hannah | Keep the nightlight on.

For context, I'm worried about Parker stealing my hats because I won a fantastic print of her in the big Sunday morning auction. More on that later.

I was frazzled and frustrated when I got to

con_txt itself; I haven't seen six AM face-to-face in a long time and the early rising started to snap back at me around noon. I wore my Snakes On A Cane shirt. The service in the hotel's restaurant didn't do me any favors, either. Still, the flight was speedy and the Metro was fast, and being able to head right into panels helped a lot.

Love the Characters, Hate the Fandom was a lot of why I love cons distilled into an hour of talk on what happens when lots of people write certain characters and loving what the show provides rather than the show itself and how bad productions can be just as inspiring as good ones - "I can do a better job than this!" Being able to say "slash" and "AU" and know the other person knows what I'm talking about, plus knowing everyone else in the room has a decent chance of being as self-examinatory and thinks about this stuff as much as I do.

I didn't get the chance to go to any of the one o'clock panels and really should've gone to the local Panera, but got a great lunch with

deelaundry despite the non-tip-worthy service and made it back upstairs for the Taking over the Asylum panel where I got some time to explore the issues of people taking over other people's characters professionally that I'd brought up a couple of hours ago. The room got into some talk on "transformational" creators and "affirmational" ones, which are people who love the medium itself and want to use it to tell stories and the people who love the stories told within the medium and want to tell those stories themselves. We talked about how literally everyone working on Doctor Who grew up watching it, what constitutes fanworks if they're done professionally, how things can go very right and very wrong when people want to tell the stories they read when they were ten, and how fanon drifts over into canon.

Is Nothing Sacred? Crackfic, crossovers, and weirdo AUs was a lot more serious than the topic itself tends to be. "Internal consistency" was a big part of what we talked about, and my favorite term "emotional fidelity", and everyone agreed on making sure that the crack sustained its intended tone throughout and that crack doesn't necessarily have to be funny. If a fic has a whacked-out premise, that doesn't matter as much as how well it's written and how well it pulls that premise off, and how the readers feel by the end of the story. Bandom came up a lot, and so did SGA, and there was some talk on the difference between playing an idea straight, deconstructing it, and writing a story at three AM and drunk for the humor value. The very good point that 'all it takes is one' to start a wave of penguins and puppies, and how once one fandom gets its penguins and puppies it's very easy for another one to do so as well. Some fandoms do lend themselves to crack moreso than others, which I think is in part due to attracting the audience that'd write crack to begin with - Stargate Atlantis is the granddaddy example, compared to something like Criminal Minds - but when a person comes from a crack-based fandom they do tend to bring that crack with them, which is why some fandoms get kittens in under five months. Also, "tragic couch" would be a good name for a band. And my wingfic Left of West is here, and my genderfuck deconstruction Uniforming (Made to Seem) is here.

I hung out at the con suite for a while, peering at jewelry and zines and posters and checking my e-mail, and then went out for dinner with a few people I knew and some I didn't. We went to a local Thai place where I had something big and blue on the grounds that Dan Rydell of Sports Night taught me never to pass up an opportunity to drink something big and blue, and I should seize the opportunity. It had rum, pineapple juice, blue liquor, and lots of shaved ice, was indeed very big and very blue, and came topped with a cherry and an orange slice. I should've gotten a picture. On the way back, I talked about hats with someone whose name escapes me.

The Disco Duck was fun, and I met another woman with my name, which was fun, and got weirder and cooler when we found we're both librarians and baked and have a penchant for hats. Someone said we needed a third Hannah for vocals to make a popular music group, since I'd be on drums and she'd be on guitar. We danced a bit without meaning it, and went through the Time Warp again with more than enough gusto, and one shot of Bailey's wasn't enough but I didn't have enough cash with me to cover another drink. So Dee took me to her home, where I crashed in her guest bedroom and I experienced shower envy since hers is, in fact, objectionably better than mine.

Saturday I got up pretty early on account of falling asleep fast, and once I got dressed made French Toast for breakfast with the help of the Bigger Little Laundry. The Smaller Little Laundry was busy playing video games and Mr. Laundry didn't get out of bed until the toast was done. I wore my Global Dynamics t-shirt with the original SciFi channel logo.

We got to the con in time for Slash and the Dream of Actually Gay Characters where the lists of GLBT characters and out celebrities each made it onto a second giant post-it note. We talked about the importance of having two telephones - one phone isn't much, but with two you can call someone - and why it's so vital to have someone instal that first phone to begin with. There was some comparison of cable TV networks and mainstream broadcasting companies, and I took great glee in pointing out David and Keith from Six Feet Under are the healthiest, most stable couple on the show and the only one to end it together and happy. Being evil does give people more freedom, there needs to be more same-sex public displays of affection in addition to actual stated relationships, and things have gotten a lot better and there's still a long way to go. And being a vampire means everything's just thrown out the window, which Pam is eminently pleased with.

The con suite and lunch followed, where I went out to the local farmers market with someone whose Livejournal username I can't recall. The fact that there was a local farmers market that I attended says a lot about me. She got her lunch of a pint of yogurt packed with good vegetarian protein, I got a veggie burger from a local chain of shops, and we pitched in to buy a pint of pear sorbet that we passed around the con suite. For once, running out of spoons wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since at cons it's easy to share spoons. One more reason to love them.

The Eleventh Doctor was an immensely quoted panel, with gems like "Bizarre clothing thief strikes again at hospital!" and "If Nine is Four off his meds and Ten is Five off his meds, Eleven is back on his meds." A general panel of squee and speculation, and a fair bit of sighing and spoiler avoidance.

I think it's my fault the AUs and the Fans who Love Them panel somehow settled on the "barista AU" as the default AU by which other AUs are measured. Sorry about that. As it was, we talked about making AUs, why we do it, which fandoms draw people that want to write AUs to them and what the AUs offer, and how to make them believable. The idea of getting to the central core traits of the characters came up, as did the setting of the original story as a character itself, for which Band of Brothers served as an example. Some of it is the humor and novelty value - "seemed like a good idea at the time" covers a lot of fan activity, when you get right down to it - and some of it's to seriously examine who an individual character is by stripping much of what's attached to them away to find out who they are when it's all gone. The farther out from canon you go, the more you need to make everyone sound like themselves and the more believable the world needs to be, and I said that if I don't think a reader can go into the AU world, set up a dentist's appointment, go to the waiting room and pick up a copy of Newsweek and understand how the articles would be different, I haven't done my job right. And maybe get a few lattes along the way.

Finding Fan Activity wasn't as much about real-world connection-making as I'd wanted, which might make for a good panel next time. So I went over to the Leverage and the OT3 of Joy panel, where everyone agreed typical gender roles get thrown out the window and how the whole thing is a big ball of fun and happiness. Alec, Eliot and Parker all care for each other, and there's plenty of ways to get them together in one way or another, most of which came up.

If I'd had a room at the hotel, I'd have taken the hour to crash, but instead I forgot the lobby's couches were there and sort of bummed around the con suite. But Fandom Suddenly Loves the Ladies got my spirits right back up, where we got to talk about general trends in media in the last couple of decades as indicative of overall shifts in cultural assumptions and mores. Again, I had to think I should've gone into media studies. We talked about rating systems being totally screwed up, how shows are having more than one female character and how they talk to each other without talking about men, how it's not necessary to do crossovers to get femslash between two strong women anymore, and the fact that people are generally writing more women and writing them better. They've got their own agency independent of being love interests and tokens, which everyone appreciates.

Dinner was spicy sushi and a weird chicken teriyaki, which challenged my assumptions over what constitutes that dish; for one, this had pineapple in it. Welcome in big blue drinks, not so much in chicken teriyaki, even if it is experimental.

Someone whose name I forget and really should buy cookies to repay her generosity gave me a ticket for a drink, which I spent on a double shot of Bailey's at the Vid Show intermission. Now, to establish the setting, the Vid Show was screened in a quiet room and a loud room. I was in the loud one. So I was present for the laughing, for the heckling, for the clapping and catcalling and the sing-along. Oh, yes. One of the vids was to "Birdhouse In Your Soul" and the instant the lyrics started everyone in the audience was singing along, just like a bouncing ball symphony except a million times better. Some classic vids made on VHS tapes, some new avant-garde vids about real people, some I'd seen before and still loved, and the whole thing was a general blast as vid shows should be.

(A brief rant: Two of the vids were to Lady Gaga songs and one was to Adam Lambert. I'm not angry they were in there, and actually got into the music a bit, although I'm not going to seek the stuff out. I'm still frustrated over the fact that nobody told me these people had actual singing talent. Most of bandom talks about these people and various groups in the context of the individuals and their personalities and attractiveness and their skills at making spectacles out of themselves, and how strangely they can dress and how exploitative their videos can be, not in terms of their musical abilities, and especially not in terms I can understand without a couple of weeks of active translation work. So after the Adam Lambert song was over, I said loud enough for people to hear, "Nobody told me he could sing!" I knew he'd been on TV programs to that effect, but the way fandom talks about him I almost think he shows up and sweats glitter and sunglasses instead of singing.)

After the show everyone was running around, cheering and gabbing and mingling, and I was in the right mood and right state to do some very crazy things. There was someone walking around with a huge bottle of a violently orange-colored mixed drink which was apparently half grain alcohol and half something else. All I remember is it tasted like grapefruit. She handed me a cup of the stuff and I drained it right away, and she poured two glasses - and by the time she'd picked hers up I was done with mine. Delicious and delightful.

On the drive back to her house Dee and I talked very seriously about Eminem, rap music as medium, and the difference between curtainfic and domestic fics and why there's no shame in writing established relationships. We got pretty heavy into that last topic. When we got to her house I was in the state of being well aware I was drunk but not knowing how drunk I was, so I called it quits before midnight showed up. It's kind of weird I sleep better when I'm on vacations than when I'm in a fairly stable schedule. Anyway.

Sunday I got up early again, and didn't get to any panels for a while since the morning started out with a raffle drawing and art auction. Which is where Parker comes in. I know it's a print and I still don't get why there's a dog in there, but I had so much fun bidding on her I still don't really care because every time I look at that print I'll think of the auction and how much fun I had in it. I really shouldn't be allowed at auctions unsupervised. She cost me $212 dollars, because she's boiling hot. I also bought an adorable silver ring with a blue stone set between a pair of bunnies.

I wore my It Came Out Of Nowhere t-shirt, which led to the agreement that the Doctor needs both Doc Brown and Marty as companions since everyone already knows about time travel and the two Docs would pretty much destroy the whole space/time continuum without trying and Marty and Amy Pond would sit back and crack wise. That fic really needs to exist for the betterment of humanity.

I got to the last half of Star Trek: To Boldly Slash where Everyone has Slashed Before which meant I was just in time for discussions about the differences in tropes between AOS and TOS, general characterization what we'd like to see - I want less of "Kirk needs a daddy/healing cock for his abuse" and way, way more of McCoy doing anything - and how AOS is bringing people into TOS and general fandom trends when something new is added to a previously closed canon.

Tall, Dark, and Deadpan was an hour discussing the general deconstruction of characters we love, trying to figure out why we love them and what their appeal is to us - the sort of thing I do on my own most of the time, so to do it out loud got a little intense when I could actually say things like "the moment of empathy, that catharsis" to talk about the draw in stories of the inscrutable, controlled character to have a moment of emotion that their significant other witnesses and then understands them that much more. And there's a difference in having a committed sexual relationship and being open with someone. These individuals are very compelling, often have their own stories in addition to the main narrative, offer an outsider perspective, and give fans a lot to work with in terms of potential stories to write. And when I said "Norrington" there was a general murmur of approval throughout the room.

They Fight Crime! (More or Less) turned from general talk on shows to a commentary on modern trends in current media regarding gray-and-gray morality and audience catharsis to something on product placement before getting back to the morality question. Stuff like Burn Notice, Leverage, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Justified, The Mentalist, Psych and White Collar all have characters doing bad things for good reasons, and it's dubious whether the audience should sympathize and empathize with them, find their actions reprehensible, or both. Whether there's a series of general trends running through society right now that's producing a desire to see characters cut through the middle men and deliver justice themselves through whatever means they see fit. This isn't a modern trend - noir's full of this stuff - and we talked for a while on how it wouldn't take much more than a change of lighting and music to move some of these shows from light comedy to incredibly bleak dramas.

The Dead Duck was mellow and quiet, and Dee gave me a ride back to the airport where we talked fic some more. The airport itself was, after all the socialization, really lonely - I didn't have that knowledge I could just start a conversation anymore, whether it was about a specific show or a general discussion of pie-making. Fandom's very friendly when it gets face-to-face, and I really missed that when it'd been missing for less than an hour. Existentialist angst is tricky to handle at the best of times, doubly so in an airport.

Due to a runway mix-up the plane was a half-hour late in taking off, but still got me into Pittsburgh early enough to get a nice aerial view of the city lit by the sunset as we came in, going West over my neighborhood and school and all of the downtown, and I admit I felt a fair bit of pride about where I'm living. The shuttle to get me back to the house was on time, and I got back just in time for fireflies. To celebrate and continue the trend of con-night drinking, I opened up a bottle of raspberry Lambic beer all for myself.

And now I'm ready to do it all over again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wow! It sounds like you had a blast. The discussion about crackfic had me nodding as I read, what with the great point about how it has to be well written.

Existentialist angst is tricky to handle at the best of times, doubly so in an airport.

You must use that line in fiction someday. It's so wonderfully made. :)

Yeah, that struck me, too. The characterisation has to be rock-solid within the parameters of the crackiness for it to work, otherwise whatever you've changed to, uh, cook up your crack won't be funny in contrast. Drunk at 3AM will work, as long as you're not forcing it.

We talked about that in the AU panel too, about how if the characters aren't recognizably themselves, the whole thing collapses like a badly-balanced house of cards.

It was a big ball of fun, and the next one's in 2012. You might have some free time by then.

I borrowed it from a bit from Douglas Adams - "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

I am so jealous, and so thrilled you got to attend. :-)

"If Nine is Four off his meds and Ten is Five off his meds, Eleven is back on his meds."

*sporfle*

I could actually say things like "the moment of empathy, that catharsis" to talk about the draw in stories of the inscrutable, controlled character to have a moment of emotion that their significant other witnesses and then understands them that much more.

This is just *brilliant*. Right here, the reason why I read fanfic.

Right here, the reason why I read fanfic. Oh, absolutely.

hannahrorlove put it really well. To me it's also about being able to see show where before there was just a tell in close-up or medium shot, you know? It's that point of view that you just feel needs to be explored, one character opening up to another and all the emotions tied up with that. It enriches what you see on the screen.

Exactly--reading fic and being part of fandom has made me a much different media consumer. For the better, I would like to think.

That's something which came up in the Love The Character and Fandom Suddenly Loves The Laides panels, how fandom is an environment that fosters close scrutiny of media texts and encourages discussion and self-examination. There was a bit of talk on how reading filmed serialized media - TV shows - is a learned skill, and how some actors haven't quite gotten that yet.

So yeah, paying attention to the text for reasons other than the raw story or the eye candy is a skill fandom helps people learn.

That came up - the tall, dark, and deadpan character, being the outsider viewpoint, offers a lot of exploratory possibilities.

Start saving up for the next one now! We could split a room!

I keep spamming the hell out of this post, but it sounds like you had a great time. con.txt sounds totally freaking awesome!

It totally is, dude! You should come next time!

Oh, Hannah, thank you for sharing, and you really make me want to go!! What fun!

You would've rocked the SGA panel. And pretty much everything else.

Keep the nightlight on.

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