amedia

REVELcon 2003 - quickie con report by Amedia

I wrote up a very detailed con report on the plane on the way back from REVELcon - and lost it! Finally I realized that looking for it any longer was throwing good time after bad, and decided to rewrite it. This won't be as detailed, but even the act of writing things down once has helped me to remember.

Wednesday, March 12 - dinner at the Taj Palace with Carol. How I miss Austin!

Thursday, March 13 - Carol fixed me hot biscuits for breakfast with some sort of exotic Middle Eastern jam with figs in it. Luscious! We ran errands all day and then she dropped me at Connie & Leah & Vivian's house, where I had dinner and spent a delightful chunk of time catching up with Connie while she showed me one of her favorite sites, the photographic archive called Webshots. That evening: hot tub! Very relaxing.

Friday, March 14 - rode with Leah and Vivian to REVELcon. Arrived in time for my first panel, "Lord of the Slash." It turned out that Jan (in charge of programming) had put me on it because she knew that I was "willing to sit up there and talk about *anything*" - she didn't actually know that I was writing LOTR slash! So that was serendipitous. We talked about the whole idea of LOTR fanfic in general; Tolkien apparently was not displeased during his lifetime to learn that people wanted to write their own stories of Middle Earth. As far as LOTR slash went, however, opinions were sharply but politely divided. Carol arrived during the panel, as she had driven up separately.

A bunch of us Ratties - Carol, Lin, Beth, Lorelei, and me - went out to dinner at Whataburger afterward, where we rough-and-tough WW2 fans talked a lot about ... decorating shows! There was some friendly disagreement over the relative merits of Trading Spaces vs. Changing Rooms. Carol and I went home with Lorelei, who had not only graciously agreed to host me when I asked about it a month ago, but very kindly agreed to host Carol as well when I asked her the day before! We turned on the TV at Lorelei's house and there was... Trading Spaces! So I got to see an episode, which was great fun. I had brought along a tapeful of Hawaiian Eye at Lorelei's request; we popped it in to watch a few minutes of the very young and yummylicious Robert Conrad and wound up watching a whole episode.

Saturday, March 15 - Carol and I drove back to the con because Lorelei had a family event to attend; indeed, at some very early hour of the morning I got to meet Lorelei's sister, a very thin and elegant woman who said something about having cold brussels sprouts for breakfast because she couldn't find the tofu. (Lorelei confimed later that this was not a dream. Lorelei's daughter Amy, who has become a delightful young woman, informed me that her aunt is the salt of the earth, no matter what people say about her breakfast habits.)

At the con, we were introduced to a first-time attendee, Kim, who is a big Rat Patrol fan. Anita, who introduced us, knew that I used to edit the RP slash fanzine Flanking Maneuvers, but didn't realize that Carol had put on the Long Range Desert Convention! So she got two eager Ratties for the price of one! We were delighted to meet Kim and nattered away happily all around the dealers' room. She was looking for Hitch slash; I found her a used copy of an early Diverse Doings with Deb Hicks' wickedly erotic story "Devil Wearing Wings," which features Hitch prominently. We also introduced her to the other Houston Ratties, especially Lin, who is a big Hitch fan.

Later on, I had a long lovely chat with Kandy Fong, one of the pioneers of fannish music videos. She had brought a new tape from BASCon (with an _I Spy_ songvid, yay!), which I was happy to see and thrilled to buy. I didn't realize until she told me that she used to do ST slideshows with music, in the days before VCR's, which were like a precursor to songvids. Wow.

I had my second panel at 2 p.m., which was entitled "Sex sex sex - where do we draw the line?" Again, Jan had put me on it because she knew I'd talk about *anything*. The topic of the panel was really not sex per se, but the extent to which fandom self-regulates (or doesn't self-regulate) certain areas once considered absolutely verboten. Chanslash, incestfic, RPS, and other squicky topics were all discussed. While we certainly agreed that such things have become much more common and much less regulated with the advent of the Internet, those of us with long memories also recalled isolated examples of them in printfic (e.g. the K/S time travel novel _Fetish_, in which Spock is seduced by a sixteen-year-old Kirk). We also talked about the distinctive flavors of fic that tend to surround certain fannish universes, and I learned more about the _Smallville_ fanfic community than I *ever* really wanted to know.

I spent some time in the hospitality suite with Dee next, beta-ing in person a LOTR story she's working on. I enjoyed it much more than I expected from her initial description, particularly the richness of detail about daily life in Meduseld, and I look forward to the finished product. (No, I'm not going to say more!)

I went to one last panel, the Fannish Dictionary panel. I got a chance to ask what on earth "ship" means, since I've seen so many different uses. The consensus appeared to be that it refers to stories involving relationships, and that different people use it differently. Sigh. (Some use it to mean *any* story focusing on *any* relationship, straight or slash; others use it to refer to non-explicit hetero-relationship stories, while others restrict it even further to *canonical* hetero-relationships!) I learned a new term, "retcon," which is short for "retroactive continuity" - very important for shows like _Enterprise_ or movies like the _Star Wars_ prequels.

Next it was time for the Standard by Several pizza party, an enjoyable affair where we continued some of the discussion from the panel, talking about fandoms that import foreign words from the countries in which the shows originate. So, for example, anime fans use Japanese slang like "otaku" ("fanboy"), while LOTR fans use British slang like "poncy" ("gay").

I didn't stay for the cabaret - since Elaine's death I sometimes find it hard to attend - so Carol and Lorelei and I went back to Lorelei's and watched the pilot episode of Lorelei's latest fave, _The Big Valley_. I'd never seen it, and Carol barely remembered it, so it was new to both of us, and very enjoyable.

Sunday, March 16 - I remember that Lorelei fixed us a hot breakfast, but darned if I can remember what it was! We headed back over to the con for a last day of revelry. I got to see a very funny _Farscape_ episode called "Out of Their Minds" and spent a lot of time hanging out in the con suite. Somehow I wound up volunteering to help out in the con suite next year; Elf, the hostess, was very persuasive.

I had told Vivian and Leah that I was going to ride back with Carol; her car had been making funny noises and giving us weird error messages, and I didn't think she should drive back to Austin alone. Our suspicions were confirmed when the car gave out near LaGrange. We had been looking for something like a gas station where we could pull over, since the sounds had gone from funny to ominous, but we had gone several miles without an exit. Walking for help was out, then, and neither of us had a cell phone. So we put on the flashers and waited by the side of the road. Carol is convinced that I have uncanny luck; I think I just have a very frazzled guardian angel. Whatever the explanation, we had only been waiting about ten minutes when a wrecker pulled over to see how we were. It was a couple who worked for a towing company in Austin. They already had a van on their rig, but they called another truck from their company to come out and get us. They invited us into their spacious cab to wait for the other truck, because "two girls shouldn't have to wait in the dark alone." They waited with us for a good forty-five minutes, keeping us entertained with stories of their grandchildren, then drove to Carol's house ahead of the other truck because it didn't have room for us in the cab. They were extraordinarily kind people and we were immensely grateful.

Monday, March 17 - I spent the night at Carol's and took a taxi to the airport in the morning. I even remembered to pack something green! Many thanks to my hostesses [Carol, Vivian & Connie & Leah, and Lorelei], to Merc and Jan and Elf and all the others who put on REVELcon, and to Bob and Sandie of Tommy's Towing Service. And last but not least, to my hubby - not only did he hold down the fort for nearly a week while I was gone, he drove a six-hour round trip, twice, to get me to and from the airport. Much love to all!