raven | Entries tagged with con report

So, Vidukon! I had a lovely time - spent my morning on Friday writing in Starbucks at Paddington; headed westwards in a train carriage with two hen parties and nine fangirls, it was great - and we got to Cardiff with far less incident than last year; Cardiff itself is lovely, it has bilingual signage and smells like the sea, which is all I ask from of a place; and we piled off the London train and ran straight into

fray_adjacent, which was super. Vidukon is a lovely little con - emphasis on the little; I think I knew almost everyone at least by sight, or through having met them last year - and the atmosphere was way more collegiate than some other cons I've been to.

I didn't go to everything, but I went to most things. Some brief notes:

-My favourite vidshows were the Pride vidshow (because, once again, Vidukon is the same weekend as Pride); the Same Song, Different Source vidshow (because, wow, I am kind of vid-illiterate, but a show like that really helps - it helped me draw out parallels and interesting themes where maybe I wouldn't've been able to otherwise) and Constructed Realities, which was probably the most fun vidshow. My suggestion for that show was "Closer", and it was fun seeing that on the big screen; also one vid of mine appeared, "we were born in a summer storm", which was also nice to see; but my favourite favourite favourite times eleventy million thing about that vidshow was "Papa Don't Preach", in which Jack Harkness is keeping his baby. I'm so happy about that vid. So, so happy.

-So, having only begun vidding as a result of last year's Vidukon, it was a major kick and blessing for me to see my vids on screen! As above I had one in the constructed realities show, and "Landsailor" of course appeared in the Aims Vid Project show. I very much enjoyed being part of that project, especially as such a new vidder - "Landsailor" was the third vid I made - and getting to see them all on the screen one after another was part of the whole community building thing I think is so important in fandom generally. It was great. I also got to see "Unsteady Ground", the vid I learned how to vid to make, on the screen in the Vidders' Choice show, and that was amazing: I mean, really, really amazing. Even a year's worth of experience makes me think I'd do it slightly differently now, but nevertheless, that was the vid of my heart and it was so so nice to see people's reactions to it in real time. Aaaah.

-And, finally. Premieres. I didn't have a premiere myself - I thought until the last minute I was going to make a Queen Arachnia vid for the lulz, but it never worked out - but I knew

cosmic_llin had one and I'd been hearing static about that vid since April. It's a vid, they all told me, very obliquely, that is relevant to your interests.

silly_cleo wanted to sit next to me for it. It was all very intriguing.

The vid is "Long Live" (by

cosmic_llin), no content notes, all of Star Trek. Long live the magic we made.

Go watch it. I'll still be here when you get back.

Yep.

I think that it was out of consideration for my feelings that

such_heights put it at the end of the show? When the lights came up I couldn't talk for a while. I just can't.

Actually, cribbing mostly from the comment I finally got myself to write on it (after the broken-hearted keening was over, natch), ( more on this )

I just... yes.

-I also made a vid myself and posted it during the con - not a premiere; I'm not that organised, though I did finally finish the vid on Saturday afternoon - and in case you missed it, here it is: we came to learn the sea, also about all of Star Trek! This has been the vid of my heart the last couple of months or so; like Long Live, it's a love song. A little sadder, as is my wont, but still.

-And though I had rather a miserable train journey home - drunks! smelly people! ticket shenanigans! - I had my laptop and a surplus of enthusiasm, so I vidded! I made 30 seconds of a vid, anyway. I have a lot of vid ideas at the moment - I'm still going to make an Arachnia vid at some point; I have a half-formed idea for a vid about sad robots - but the one that got made is this odd little creature, a vid about Star Trek, mind control and violence.

(As per, I have all the happiest fanwork ideas.)

Right. Work.

Crossposts: http://loneraven.livejournal.com/767001.html

In the last week, I have: applied for two jobs; entered the competition for the Lucy Cavendish Prize; started agricultural forfeiture proceedings; done a rural first registration; got four hours of CPD; approached two academics and two professional supervisors about references; gone to a three-day con 3,500 miles away.

(I am very tired.)

(I also have concrud.)

I am so tired, and I have such concrud, that I think I shall listen to the Gaslight Anthem very loudly and let you have the edited highlights of Muskrat Jamboree, oh yeah:

-My ROOMIES,

alpheratz and

soupytwist who are the best roomies a girl could ask for. I arrived somewhat mangled on Thursday evening in the snow (after I fare-dodged on the T by mistake - dear state of Massachusetts, I owe you $2.50) and

soupytwist looked after me and got me my registration packet and dinner and fangirls (I met

celli and

slodwick and have no very clear memory of what I said to either of them) and then I went to bed. The con hotel was pretty fabulous, but of all its myriad wonderfulnesses the beds were way up there. Big squishy pillows. Also

alpheratz's alarm clock tone is "Glosoli", which I found sufficiently charming that I didn't care it was stupid o'clock in the morning.

(Americans also say "ass o'clock in the morning", which is much more expressive, only I can't pronounce it. I forget who it was at the con who got me to say "I pawned my porn at the pawn-shop" but yeah, same deal, terminally non-rhotic &tc.)

-Fandom blind date! I was holding up Slings & Arrows;

soupytwist did The Middleman; it was awesome. Also slash pictionary, which was hilarious and joyous and kind of a testament to the wondeful human brain - you could draw five stick figures with a couple of semiquavers and trust the whole room to shout "One Direction!" - and kind of exhausting, also, so I went to the craft table and found grown women studiously engaged in covering pictures of pretty people with glitter. It was the best.

-Make-up! So,

commodorified very kindly offered to make me up for the dance, and by the time she'd done with me I didn't quite recognise myself. I had gold glitter on my eyes and sprays of glitter on my cheekbones. I looked like her Midas touch. (Here's the thing. I never liked school all that much. I didn't aspire to be prom queen. But I walked into the MJ dance party wearing a short red goth dress, covered in glitter, surrounded by all these gorgeous, unrepentant, unapologetic women, and felt like these are my people, this is my place. Fangirls, you are as beautiful as the night sky.)

-The vidshow was amaaaaazing. It started with Starships and got everyone going; there was a sweet interlude of Home; and at the end of The Adventure, the atmosphere in the room was electric, collective, transformative - I was transported.

-Dance party! There was daaaaaancin'. There was also a lot of sadness for the bandom fans when it came to light right in the middle of the party that My Chemical Romance broke up. That was not a highlight, so I skip over it. The daaaaancin' was awesome though; I like watching lots of ladies doing Gangnam Style.

-Saturday was a quieter, more disjointed day -

soupytwist and I both slept through the nine o'clock panels, and I didn't really get myself together until we got to my first serious panel, Kink 201. Which was fun and interesting, but the hotel were also leasing space to a casting call next door to the consuite, and it was packed full of children. (And some adults - one of whom was so obnoxious (who, outside of fiction, actually says, "What're you looking at?) that I was v. uncharacteristically driven to be very rude in public.) And, argh, you don't want to be doing a kink panel when there are literally fifty kids just outside the room. "Don't crack the whips! It'll scared the children!" ...yeah.

(It later turned out the casting call was some sort of elaborate scam; I felt bad for the kids, but not the dratted woman I yelled at.)

-In the afternoon was the Twenty Years of Due South panel, which I liked a lot, and afterwards we went for ice-cream and thence to a costume room party, which was all pretty fun. I was getting tired and anxious again, but I had a good time in the end - especially eating peanut chilli ice-cream (mmmm), and playing Apples to Apples, Fandom Edition. (I won, largely based on the observation that gay sex is quite popular, competence kink is cool, and accidental marriage is bogus!)

-Sunday was also rather disjointed, as the con proper was over by eleven and my lovely roomies departed homewards before lunch. I went for lunch at the restaurant closest to the hotel (an amazing fake Irish Viking bar serving Irish classic dishes, such as BBQ brisket with biscuit and chai-apple French toast) and got to hang out with

spuffyduds and

queue among many others, and that was really great. I got to talk a little about my real life with someone from fandom who Gets It. Isn't that awesome? It was awesome and... affirming, I suppose. I sometimes worry I am fighting some wars on my own, and it turns out I'm... not. That is very vague. But I finished my con experience feeling very, very good, not just about fandom, but about life - the life I've made.

I flew into Heathrow yesterday very early morning, got home and slept like a dead thing; I am about to do the same again. Lovely, lovely con. I don't know if I can make it to Seattle for BP, but here's hoping.

(Also, the final crucial detail. Following the end of Connotations, there is a space, I believe, for a fan-run con in the UK. A general one, not a vidcon like

vidukon_cardiff.

soupytwist and I have plans. Watch this space.

Current Mood: exhausted
Crossposts: http://loneraven.livejournal.com/737153.html

Today, I am having a quiet day doing nothing very much. The sun is emerging slowly and it's good.

This is mostly because I got up yesterday at the crack of dawn, dragged Shim out of bed too, filled my bag with water bottles, cereal bars and Haribo, and got the X5 - for the first time! how can I have lived in Oxford five years without ever going through this particular rite of passage - to Milton Keynes. I have been to Milton Keynes on three previous occasions, all for the same reason - conventions. I am not cool, okay. Never have been, never will be. Moving right along. I didn't go to any for four years until last year, and this is my second within a year. Maybe it's indicative of how you can take the girl out of geekland, etc.

So, I got the X5 into Milton Keynes, which is still total hell - the city, not the X5. I mean, seriously, I know it's a cliché to talk about how awful it is, but oh, so many roundabouts, such a total lack of being able to walk anywhere, and yes it's lovely and green but so is the countryside. I mean. Sometimes in cities you like to be able to walk places without walking boots and a crook, or the benefit of an internal combustion engine. Argh.

hathy_col got really rather stressed out round about roundabout number 355, which seemed to me be a very restrained response to all the endless revolving through Dantesque circles.

ANYWAY. The Collectormania empire has been ousted out of its usual location and been stuck in a football stadium in Bletchley, so accordingly I skidded up around lunchtime and met

hathy_col,

tau_sigma,

stupidore and

ann_pan and Lucy-who-is-not-on-LJ in the queue to meet Chris Barrie, and she - Lucy - explained in hushed tones that she'd loved him since the age of thirteen and then went an endearingly brilliant shade of pink. I had never met her before, but decided she must be some type of kindred spirit. After this we went to the dealers' room to look around and warm up a little.

Yes, about that. From the purely logistical standpoint, this was one of the worse conventions I'd been to - it was all arranged in a long line, so you had to walk for miles to get from one end to the other; it might be a day in late May, but the rain had been driving all day and the whole place was exposed to the elements, except the dealers' room which was too cramped and stiflingly hot; and the stewards were mostly all stuck on the one setting, which was "irrationally angry", and on the whole there was no food to speak of, and no coffee. I was a little frustrated by it, but the company made up for it, as usual. I love conventions of this type, where you wander around in a big gang of other women and don't feel obliged to attend any particular panel or go and see any particular guest or do anything

I missed going to meet Patrick Stewart, on account of not having been enough of an early-bird to get tickets, but I went to meet Kate Mulgrew instead. ( about that )

At length, the party acquired food and retreated to the hotel room to eat and vegetate in peace, with the help of three gigantic pizzas and garlic bread, potato wedges and what the Domino's pizza menu described as "chicken strippers".

("Oh," said Tali, whose sense of humour gets charmingly cutting at unexpected moments, "do they do a little dance, do a little twirl, then pluck their own feathers off?")

In the meantime, Ann and Lucy had decided that what I really ought to do was try on their Star Trek dresses. (Katie had been searching vain for one all day.) The first one, Ann's, was a little red number with jaw-dropping cleavage (it came from Ann Summers!) that I liked a lot, for all I had to wear it without a bra and looked rather nippletastic. The second one was an "official", a little blue science dress which I also loved. I now want one of my own, so I can wear it with amazing high-heeled boots and have a fancy-dress party just to do so.

And then we watched Doctor Who. ( Cold Blood )

The BBC, with its inimitable talent for scheduling, then segued into Eurovision with scarcely a pause. I stayed for the Azerbaijani entry - okay, I have said this before and I'm going to say it again, Azerbaijan is not in Europe, and please no one comment to explain it, I prefer having it as a delightful mystery - and also the Spanish entry (there was a pitch invasion! Random chap ran on, did a little dance in the middle of the Spanish act, was dragged off by security), and paused for the amazing Moldovans (with the chap who was greatly sexually attracted to his own saxophone) before finally, with great regret, departing. I caught the last bus back to Oxford and thought that my adventures were over for the day.

( but they weren't - er, this might be triggering for some )

So I returned, fell asleep almost instantly, and I have to say, it was a very, very nice day. Thank you to all who made it so! And today I do nothing but sleep and write.

Current Mood: sleepy

In reference to the following,

hathy_col writes, "Iona sings songs of the great Tribble hunt. She has a statue in the hall of warriors with a Tribble in one hand and Kirk's head in the other!"

( okay, so I was unnecessarily freaked out by the tribble )

Look, it makes happy noises, which are freaky, and then it makes irritated noises, which are freakier. And it's all fuzzy and creepy and whatnot, and then it sort of leaps out at you from wherever someone has it hidden, and, er.

Kapla, I say. Kapla.

London Collectormania was a lot of fun, in the end. It was at the Olympia, on two levels, which as Colleen said, was a vast improvement on previous incarnations, as there was actual space to see everyone and everything, and if you felt like it you could stand at the edge of the upper gallery and look out over costumes and Daleks and brightly coloured mohawks and geeks and the coming of their kingdom of heaven.

hathy_col and

ann_pan and I drifted around getting into trouble, mostly. Highlights:

-Aforementioned Tribble. So fluffly. So very frightening.

-Gareth David Lloyd, who is adorable but should stop slicking his hair back. He did one panel talk with Kai Owen where he admitted to being in a pantomime in Preston as Prince Charming. (With songs from High School Musical, oh I wish I were kidding.) "None of you are actually going to go and see it, are you?" he asked at one point.

Well, I am home on December 23rd. Colleen and I are finding the phrase "IANTO PANTO" inherently amazing. Um.

-Costumery! There were a lot of Imperial Stormtroopers running around, as usual, and an odd reptilian thing I found very disturbing, and lots of furries.

emerald_embers and I both fell in love with five-year-old Castiel in a very sharp suit and very feathery wings. "I am the angel of the Lord!" D'awwwwww.

-Corsetry! I love how people just assume that goths are into geekery and are usually right, so we spent quite a bit of time at a tiny little corset shop squished between two dealers' tables. Colleen got a beautiful silvery corset, and I considered it, but eventually decided against it; not before the nice woman selling them had laced me into the closest corset to hand and then said blithely, "Oh, no, we can get you into one smaller."

For the record, my waist is not designed to be squished to 22 inches. But it was a very nice corset.

-But my favourite part of it was meeting Rene Auberjonois. When I arrived Colleen and Ann had already got his autograph, and I didn't really want one, so I suggested we just go and talk to him anyway. There was nobody at his table. It seemed logical.

"No," Colleen said.

"Why," I said.

"Because I'm scared I'll open my mouth and 'I NAMED MY CAR AFTER YOU!' will come out!"

I thought this was fair enough. But I went to say hello anyway, and he was very, very, very nice. Nobody mentioned that I suggested Colleen name her car Odo (she actually named it Odo'ital), and nobody's tongue actually fell out.

Speaking of Rene Auberjonois, he is in the first episode of Boston Legal! How did I not know this? There are whole minutes of him, James Spader and William Shatner in the SAME ROOM. BEING LAWYERS. Come on. You are all fired.

Yes, it was a lovely day; in the afternoon I went away for a while to see some of my university friends, and returned in time to help scrape

emerald_embers off the proverbial ceiling and set out into the rain. (And missed George Takei! Which is a great shame, as he was the other person I was very excited about seeing; on the other hand, it would have been Colleen having to stop me from opening my mouth and having "And one day, when you least expect it, I will HAVE SEX WITH YOU!" come out, so perhaps it's just as well.)

Getting home was a logistical nightmare - first there were no trains out of Paddington, and then there were no trains out of Didcot, and then there were no buses, and then there were no taxis, and then it was nearly midnight and I was very bedraggled, but I think it was all worth the rain.

In other news, yesterday I applied to NYU and the University of Chicago for their graduate programmes in legal philosophy. I will tell y'all about this when the old brain has, y'know, processed it.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Regina Spektor; Laughing With