Phoenix Rising, Entry Eight. Summaries: Friday.

[valis2]

Friday morning we were both awakened by the sound of a very loud hotel employee explaining not only how to use a keycard, but how to use an ironing board. Srsly. Who the hell has never used a keycard before? Or iron? Did I mention this was at seven am? Grr.

11 am...I sat down for the "Fanon/Canon Continuum" presentation. And guess who sat down next to me? marginaliana, that's who! Hooray! I was so happy to see her. We giddily babbled and hugged for a few minutes, and then the presentation started.

This was one of the more fascinating presentations I saw. The lecturer was trying to tie in fanon/canon with linguistics, and it was very interesting. She explained that a "creole" is a mix of two languages. The "substrate" language provides the base for the creole, giving it structure and grammar. The "lexifier" language provides the words. She explained that the substrate for fanfiction is very often the modern culture/fan culture/media/etc. of our everyday lives, and the "lexifier" is the fanon spackle we use to fill in spaces and create a continuum. Very cool.

Then I went to the Snape Slash Luncheon, which was great. I finally got to talk to sor_bet...I had met her before, at Lumos, but we never really talked. I also sat with iheartbowie, ziasudra_fic and chaeche, who were fun. We talked about a lot of OT things like book banning and Jehovah's Witnesses. There was a trivia contest, and I won a prize because I remembered that Snape offered a "Babbling Beverage" at the end of OotP, so that was nice. It was a well-attended meetup, definitely, and we took up a corner of the Roux Bistro and shouted out Snape trivia answers. Great way to spend a lunch hour.

After that I went to "Specifying Gen" at 2 pm which turned out to be a round table. Unfortunately, it was in a lecture room, which meant that we were not arranged in the round, and therefore I couldn't hear much of what was said. It did raise interesting issues about what constitutes gen vs. het/slash. The big question was, "If you remove the sex, what is left?"

There was some fascinating discussion about whether or not a gen story could have a relationship in it or not. It does make me think, as recently pennswoods listed tLS as a gen story, which really made me pause for a moment.

Then at 3 I went to the slash panel, which was run by titti, shadowkitten, and anise_anise. I ended up leaving early...it wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for, and I ended up going out somewhere to dinner, I think, with julian_black.

At 6 I went to the only extra event I'd paid for...a wax museum tour, with a presentation after. It was "Transformation: From Influence to Inspiration," held at the Musée Conti Wax Museum, and it was supposed to be a talk about genres and how they influenced HP. Well, I guess I expected more, because I was a bit sad with the presentation. It started off with a great quote from TS Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

Then there was a comparison of the British vs. American covers, which started off promisingly and then seemed to go nowhere. She pointed out how the first four British covers are a bit less happy than the first four American covers, and then the opposite for the fifth and sixth books. Well, okay.

Then she basically made a very cohesive presentation about the different source materials; however, it was all information that has been covered to death on LJ, so it was a bit anticlimactic.

The wax museum was...heh. Awful comes to mind. I think it was probably put together in the late 60's, early 70's, and it really shows. It's rather sad and dejected, and tells the story of Louisiana's history through the use of rather small wax models. There was one devilish woman who rather looked like Bellatrix. Aurora Grayeyes and I walked around and giggled. There was a battle scene, and there was a man on the sidelines being operated on. I mentioned that it looked like historical Louisiana h/c. heh. His chest was moving up and down, which, at one time, was probably a rather subtly scary thing, but at this point the mechanism is a bit too exuberant, and Aurora thought that it looked like an alien was preparing to pop out.

Oh, and there's a cash bar about halfway through the museum. Presumably to help you soldier your way through the other half.

Went to the Drunk Eaters party, where Snape's underwear was proudly on display. There was also a projector with movies, music, lots of booze, and Polyjuice Punch. I met saridout and dementordelta, but was just too tired to hang out. I went back to the room and slept.