Nimbus, before and after

[jlh]

Before I go down the "what did you do during the con, Mommy?" road, a quick shout out to the person I, for one, wished most fervently was there, lunasparrow. To have seen you as one of the amazing ladies at our room parties, to see your reaction to some certain people, to just have you in the posse—you were missed.

And now, to it:


After some last minute Palm-related panicking on Wednesday night (thank you to tromboneborgesand maybethemoon for being so sweet and techie) I got myself to the Avocado where rubydebrazier and I stayed with ali_wildgoose and epicyclical due to our early morning flight. We got ourselves to Kennedy and thence on a plane, and thence to the Swan thanks to the lovely heidi8. There was a lot of annoying futzing at check in, but very quickly we were in one half of our duplex and off to dine with queerasjohn and Heidi. This would be, by and large, the last time we saw John to talk to, but we are lucky enough to have local!John so we were really okay with that, and happy to just cheer for him when we found him. Heidi, of course, is fabu, as is Jonathan. What an ickle sweetie! msscribe, ely709, and evil_erato arrived soon enough, and then after lunch the other room was opened. Finally tracked down nmalfoy and wandered off with her, legomymalfoy, littletort and slytherincess to check out the equipment at the Copa (or lack thereof). Back at the room we thought about going to the pool but it was so hot, so we just lazed around and then went down to registration.

Suggestion #1: When dividing people into two lines by their last names, do NOT say A-M and N-Z. Many more people have names A-M than N-Z. The lines quickly became uneven and I got vaguely grouchy. But this was mostly becasue Ali and Cassie kept coming by and making fun of my still being in line, and then running off to socialize more. Bitter!

Got through registration, got a hug from angiej, and then went on to meet oh my god, so many people, but especially fick_l_rene, resmiranda and vanityfair. Rushed around zorac when he arrived with fandomopoly. Sat down out of exhaustion and ended up front and center for the MWPP panel, during which kitsune13 whispered sweet nothings about Sirius and James in my ear. I thought it very ironic that a Sirius hetster was up representing but of course Carole did an excellent job, as did Gwen and Cedar and Ebony. Futzed around some more, then went to the end of the Kittens concert to witness the lead singer sitting on John's lap (waste, should have sat on Ruby's lap) and Ali sing along to the HP song.

Back to the room for the first room party, where much plotting occured. Ran out quickly for mixers with Femme and Dionne, blasting a bunch of random songs with the top down. At some point earlier in the evening aegeus had attached himself rather firmly to our little tribe, and Aegy and Aja stayed over.



Up early to get Aja and Aegy back to the slash cabana for showers and then back to the Swan, and then back to the store, all in Femme's car, all with Ali along for the ride. Got taco bell. Yum. Sang along to "Living on a Prayer" and freaked the kids right out.

Afternoon was spent in lovely sessions. First, transgressing the text with Catja (and darling, your polka dots completely rocked), then slash with John and his cast of thousands in the big room.

Suggestion #2: I think that the "why do all these straight women write about gay boys?" question has pretty much outlived its usefulness. Because it didn't match up with what goes on with so many of us, it elicited endless personal testimonies about why everyone writes slash. Can we stop applying findings from years of Star Trek zines in the 70s and 80s to the HP oneline fandom of the 00s? Is that possible?

Then everyone held their breath when Cassie got called out—but it turned out to be Sushi asking for an impromptu debate. Draco panel went reasonably well, I thought, and at least was entertaining. Was bitterly disappointed that the talk about other houses didn't happen.

We wandered off to Italian dinner and thence to the impromptu panel where Sushi finally explained to this non-Snapefan why the bloody hell Harry would ever sleep with him. It made sense in analysis, but why is this never elicited in the fics? I think those Snapesters just assume everyone loves Snape so why shouldn't Harry? Darkrose also great with the Snape/Draco. I'm generally disturbed at all the references to James and Lucius for these ships, and as Ali noted, Snape's emotional age is clearly about 15 so wouldn't it be better for him to be with someone older who will kick him in the arse? So, sadly, I remain unconvinced. Not that Cassie didn't acquit herself well regarding Harry/Draco but I've heard all that before, anyway.

We went back to the room to change for the FA party. It was a bit late and the rain was coming down in buckets. We trotted over and proceeded to shake a tail feather all night long. Danced with everyone I could find, especially littletort during Pussy Control. Had an incredible time and didn't even drink at all! Did the time warp with Aegy, got glittered by John the glitter fairy, bowed down before the one we serve (that being Heidi of course) and generally went nuts. Great, great party. Collapsed into bed from exhaustion at 2am. Oddly, very hyper slash villa types came to pick up their wandering Aegy at 3am. Went back to bed.



If Friday was slash day, Saturday was het day. Woke up early to get in line for the H/H vs R/H debate. Totally woke my inner shipper. I think I frightened Ali. Was annoyed at the JKR shirts. Was also annoyed at the R/Hers reliance on author quotes. As Libbie said later: Chris Carter, people. Pull from canon, there is plenty there. earthquake1906 made my day by announcing that I had turned her on to het and giving me some dried fruit. zorb and Linda were wonderful, of course, and captured everything that we love about H/H perfectly. *hugs ship*

We left there for Catja's incest talk. As Ali and I were saying, if you ship Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny, then it must be Harry/Hermione and Ron/Ginny! The talk was totally amazing, the upper class/lower class pathology/too much love and the CoS Freud bit. She even found something new to say about the twins being trickster figures. And of course it must be said, she looks amazing in a corset.

Then it was off to scrounge up some lunch, and talk to skgbriefly about the debate, and then I hauled Aja to my room along with some other lovely lassies including dayafternext so we could whip up some Fandom Squares questions for her. (Hey weatherby, he liked ours so much he gave the Ron one to the SQ! We rock!) Then it was back downstairs for another impromptu, this time about RPGs. I cannot reveal what was said there, but it did give me the opportunity to shamelessly fangirl khirsah and ask her to finish the damn S/D Christmas fic. She, of course, looked at me like I was quite mad indeed.

(Oh, and seviet, don't think you weren't invoked as well. As we sat there talking about slash RPGs they were setting up for fandom squares, and apparently the little game board was set up on Amy's computer, and of course the illustration you did from In This World of Strangers is her wallpaper, so when it got projected on the wall everyone went, ooooh! As they should, of course.)

Fandom Squares was funny and crazy and I was nervous until I wasn't. I stood in the back of the group and snarked with Aja, and got to see the asskissing and the barking up close and personal. Lucky me. Afterwards, I got to shamelessly fangirl eibbil_libbie for her user name and her smut. I stood talking to those PP folks for quite a bit, then joined my chums for sushi. On a run out to get money, Cassie and I ran into even more PP folks coming back from the founder's feast so I got to tell Linda how great had been in person.

Then we pretty much just gathered folks in the room for the proper, big, end of the run room party. Many women sitting in a room talking about smut. Live readings of smut. People saying they liked my smut! Long conversation with the truly, truly amazing debellatrix about life and everything. fick_l_rene took a picture of my chest area. We screamed and shouted with a bit more abandon now that we knew that EQ was our neighbor. Ruby did the good-apartment trick and invited her, and while we didn't get an EQ, we did get some chocolate. Went downstairs very briefly to watch me some CoS but by then I was drunk enough that I didn't really care much about the movie. Came back upstairs and passed out.



Poor Rene was quite out of it, so Ali, Cassie, Ruby, Res and I went to brunch, then we finished packing, checked out, and wandered about. Visited the post-mortem. One presenter proposed that they have a forum where kids and their parents could talk about HP. I was sitting against the back wall, flourishon one side and Aegy on the other, both saying, "No, no, a thousand times NO!" which couldn't have been funnier.

By the way, Aegy has GREAT hair.

Then we got into our car, after several goodbyes, and off we went.


I feel very balanced. I fangirled and was fangirled. I was a slasher on Friday and a hetster on Saturday. I fulfilled my major missions of meeting as many chat/LJ good friends as I could, and of connecting with the PP gang with whom I hope to form closer ties in the future.

Everyone else is making warnings about their LJ now that they have all these friends so I suppose I'll do one of my own. I talk about my life a little, my friends some, fic a bit, and general fandom a good deal. I don't post that often. There is FREQUENTLY smut posted here, both slash and het. I am very slow to friend people. It's basically whether I've met you, or I've been by your journal, and you seemed cool. I hate defriending, so I'm just conservative about friending in the first place. So, thanks for friending me!