Bisamråtta means "muskrat" in Swedish.

I didn't make it over to muskratjamboree Thursday night when people began to trickle in because I had to finish an assignment and can't manage my time at all, but I did go for most of Friday and yesterday, and lo, it was fun. I hadn't been able to see linaerys since leaving NY in August, and I hadn't gotten to talk to kassrachel in person since first meeting her in July halfway across the world, so most of all I was glad to spend time with them at meals and between panels, and to meet some of their friends too.

The second-best thing was an item in the registration bag:



That's right: I, too, can be a little like John Sheppard! I totally wore it to class on Friday under the black shirt I already had on. My ex-Air Force classmate was amused.

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While we're on the social aspects, if you'll permit obnoxious name-dropping for a minute: It was cool to see the faces of people whose names I know from Harry Potter and SGA fandom, like marginaliana, hermionesviolin, wolfshark and kimberlyfdr, or friends of friends, like celli and slodwick. I got to tell wesleysgirl and giddygeek how much I like their stories, and talked briefly with a couple of people who run the Transformative Works and Cultures journal. The Boston crew ignazwisdom had introduced me to were there as well, including of course Iggy herself, and jadelennox and bathsweaver—b., if you're reading this, I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't realize who you were when we were discussing room-sharing. Also, there was one woman I kept sort of staring at at the dance party Friday night, because something about her made me like her; it took until the next day for me to realize she reminded me of deelaundry. ♥

And yes, I actually danced at the dance party! I surprised myself. By the end, I may even have looked marginally less like a lackluster marionette.

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Before the dance party came the vid show. I'd never been to a vid show, but now I want one every Friday night, please. Because the con was multi-fannish, there were three pan-fandom vids out of 18, and the rest of the 15 represented different fandoms. Turns out it didn't matter that I only know a few fandoms; these were enjoyable even when I knew next to nothing about the shows. ( recs! )

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Then there were the panels, of course. I'm used to the format of presentation(s) followed by Q&A, but these were run entirely as group discussions. Maybe that's more typical of smallish slash cons? With one or two exceptions, it worked out all right, but I'd still have liked more structured introductions. Sometimes it would take the whole session to reach the point where I'd've liked to have started. ( Come on in for recaps of McShep, genderswap, linguistics, comedy, little black dresses, the end of SGA canon, AUs and geeks. )

I didn't get to go to the panels on the OTW, feedback, what shows seem to make good fandoms, and what keeps the fandoms of some closed canons active, so I'm looking forward to people's reports on those to see whether anything new was said.

It was a crazy couple of days, what with doing work and going to class and traveling between the con and home and negotiating a sublet for the summer and having to drive an hour south last night for my thesis, and at times it felt hard to socialize when a lot of groups already knew each other, and I still don't identify as a slasher so much as a ficcer, but all in all it was a good time.


ETA: kass' report