Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts

Thursday, September 1, 2011

It's Real for Us: LeakyCon 2011


Obviously, I totally failed at BEDA, and even after it turned into BALA it kind of fell apart, between the craziness of being in Chicago and then coming home and getting sick. But here I am again with a super-long post for your enjoyment.

It's the first day of September, which means that a new school year has begun at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In honor of that I've finally gotten my many, many thoughts on LeakyCon 2011 together in a cohesive manner. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, it was a gigantic Harry Potter fan convention that took place in Orlando, Florida, in the middle of July. I first began counting down to LC'11 somewhere around 500 days before it started. I know. I'm a nerd. I like numbers. Moving on...

I'll start with a basic, basic sketch of the experience so I don't have to explain too much as I go along. The con was held at Universal's Royal Pacific resort, which is within walking distance of the Islands of Adventure Park, which contains the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My roommates included my sister Alicia (or Phish), my almost-sister Maddy, and my friend Jess from college. (We met at a nerd/wizard rock concert in October.) We flew from Columbus to Orlando on Tuesday, July 12th and spent that afternoon exploring the enormous hotel and conference center. The next morning we attended a special event called Lit Day, which featured panels, workshops, and other programs put on by authors, agents, editors, and others from the field of young adult literature. Lit Day's keynote speaker was none other than Arthur A. Levine, the man at Scholastic who fell in love with the Harry Potter books and decided to take a chance by publishing them in the U.S. Wednesday night we attended the opening ceremonies of LeakyCon itself, and then we pretty much danced our way over to the theme park for an event called Open at the Close. The Wizarding World, which normally closes at 10 PM, stayed open until 1 AM just for LeakyCon attendees. The next day was filled with all sorts of programs, which ranged from academic discussions to hands-on workshops to podcasts to original musicals to film screenings to meetups for various groups of people. Thursday evening we attended a special screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, six hours before the midnight release, and then we hurried back to the hotel for a six-band wizard rock concert. Friday meant more programming, including a dance workshop led by Alicia, our friend Emily, and me, and there was another wrock concert that night, this time with seven bands. For me, Saturday was mostly taken up by the two incredible keynote events I attended, and Saturday night was the Esther Earl Rocking Charity Ball. Sunday morning brought a delicious brunch and many tears at the closing ceremonies, and then a plane ride home.

I've titled this post “It's Real for Us” because of a relatively new song of the same name by Lauren Fairweather. On one level, the song refers to a conversation in the seventh HP book in which one character tries to convince his Muggle-born friend that Hogwarts really does exist, even though her jealous, unmagical sister wants her to believe otherwise. On another level, however, the song speaks to the fan community's collective feeling that it doesn't matter what outsiders think, because we love this world we've read about and continue to expand upon. I attended the first LeakyCon, which took place in 2009, and it was probably the most life-changing experience I've ever had, even a shade more powerful than the time I spent studying in Ecuador. I ought to see what other people think about this, but I'm going to postulate that nothing can ever quite compare to your first major Harry Potter con experience, the one that opens your eyes to exactly how vast and diverse and loving this community is.

Unfortunately, I experienced several minor disappointments at LeakyCon 2011. At one point I remember stating that it felt like the “con gods” were against us. On Wednesday afternoon I lost my phone. It just disappeared out of my pocket right before the keynote with Arthur A. Levine, and because I was trying to find it I didn't get a chance to meet Mr. Levine, something I had been really excited about. I did get my phone back eventually, but not until Saturday afternoon. At the Open at the Close event, no one told us that the Forbidden Journey, the ride inside Hogwarts castle, was going to close significantly earlier than the rest of the park. We were just getting in line for the ride at midnight when a Universal employee appeared and told us that they were going to run the ride one last time and we needed to come quickly, so we raced through the castle behind her, and when we reached the loading zone for the ride the employees there told us that they had shut it down for good ten minutes previously. The girl whom we'd followed through the castle mysteriously evaporated. I'll admit I cried quite a bit over that one. I was supposed to take part in an incredible flash mob during the LeakyMug podcast, but it had to be canceled because not enough people committed to taking part. On Thursday morning, Maddy bought her very first wand, a beautiful Lily Potter model from Whimsic Alley, and as we were walking down the Universal City Walk that evening after seeing the movie, she reached into her purse for something and managed to knock her wand out. I heard it hit the ground, and we started looking for it less than ten seconds later, but it was gone. We retraced our path four times to no avail. There were so many people there, and I think it's just as likely that it got kicked under one of the carts along the City Walk as it is that someone else took it. I gave her money to buy a new wand the next day, because I was just not going to let my little sister lose her wand at her first con, and she went back and bought the James Potter model. And unfortunately, I ended up hating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which was kind of the central event of the con. I won't go into all of that here, because that could be a whole post unto itself, but I sobbed during the credits because I wanted so much to like it, but I just didn't.

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed by parts of the actual con and some of its staff. Registration was a total and complete mess. If you can't handle 3,000 people's registration, then don't let 3,000 people register. There was no excuse for the literally hundreds of badges that were missing. I missed the two Lit Day programs I most wanted to attend because I had to stand in one of several conflict resolution lines for over two hours, and I know they kept telling Lit Day registrants to just go to our programs and take care of it later, but I was afraid if I got out of line and came back I would miss either the Arthur Levine keynote or the opening ceremonies or not have time to change into my costume for Open at the Close. Also, in addition to calling the hotel's lost-and-found every few hours, I asked about my phone every four hours or so at the Leaky staff desk in the conference center, and I unfortunately discovered rude Leaky staffers for the first time ever. Most times the people were very nice, but there were a few occasions where I was made to feel like I was wasting people's time because they had to turn their attention away from their conversations with friends to listen to my quick question.

However. However, however, however, even when things kind of sucked, I was still at LeakyCon. I got to walk through Hogsmeade sipping butterbeer and eat at the Three Broomsticks with my sisters and some of my closest friends (all of whom I've known for less than two years). I had my picture taken in front of Hogwarts with Alicia and my dear friends Emily and Jordan, just as we did when we were at King's Cross Station four years ago. I waltzed with my friend Philip and a good chunk of Team Starkid during “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at the ball. I got to talk to my friend Elisa, whom I met last year at Wrockstock, and I got the chance to have a real conversation with Jordan for the first time since we graduated college. I also met a few friends whom I'd never before met IRL. In fact, I met my friend Jodi when we randomly wound up sitting next to each other while waiting for the LeakyMug to start, and we talked for probably fifteen minutes before realizing we tweet each other all the time! 

The program Alicia, Emily, and I did, which was called “Dance Against the Dark Arts,” ran perfectly smoothly and we had two or three times as many participants as we were hoping for! I was sad that John Green had to go home because he got sick, but I did get to meet him at LC'09, and I got to see Hank run around the room with swords and sing “Protons and Neutrons” in the dark (because the lights went out randomly), and Maureen Johnson trolled the Nerdfighter gathering the whole time via Twitter. I laughed and cried and laughed during the amazing Very Starkid Event and high-fived Joe Walker during the photo booth session. I learned that Benedict Clarke (young Snape in the film) is afraid of lemon meringue pie, and I watched my sister stump Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) with a Harry Potter trivia question. I got to tell Stephanie Perkins how much I love her first novel, Anna and the French Kiss. And the wizard rock – oh my goodness, the wizard rock! Bands/artists that deserve special recognition for mind-blowing sets that I will never forget include Tonks and the Aurors, Ministry of Magic, Hank Green, Gred and Forge, Harry and the Potters (just for having Evanna come out and play bass during their encore) and of course, Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls and The Remus Lupins, who were playing their last shows. Seeing Alex Carpenter tear up stage was really evidence of how far this genre of music that began as a joke has come. Speaking of Alex, it was really wonderful to get a chance to talk to him in the Room of Requirement on Friday afternoon without being surrounded by a crowd of people also wanting to talk to him. When he's not swamped by a hundred people and can actually hold a conversation with you, you know that he is really glad to talk to you and is honestly interested in what you're saying.

And of course, there's the one thing that I can never manage to express adequately, no matter how hard I try, which is the sense of love and acceptance and community that you can practically grab out of the air when you're at an event like this. Harry Potter fans, the wonderful, nerdy, totally insane ones who spend their hard-earned money to go to LeakyCon, are the most amazing group of people with whom I've ever been associated. There's no way to replicate how I feel inside when I've got my arms around sweaty, hoarse-voiced people I don't even know and we're all swaying back and forth and singing “We're wizards, we'll party forever! This night will never end!” at the top of our lungs, or when Melissa Anelli announces that we've raised $120,000 for Book Aid International, the Harry Potter Alliance, and the This Star Won't Go Out Foundation. It's because of those feelings that I was literally sobbing by the fourth note of “Days of Summer” at the closing ceremonies.

As Lauren says in her beautiful song, “It's real for us, it's real for us. It doesn't matter what the Muggles say, 'cause it's real for us.” I am so blessed because I do get to live in Harry Potter's world, or at least as close as anyone except Jo Rowling can possibly come, and I know it's real because it has its ups and downs just like any other part of life. Even when things in the wizarding world are less than perfect, there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

BEDA Day 17: Pottermore and Houses and sorting, oh my!

I'm starting to get quite paranoid, to the point where I periodically start shaking and have slight trouble breathing if I let myself think too much. What is the cause of my paranoia? Harry Potter.

You weren't that surprised, were you? Good.

Specifically, I'm paranoid about Pottermore and getting sorted into the wrong House. Pottermore, in case you don't know what it is, is a brand new, interactive, online way to experience the Harry Potter books, connect with other fans, and learn more things about Harry's world that Jo Rowling has yet to tell us. It opens to the world in October, but 1 million people have been given early access to the beta version of the site. From July 31st to August 6th, a clue was posted each day, and those who solved it and caught the Magic Quill before that day's spots filled up got into the beta. I have wonderful friends, and I got in on the very first day, thanks to a 4 AM phone call from my dear friend Chloe. Beta testers are being granted access in waves, and for the last few days my Twitter feed has been filling up with excited tweets from those who've received their welcome emails. I have yet to get mine.

Pottermore gives users the chance to experience all kinds of standard Wizarding milestones, among them being sorted into one of the Houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rather than placing a magical hat on their heads, as is traditional among wizards and witches, Pottermore users take a complex personality test, designed by Jo herself, to find out their House, and Houses can't be changed after they've been assigned. I know at least three people who are already on the beta and who have been placed in a different House than the one to which they've always ascribed. Many wizards and witches out there are having identity crises of varying degrees of severity, and now I'm paranoid.

I've always known I have a lot of Hufflepuff qualities, but I feel very strongly that I have even more Ravenclaw in me. Since I first realized that many people take sorting very seriously and I began to take it seriously myself, which was actually only about two and a half years ago, I've considered myself a Ravenclaw. I have a Ravenclaw tie, Ravenclaw socks, and a beautiful Ravenclaw jewelry set that my friend Carie just gave me; I'm a member of Ravenclaw House on the Harry Potter Alliance forums; and my Twitter and Gmail names are both ravenclawdancer, not to mention that I generally look better in blue than any other color. However, I'm still paranoid of being sorted into Hufflepuff on Pottermore. This Sorting Hat test, the most accurate one I've taken thus far, gives each person a percentage for each House, since it's true that most people have at least a little bit of each House in them. My scores were as follows: Ravenclaw - 100%, Hufflepuff - 95%, Gryffindor - 81%, and Slytherin - 41%. At Hogwarts, it's a known fact that the Sorting Hat takes one's choice into account when assigning Houses, but I have no idea whether that applies to the Pottermore sorting process.

One of my favorite musicians, Alex Carpenter, posted a song yesterday that speaks to the Harry Potter community's collective fear of being sorted wrongly. While I think the song is brilliant, I now have it stuck in my head and it's making it impossible for me to think about anything besides Pottermore...

Friday, August 12, 2011

BEDA Day 11: Mixing truth and fiction

I'll just announce it at the beginning: This is going to be another cop-out post. However, if you follow the included links, you're guaranteed to get a few good laughs!

The Leaky Cauldron, my favorite Harry Potter-related news site, posted a link today to a brilliantly written article that gives serious (Sirius?) suggestions for fixing some of the world's major human rights and foreign policy issues, but the entire thing is written as if the authors are witches and wizards. Even if you don't know much about Harry Potter, it's still a fantastic read, and most of the important wizarding references are explained.

That article contains a link to this article from Slate.com, which is all about Rupert Murdoch's desire to purchase The Daily Prophet, the main newspaper in magical Britain. Again, it's hilarious, especially with its insinuations that Murdoch's best friend is Rita Skeeter, everyone's favorite sneaking, spying, mud-slinging, yellow journalist witch.

Enjoy. :)

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Getting back into the swing of things

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know I haven't posted anything in forever!! My apologies to the, like, two people who probably read this. But school starts tomorrow, which means my Ecuador classes start tomorrow, and the Ecuador trip was the reason I started this blog in the first place. So I'm going to make a real effort to blog much more often, starting right now.

I'm all moved in, and I like my room. It's way smaller than last year's, but it's a double instead of a triple, and it's definitely bigger than my room freshman year. I'm rooming with Jamie again, and we've pretty much got things sorted out. There are just a few little housekeeping things left, like flattening out my awesome Half-Blood Prince poster (which I got in Chicago at HP: The Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry!!) so it will actually stay on the wall.

I just got back from the first Certified Peer Educators (CPE) meeting of the year, and it looks like I'm in for a great six weeks and everyone else is in for a great semester. It was so nice to see more friends after so long, but I really missed Jayla, who is in Australia right now!! :(

The Braves beat the Marlins and they've actually overtaken them in the standings, so that's awesome!! Have a great Sunday night. :)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Weapon We Have Is Love: LeakyCon 2009

I heard "The Weapon" by Harry and the Potters tonight, for at least the third time since I've been home, but this was the first time it brought tears to my eyes. That's how I knew it was time for this post. It's rare that I have to sit and process something for a long time. Usually something important happens and I instantly have words scrolling through my brain, preparing for the first moment I have to sit down and write about it. So why has it taken me a week and a half to be able to write about LeakyCon 2009??

The simple answer: Those four days were without a doubt the most wonderful, amazing, incredible, spectacular, moving, emotional, completely joyous days of my entire life, and I don't think anyone could possibly process all of that in a shorter amount of time. For the record, all of those adjectives were completely inadequate. I'm advocating that "LeakyCon" becomes its own adjective, although I don't think it could ever be properly used again until 2011.

In case you don't know, LeakyCon 2009 was (geesh, I hate that past tense!!) a fan conference put together by the brilliant folks at The Leaky Cauldron, the best source for Harry Potter news anywhere (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org). If you want to hear every tiny little detail about the conference, I would be thrilled to tell you all about it in person, or the Internet equivalent. (I'm sure that offer surprises no one...) Here, though, I'm just going to attempt to sum things up as best I can.

There's nothing more awesome to me than people who are so committed to what they love that they're willing to gather a lot puzzled looks from strangers in order to express their love. For example, teenagers walking down the sidewalk in broad daylight, dressed as Draco and Bellatrix, or middle-aged women enjoying a coffee at Au Bon Pain (how do you say that again??) wearing beautiful, elaborate, hand-made robes and witch hats. Plenty of other people wore sweaters and House ties, or wizard rock T-shirts, or whatever they happened to pull out of their suitcase that morning. Whatever you wore was perfectly acceptable.

But of course, pretty much everything was perfectly acceptable, because Harry Potter fans are the most accepting community I've ever been a part of. Every single person was clearly important to everyone else, no matter their age, nationality, mental or physical ability, or understanding of the fandom...and the attendees truly ran the gamut in all of those categories. Nothing was embarrassing there; everyone was cool...the Nerdfighters, the super-geeks (like the kid who carried a lightsaber all weekend!!), the fanfiction writers (which, yes, I am one, in case you didn't already know), the gamers, and of course, the people who make their living touring the country and singing songs about Harry Potter. The only negative comments I heard all weekend were directed at Laura Mallory and Warner Brothers ("Alan Horn is a Slytherin!!" Yes, Sue, yes!!). People were even civil when Twilight was brought up, to my surprise and appreciation.

Everywhere I went, I looked around and was reminded that all this glorious craziness was started by one woman and one book. From the incredible abundance of authors who were willing to answer any question with advice and encouragement to the freaking sweet drumset painted with the mantra "Fight Evil, Read Books!", I couldn't help thanking God for Jo Rowling every five minutes. There was absolutely no way she could have known, nineteen years ago, how her simple idea would change the world, and we have no idea now where it will take us in the future. The general public thought all the hype would die down after Deathly Hallows was published; no one has ever been more wrong. There's more to talk about now than ever, as evidenced by some of the programs listed in my conference book: "Fawkes as a Symbol of Faith and Resurrection;" "Demonization of Wealth, Power, and Prestige in the Wizarding World;" "The Impact of Fathers in Harry Potter;" "Still Conjuring Herself: Further Thoughts on Hermione's Self-Determination in Harry Potter." There was a seminar on Jewish values and ethics, a comparison of the Wizarding world to the American Deaf community, a comparison of Wizarding and UK laws, and a discussion about being an adult fan of a children's series. There were workshops for fan art, wand and costume making, improv, and starting a wrock (wizard rock) band. There were several live podcasts, an original musical, panels with successful authors, a screening of We Are Wizards, and of course, a whole slew of programming provided by the awe-inspiring Harry Potter Alliance, which has put the values espoused in the books into practice in the real world through their work in Darfur, Rwanda, censorship in the media, environmental issues, and countless local communities. (I'm in the beginning stages of getting a chapter started at B-W.)

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the whole experience was getting to meet so many of the awesome people who have become the leaders of the fandom -- most of whom never intended to lead anything at all. They were just regular fans who were blessed with brains, talent, and a whole lot of luck. It's a really odd thing, in a lot of ways, to be a fan of the PotterCasters and the Leaky staff and the VlogBrothers and the wrockers. It's like being a fan of a fan. But all of those people worked so hard to put LeakyCon together for the rest of us, and they are truly normal (well as "normal" as a Potter fan can be!!) people who are willing to shake hands and take pictures and sign autographs for hundreds of people. And the greatest thing is that they're all friends. They created an evironment of love and friendship that was contaigious. They all want each other to succeed, even to the point of plugging each other's merchandise, sharing instruments, and playing another hour-long set to help out a band that only actually has one person in it, despite a plural name.

It's only been nine days since I left Boston, but it feels like a year. As someone said on YouTube or something recently (I think it might have been Addie from Room 3428, but I might be way wrong...), it kind of seems like LeakyCon was something I dreamed. At the same time, though, it feels like it all happened yesterday, because so many moments from that weekend are indelibly etched in my brain and my heart. It's very hard to explain (and understand)...I guess you kind of had to experience it.

At the end of the ball on Saturday night (or rather, early Sunday morning), Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters said, "This has been one of the best weekends in the history of humanity," and he was so right. I can't think of another experience I've had that was more focused on love and making the world a better place. At the close of his little speech, I figured Paul was going to put on "The Weapon," the unofficial anthem of the Harry Potter community. Before he had the chance, however, 750 people spontaneously burst into the song a cappella. We sang the whole thing, and it was completely indescribable. I realized later that the only reason tears hadn't been streaming down my face was that every last smidge of energy in my body was occupied with jumping up and down and singing at the top of my lungs. The words of the chorus have never felt truer than they did that night:
"There's one thing that I've got
One thing that you've got inside you too
One thing that we've got
And the one thing we've got is enough
To save us all...
The weapon we have is love"

I can't wait for LeakyCon 2011!!

Two other songs that capture the fandom pretty darn well:
"This Is Never Gonna End" by The Parselmouths (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEKgEnq_qYM)
"For Jo" by RiddleTM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unms0DvGg_Q)