Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I made it to WriterCon more or less in one piece last week, 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

Tired now, and I forgot to eat lunch or supper today (I just realized), so more will have to follow tomorrow.