Con report: Days 2 and 3 (beware the tl;dr!)

[dragojustine]

So I'm finally recovered from the con. (It only took, what, two nights of 12 hours of sleep and three days of speaking to no one? Oh god, introversion, how you make life difficult.)

No detailed day two and day three rundowns from me.

-The SPN John panel was extraordinarily well moderated by sylvia_bond. Less contentious than at Wincon, perhaps because of that moderation, perhaps because everybody really emotionally invested in "Good dad" avoided it. That meant the discussion could leave "good dad or bad dad" and head in directions like "bad dad, sure, but how much was that caused by his own trauma? How capable was he of being otherwise?" and "how possible is it to be both a good classic hero and a good dad? Even more so, how possible is it to be a good dad and yet create the next generation of heroes?" Wonderful.

-The meta panel on identity politics (whatever it was actually called) was about what I expected. Managed to be not horrible, broke now new ground, and it turns out that a lot of people are a great deal more lastingly pissed at the little "Yuletide is anti-semitic" kerfuffle than I thought. It was in some ways a bit grating- for instance, the first (I think only) time the word "privilege" was used, the entire section of the room I was sitting in broke out in eye-rolls and huffs and "well that's a ridiculous word, that's stupid, I hate that." I'd imagine the rest of the room could probably hear my teeth grinding. There were a few token attempts to explain that you don't see it or want to worry about it because that's sort of the entire point of the concept, no? But the few other people I saw grinding their teeth all seemed to come to the same conclusion that it wasn't worth spending the rest of the hour on that and moved on. Apparently the concept privilege, (like, for instance, terminology from queer theory) is one of that is well worked-out in the toolbox of academic discussion but for whatever reason has not been able to make that leap to non-academic conversation. How can/should that be changed? Somewhat related observation from the panel- the group seemed much more reluctant, and much less comfortable, speaking about sexual orientation than race. Even flat-out avoidant. I find that interesting.

-At least two panels (Fannish entitlement and "you got your meta in my squee!") plus a few extra-panel conversations touched on the issue I'm thinking of as "meta versus wank." There were a lot of expressions of dissatisfaction that fandom seems to have forgotten how to do good meta, and now tends to skip straight past meta into the wank stage. This baffles me- after all, we have a LOT of polite and intelligent people, many of whom come from academia and have (or otherwise acquired) the tools to have those kind of textual criticism discussions. How do we bring back sane and un-wanky meta focused on the shows? Point the first- defining the scope of your meta (within the context of the show only, including extra-textual information about the writing/filming process, including the context of our larger society?) and then keeping the discussion within that scope. Point the second- for the love of God, bring back moderation! There are very few spaces for moderated discussion now. Point the third- discussion used to happen on relatively neutral ground such as e-mail lists. Now it happens in the highly personal space of one person's journal, which for polite people puts up a psychological barrier to vigorous discussion (and then leaves only the impolite ones disagreeing). slashpine  was taking very good notes on this conversation, which I dearly hope she posts.

I brought up spn_heavymeta  several times as a model of meta focused within the scope of the show, and conducted on the neutral ground of the com rather than in people's private journals- or at least, the main essays are. This more and more seems like a fantastic model to me. torchwood_meta  seems to also hold its discussion at the com rather than in journals, though it doesn't have the library of fantastic essays. How to start coms like that for other fandoms? How to push people in the direction of discussion of coms rather than private journals?

-The Torchwood panels were a bit crowded and chaotic. The Captain Jack one was interesting for providing some little bits of canon or pseudo-canon I missed, from the online blogs and the novels. Also, a comment by way of minotaurs - the coding of Captain Jack as an American reads TOTALLY different to the originally intended British audience than it does to us. That observation was so stunningly obvious and important and yet so completely new to me that I basically sat there staring at him with my mouth open. Along with that comes an entire post-imperial reading of this damn show that I SHOULD have thought about- dammit, I SHOULD know enough to have thought about- but hadn't. Way to drastically change my take on a show in one sentence or less!

-Very fun lunch with sylvia_bond  and amothea , and their friend Cathy. So entertaining!

-The con's zine library is awesome.

-The vid show was short and very old-school fannish (Two Pros! Two Starsky & Hutch!). The Oceans 11 vid and the Numb3rs vid made me squee like a madwoman, and I am desperate for Constance to see the Numb3rs one but it doesn't seem to exist online. Spent a long time with delibby  talking about the problems of just not getting vids- not sure how to analyze or what I'm looking for, unable to articulate what works and what doesn't. She helped a little, and convinced me to go to the first half-hour of the vid show review.

-The art auction was fantastic- I expected to be bored and skip it, but the_shoshanna  on stage is a thing of beauty. I kind of want to be one of her scantily-clad art runners next year, though I could never be as much of a crowd pleaser as nakedbee .

-Finished up with a long long time spent in the con suite. Much discussion of fannish history, cons, etc. Many highly cool people. Then the funnest late night/early morning I've spent in ages, with slashpine . Academic and archaeology and teaching! Crossovers and morality in Harry Potter and world building and science fiction! And now I am eagerly awaiting her Snarry recs *facepalm*

At several different points during the weekend, I ended up saying "I should propose a panel on that!"

1. Vid-watching 101. What are you looking for, when you analyze a vid? What kind of questions do you ask? How do you articulate what worked and what didn't? (I really want this one, and the_shoshanna says it happens at Vividcon, so I know it's possible!)

2. Too Much Canon! Maybe your is a TV series, remade decades later, with a spinoff, and blogs and extra website content, and a novel or two (Hi, Dr. Who!). Or the canon is supposedly closed but the creator won't shut up (Hi, Rowling!). Or the creators added an extra, hated it, and quietly retconned (Hi, SPN!). How do we cope? When do we just choose to say, "I am pretending the novels/comic book/blog/interview never happened?"

3. The Endless Campout Sometimes, bits of canon just SUCK. How do we cope? Ignore it? AU it? Try to improve it? (Yes, this needs improvement, but I like the basic idea. Hi, slashpine !)

4. Moderating Following up that "we need to return to moderated spaces for meta discussion" thing. Just what it says on the tin. I could SO EASILY become totally addicted to conventions. Actually, given that I was already registered for Comic-Con, already planning on attending the next Strategicon and a Lindy Exchange in Seattle, and that I am budgeting money for Bascon and Wincon as we speak while eying con.txt longingly... maybe already addicted?