I’ll Smile If I Want To
Thinking about something twistdfateangel posted:
There are a lot of people out there who can’t have a good time unless someone else is having a bad one. In online gaming, we call them “griefers”.
Unfortunately, the costuming field in fandom has a fair proportion of them. They used to make me angry… now I just pity them. (And mock them a bit.) I’ll wear what I damn well want to wear to the con, and if it’s not quite period, or if the fabric color’s a little off, or if I’ve taken parts of the outfit from entirely different fictions: screw it. I’m having fun. Too bad, so sad that they’re not.
Power and Con Crud
I appear to have recovered from the sinus infection I had before MarsCon only to walk right into a full-blown bout with the influenza. This is an especially impressive achievement considering that I had the flu shot back in November. Go Me. So now I’m into the negatives again with my sick days at work – thank goodness that they’re pretty flexible – and sitting in bed taking Tamiflu twice a day and remembering what food and drink were like when my sense of taste was functional. Whine whine carp carp bleh.
It’s kinda funny to watch some people acting like Obama has already completely ruined his presidency based on a few choices that I admit I don’t agree with either. It’s even funnier, in a completely pathetic kind of way, to watch “Rapture Ready” Christians glancing impatiently at the sky while wondering why Jesus hasn’t come to rid them of this Antichrist. Y’know, he’s just a man, albeit an intelligent, articulate one with some ideas that, if they work out the way he says, could leave this country in markedly better shape when he leaves power. Which he will do, in no more than eight years tops, because that’s what the laws of the country say. But he’s still just a dude. He’s got four more years minimum to try to impress as many of us as he can, and we really ought to give a fair fraction of that to him before we declare him a failure.
(P.S. He’s also not the dictator of America. Whether the country is any better in four years has as much if not more to do with what its collected citizens do, than with any orders he gives. The most he can do is inspire, positively or negatively. It’s hypocritical to throw our responsibilities as citizens on the President’s shoulders and then be angry him if we don’t like the way things go.)
Okay, enough politics. Sort of. I had an excellent time at MarsCon, it offered me everything I could want from a weekend fan con and I indulged to the practical limit. I’m already in line for next year’s, and I think I may even have contributed to the next chosen theme. I’ve heard a little bit of whining in places, though for the most part I’ve put it down to folks with entitlement issues.
But I’ve also heard quiet murmurs of staff drama. These may be overblown, and already handled, in which case I’m a happy fan. However, as I look at some of the difficulties my favorite cons have hit over the years, I’m seeing a certain cycle. Since it always seems to hit sometime between the con’s tenth and fifteenth year, I’m calling it Con Puberty; after years of success, suddenly the con is hit with massive crises of staffing, programming, funding, and or general personality – an identity crisis, if you will. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they don’t – often the event will fragment and reassemble as a new con with echoes of its predecessor. But either way, unlike normal puberty, in another 10-15 years, it’ll hit again.
RoVaCon survived it once, and was killed the second time; it looks as though Technicon is going to follow the same path. Rising Star rose from the ashes of RoVaCon, then years later survived its own puberty by evolving into a different con with the same name. Sci-Con evolved into a completely different event with a new identity; and now, as I count back, MarsCon has been around under that name for, what – ten-fifteen years?
MarsCon’s a great con. To get all circularly Frankensteinian with my metaphors, if the con’s indeed having any issues, I’m hoping it’s not Con Puberty, but simply a minor, quickly remedied staff infection.
Inside the Borg Studio
Yes, it’s Interview Meme time again. kittenchan asked the questions, and I provide the answers. For those who wish to play along at home, the rules are (c’mon, you know this by now):
1. Reply to my post asking me to interview you.
2. I reply to your post with five questions.
3. You post your answers and this meme on your LJ.
1. What’s the craziest (PG) thing you’ve ever done?
PG, huh? Probably in my teens, when I used to attend USS Heimdal meetings in Lynchburg, the other car in our convoy would race us there and back. 110-120 MPH speeds were known to occur. I wasn’t driving, but I didn’t exactly try too hard to talk the drivers out of it, either. I’m glad that we all grew out of that before something terrible happened.
2. Why did you first join VTSFFC?
It wasn’t really on purpose! When Tom Monaghan started attending Tech, he invited me along on a VTSFFC trip to Stellarcon. I rode with Scott Gosik, whom I had not met before that day, and weathered a barrage of cryptic anime references; witnessed a car accident in our convoy and spent an evening in an Emergency Room with a delirious Rosethorn (also a total stranger); and entered the con costume contest on five-minutes’ notice, using random items I’d happened to pack. The general consensus was that I had passed the initiation whether I’d intended to or not.
3. Do you still draw?
I have not drawn anything in 2008, I fear, besides some crude notebook sketches of my Legion of Liberty superhero. I have several drawings in my head, though, and 2009 will not be artless.
4. Do you ever miss working at the TN?
I miss a lot of the people I got to work with at the TN, but I don’t miss the late Tuesdays (even the abbreviated ones) or the desperate deadlines! Honestly, I wish there was a NASA facility in Blacksburg; the work I’m doing now is great, and I still enjoy causally saying “oh I work for NASA” when asked, but I miss my friends and family up there a lot.
5. What’s your favorite restaurant of all time and why?
After lengthy thought – there are two close runners-up – I’d have to say Sakura, over in Salem. The prices are moderate, the service is very good, the decor is attractive and simple, and the food is addictively good. I can name restaurants that have been better in one or more categories, but this is the all-round winner. I think a certain someone’s impromptu reception dinner was held there, as well 🙂 Stinks that I’m 5 hours away, now.
A sea of happy oddness
On my morning drive I listened to a podcast this morning interviewing James Randi, noted stage magician and skeptic. He raved about Dragon*Con, calling it a gathering of 37,000 people where everyone is weird, smart, and surprisingly nice. Randi expressed amazement at the way that everyone “fits in” at Dragon*Con, even a cranky 80-year old magician, and that he’d be attending future Dragon*Cons whenever possible.
Fandom sure doesn’t have all the answers, but when we get it right, fandom rocks, doesn’t it?
I hope to go next year. I wanna meet some Mythbusters.
Totalitarian Fan Fashion
tzel reposted an very good article from
Rule One: Steampunk fashion is a real-world reproduction of the clothing that is or could be found in steampunk literature. It’s that simple. Note the phrase “could be” in that sentence.
Rule Two: When in doubt, dress Victorian and then add. Here’s a nice simple baseline. Again, that’s baseline, not Scripture.
Rule Three: Steampunk fashion is about creating an [entertaining] outfit […]. Never feel obliged to take away from the style or appeal of an outfit simply because you fear it will be “not steampunk enough.” There is no “steampunk fashion bible”, and attempts to create one should be ignored.
Rule Four: There is no “steampunk color.” Some people have claimed that steampunk is only brown, or only black, or only white, or only light, or only dark. They are wrong. In reality, Victoria herself may have stuck to black, but the rest of the world didn’t. And we’re not exactly recreating reality here anyway.
Rule Five: You are allowed to like other genres. If you like a style of fashion that does not fit into steampunk be proud of it. This is not One Fandom to Rule Them All, any more than pulp SF, Trek, anime, B5, fursuiting, Galactica, or Firefly were. It is a way for like-minded individuals to have fun.
Rule Six: Have fun and be yourself. That’s what this is about. Don’t feel compelled to conform with everyone else. Fandom needs individuals and noncomformists. You didn’t join the counterculture just to find a clique within it. Express your vision!
I often feel that there are too many rules, too many pecking orders, too many boundaries in fandom. Perhaps some of them evolved from guidelines intended to help the socially unskilled from being complete jerks. But I think much of it comes from people’s natural tendency to find a leader and be part of a movement, safe inside something bigger than they are. But fandom’s roots are in dreams, imagination, and fun; and when a leader intentionally or unintentionally suppresses that in service to his or her own vision, it’s a mistake.
The very first group I hooked up with, Starfleet, had ranks imitating its fictional namesake. The idea was that these ranks would reflect a recognition of service to the club and a responsibility for the club’s operation. But some of the fans decided that the rank gave them paramilitary power, and that they could make decisions for the other club members. This caused enough trouble that, eventually, Chapter Chairpersons were specifically advised to downplay the “rank” structure in chapter activities.
Conversely, my own first chapter, and the ones that followed it, encouraged personal uniforms of the fan’s own design; ran role-playing sessions in which anything that could be shoehorned into the Trek universe was allowed; and treated ‘ranks’ as a subject for silly wordplay. (Woe to my first chapter chairperson when she attained the rank of Rear Admiral.) We did massive damage to Paramount canon in those days, but boy, did we enjoy ourselves.
I suspect that the modern preoccupation with the ‘right way’ to be a fan is partly the Internet’s fault; by making it so easy for a fan to find people who agree with their point of view, the ‘Net made it less necessary to learn tolerance and even appreciation of the fen who didn’t quite. But it also offers more exposure to new and different ideas, and opportunities to have more fun and meet more people, not to mention more places to buy cool costume and accessory stuff, so there’s no point in technology-bashing.
Recently, I’ve had the privilege of visiting some cons willing to relax the boundaries, ditch the unnecessary rules, and throw wrenches into the artificial fan heirarchies. I love this, and I think it’s beneficial to nearly every fan. So at the next con you attend, help bring some craziness back; wear a hall costume, cheap or fancy, and wear it your way! Wear a leather miniskirt with your Galactica uniform; furry ears and tail of a species unknown to real or speculative zoology; an anime costume where the fabric choice and sleeve length are darn well inaccurate, thank you; or, horrors, a steampunk costume in red and silver! Sure, some small-minded person may write something insulting in their blog when they get home.
So what? You’re having fun.
Grown-ups of Time
I recently finished Series 4 of the revived Doctor Who. In many ways, the finale wrapped up and tied together the last four years of programming, as Russell Davies is moving on to other projects. The finale was a slam-bang affair, one comparable to ST:TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds” in breathtaking moments and an edge-of-the-seat cliffhanger. However, the finale underscored certain themes of Davies that I hope to see put to rest.
Originally, the Doctor was a political fugitive from his people, but he eventually evolved into a crusader of Time and Space, saving individuals and entire planets from oncoming disaster. His fourth incarnation sacrificed himself to save the existence of the universe from one man’s foolishness. The Doctor was clearly fulfilled by his never-ending quest.
When the Doctor returned to television, he was in some ways a broken man. He had been at least partially responsible for the destruction of his race in an attempt to prevent an apocalypse (a futile attempt, as it turned out). Other characters made much about the Doctor as the bringer of Death. Of course, he repeatedly staves off even greater death and destruction, but apparently one gets minimal points for that.
Rose Tyler’s love healed the Doctor, and in fact he began to return the emotion openly for the first time in the 40-year history of the show. But he then regenerated into a new body and personality, and Rose was forced to leave him, and he sank into depression and despair. The crusader of Time and Space was replaced by a sad, lonely immortal who kept on keeping on mainly because he didn’t have anything better to do.
When the villain of the finale mocks the Doctor for creating a band of “Children of Time”, willing tools who will aid our immortal in the destruction of lives and worlds, it’s completely unfair, and yet the Doctor shows hurt and shame. What he’s really done, of course, is give a succession of companions a broader perspective, the skills and the confidence to defend themselves and their loved ones, and the ability to make the awful decisions at times when the Doctor isn’t around. They are “Grown-ups of Time” now, but the Doctor is too busy wallowing in failure to deal with that.
The new helmsman, Steven Moffat, has written episodes that temporarily bring back the crusader. While Moffat’s Doctor in these tales retains a vulnerability that the older series did not give him, he remembers his role as the defender of Life, and revels in the challenge. I absolutely hope that future seasons return to that philosophy, as the worn-out, depressed Doctor is a shadow of the beings he once were, and I become sadder with every episode in which he flails about desperately.
Why have I gone on at length about this? Because the older Doctors, the Fourth especially, represent in many ways the person I’ve always wanted to be. Assertive, cheerful, full of wonder, and up to the challenges of life. Frankly, the Doctor these days has a far emptier life than I do, and it’s hard to see the fictional hero I’ve felt so connected to suffer so. I guess this is something of a “Get Well” card to my old hero.
Further points, with spoilers, below
The Soul For Getting Down
meiran posted this. It’s silly, it’s fanservice… and it’s joyously wonderful.
Interviewed by jazzfish
1) How’s life in Norfolk?
I really like it here. There’s more to do than I can possibly keep up with, lotsa good friends, and the scenery’s suprisingly good for a large metropolitan area. I do miss mountains, all the lovely folk in SWVA fandom, and not having to commute through a congested bridge-tunnel every day; and of course it would have been nice to be near my Mom when she got hurt. But otherwise, this is an excellent place to live.
2) What tech toy do you not own (and don’t plan on acquiring in the next three months) that you wish you did?
A GPS navigator for the Hyundai. I still do just enough convention driving and the like that it would come in handy.
3) What’s your favorite nonfiction book?
Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. It’s a brain-stretcher of a book, one that I’ve had to read many times to access most of the meaning, but one full of fascinating ideas and profound concepts involving music, art, literature, language, biology, and computers. I must be a graduate of the book by now, though, since I think his views on the future of Artificial Intelligence are quite pessimistic. OTOH, what do I know?
4) What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Working the Copy Center counter at Staples. The work itself was fine, but I had such difficulty with abrasive customers and co-workers that it made my previous job of vacuuming and emptying trash cans for an office building look absolutely peaceful.
5) How fast do you type?
To my own great surprise, around 60-65 words a minute. Surprising, because I kind of two-finger type. An actual typewriter would kill me, because I hit the “delete” key a lot. Still, my old boss at Thrifty Nickel once said I was the fastest, most accurate bad typist he’d ever seen.
Der Ruleses:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them 5 questions.
