Ascendio

So, Ascendio was fantastic, and I'm really feeling nostalgic tonight. It's the end of an era, you know? If you've ever been to one of the HPEF cons, you know that it was a really unique kind of con. The cons were large and included people from across the Harry Potter fandom, and were fan-run. There are lots of small fan-run cons and big industry-run cons, but I'm not aware of any other large cons that were so focused on the fans of a single fandom and the things they create.

The Ascendio staff did a fantastic job of making sure that every subgroup of the fandom felt welcome, IMO. The programming was well-organized and scheduled in ways that made sense (props to femmequixotic and nqdonne). All of the panels I attended or participated in were fantastic, and having a slash track meant that there was almost a mini slash con inside the larger con.

There was a distinct multi-fannish feel to Ascendio (thanks in large part to noeon, I understand) that I haven't seen at an HP con before. People talked about the Avengers and Sherlock just as freely as HP. Though we were all clearly there because HP is our home fandom, we also celebrated the new fandoms we love and obsess over, and it was SO much fun. It was fascinating to see the shift visually through the costumes people wore. In the past, most of the cosplay tended to be HP-centric, but at this con, people wore costumes from a large variety of fandoms. I'm still amazed by the woman who wore a replica of Princess Dianna's wedding dress!

Cons are always about the people, of course, and this one felt like a reunion in a lot of ways. I roomed with chaeche in the Sherlock suite, which was AMAZINGLY decorated by pennswoods -- I think she took pictures of the room, and I'll link to those when they're posted. I got to be on panels with femmequixotic, bookshop, pir8fancier, noeon, starlitshore, sugareey, and others (I know I'm leaving people out and I'm so sorry!). I got to see friends old and new: drinkingcocoa, geoviki, meri_oddities, goseaward, pinkfinity, lampblack, novembersnow, stormwynd, foxestacado, sassy_cissa, potteresque_ire, jlh, gatewaygirl and and and... shit, there are faces whose LJ names I can't match up and I'm exhausted and will have to edit them in later. So sorry if I left you off!

I've always felt sadness at the end of a con, but this is the first time I've cried when saying goodbye to people. Seriously, there were so many tearful hugs this morning, and the emotion caught me by surprise. I think that everyone felt it, that feeling of it being a sort of end of an era for the HP fandom. Not that it's over or that there won't be other cons -- hello, lubricus is in just a few weeks! But it definitely felt like we're all scattering now, that there may not be another con like this where so many people whose home base is the HP fandom get together and celebrate our collective creativity and geekiness. I know I'll see people at lubricus next month and then at WinCon in October, but there's no "see you next year". And yeah, I'm a little sad about that. *sniffle*