Slayage Post 1

There haven't been any presentations yet, but this is already shaping up to be a megafun conference. Last night at the reception I met a woman named Stephanie, a medical writer by trade, who is putting together an online journal of fanfiction studies. She says the new scandalous form of fanfiction is slash fiction about actors, rather than the characters they play. Thus someone out there is writing James Marsters/Tony Head fiction. Stephanie said that she sees the same debates springing up in fanfiction communities again and again, always following the same pattern. One of the things she hopes to do with her journal is to help communities by identifying these patterns so people can watch out for them. She also wants to promote scholarly work about fanfiction as a body of liturature, rather than just sociological work about fanfic writers. As a general resource, I pointed her to Making Light, particularly this post.

Today on the bus I met a woman, whose name I don't remember who works as a production manager for reality TV shows. She told me she worked on Paradise Hotel, and I immediately blurted out "You mean Drunk Asshole Hotel" Amazingly, she kept talking to me. She had very fun things to sa about working on a battle of the bands show for one hit wonders of bygone eras.

Most of the conference goers are female, and no one showed up in costume. One person appears to be a MTF transsexual, though, which sorta goes against both those generalizations.