con.txt report

[abka]

This weekend I went to con.txt, my first con ever, and had a lovely time. Thanks to everyone who let me follow them around like a stray puppy, crash their hotel rooms, and borrow their computers (this is mostly uschickens, afrikate, and bayleaf). I met lots of awesome people most of whose names I do not recall, but I had some really interesting conversations :)

Friday:
Arrived Friday morning and having already eaten breakfast passed up the hotel's restaurant for con.txt 101. Then went to Torchwood: Retcon which was quite fun and one of the panels in which I had the most to say. Then I crashed bayleaf, Aral, and Fuschia's panel planning lunch before heading to Reboots, Retcons, and Multiple Continuities. That was a good panel but made me feel bad for comics fans invested in continuity.

I spent some time hanging out in the con suite with uschickens, afrikate, insptr_penguin and some other people, at least one of whom was knitting. We checked out the art auction, dealers etc. At 5 I went to Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Actors (and Writers and Producers) Interact with Fans. I think it was one of my favorite panels of the weekend, multi-fandom with lots of good flow, interesting, but also fun.

We went to a hotel room and shut up while uschickens called an Ethiopian place, convinced them to deliver to the hotel (9 full orders, come on, you can have someone drive a couple blocks) and then proceeded to painstakingly order. Apparently her pronunciation wasn't up to snuff (it sounded fine to us) as she had to repeat each menu item with slightly different emphasis and then politely followed it up with "I'm sorry". Go her because the food arrived and was delicious.

Then everyone got naked (well not all at once), we got dressed for disco duck. Everyone looked fantastic (and can I say that we all have great taste in shoes). Many people danced for the first two hours, then a bunch of people left, I stayed around for a while, went looking for a room party around 11 (it was already defunct) and then went back and danced with cmshaw, gblvr, and a couple other people until they shut off the music at midnight. I remember talking to a bunch of people but as I was a little tipsy do not remember all the details. Later I sat outside with uschickens and heard synecdochic's dramatic employment tale. Many thanks to insptr_penguin for driving me home.

Saturday:
Arrived in time for Supernatural: Hell of a Season Finale, in which there were interesting discussion as to what different aspects of the show people like (for the record, I freakin loved Ghost Chasers), but much less "omg pretty boys" squee than I wanted. I went and bought a lovely blue and silver ring from a dealer (the jewelry table was fantastic!) and then joined about a million people in bayleaf, giddygeek, and someone else's (sorry I don't remember your name) room for bandom lunch. The pizza was good and the conversation fun even though I didn't follow all that much of it.

I went to Art of the AU which was fun although I was fading a bit by that point. I can only interact with that many people for so long. My two quiet hours alone (or mostly alone) in the hotel room were fantastic and I reemerged for Canon vs. Fanon: Characterization Smackdown refreshed. The OTW panel also went well although I was glad to break for dinner. We ate in the hotel restaurant and had a very enthusiastic although somewhat inappropriate waiter. I had a nice conversation with the people at my end of the table, arallara, trixiesfic, uschickens, bayleaf, lightgetsin, and argh someone else who was sitting right across from me but who I can't remember (sorry!).

Vid show was fantastic! I started out in the quiet room with insptr_penguin, but for the second half moved to the loud room with everyone else (which wasn't all that loud, perhaps we needed more booze). I love Crazy (Life on Mars) and Comin' Up From Behind (Bound). Also thought Accidentally in Love was great even though I didn't know anything about Loveless (and finding out about the cat ears later helped.) Hurt (Brokeback Mountain) made me well hurt (like everyone else in the room). Thank goodness it was followed by Papa Don't Preach (Torchwood/Dr. Who). The whole show made me want to resurrect my Supernatural vid which hopefully I will get around to this summer.

Afterwards we went upstairs then down again and had a very serious fantastic conversation about what to do when midget-ninja-pirate zombies attack your office (hint: stand on your desk not under it). There were a ton of nifty people there and I don't remember everyone's names. Oh look I can steal some of them from other people's con reports. bayleaf, hederahelix, ciderpress, smallbeer, arallara, trixiesfic, giddygeek, uschickens, afrikate, insptr_penguin were all there (and maybe some other people). cmshaw and lightgetsin showed up towards the end.

I went home and proceeded to tell a sleepy D. all about the coolness of my day and showed him the fantastic Torchwood mpreg vid.

Sunday:
It was really hard to wake up and drive in Sunday morning, but I made it. My day started with breakfast and the art auction (I wanted the knitted adipose but not for over $100 thankyouverymuch). Sunday was my most panel-heavy day. I went to four back-to-back: the very fun When You Get What You Want, then ellen_fremedon and sanj's beautifully-prepared Doctor Who: What's a Slasher to Do with Old School Who? Quite a Lot! I'm really looking forward to more sci-fi Fridays.

I switched rooms for Being Fannish Without a Fandom and stayed for But if, Baby, I'm the Bottom, You're the Top. This was featured lightgetsin in her second fabulous, revealing, vinyl(?) outfit of the con. treewishes tapped me to write (cause when treewishes tells you to do something during the BDSM panel one must do it, yes :) ). This was slightly embarrassing as I didn't know how to spell everyone's names (hi, I'm new), but the panel discussion was good even if we all were losing a bit of steam due to it being the end of the weekend.

Dead Duck was good, then I had a nice relaxing Thai lunch with bayleaf before coming home and crashing. Big points to D. for rescheduling the celebration of our 6th wedding anniversary from Sunday (the actual date) to Tuesday.

I had a great time at the con, thanks so much to everyone for making me feel welcome :)

Comments

[metallian.livejournal.com]

Hooray for cons!

That was a good panel but made me feel bad for comics fans invested in continuity

Care to elaborate?

[abka.livejournal.com]

Oh just that comics canon seems so extensive that if you're following a certain character (or pair of characters) there are bound to be contradictions (some "explained" with handwaving others not). So you need to chose what particular canon you're using as the basis for your story, trying to make everything logically consistent doesn't fly (and there would just be such a huge amount to read). I don't read or write about comics, so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's what I got from the discussion.

[metallian.livejournal.com]

It's true, it's a very messy business on which some of us (like me) try desperately to impose some order. Some say it doesn't matter as long as the story's good. But for my money, there's nothing quite like the high you get from catching a reference, reading a story that builds intelligently on the consequences of a previous storyline, or seeing loose ends tied up in a clever and clean fashion. For me, that stuff's at least half of the fun of reading comics.