Con.txt post the first!
Okay, we're going to have to do this in parts because it is taking too long to write and it would be too long to digest anyway.
con_txt! Happened this weekend, as it does every two years in D.C.; this was my second time. There were many enjoyable panels, a party, a vid show, and meals with friends and new acquaintances. The local crew was there (cinco, alpheratz, v_greyson, ellen_fremedon, coyotegestalt, recrudescence, deelaundry, holli, kinetikatrue), and corbae, who I forget is not actually local, and linaerys came down from NY, which was great even though I didn't get to see her much. Most dearly missed from my personal experience was synn, who's on a long business trip across the sea. And kassrachel, but that is tempered somewhat by the likelihood of seeing her at Vividcon in August.
And that is enough about names. Let us talk panels.
First, I must say that Small Fandom Speed Dating won my heart on Friday as anticipated-and from the sound of it, also the hearts of many others who attended; it's been requested to become a permanent part of the con programming. ellen_fremedon and sanj set it up to run like The Dating Game: One contestant per round stepped up to be matched with a new fandom, three randomly selected audience members -slash-"pimps" sat behind them holding cards with their favorite small fandoms written on them, and the contestant proceeded to ask questions like, "If I were playing a drinking game while watching/reading your canon, what would be worth a shot?" or "How can I cross it over with Star Trek?" or "If the main characters were stranded on a desert island, what books would they bring?" or "I like to play Kink Bingo. What are the top five kinks I can find in your canon?" (ellen and sanj had written up a list of prompt questions for those who needed the aid.) After a set number of questions, the contestant would pick one of the three and exchange contact information for future pimping. Then the next contestant stepped up and blindly picked the cards of the next three "pimps."
As you may guess, hilarity ensued. In the first round, for instance, where the small fandoms were Grimm, Sky High, and New Mutants, the drinking game question elicited answers such as every time "someone makes up a German word," "comes back from the dead," and "makes a face that looks like they're having an orgasm but they're not." It was in general an entertaining way for audience members to learn about new fandoms as well.
I got to pimp twice: Once for Roar (winner!) and once for Odyssey 5 (beat out by far by Miami Vice). I also got to be a contestant, and was matched with the comic Top Ten as pimped by holli. (Also ran: Primeval and Russian Sherlock Holmes.) So now I have three graphic novels to read, and a season of Sebastian Roché and baby Heath Ledger in punk chain mail to share with Leah/djkittycat.
It was a bit nerve-wracking to get up in front of a room without knowing what questions would be thrown at me, but of course the atmosphere was friendly and fun. Roar went very well, and some of my answers made people laugh, which is appropriate for a show so ridiculous; Odyssey 5 really didn't get an opportunity to shine with the questions that were asked, but no matter. Dee discovered later that one of my off-the-cuff Roar answers made the quote board in the con hallway, hee:
In short, it was a ton of fun.
Most of the panels I went to over the three days of programming were meta or pan-fandom, but I did attend one show-specific panel and two impromptu single-fandom/single-actor "DIY" discussions. So let us cover those now.
Community 201: Queer (Meta) Narratives in the Contemporary Sitcom with ellen_fremedon - Contains general spoilers through season 3
After a group expression of delight over the show, ellen opened the panel with a question about how to categorize it. The decision was that it is a "meta genre" show. Comment: "In what other series would you have a Pulp Fiction episode that turns out to be a My Dinner with Andre episode?" Explaining a Community joke ends up involving explaining scenes from four episodes and a half dozen pop culture references. We're talking about a show that spent three seasons setting up a Beetlejuice joke.
ellen being ellen, we covered a few of the show's many Doctor Who references. For instance, sad face that there's only room for one person in the new Dreamatorium; but ellen posited that if you read it as a zero cabinet (?), where Abed's/The Doctor's team builds him a safe happy place after he had to jettison the full one, then it's actually heartwarming. There are TV Tropes recaps and Fandom Confessions tumblrs for Inspector Spacetime. Nice that the showrunners even probably intended or at least wanted that. ellen also covered some of the reasons/clues toward why she was actually expecting an alternate timeline crossover in the season finale, such as that the two air conditioning booths resembled Ten and the Master's Sun Chamber, and she was waiting for someone to knock four times before the finale ended. Also that throughout the season, characters kept being played by other characters. Conclusion: Maybe it's where the showrunners were going, but it had to be changed when the fourth season was uncertain.
On Greendale's purpose of validating people. The Dean is shamelessly kinky. Fun (if confusing to reference-what do you mean by "Dean/Dean"?) pairings of Dean/double!Dean, Dean/competing community college Dean, and Dean/Vice Dean. He's being increasingly validated. Jeff is throwing him a bone. So to speak. "I love the love the show shows for TV as a medium." And Abed is there, reinforcing the importance of narrative. He is increasingly held up as right. There's been a mainstreaming of geekery across the characters. Troy was totally a feral fan in high school, and now he's been validated too.
Fandom needs to take over the show, especially without guarantee that next season will be good. We should arrange a virtual season! The series finale should be a Community parody. Our brains would explode. It would have to be like Being John Malkovich. Abed will have to go inside his own head.
At the last Muskrat Jamboree, people brainstormed things they wanted to happen. Most of them did happen. New brainstorm! Formats for next season's episodes:
Miscellany:
Tom Hardy party (DIY panel)
To name the "mods" would be to name half the group, so let's just say that sitting at the table with me were v_greyson, recrudescence and linaerys, and later Leah. General lunchtime enjoyment of Tom Hardy (he played Eames in Inception) candid photos, past and upcoming film roles, speculation about how much of his face we'll see when he plays Bane in Batman this summer, and an unrelated ad for gelato featuring two sexy "priests" with the tagline, "We believe in salivation."
Star Trek (DIY panel) with kris/mydaroga and joy/lettered
A freeform lunchtime discussion about our favorite Trek series/movies and a bit of history of Kirk/Spock as it began in TOS and evolved after Reboot, with brief forays into "you kids get off my lawn." Whereas the original and longstanding reference to Kirk/Spock has been K/S, since Reboot some fans have been using the term "Spork" or "Spirk." Deliberately used as a mark for Reboot fans to differentiate themselves from TOS fans? The librarian in kris finds this problematic for consistency/continuity/cataloguing. Reboot also provided support (at long last) for the Kirk/McCoy pairing that many TOS fans had been waiting for more community love for. …Awkward phrasing, sorry. I have post-con brain.
Still speaking of changes over time. Meta can help us reconcile different, rebooted, and/or conflicting canons - although some justifications still don't make us like that canon more. e.g. It makes sense why the reboot universe needed to militarize Starfleet, but mod prefers the original ethos of scientific and cultural exploration. Also: In the 60s, people were afraid of the future and war, wanted reassurance that there could be peace, science, anti-imperialism. We're not getting that message as much, but we still want it. We want to know that we can be more than we are.
Miscellany:
Whew. Next post, we will do some of the meta panels, and probably the vid show! For now, I need a nap to head out to see Riverdance tonight. Thank goodness for telework tomorrow.
ETA: Part two now posted.
con_txt! Happened this weekend, as it does every two years in D.C.; this was my second time. There were many enjoyable panels, a party, a vid show, and meals with friends and new acquaintances. The local crew was there (cinco, alpheratz, v_greyson, ellen_fremedon, coyotegestalt, recrudescence, deelaundry, holli, kinetikatrue), and corbae, who I forget is not actually local, and linaerys came down from NY, which was great even though I didn't get to see her much. Most dearly missed from my personal experience was synn, who's on a long business trip across the sea. And kassrachel, but that is tempered somewhat by the likelihood of seeing her at Vividcon in August.
And that is enough about names. Let us talk panels.
First, I must say that Small Fandom Speed Dating won my heart on Friday as anticipated-and from the sound of it, also the hearts of many others who attended; it's been requested to become a permanent part of the con programming. ellen_fremedon and sanj set it up to run like The Dating Game: One contestant per round stepped up to be matched with a new fandom, three randomly selected audience members -slash-"pimps" sat behind them holding cards with their favorite small fandoms written on them, and the contestant proceeded to ask questions like, "If I were playing a drinking game while watching/reading your canon, what would be worth a shot?" or "How can I cross it over with Star Trek?" or "If the main characters were stranded on a desert island, what books would they bring?" or "I like to play Kink Bingo. What are the top five kinks I can find in your canon?" (ellen and sanj had written up a list of prompt questions for those who needed the aid.) After a set number of questions, the contestant would pick one of the three and exchange contact information for future pimping. Then the next contestant stepped up and blindly picked the cards of the next three "pimps."
As you may guess, hilarity ensued. In the first round, for instance, where the small fandoms were Grimm, Sky High, and New Mutants, the drinking game question elicited answers such as every time "someone makes up a German word," "comes back from the dead," and "makes a face that looks like they're having an orgasm but they're not." It was in general an entertaining way for audience members to learn about new fandoms as well.
I got to pimp twice: Once for Roar (winner!) and once for Odyssey 5 (beat out by far by Miami Vice). I also got to be a contestant, and was matched with the comic Top Ten as pimped by holli. (Also ran: Primeval and Russian Sherlock Holmes.) So now I have three graphic novels to read, and a season of Sebastian Roché and baby Heath Ledger in punk chain mail to share with Leah/djkittycat.
It was a bit nerve-wracking to get up in front of a room without knowing what questions would be thrown at me, but of course the atmosphere was friendly and fun. Roar went very well, and some of my answers made people laugh, which is appropriate for a show so ridiculous; Odyssey 5 really didn't get an opportunity to shine with the questions that were asked, but no matter. Dee discovered later that one of my off-the-cuff Roar answers made the quote board in the con hallway, hee:
In short, it was a ton of fun.
Most of the panels I went to over the three days of programming were meta or pan-fandom, but I did attend one show-specific panel and two impromptu single-fandom/single-actor "DIY" discussions. So let us cover those now.
Community 201: Queer (Meta) Narratives in the Contemporary Sitcom with ellen_fremedon - Contains general spoilers through season 3
After a group expression of delight over the show, ellen opened the panel with a question about how to categorize it. The decision was that it is a "meta genre" show. Comment: "In what other series would you have a Pulp Fiction episode that turns out to be a My Dinner with Andre episode?" Explaining a Community joke ends up involving explaining scenes from four episodes and a half dozen pop culture references. We're talking about a show that spent three seasons setting up a Beetlejuice joke.
ellen being ellen, we covered a few of the show's many Doctor Who references. For instance, sad face that there's only room for one person in the new Dreamatorium; but ellen posited that if you read it as a zero cabinet (?), where Abed's/The Doctor's team builds him a safe happy place after he had to jettison the full one, then it's actually heartwarming. There are TV Tropes recaps and Fandom Confessions tumblrs for Inspector Spacetime. Nice that the showrunners even probably intended or at least wanted that. ellen also covered some of the reasons/clues toward why she was actually expecting an alternate timeline crossover in the season finale, such as that the two air conditioning booths resembled Ten and the Master's Sun Chamber, and she was waiting for someone to knock four times before the finale ended. Also that throughout the season, characters kept being played by other characters. Conclusion: Maybe it's where the showrunners were going, but it had to be changed when the fourth season was uncertain.
On Greendale's purpose of validating people. The Dean is shamelessly kinky. Fun (if confusing to reference-what do you mean by "Dean/Dean"?) pairings of Dean/double!Dean, Dean/competing community college Dean, and Dean/Vice Dean. He's being increasingly validated. Jeff is throwing him a bone. So to speak. "I love the love the show shows for TV as a medium." And Abed is there, reinforcing the importance of narrative. He is increasingly held up as right. There's been a mainstreaming of geekery across the characters. Troy was totally a feral fan in high school, and now he's been validated too.
Fandom needs to take over the show, especially without guarantee that next season will be good. We should arrange a virtual season! The series finale should be a Community parody. Our brains would explode. It would have to be like Being John Malkovich. Abed will have to go inside his own head.
At the last Muskrat Jamboree, people brainstormed things they wanted to happen. Most of them did happen. New brainstorm! Formats for next season's episodes:
- Love Boat
- Upstairs, Downstairs
- Groundhog Day
- "Lower decks" ep
- Three's Company
- Amnesia
- Future ep, or time-traveling study group from the future
- Bizarro version of study group - hopefully genderswapped! Or - Sliders! Or Quantum Leap
- Silent ep or all voiceover
- Tristram Shandy - another way to explode our brains
- Hard to match tone
- Hard to write comedy, esp for a show that's already funny
- Not enough broken parts/gaps
- Very visual
- It's so much of its medium
- Need deep knowledge of the canon and of popular culture
- Very distinct character voices, and many characters
Miscellany:
- Reference to thingswithwings' meta about the unfortunate merging of Britta as personal failboat and Britta as holder of progressive/feminist sociopolitical beliefs. But at least they never slut-shame her.
- Earlier, ellen wasn't happy with the Troy/Abed bromance teasing but happily it has only gotten queerer
- Showrunner Dan Harmon, early on: All ships are possible on this show.
- We are disappointed with the Chang plot direction. Maybe we don't like it because he's the only purposefully mean character
- Ken Burns ep: poking fun at the Troy/Abed fight but also acknowledging that yes, a rift between best friends does feel that important
- The asylum made more sense than that Greendale is an actual community college
Tom Hardy party (DIY panel)
To name the "mods" would be to name half the group, so let's just say that sitting at the table with me were v_greyson, recrudescence and linaerys, and later Leah. General lunchtime enjoyment of Tom Hardy (he played Eames in Inception) candid photos, past and upcoming film roles, speculation about how much of his face we'll see when he plays Bane in Batman this summer, and an unrelated ad for gelato featuring two sexy "priests" with the tagline, "We believe in salivation."
Star Trek (DIY panel) with kris/mydaroga and joy/lettered
A freeform lunchtime discussion about our favorite Trek series/movies and a bit of history of Kirk/Spock as it began in TOS and evolved after Reboot, with brief forays into "you kids get off my lawn." Whereas the original and longstanding reference to Kirk/Spock has been K/S, since Reboot some fans have been using the term "Spork" or "Spirk." Deliberately used as a mark for Reboot fans to differentiate themselves from TOS fans? The librarian in kris finds this problematic for consistency/continuity/cataloguing. Reboot also provided support (at long last) for the Kirk/McCoy pairing that many TOS fans had been waiting for more community love for. …Awkward phrasing, sorry. I have post-con brain.
Still speaking of changes over time. Meta can help us reconcile different, rebooted, and/or conflicting canons - although some justifications still don't make us like that canon more. e.g. It makes sense why the reboot universe needed to militarize Starfleet, but mod prefers the original ethos of scientific and cultural exploration. Also: In the 60s, people were afraid of the future and war, wanted reassurance that there could be peace, science, anti-imperialism. We're not getting that message as much, but we still want it. We want to know that we can be more than we are.
Miscellany:
- Later Treks lack the wacky exuberance of WE'RE IN SPACE YAY TINFOIL (with some exceptions, like Q) - they have more gravitas.
- Garak/Bashir offered different dynamics from most of the Trek pairings that came before
- Theory that in TOS Spock and Uhura broke up right before Kirk came on board
- Fun to watch Takei/Burton/Dorn/Wheaton/etc. interactions on Twitter
- "Just a Guy" universe crosses Highlander with Voyager. There is also a Duncan/Methos/Guinan story somewhere
- Resource: trek_news
Whew. Next post, we will do some of the meta panels, and probably the vid show! For now, I need a nap to head out to see Riverdance tonight. Thank goodness for telework tomorrow.
ETA: Part two now posted.