Boskone: Day 1

[the_wanlorn]

 
Being me, I skived off work an hour early so that I could be sure to get to Boskone on time and get checked in and pick up the birthday present for Lexi. And, being me, I got lost trying to navigate the streets of Boston.

Which is not my fault. I mean, have you seen the sort of shit Boston has as its streets? This is not a set of streets, this is either a plate of spaghetti or some many-tentacled monster beginning its attack:



See? Not my fault. (As an aside, I used to drive through this every day. Look at the closeup. What the actual fuck, Boston.)

So I moseyed on into the end of "A Splintered Culture"¹. Eh, it wasn't bad, but I didn't catch enough of it to like it or dislike it. I'm still not used to hearing fandom and fanfic and slash talked about in real voices.

At 6 I fucked about for an hour. No, I don't remember what I did. Other than fucking about. I think I planned how to get away in case the entire hotel got zombified. Maybe. Or maybe that was when I did most of the writing of lulzy NCIS fic.

And by "boring" I mean "not as interesting as horror, which isn't to say I don't like them both". "women of Darkness"² was a splendid panel. I got a lot of reading recs, and it was fun to listen to Nina Harper talk about her time as a street goth.

Interestingly, they started off the panel by talking about Jane Austen, of all people. Harper mentioned that she found the underlying desperation of the women in Austen's novels to be absolutely horrifying. While I think that it's a stretch to call Austen horror, I can see where they're coming from.

Also, on a "lol over-analyzing goths" note: Harper pointed out that goths and gothic literature originated back with the Age of Reason. At that time, people were like "*\o/* LOGIC! *\o/* REASON! FEAR/MAGICAL STUFF/WONDERING WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH IS FOR LOSERS >:(" From that point on, society as a whole has stuck with the reason side of things, making goths function as the subconscious of society (ie, what focuses on "but we're all gonna die someday DDDD:").

... lol over-analyzing goths (she says as she goes to check out "Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin" from the library).

I also asked my first question at a panel ever in all the years I've been going to cons. Which was basically "Why are all these women writers you're talking about from New England?"

The answer is shockingly logical. At the time period we were talking about, Boston had the only printing press. If you wanted to be published, you moved to New England.

To a lesser extent, at that point in time New England had been settled the longest. Thus, its traditions were deeper and more twisted. If you look at the South, it also produced a large amount of horror writers. New England has the huge old houses with ghosts and demons in every nook and cranny. The South has hillbillies and inbred monsters in ever hill and valley.

At 8PM we talked about zombies. Which will have its own entry. Because, hi, ZOMBIES.

Last was the filking. The Memorial filking circle for Greg McMullan was terribly sad. The open filking afterwards was terribly fun. While I've always known that filking is something that appeals to me (singing? and fun songs? singing fun songs? SIGN ME UP), I think it's moved from "I like filking and will occasionally try to write a Firefly song to a Great Big Sea tune and a Dark Tower song to an original tune" to "FILKING IS MY NEW LOVE LET ME OBSESS ABOUT IT FOR A BIT AND ACTUALLY FINISH A SONG OR TWO".

---

1: Has the growth of SF irretrievably splintered it? In the past thirty years, the amount of written SF has tripled, the amount of media SF has increased at least tenfold, the number of people who consider themselves to be fans has drastically increased, and the number of people who read or watch SF "just for fun" has increased to the point that SF is central to our popular culture. Furthermore, the day when someone could be well-read in SF without being 50 years old is long past, due to the sheer volume of good material. Does this mean that SF as a unitary culture, a shared experience, is ended? If not, how can a newbie hope to participate in the shared culture on an equal footing with long-time fans? If so, can we do anything about it? Since the size of the field seems likely to keep increasing, what does this bode for the future?

2: Scholars contend that the modern literature of the fantastic began with Mary Shelley and her little book about a big ugly undead guy. What other women have been important to the development of horror and dark fantasy? Do they bring any particular advantages or disadvantages to the field? What women are writing especially scary stuff right now?
 

Comments

[operagrrl.livejournal.com]

ZOMG, totes jealous. I wish I'd been able to make it to this. *le sigh*

And filking? This is the first I've heard of it, but your description sounds pretty scrumptious!

And nobody can understand Boston streets without actually experiencing them. The complete nonsensicalness of it, combined with a lack of street signs (which Menino stridently denies. Does the man not drive himself anywhere?) is a white knuckle experience along the lines of the Tower of Terror. I love driving in Boston. Keeps you sharp.

Also, I love that fic and slash were being talked about. It's just too huge to ignore. And, the fact that SO MUCH gay porn is being written by middle-aged straight women? That is a cultural phenomenon that just BEGS to be studied.

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

It was so much fun. Arisia was my first con, and up until this year my only con. And I would always go and be all "meh" by the end of Saturday and not go back. But Boskone was so much fun.

BOSTON STREETS ARE INSANE. And you're so right about the lack of street signs. It's an adventure and a half getting to anywhere in the center of the city. I actually ended up buying a GPS direction thinger program for my phone around 5:30 on Friday because I was so fucking lost in that maze. I'm used to the outskirts where, okay, so there aren't many street signs, but at least everything is in a vague sort of grid-type thing if you squint real hard, and I've become really skilled at finding my way back to the last place I was sure I knew where I was going and trying a different route from there.

But near the airport? You can't even pretend that obscene mess of streets and highways piled on top of one another is a grid. That said, even though I drive everywhere in Boston (I mean, I live near the end of the B branch of the green line, so going anywhere is a 15 minute drive vs. an hour and a half T ride), this is the first time I've ever got so lost not even my maps could help me.

[verrucaria.livejournal.com]

I've never been to London, but I suspect that London streets are the same (except that London has a larger area). And, supposedly, Boston was settled by a bunch of Londoners. I just find it sad that these people hadn't seemed to learn anything in the centuries that separate settlement of London and settlement of Boston.

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

What women are writing especially scary stuff right now?

I find it scary that Danielle Steele is still writing any stuff at all. ;-)

[emiweebee.livejournal.com]

I AM BOSTON.

OM NOM NOM.

[crazyasitsounds.livejournal.com]

That's why I took the commuter rail when I was working in Boston & then proceeded to complain about the commuter rail every day for three months.