We can't rewind now; we've gone too far.

One thing I overhead at Con.Txt was someone in the upsuite saying how even though she was a hardcore introvert, she wasn't at all tired out by talking to people, that it was enjoyable and invigorating and energizing - and I jumped in to agree and say that at fandom conventions, conversations are always meant to be genuine interactions, we're all open and honest with each other and if we don't want to talk at any given moment, we're not going to fake it.

Not everything has to be an open opportunity for deep conversation. Sometimes 'hello' is fine. But what can be draining about the world outside of conventions is the disingenuousness of a lot of social interactions. The use of 'how are you' as a greeting has always gnawed at me. It's not the case with cons.

There were some panels that I know I wouldn't have had fun with, there were some where I still wonder if I should've flipped over into that room instead, and that's true with every con I've ever been to. The only solution is to accept that, and ask people afterwards what happened. Of the panels I attended, I think I liked The Good Place: Moral Forking Philosophy with a Side of Shrimp the most in part because I helped moderate that one and we got into some nice discussions about the characters, how the tight format helps the story immensely, and speculated on certain hints about the whole show's backstory that might or might not have built into the text itself. Same with Steven Universe: I Am Made of Love (And It's Stronger Than You), where I got to spoil someone for a major character reveal and get rewarded with the absolute best face.

One-Shot Wonders was as much about the strengths short pieces - you don't need to explain everything the way you would with an 80,000 word epic; you show up and give the idea and get out of there - as it was about fandom platforms and trends. Post-episode fics are basically a thing of the past, but Tumblr helped give response-fics and small little written sketches another place to thrive because of how the website is structured. AU All The Way didn't have as much talk about set-up and structure and the joy of exploration as I'd have liked, with a lot of it spent listing kinds of AUs, but there was some talk about the shift in nomenclature, alternate realities versus canon divergences, and how authors decide on what is and isn't brought over from the canon to the new stuff.

End of (Slash) Fandom As We Knew It (and Do We Feel Fine?) brought up a lot of thoughts I've had for a long time, about how the semiotics and heuristics of fandom itself have shifted so fundamentally in the last fifteen years, never mind the last forty, that the old approaches to conceptualizing fandom as a whole have pretty much vanished. How slash used to be a genre unto itself, indicating certain inherent philosophies and emotional connotations. That to find certain things which slash used to advertise is more difficult because slash isn't a singular term being used to specifically communicate that. And how it's not a terrible thing, necessarily, because when you shift fandoms these days you don't lose your friends the way you did a long time ago, how it's easier to make new friends regardless of shared fandoms, and how there's still pockets of places providing fans with the same emotional stories that they once fell in love with. I made sure to quote the song "Internet Killed the Video Star" - "oh the glory days are gone but everything OK/'Cause we still love our sex and drugs just like the good ol' days."

Though it was opposite the crossover panel, which apparently had some good talk on a fic I absolutely adore, so who knows if I'd have liked that one more. (It's this Buffy/Always Coming Home fic and it is a delight.)

Other panels included sub.txt: a panel on male submission, We Hurt the Ones We Love, Tro(m)ping Through Fandom, Werewolf Torts and Undead Annuities 201, and F*** This Grim Cyberpunk Dystopia, Bring Us Luxury Queer Space Communism!. All of them were basically what they say on the tin, and all of them were opportunities to sit in a room with a couple dozen other people and talk about topics that aren't generally brought up in most daily situations. You need a certain amount of a certain kind of person to get anything good going with them, and we did for all of them. As an example, someone brought up how they wanted historically accurate coffee shop AUs - which is to say, coffee shop AUs for canons set in the 18th and 19th centuries in coffeeshops of those eras.

The DIY panel on Glow was sparsely attended but all the richer for it. The Buffy sing-along was a delight from start to finish, and perhaps next time we'll do a Steven Universe sing-along. At the Disco Duck, I floated around as a booze fairy, offering people drinks from the tiny bottles I'd brought along, introducing some people to single malt whiskey and getting others well lubricated on different kinds of vodka for a particularly fun night.

If I have any complaints, it's that the dance party DJ played a couple of songs I requested to not be included during the night, and that too often I was spoiled for choice in panel decisions. Dancing hard enough to hurt my knee is my fault, with nothing to do with the con. I take full responsibility for that. (At the Dead Duck, someone complained there wasn't any bacon at the free breakfast bar, and I held myself back from saying I didn't think that was a problem.)

Not a complaint as such but a general observation, it seems to have gotten smaller since 2016. There's reasons for that, I'm sure, but I'm going to have to step up my game for preparing and advertising for 2020. Because everyone should experience conversations in an environment where everyone around them genuinely wants to talk.