SCREAM -
BLACKOUT!
Hee.
After lunch, queeberquabbler gave her annual panel on how gods are portrayed in Supernatural vs. how they're portrayed in mythology. As you might guess, Show tends to cherry-pick what it needs for the story and discard the rest, but not being into mythology myself, I never would have noticed that certain gods shouldn't have appeared in the same episode because they weren't alive at the same time. We also had a general discussion on the pros and cons of interacting with cast and showrunners on social media.
Then we had our first craft project of the weekend. We made bookmarks by tying beads onto the ends of cloth strips, then ink stamping them with supplies provided by alcorandmizar. She also ironed the bookmarks for us to set the ink. I think mine turned out pretty well:
(It's not that yellowed in real life; I just haven't figured out how to set the white balance on my camera yet and the picture was taken in my kitchen.)
After dinner, we had a guest come in to do individual tarot card readings. Those who weren't participating watched some episodes of Show and talked amongst ourselves. I was also cross-stitching much of the day.
Saturday ended (yes, all that was on Saturday!) with another panel by queeberquabbler on why Supernatural seems to inspire so much more fan fiction than other shows and what about the show motivates the writers to write.
Sunday started with the annual spoiler panel, which I skipped because I don't do spoilers for this show, even though I do them for some of my other shows (go figure). Then agent_jl36 gave a talk on cursed objects in the show and objects believed to be cursed in real life (like the Hope Diamond). Then we made our own curse boxes like the ones John Winchester and Bobby Singer had to protect the world from cursed objects. I got as far as painting mine matte black and putting in a blood red liner (I'm really pleased with how the lining turned out), but then it got to the 'draw intricate protection symbols freehand' part, which is when this particular craft abruptly exceeded my skill set. I didn't take a picture because a solid black box wouldn't look like much on the monitor. I still want to work on the box some more, but I think a trip to Michael's for stamps or stencils or something is in order.
After lunch, alcorandmizar gave a brief talk on the brothers and hero archetypes. The main focus was on how there are different hero archetypes and Sam and Dean are different hero archetypes from each other, and how that may unconsciously be the cause of some fandom strife and dissatisfaction with the roles the brothers play on the show. What if you like Hero Archetype A, but your favorite brother is Hero Archetype B? If your favorite brother isn't getting the journey you want him to have, even though it's consistent with the archetype he is, that could definitely be frustrating. I never thought of that before, and looking back on it, it's only an occasional problem for me on this show, but I can see where I'm having that issue in a major way on one of my other shows.
We wrapped up with a raffle (I wasn't picked last this time! And I won a Supernatural-themed necklace), then a general discussion of anything we hadn't covered that people wanted to talk about. Some years we just kind of look at each other, decide we've been discussing the show for three days already, and leave. This year the discussion ran for an hour, including discussion of the potential spin-off.
All in all, another fun weekend with fun people.