Let's talk about how much fun I had at *r*s**, letting it all hang out, schmoozing the massive geek crowds. It was my late-in-life coming to terms with my dorkitude. I was the king of gaywads at my suburban-P*ttsb*rgh high school. I lettered in riflery (i.e., shooting bits of paper). I talked trash about everybody and nobody invited me to their parties. But I was not in the geek clique -- some basic disinclination held me away from the hardline SF/F gamer culture. When the Magic: The Gathering people took over our window seat, I lead the retreat with an ugly smirk on my face. [I led my regiment from behind / I found it less exciting]. I was associated with a shrewdness (as of apes) of future professors of comparative literature. They were prematurely bitter, they were genderally mixed, they were socially incapable, they were very in each others' faces -- they were my current friends in larval form. In one way, I chose wisely, sticking with the Shrewdness, but I also would miss out on the gentle, boyish cameraderie of the Magic boys.
Sw*rtm*r* was a different story, of course, as I was elected a member of SW*L by popular acclaim, and unwillingly, even -- my chair was dragged half a mile into a different dining room to plight their earnest. I missed the two main questions on the questionnaire: Do you read Sci Fi? / Do you read Fantasy? but racked up about 92% on the rest of it.
Which is how I found myself, LJT, EN, and JH attending the SF-in-academia panel like a counter-panel of our own. We are a medievalist, a sociologist, an historian/journalist and a psychologist -- might as well have set up a franchise and sold intellectually-stimulated doughnuts. Postmodernism like doughnut. Everybody like postmodernism; everybody like doughnut. But you have too many doughnuts, you don't feel so good.
Insert discussion of what it means to study fandom / the thorny question of quality / notes on fanfic and slash.
Insert discussion of not getting geek-boy loving; report, however that SLB's-ex loving was had. This continues a dangerous precident. Hm. Would hot people please start dating SLB so that I have more of a selection? Thank you for your co�peration.
Music: Telemann Trauer-Actus. Cantus C�lln. So sexy. Oh, wait: it's about death.