CONvergence Day 2

I had one panel today, at 8:30 at night, which may not seem like a "late night panel" to you folks, but 8:30 PM skirts the edges of my bedtime. I'm an unrepentant lark, my friends. I'm often in bed by 8:00 pm. Thus, perhaps, needless to say, this was not my best panel of the con so far. It was called, "They Came from Fandom..." and it was ostensibly about how some of us professional writers started out as fans (or, as in my case, re-embraced fandom AFTER going pro.)

What it sort of became was Fandom 101, aka "Back in the late Jurassic, before the Internet, when the word 'fandom' meant community, not genre...."

That was a fine topic, but I didn't feel I had a lot to contribute to the discussion. In all honesty, even if we had stayed on topic, I'm not sure what I would have had to say about the subject. I mean, in some ways, it seems like it ought to be a gimme, as in: if you don't love SF, what the f*ck makes you think you can write it? What is strange to me is that, apparently, there are SF/F writers out there who are somehow NOT fans.

I guess the thing is that "fan" is described differently these days. But, back in the late Jurassic, it kind of just meant you read the stuff and liked it. I didn't really become active in the con scene until I was starting to pursue a career as a writer, so in some ways I didn't come from the kind of FANDOM that some of the panelist were talking about. I did write fanfic, but, back in the late Jurassic, there wasn't an internet for me to post it to, so all my Anne McCaffery and Katherine Kurtz fanfic stayed in the notebooks they were handwritten into. I also really remember being counseled not to act too fannish on panels (specifically, I got the whole "dress for the job you want" lecture, with the implication that if you showed up to con cosplaying, you weren't serious about being a writer.)

I tried to talk about this a little on the panel, because even though the Minneapolis/St. Paul fan community is very accepting of fannish pros, I'm not sure it's honest to say that you get taken as seriously sitting on a panel at Anime Detour in your shinigami costume as you do dressed in corporate drag. In fact, I felt a wave of 'and you are...?' from my fellow panelist when I came and sat down next to him at Detour, because I was full-on cosplaying. Despite 15 books in print, the book (panelist) really is still judged by the cover (costume).

Which was why, for the most part, Detour was a much more freeing, fun experience for me. I'm not in costume at all this weekend, nor will I be. Because at this con, I'm a pro, not a fan.

This was also one of those panels that suffered from CONvergence's policy of not always naming a moderator. We ended up letting the person who volunteered for the job have it, and so far, in my experience, that's often the LAST PERSON WHO SHOULD HAVE THE JOB. The volunteer moderator did a pretty good job of asking questions, but she was willing to let the topic meander and I was just not up to the task of herding cats (which I might have been if I had something to say, but I really didn't feel like I did.)

So, it was kind of meh.

At one point, one of the panelists brought up the idea of the permeability of the membrane... as in, how easy is it to pass between pro and fan? I thought this was an interesting concept, but we never really explored it.

I'm bummed because it was another all-star cast. I almost always love being on panels with Emma Bull. Catherine Lundoff is a bright, interesting woman who is always a pleasure to talk to. Patrick Neilson Hayden is, of course, a giant in the field, being, as he is, a senior editor at Tor Books, but also a long time fan. Joan Marie Verba likewise is often a great panelist, but for whatever reason, none of us entirely clicked.

For myself, I blame the hour. If the panel had happened when I arrived at the con at 1:00 pm, it would have been smashing, because I would have been at my peak.

Probably the best panel was the accidental Marvel Movie panel that happened when I had dinner with naomikritzer, Will Alexander, and seanmmurphy, which wasn't a panel at all, but a bunch of us getting wound up and fannish about all the latest films and comparing them to the comic book canon.

I attended a lot of panels, but I probably should have gone to Theatre Nippon. I'm probably not going to catch any anime movies this con because I'm planning to skip tomorrow. I'll try to do a write up of the panels I attended because I did actually take a few notes on thoughts I had, but it's like 1:30 in the morning and my brain has stopped "braining" as the kids might say....