Things happen, even IRL

[extrapenguin]

Now that my sibling has finally stopped dragging their heels and bought a Worldcon membership, I can reserve a hotel room for us! I went for the nearest-by option in the price range. This is A Success in my adulting life. Now, the plane tickets...

fandom_stocking now has a list of needy stockings available! Full disclosure: I am on it.

For those of you who are exchange mods, morbane was in correspondince with AO3 over the Reveals Bug – and discovered that there moderation queue functionality is apparently a bug. Post with explanation. I'm drafting together an e-mail to AO3 over this, asking them to please not "fix" this "bug".

In the realm of actual post-posts to make, I have an idea for a post that is half condemnation of Hogwarts House sorting and half rage at the "archetype and 1-2 quirks" school of characterization, a half-post idea that's basically just me quoting stuff someone else wrote on Tumblr + adding a few other translations of the relevant passage, and of course the "OCs must serve either as foils or worldbuilding" post, but: tired. I have to pack and do a ton of bureaucracy and ugh.

space_swap fandom pimping post will go up over the weekend.

Comments

[sewn]

Ah, I wish I could go to Worldcon this year! (Can't afford it rn.) I had a great time in Helsinki. I'd never been to a con that size and I got such a kick out of everything.

[extrapenguin]

Yeah, hotels and flights to Dublin are kinda expensive. Worldcon Helsinki was an amazing experience.

[sewn]

It really was. I had been in a bit of a fannish slump, but going to Worldcon reignited my interest in SFF and made me want to become active in fandom again. It was just amazing to be there. And outside the content and fannish enthusiasm, it was fascinatingly... American in a good way, if that makes sense.

[extrapenguin]

Hmm, so, eager and outspokenly friendly and enthusiastic? That it was! (I can tolerate it for a week or so at a con, but not all the time everywhere.) The whole "lots of people working together for common cause of letting everyone have fun" aspect is wonderfully inspiring.

[sewn]

That's part of it, but (and apologies for pretentious rambling) being there also made me think about... inclusion, I guess, and how it's understood differently in the US.

Take religion, for example -- it was interesting to me to read the guidebook and see it had info on different places of worship and where to find them. That's something I've never seen in a Finnish info package for a secular event, and it struck me that that must be how the American idea of religious freedom comes up in practice. I'm so used to thinking of religious freedom being respected by not talking about religion in public spaces at all if possible. I knew it's a fundamental conceptual US/Europe difference (freedom to do smth vs. freedom from smth) but it was cool suddenly seeing an example of it. And it wasn't just the religion thing; it's kind of hard to explain, but there were these little social cues in interactions that I could only identify as vaguely "American."

I think this sort of ~open atmosphere of self-expression could be seen as the positive side of US culture, even if I think it would get exhausting living like that... All in all it was just weirdly fascinating seeing Americans irl -- I haven't met many. They really exist!