Wrockstock post-mortem
Oct. 29th, 2007 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmagrant01I just got back from a weekend in the middle of Missouri at an HP gathering called Wrockstock. It was basically a wizard rock festival, but a group of slashers within a reasonable distance decided it was a good excuse to get together for the weekend. We had some issues with the organizers early on, but happily had no contact with them during the event. (I won't attend anything organized by them again, as they were incredibly unprofessional and even vindictive to several of us in personal communications.)
We rented a cabin and spent most of the weekend hanging out in it, relaxing, talking slash, drabbling and drawbling, and generally having great time. We made it down for a few of the bands, and that was fun, but for the most part we were there for the slash. The others who went were![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daddybear716, abovethestars, rubytuesday5681, dramedy, mijan, fiona_fawkes, sesheta_66, alaana_fair and melmoe1.
Our cabin had two levels, and shortly after arriving we discovered the lower floor was occupied byvoldiebeth and friends. (She was the one dressed as Voldemort at Prophecy, for those of you who were there.) They had an awesome dark mark on their door! Beth spent a good part of the weekend in costume, including one night wearing a bright green Weasley sweater with the initials "LV" on it. mijan was in costume as Harry, of course, and Fiona dressed as a DE. I was Tonks, and the others wore house robes. There weren't as many costumers there as I expected, and many folks seemed to be wearing costumes that weren't HP-related at all. I think my favorite costumes were those of the couple who went as Dumbledore and Grindelwald! They walked around holding hands and snuggling,and it was all very sweet.
The bands we saw were great (The Remus Lupins, The Whomping Willows, and Draco and the Malfoys), and we heard the others all gave great performances. It was interesting to get to watch the wizard rock community up close. The bands all seem to be really supportive of each other, and were singing along and cheering each other on. A lot of us like to make jokes about Alex Carpenter being a player, but he was the one singing the loudest and cheering the hardest for every band on stage. I seriously thought Brian of D&tM was going to cry from sheer joy a couple of times, and Matt of the Whomping Willows gave one of the best performances I have ever seen at a wizard rock show, ever. The fans had all these little props and things they would do for different songs, and it was all so very cool. I mean, how awesome would it be to have written a song and to sing it in front of 150 people who are not only singing along, but who have brought props to act out the lyrics? I was really impressed. I'm sure they have their wank and drama like everyone else, but it was really cool to see how close-knit and supportive they were of each other.
In general, the fans who were at this event were your generic HP fans and Wizard Rock fans. As far as we could tell, we were the only fanfic writers and fanartists there. There were lots of families with kids, college-age folks, and wizard rock groupies. It seemed like at least a quarter of the people there were in a band. And so given all that, I was quite surprised that people were so, so excited about Dumbledore. I saw nothing remotely negative; in fact, every discussion of Dumbledore being gay was met with cheers and happy smiles from everyone. There were quite a few references to Dumbledore being gay throughout the weekend, all of them very positive. Some of the bands had changed lyrics here and there -- for example, in D&tM's "Tom Felton's Kinda Hot", the last lyrics were changed to "And I can say with glee, and Dumbledore would agree... [pause for nearly a minute of screaming cheers from audience]... Tom Felton's kinda hot." Andrew of the HP Alliance said that the organization was adding GLBT right issues to the list of causes it fights for and supports. And again, these folks don't read slash.
Sometimes it seems like we think we have a monopoly on being the queers of fandom, the ones who represent the GLBT community. But sometimes I'm not so sure about that. We focus on it a lot more than other fen do, but maybe to a point that it actually diminishes our impact on fandom a bit. The Dumbledore thing is a good example. As far as I can tell, most fans out there think it's just a cool thing. The only ones who really aren't happy with it are the right-wing crazies and a contingent of fanfic writers and readers. Those two groups are basically the only ones who disliked that statement and complained loudly about it, which I find a bit ironic. Most fans out there just love the books and are happy to take everything JKR says and just enjoy it, without analyzing it or second-guessing it or speculating about her motives in saying it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing that; it was just refreshing that it wasn't a topic I felt like I had to avoid bringing up over the weekend. It got cheers from everyone -- not rolling eyes and arguments. It really made me think.
When we weren't listening to wizard rock (which was most of the time), we were hanging out in the big gay slash cabin. We thought we'd do a lot of drabbling, but we ended up mostly just hanging out and talking. It was a different vibe than you usually have at cons, really laid back and relaxing. It's cool to have a chance to just get to know people, and I felt like we really did that this weekend. For example, I learned that Daddybear, Dramedy, and I are all utter musical theater geeks. We started singing random lyrics whenever something someone said reminded us of a musical, and it became a sort of challenge game -- much to the annoyance of our cabinmates, heh.
I really enjoyed the weekend, and was sorry to see it end. It was a long, quiet trip home, and it left me looking forward to the next time I can get together with fannish friends. Fiona kept bursting into grins on Friday night and saying, "I love slashers!" I totally agree. :-)
And now I'll be disappearing from the internets for a little while. I need to focus on getting my fics for holiday exchanges done! I'll be around, but I'm going to try to stay off my flist as much as possible until I make some significant progress. Happy Halloween, everyone!
We rented a cabin and spent most of the weekend hanging out in it, relaxing, talking slash, drabbling and drawbling, and generally having great time. We made it down for a few of the bands, and that was fun, but for the most part we were there for the slash. The others who went were
daddybear716, abovethestars, rubytuesday5681, dramedy, mijan, fiona_fawkes, sesheta_66, alaana_fair and melmoe1. Our cabin had two levels, and shortly after arriving we discovered the lower floor was occupied by
voldiebeth and friends. (She was the one dressed as Voldemort at Prophecy, for those of you who were there.) They had an awesome dark mark on their door! Beth spent a good part of the weekend in costume, including one night wearing a bright green Weasley sweater with the initials "LV" on it. mijan was in costume as Harry, of course, and Fiona dressed as a DE. I was Tonks, and the others wore house robes. There weren't as many costumers there as I expected, and many folks seemed to be wearing costumes that weren't HP-related at all. I think my favorite costumes were those of the couple who went as Dumbledore and Grindelwald! They walked around holding hands and snuggling,and it was all very sweet.The bands we saw were great (The Remus Lupins, The Whomping Willows, and Draco and the Malfoys), and we heard the others all gave great performances. It was interesting to get to watch the wizard rock community up close. The bands all seem to be really supportive of each other, and were singing along and cheering each other on. A lot of us like to make jokes about Alex Carpenter being a player, but he was the one singing the loudest and cheering the hardest for every band on stage. I seriously thought Brian of D&tM was going to cry from sheer joy a couple of times, and Matt of the Whomping Willows gave one of the best performances I have ever seen at a wizard rock show, ever. The fans had all these little props and things they would do for different songs, and it was all so very cool. I mean, how awesome would it be to have written a song and to sing it in front of 150 people who are not only singing along, but who have brought props to act out the lyrics? I was really impressed. I'm sure they have their wank and drama like everyone else, but it was really cool to see how close-knit and supportive they were of each other.
In general, the fans who were at this event were your generic HP fans and Wizard Rock fans. As far as we could tell, we were the only fanfic writers and fanartists there. There were lots of families with kids, college-age folks, and wizard rock groupies. It seemed like at least a quarter of the people there were in a band. And so given all that, I was quite surprised that people were so, so excited about Dumbledore. I saw nothing remotely negative; in fact, every discussion of Dumbledore being gay was met with cheers and happy smiles from everyone. There were quite a few references to Dumbledore being gay throughout the weekend, all of them very positive. Some of the bands had changed lyrics here and there -- for example, in D&tM's "Tom Felton's Kinda Hot", the last lyrics were changed to "And I can say with glee, and Dumbledore would agree... [pause for nearly a minute of screaming cheers from audience]... Tom Felton's kinda hot." Andrew of the HP Alliance said that the organization was adding GLBT right issues to the list of causes it fights for and supports. And again, these folks don't read slash.
Sometimes it seems like we think we have a monopoly on being the queers of fandom, the ones who represent the GLBT community. But sometimes I'm not so sure about that. We focus on it a lot more than other fen do, but maybe to a point that it actually diminishes our impact on fandom a bit. The Dumbledore thing is a good example. As far as I can tell, most fans out there think it's just a cool thing. The only ones who really aren't happy with it are the right-wing crazies and a contingent of fanfic writers and readers. Those two groups are basically the only ones who disliked that statement and complained loudly about it, which I find a bit ironic. Most fans out there just love the books and are happy to take everything JKR says and just enjoy it, without analyzing it or second-guessing it or speculating about her motives in saying it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing that; it was just refreshing that it wasn't a topic I felt like I had to avoid bringing up over the weekend. It got cheers from everyone -- not rolling eyes and arguments. It really made me think.
When we weren't listening to wizard rock (which was most of the time), we were hanging out in the big gay slash cabin. We thought we'd do a lot of drabbling, but we ended up mostly just hanging out and talking. It was a different vibe than you usually have at cons, really laid back and relaxing. It's cool to have a chance to just get to know people, and I felt like we really did that this weekend. For example, I learned that Daddybear, Dramedy, and I are all utter musical theater geeks. We started singing random lyrics whenever something someone said reminded us of a musical, and it became a sort of challenge game -- much to the annoyance of our cabinmates, heh.
I really enjoyed the weekend, and was sorry to see it end. It was a long, quiet trip home, and it left me looking forward to the next time I can get together with fannish friends. Fiona kept bursting into grins on Friday night and saying, "I love slashers!" I totally agree. :-)
And now I'll be disappearing from the internets for a little while. I need to focus on getting my fics for holiday exchanges done! I'll be around, but I'm going to try to stay off my flist as much as possible until I make some significant progress. Happy Halloween, everyone!
