Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I made it to WriterCon more or less in one piece the week before last, after trying to drive through torrential rains in TN, KY, and IL with (as it turned out) four very bald tires -- one of which developed quite a large hole very suddenly while I was cruising up Interstate 57 (fortunately, the rains had been left behind by that time). It was quite exciting for a while, since the tire that started to rapidly deflate was the left front in my front-wheel-drive vehicle, but I was eventually able to find four new tires to fit my car at the Farm Service co-op in Tuscola, IL and was back on the road again.

My parents, who were to have swapped cars with me (much to my advantage: new car for old) at a Welcome Center just over the Iowa border on I-80, kindly drove an additional hour or two down I-74 to meet me in Galesburg, IL at a very budget-friendly Marriott at exit 48B (free coupons for large savings on supper and breakfast in their attached restaurant came with the room we shared, and the food at the restaurant was both well-prepared and reasonably priced, even before our discounts were applied). Instead of a quick vehicle trade-off in a welcome center parking lot, before they drove the three hours back to Milwaukee that same night and I drove the last hour and a half to missmurchison's, Mom and Dad and I had time to actually visit that evening, and I was very glad of that -- so the blown tire and extensive road construction delays might not have been such a bad thing, after all.

Although . . . Mom did borrow (*cough* steal) my new Carla Kelly Regency Romance, since she'd brought nothing of her own to read that night. There are times when having my mother share my taste in romances (we'd prefer to re-read Georgette Heyer, but have found a few modern Regency authors we respect, among whom only Carla Kelly seems to be publishing new books these days). Oh, well -- I'll steal it back from her at Christmas.

Miss M and her family graciously received me mid-morning on Wednesday, and I enjoyed the rest of that unseasonably cool but sunny day reading the latest Mary Russell mystery from Laurie R. King ("...to be continued"? WTF? I hope the sequel to The Language of Bees comes out pretty darn fast, is all I can say) and walking with Miss M through the nearby park . . . which, coincidentally enough, leads straight to the used bookstore and back, so the exercise is always interrupted midway through to allow for some lazy book-browsing. Mr. M made us a fabulous marinated chicken paella for supper, and we whiled away a pleasant evening.

Thursday morning we just had time for a quick cup of coffee and bowl of cereal (well, I had time for that, anyway), before loading up my new little hatchback for the 4 1/2 hour-ish (not counting the time we spent having lunch in Albert Lea) drive to the convention hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Though it was not yet 3 PM when we arrived, the hotel allowed us to check right in, so we could relax and unwind a bit (after learning that we weren't needed to help set up anything) before Con Registration opened at 5. As we began to suspect and soon confirmed, the Radisson was a very accomodating and efficient hotel, with an unfailingly friendly and knowledgeable staff.

Introvert though I am, and somewhat allergic (metaphorically speaking) to social gatherings of more than three or four people, all of whom I've hopefully known for years, the reception during Registration was not quite the ordeal I dreaded. The buffet was surprisingly varied and even included grilled vegetables, and nobody was actually forcing me to have fun . . . so I kinda did have fun. I conversed with several new people (one or two at a time, of course, to avoid socialization overload) and began to realize that more than a few fanfic writers find themselves on the introverted end of the spectrum. I AM NOT ALONE.

Who'd have thunk it?

By the time the hospitality suite opened sometime after 8 PM, I was actually beginning to START conversations with strangers. Wow! Of course, it helped if I could sit by the fic library and pretend to bury my nose in a story whenever my capacity for live human (and intelligible) conversation seemed temporarily exhausted.

Must. Have. Reading material. As buffer. From. Big. Scary. World.

Aaaagh . . .!

Miss M and I overslept significantly on Friday morning, so Opening Ceremonies and the morning panels sort of passed us by while we were waiting for the little coffee-maker in our room to do its work. But after having obtained additional coffee and cereal for breakfast in the Hospitality suite, we were ready and eager for the rest of the day's events. I can't quite remember what I did, but I know it was enjoyable, and concluded with the delightful panel on "Science for English Majors" and supper in the Hospitality suite.

No, I did not go to the cocktail party (I know my limits on unstructured social gatherings, and two nights in a row is too much for me), but both missmurchison and our new room-mate astridv did attend it and apparently had a marvelous time. Meanwhile, I had a marvelous time catching up on my mystery novel reading and my alone-in-the-room sleep time.

After shelling out a sizeable donation for the even-more-sizeable inroads we were about to make into the Hospitality food supplies again, I actually made it to a morning panel on Saturday, catching all but the first few minutes of "If You Build It, They Will Come".

I'm always glad to discover somebody else (shaddyr!) who remembers the days of sending in SASEs (self-addressed stamped envelopes -- the necessary precursor to gaining any information about fellow fans and organizations in the olden times of 1970's Trek fandom) and waiting weeks and weeks for your mimeographed (or, if you were lucky, photocopied or offset printed) fanzines to come in the mail. I'd caught only the periphery of Xena fandom in the mid-90's days of use.net for subtext discussions and uber-Xena fanfics and the like, so I couldn't identify with that part of fannish history as much. However, when my frustration and will-they-won't-they? anxiety over the Spuffy relationship in the middle of BtVS season 6 drove me in desperation to seek out fanfic to read on the web, I did end up on a Yahoo email discussion group ("Tainted Love" -- later changed to "More Tainted Love") that was an off-shoot from an extremely short-lived Spuffy fanfic website. So I remember when the bulk of our fannish discussion and fic-sharing seemed to switch from the e-mail group to LiveJournal. And I could definitely identify with the need for accessible, preservable, searchable fanfic archives for newcomers and old-timers alike. Beyond that, my 47-year-old 'techno-peasant' brain was having trouble keeping up.

I spent the early afternoon going to the panel on Slash in order to listen and hopefully learn. (Translation: I was partly there to listen and learn, but I was also hoping to get a 'feel' for the temper of the attendees at that panel, in an attempt to guess how lively the debate was likely to be at the "Evil" panel the next day, and how likely it was that the moderator would need to throw herself on a verbal grenade from the audience before the day was done. Based on that panel's conversations, my guess was 'very lively', but probably not so much with the live grenade-throwing . . . which would put our con discussion several steps ahead of some religious gatherings I'd been to where the ordination of women and of LGBT candidates was debated with a notable shortage of Christian love or even civility from those opposed.)

I spent the second afternoon session at Kristina Busse's presentation on the tropes of fanfic (which included some really impressive -- and often hilarious -- vids on a wide variety of fandoms, almost all of which I at least recognized), and ducked out early to try to get in a bite of supper before the Spuffy gathering at 6 PM (hard to choose between that and the TW/DW gathering, but long-standing Spuffy-love and the promise of bad-fic bingo won out in the end).

Of course, after I'd filled up on a bowl of excellent chili, my attention was drawn to the sign on the wall of the Hospitality suite saying that the Spuffy gathering would include going out (or, as it happened, staying in) for dinner together. But I enjoyed drinking my ice water and chatting while most of the rest of the group ate their pizza.

I won a "Wedding Dress Anya" action figure (mint condition in box, of course) in the final round of 'bad-fic bingo', and ended my day by trying not to fall asleep during the hilarious and single-entendre-laden "Expletive Deleted" panel. You KNOW you're tired when talking about explicit sex with vampires and Time Lords, etc., fails to keep you alert! So that was it for me


Note: This next part of the post was hastily re-written, after LJ ate the version I'd spent 4 hours writing.

Sunday morning started with eggs and sausage (and raisin bran, 'cause you can't really enjoy a con if you're irregular, now can you?), as well as the obligatory large quantities of coffee, in the Hospitality suite. I had the best of intentions to attend one of the morning panels, really I did, but somehow I ended up talking about the fic library and about Star Trek and other serious matters with a number of wonderful people, and I didn't get my butt in gear soon enough. In retrospect, I really wish I'd attended dancetomato's Science vs. Magic panel, 'cause I hear it was really good and I remembered her fondly from the religion panel at WriterCon 2006. Oh, well.

Since it was too late to join a panel without being disruptive, I decided to mosey down to the Magic Box one more time (and ended up fetching a coffee for the guy selling the cool T-shirts, who was dying for a caffeine fix -- so that's one life saved, at least, if I need to justify my non-attendance at church that morning!). I'd already bought my two Dr. Who-themed T-shirts (the "Blink" shirt and the tie-dyed TARDIS number) and effectively blown my shopping budget, so I sat down to wait for the raffle drawing on behalf of myself and texanfan, who'd given me her tickets in case she was still in the Writer's Salon workshop at the time of the drawing.

Naturally, texanfan won perhaps the heaviest (literally, in terms of actual weight, since I needed to carry those things around until she got out of class) set of prizes, and I won a "Ghost of the Robot" CD in the 'orphan' drawings for the prizes and parts of prizes that the first winners didn't want. Plus, I got that much-needed morning workout lifting weights, as I toted my friend's prizes up to the Hospitality suite -- where she eventually donated all but two of the books to whoever wanted them, while the folks at our lunch table started working on her orphaned C.S.I. jigsaw puzzle.

"...And there was much rejoicing."

About the "-isms" panel ("Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Fandom"), let me start by saying that from my narrow and necessarily limited perspective, it actually went much better than I'd feared, though not nearly as well as I'd hoped. (Of course, my expectations for just how badly it could have gone may be distorted by some very un-Christian gatherings I've attended, at which the ordination of women and LGBT persons was discussed with a notable lack of love or mutual respect and a great deal of vitriol. As long as no-one is throwing "God says..." or "God is on my side" bombs at anyone else, I actually have something to be glad of. Which is sad, in and of itself, I guess.)

All the credit for the good in the panel goes to the panelists -- kalichan, invisible_lift, rahirah, and xionin -- who put a great deal of "energy, intelligence, imagination, and love" (the qualities my church calls for in its ordained teaching and ruling elders, and so the first words that come to mind when I see gifted people freely giving of themselves) into the preparation and leadership of this panel. invisible_lift was the first to suggest supplemental handouts, and rahirah found and copied and brought to the con those handouts on white privilege and derailing to fill in some of what a 90-minute panel session could never hope to even begin to cover. kalichan came up with excellent topics for discussion, many of which joined the long list of issues that weren't touched on before the time ran out (like the issue of power differentials in fandom vs. canon, and whether fanfic and fan art has an obligation to be activist in the name of truly participatory culture, correcting the failings of the source material). xionin agreed to join the panel on much less than 24 hours' notice, and shared some extremely painful experiences with racism from fellow fans to illustrate the urgent reality of the evils named in the panel title. And that just brings us up to the start of the panel, and doesn't begin to account for all they contributed for the remaining 85 minutes, or in conversations afterward and in ongoing discussions now.

Meanwhile, I figured I had just one job as moderator (apart from trying not to get in the way), but when the moment came near the end of the panel session, I didn't see it coming in the first place, and froze up in the second place, only reacting after the 'f---ed up' grenade had gone off in everyone's faces. Not so good.

As far as the specific content of the panel is concerned, others -- including the panelists themselves -- have already written about it in greater detail and with better insight, I think, so I won't try to repeat in this post what so many have said better in other journals.

I confess that I hid out for the remainder of Sunday afternoon, first in the Star Trek (TOS) snark-fest ("The Trouble with Tribbles" and "Mirror, Mirror" -- which were revealed to be much slashier than I had remembered!) and the closing ceremonies. missmurchison and I made periodic visits to the Dead Writer Party that night, in case any help was needed yet in packing up or cleaning up, and in order to rescue any stray alcoholic beverages which might otherwise go to waste.

That first glass of wine might have been a mistake, but the refill certainly was, since it only exacerbated my weariness and my difficulty in hearing what others were saying in conversation. I actually hear quite well -- don't get me wrong -- but just as my eyes seem to go off in different directions and have trouble focusing more when I'm tired, so also my ears seem to have greater trouble picking out one voice from all the other voices in the room when I'm worn down. At that point, I was only clearly distinguishing about three words out of every ten spoken to me or next to me. Just as I'd done at the opening party on Thursday night, I started watching everyone's faces as much as I could, in hopes of using visual cues to fill in the missing words from a mental list of "most common con talk". However, judging by the strange looks I occasionally received, I didn't always guess correctly and apparently came out with some noticeable non sequiturs. I took that as my cue to call it a night, in spite of the urge to stretch out the last few hours of con conviviality to store up like nuts for a long, cold winter.

So, to anyone I might have spoken with on Sunday night, if I returned an inappropriate or nonsensical reply to you please believe that it was not through inattention or inebriation. I was simply unable to correctly fill in the 70% of your words that were lost in the background clutter of other conversations all around us. (That's probably another reason why parties, and especially parties with music, tend to put me on edge, since focusing on one voice among all the other voices and sounds becomes so much more difficult, and I hate appearing foolish.)

astridv had to leave early Monday morning, but Miss M and I checked out fairly late and headed back for Cedar Rapids. Our travel time was lengthened by a leisurely breakfast/lunch at Perkins (yes, only the most haute of cuisine for us!) and by a stop for gas that began to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Buffy's experience with the mummy hand and the afternoon shift at the Magic Box that seemed to go on forever (ask Miss M about it sometimes, since she's the one who bore the brunt of that detour into the Twilight Zone).

Monday ended happily (for me, at least!) with a marathon viewing of season 3 of the Paul Gross series "Slings & Arrows", which I'd been wanting to see for a long time and which the Murchison family happened to have on DVD, and even watched with me for the last few episodes.

Miss M had to work out of her home office on Tuesday, with brief breaks, but I enjoyed a lazy day of reading one of the many J. D. Robb "...in Death" novels she'd loaned me, helping to water the herbs and tomato plants which had gone thirsty in Miss M's absence, and catching up on a couple of science fiction series on the DVR. The highlight of the day, though, was going to see the "Star Trek" movie for my third time and Miss M's second at the local budget theater.

I'd seen it alone both the previous times (well, alone except for a large number of strangers in the seats around me) and Miss M had seen it with her non-Trekker family, so we both enjoyed seeing it again with a fellow fan, nudging one another at the "in joke" moments, and squeeing and rejoicing in great detail afterwards.

For instance (and I hope I'm safe in assuming that nobody needs mild spoiler warnings for the movie at this point?), I hadn't previously noted how much the character of the new James T. Kirk resembles Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan, at times. I got a very Illyan-Miles kind of vibe from that final look between Pike and Kirk near the end, making me think, "Be careful what you dare this young man to do, for he may exceed your expectations to a terrifying degree." Plus, there's that whole bluffing (mostly) your way from academy misfit to commander of a starship in a few short days -- using gall, startling competence, and sheer force of personality -- that Miles and New-Jim both seem to share.

Or maybe that's just me?

Wednesday was spent driving ten and a half hours straight (with two brief stops for gas, one of which included a side-trip to pick up fast food for the road), in order to get back to TN while there was still a bit of daylight left -- just long enough for me to nip around back and pick all those ripe and over-ripe tomatoes (cherry, yellow pear, and my first ripe Mr. Stripey) and raspberries (red, and a few gold) which had accumulated in my absence. I have my priorities, after all, and during August fresh raspberries and home-grown tomatoes seem to rank pretty high, for some reason.

[Okay, that's MOST of the post I wrote this afternoon and which LJ promptly ate. I think the original version was more eloquent, or maybe even more coherent, but this is what I could piece together tonight.]