Gotta say

[petronia]

It feels weird not to be at Worldcon, particularly as I have never even considered wanting to go when it isn't being held 30 minutes away from my house. XD;

(RaceFail made me think about it, of course - all that talk about how you don't see fans of colour at conventions. Practically everyone I know online attends anime conventions, but only one or two attend SF conventions regardless of race. Same thing when it comes to offline. The best I can come up with is that I don't think of myself as a "real" SF fan of the type (...type?) that attends conventions, nor do any of my RL friends with the possible exception of dipping_sauce, which is... weirdly bullshit!?!? And then there's fantasy lit.)

Maybe I'll wander down and check it out? XD;; They have, like, 3-hour tester memberships and stuff. But I'm not indebting myself and standing in line for 6 hours to catch a glimpse of Neil Gaiman or whatever.

(meril, any advice on how these things work? XD;;;;)

Comments

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

I keep on thinking that I *want* to be a 'real', con-attending SF fan...and the couple of literary SF panels I sat in on at Comic-Con really were kind of cool (...though intimidating liek whoa, once I realized that some of the people in the room had been doing *this same exact panel* for 30 years now)...but the bottom line is, 'real' SF cons still scare the hell out of me.

[meril.livejournal.com]

I've only been to one Worldcon, and that was last year, and a lot of my activities involved meeting other fanzine writers. I went to very few panels because I spent most of my time screwing around at Coors Field...so I'm probably of no help to you on that.

Yeah, it's going to be white and old. It will probably suck. There's a schedule online; try to find the panels that would interest you if you're trying to go for a tester membership. I didn't realize that Gaiman was there, to be honest, and I'm not into the whole celebrity worship thing; if you can't discuss books with their authors, it's not worthwhile to attend their events. Worldcons do have that "kaffeeklatch" thing so if there's an author you like scheduled for one, it can be interesting; it's small group discussion with an author. Only one other person showed up for Louise Marley's last year. We ended up talking about the Mariners. >>

You'd probably enjoy Convergence in Minneapolis, which is kind of the sf/media version of an anime con. It has everything, including POC your age attending.

I actually preferred anime cons but I think I'm too old for that now if the crowds at the last con I attended were any indication.