rusty_halo

I think that if there was a heaven, it'd be a lot like WriterCon. You're surrounded by hundreds of brilliant, talented people, all of whom share your interest in delving deep into the meaning of TV, movies, books. Everywhere you turn, there's an old friend who you haven't seen in ages, or have never even met in person, or else there's someone you don't know but would love to meet. There's even yummy vegan food in the hospitality suite, so you never have to starve. And random strangers keep coming up to you and either 1) thanking you for your website or 2) complementing your shoes. And then when you finally go back to your room, there's three people so cool that, even though you're exhausted, you stay up another hour chatting.

Heaven would probably have a nicer hotel, though, and in (my personal) heaven no one wakes up until at least noon. Aside from that, it was pretty much perfect. I just wish I'd had more time to talk to and meet everyone--there were so many awesome people that I did get to hang out with, but plenty more than I either missed entirely or passed in the hallway and went "OMG, it's you! We'll have to talk later!" and didn't see again.

There's no way to list everyone, but just, y'know, to everyone who was there: I miss you! I want to go back! The whole weekend was awesome!

Here's a more specific con report:

I left for WriterCon after work on Thursday. My plane was delayed, so I didn't get into Atlanta until almost midnight. By the time I'd taken Marta, it was after midnight.

mezzibelle picked me up at the Marta station since the hotel shuttle had stopped running by then.

I got to the hotel and met up with my roommates

10zlaine and

irfikos. I stayed with

irfikos at the first WriterCon, and hadn't seen her since, so it was awesome to see her again. She's a perfect roommate, and a very fun person to talk to. (And a funny person, which you know if you caught her kickass lecture on vampire physiology).

We had some drinks in the con suite (no beer, so I was drinking the only hard liquor I can tolerate, which is rum) and stayed up talking ridiculously late. I think we went to bed around 4am or 5am. Then

10zlaine and I got up at 7:30am to go to a concom meeting at 8am. I drank lots of coffee.

The first panel I went to was about "Chosen Families," and it was a perfect way to start the con because the concept stuck in my head all weekend. WriterCon is all about chosen families--we were talking about how the internet widens the pool and allows you to choose a "family" based on common interests far more than just on geography. It was a good panel.

I'm trying to recall everything based on memory, since I don't have a copy of the schedule handy at the moment. Let's see... We went to the con suite for lunch, then after lunch I went to a panel on genre. After that, I had to actually be on a panel, the one about Authorial Support. I was there because I'm the archivist of All About Spike, though it felt a little silly since I haven't updated that site in ages. (But yes, I still promise to keep it online! Don't worry!) The panel was fine--the audience talked a lot, so I didn't really have to worry about saying much. I suck at public speaking, if you haven't noticed. Afterward, people kept coming up to me and telling me how much they like the site--it means a lot to hear people say that. It's really kind of scary (in mostly a good way) how many people kept coming over and saying that my site "got them into fandom." Eek! The pressure!

Dinner was in the con suite (they were so good about making sure there were vegan options). We skipped the evening erotica stuff because I was helping

10zlaine make buttons, and

irfikos was preparing for her presentation the next day. And we were all still a little hung over from the day before.

I did go down to "How to write a lousy sex scene" (awesome panel, funny as hell) and then snuck over to the slash panel, but that kept getting overshadowed by the kink panel (which had demonstrations). Afterwards... hmmm... con suite, more rum, my memory is rather blurry. Oh! There was a Spuffy gathering, though. I am pretty damn far from being a Spuffy, but I had lots of friends there, and

mary5958 invited me, so I went anyway. Mary is just the coolest person--she's brilliant, she's nice to everyone, and she seems totally above fandom politics. Everyone I talked to was cool. It was nifty to finally meet

shipperx (we'd actually met earlier in the day), who I've known online for ages (I remember passionate arguments way back in the day on BAPS!) I just wish I'd had a chance to talk to everyone longer.

We actually went to bed fairly early this night, before 2am at least. Oh, and the lovely

elfgirl joined us as a roommate.

Saturday I utterly failed to drag myself out of bed until about 11:20am. I managed to get downstairs and catch the last 2/3 of the "Read and fix the badfic" panel, which was awesome. I am never going to forget that gender-swapping story about Xander as a princess with Spike as his cat. (*shudders*)

I think the con did a pretty good job of being multi-fandom, btw. It was still mostly BtVS and AtS, but Firefly was very well represented, and there were plenty of references to VM and Doctor Who and Farscape and other such things. (Also apparently I absolutely must watch Farscape immediately. I moved it up in my Netflix queue, okay? Right after the Sharpe series and a bunch of Robert Downey, Jr. movies.)

After lunch I went to a talk

shaddyr was doing about filk (which was quite interesting, the history of communal storytelling through song), and then I was on another panel (my god, this whole "being on panels" thing is scary). This one was about fandom, and Rhonda Wilcox was on it, which is cool since I really respect her (and she complemented my website, yay!). I didn't say much on this panel, mainly because the microphone was far away and I didn't want to be a pain grabbing for it all the time. We did have kind of an interesting talk about creators trying to assert their control over fans' interpretation of the text, and I gave Peter Tolan on TWoP as an example. That really is kind of funny, isn't it? Like he honestly expected to go on there, tell the fans the "correct" interpretation, and then there would be no more controvery? Ah, those naive show runners.

And then I ran over to

irfikos' lecture, which was brilliant. She had a slideshow! With drawings, like Giles in Hush! She definitely needs to post her slideshow and pamphlet online for all to see.

Then we had dinner, got dressed up, and headed to the cocktail party. I had contacted my high school friend Todd, who lives in Atlanta now, and told him that I was coming to town. We managed to arrange it for him to meet me that night. It was awesome--I hadn't seen him at four or five years. He actually looks like a grown up now! (For the entire time I knew him, Todd looked about 12.) So we talked and caught up, and I tried to balance spending time with him and talking to everyone else as well. It was a wild party--everyone all dressed up beautifully, the dance floor totally insane,

soundingsea up there in front of everyone... supercool.

I mostly hung out outside of the actual party, because it was so hot in there and I don't dance. I was talking to so many different people. And Todd. Then we went upstairs to the hospitality suite to chill for a bit, and again with the "I talked to so many awesome people and I passed by tons of people I wish I'd talked to more." Everyone was getting tired, though, so I saw Todd out around 2am, and then went back to my room and crashed.

Sunday was nice because I didn't have that underlying "I have to be on a panel today" fear. (Even though being on a panel was actually not bad at all--people were so nice and supportive and interested and relaxed and down to earth and smart).

I got up late again and was going to catch the 11:30 panel, but I ended up running into

thedeadlyhook and

revdorothyl, who'd just finished the religion panel (which I'd missed). I just stood outside with them as people joined and left the group and conversation continued to flow. It's kind of intimidating being around such ridiculously smart people. Oh, and

thedeadlyhook was wearing a KMFDM shirt; we should've coordinated, since I was wearing a PIG shirt the day before. We could've been industrial twins. ;)

For lunch,

elfgirl kindly drove

10zlaine,

irfikos, and me to an Indian restaurant (which was utterly not where the directions said it'd be) and we had great Indian veg food. (The eggplant bharta was delicious.) We were a bit late getting back (due to aforementioned wacky directions) but I caught the last 2/3 of the "Purely Scientific Spell" panel (which

redeem147 was on--another person who is awesome and who I wish I'd talked to even more, though we did have a bit of a chance to catch up). Then I went to "Why we love the bad boys/girls," which

irfikos was on (she rocks), though it was kind of more "how to write a good, three dimensional villain." Still, interesting.

And then it was over (*sob*). We had a big closing ceremonies thing (and a bunch of us who'd helped out in some way got pulled up on stage), and that was cool. (Oh, and I hope whoever stole

chrisjournal's laptop dies a slow and painful death, but that's another issue.) After that a ton of us went out to dinner--I don't even know whoall was there. Our table had nine people, and I liked everyone I had a chance to talk to. I mostly ended up chatting with

soundingsea, who's definitely one of the coolest people in fandom (she did such an amazing job helping with the programming). I'll get to see her again when she visits NYC this fall, yay! Dinner ended up being extremely slow--we were out for three hours. After we got back,

elfgirl headed out (once again, awesome roommate), and the rest of us had a final con com meeting thingie and then hung out in the consuite. Everyone was pretty exhausted, though.

I went back to the room and packed, because I had to get up at 3:30am to catch a cab at 4am to get to the airport at 5am to catch a plane at 6:30am to go to work in NYC at 10am. Which I did, though it kind of sucked. I didn't get to sleep until 2:30am because my roommates were awesome and I didn't want to stop talking to them (and, guys, I'm really sorry about having my alarm go off at 3:30am, but just think how lucky you were to get to stay in bed!). Taking a cab to the airport sucked--the guy charged us $70 (it was me and another girl). Should've negotiated the price beforehand. In the non-traffic, it only took 20 minutes. Who gets $70 for 20 minutes of work? *sigh*

So then there was the airport, and the plane was on time, and the cab home from LaGuardia was scary because some car had crashed and was on fire right next to us (I could feel the heat), but I got to work on time and stayed the full day.

So, yeah. The point is: WriterCon was awesome. And, seriously, if I could choose any social group in the world to hang out with, it would be the WriterCon crowd.