:: Wednesday 29 August 01
Getting caught up on sleep, after an exhausting weekend of doing staff work at Reunion Con. A strange and ambivalent experience.
It was very much a good thing to sit in the ballroom Saturday night, discreetly ogling Peter Wingfield, who was sitting no more than six feet away from me, while listening to Jim Byrnes, who was up on the stage playing scorching blues and kicking supreme ass.
It was entirely excellent to sit on the balcony of the big hotel suite that had been used as the Green Room, after all the distinguished guests had gone, soaking my beaten-down-to-the-bone feet in the jacuzzi, looking out at the Blade-Runner weirdness of the smoggy glowing LA night sky, swilling champagne, and talking with Maygra and Ellen.
It was irksome to be reminded once again of my own basic lack of eptitude in dealing with logistics and planning and management of fine details, throughout the entire weekend. (Especially in contrast with the high level of competence all the other staff displayed.)
It was pleasant to be at a fan con and be largely invisible, unknown to everyone except a small contingent of my slasher buddies, who were cruising along like submarines under deep cover. (Well, and to my dS friend Realitycek, who found me at the Member Services table, and with whom I had a very enjoyable but far too brief chat.)
On the other hand, it was extremely weird to be at a fan con and feel, essentially, like an alien.
This was the first time I'd been to what I gather is a more traditional, mainstream type of con--single-fandom, officially sanctioned, actors and producers and writers present. It was an interesting experience--I'm not really sorry I did it--but it's one I won't repeat. The entire vibe was very odd to me; there was a very clear, very sharp hierarchical distinction between The Important People (the actors, the producers, the writers, the swordmasters, the people with official ties to the show) and the fans, who eagerly took on the role of supplicants at the altar. And we, the staff, were clearly charged with maintaining that separation; for good and necessary reasons, I understand the need for it, given past incidents of fan unhingedness, and the apparently boundless hunger of the supplicants to reach out, touch, grasp, appropriate, consume.
It's in the nature of fans to try to appropriate the object of their passion, to seek some sort of meaningful connection with the phenomenon that fires them up. But what I realized is that for the great majority of fans at Reunion, the "phenomenon" in question is the tangible reality of the show itself, and especially the people associated with it; and hence their craving expresses itself in the quest for tangible contact--autographs, souvenirs, sightings of or even (holy of holies) brief conversation with the gods and demigods. And in reality, when you have close to 700 fans present, and only a handful of deities, all of whom have limited time and energy--well, people aren't going to get what they want, not really, not fully. So there was, at the con, a constant edgy thrum of unfed hunger, thwarted yearning.
But me, I don't really care all that much about those tangible phenomena. They're interesting; it was fun to hear the writers talk about how an episode gets shaped in the concept-to-final-script process, and it was most enjoyable to verify that Peter Wingfield is just as easy on the eyes in person as he is on screen (not always true of actors). But those things aren't what drive me, as a fan. What I care about is more abstract--the universe, the characters--and I can appropriate these, far more readily and intimately, in my own head, at my keyboard, or in conversation with other fans.
The moment I felt most fannishly well-fed, the entire weekend, wasn't during the up-close moments with the stars, but rather after everyone had left, and a small contingent of us slash-writing pervs snuck off to a room and unlaced our stays and watched vids and it was just like being at Escapade, for a moment.
So I feel incredibly lucky that my chosen form of participation in this
weird fan thing is via fanfiction, which is, for all its egomania and
BNF political games and general lunacy, so infinitely more democratic
and populist, requiring nothing more than an informed imagination and
the willingness to share it with others. I mean, it's cool and all to
hear Peter Wingfield's thoughts about Methos, but really I'd rather hear
what Maygra and MacGeorge and Killa have to say--and that's considerably
easier to achieve.
fandom journals
Anna | Aral | Athena4 | AuKestrel | beth666ann | Brighid | CLFinn | Colleen | Debchan | denise | Destina | Dine | Erica | Fluff on Top | Gemma | grit kitty | Helen | Ins | Ins2 | Jane St. Clair | Kate | LaT | Livia | Maygra | melymbrosia | Mia | Miriam | Mona | nancy | Nestra | Olwen | Pam | Rowan | sabine | Sheila | Shrift | Simplelyric | Soo | Te | Valeria | Viedma | Viridian | WitchQueen | xen | ZorroRojo
other sites I visit
Bad Hair Days | Barbelith| Hissyfit | Iain | kottke.org | lileks | memepool | Mighty Big TV | Pop Culture Junk Mail | plaintive wail | Tomato Nation
"I'd learned on the highway and in the circus, in the army, and at boxing gyms that even if you have a cutman in your corner to stanch the blood, it doesn't obviate the need for stamina, self-reliance, and keeping oriented to what I think of as the earth's magnetic field. You can have allies, mentors, be married, but still you're going to be alone most of your life, and if you're going to run off the rails, you had better be good company for yourself."
--Edward Hoagland