Con Report: Panels
Mar. 2nd, 2005 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaI didn't actually go to that many. I went to the vidding one on lyrics. I went to the Pirates of the Caribbean one, then planned to go to the Jay & Silent Bob one, but no one really showed up, so I went to the Jeremiah one instead.
The vidding one was kind of interesting for me. We discussed metaphor versus literalism and mixing of the two. We went through a sample song and thought up possible themes and techniques to use for the lyrics. That was interesting for me in that it was kind of working backwards. I never think about what theme's and metaphors I'm going to use until after I've chosen my subject. I kind of have a sense of how I want the vid to move after I hear a song, but anything beyond that I need to have a subject to figure out. We discussed use of irony. One vidder in the room, Versaphile (do you have an lj name?) said how she loved irony in vids. My favorite kind of vids are the ones that look ironic when they start out but turn out to be literal, like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sdwolfpup's Coin Operated Boy, or a few of my vid ideas that are brewing in my brain, a couple of which I mentioned.
_par_avion noted how people in the panel seemed to be really, really against being too literal. When I looked at the song we were pondering, my idea for it turned out to be more literal than anyone else's ideas. "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads, and I immediately connected it to John Crichton from Farscape. Other people were mentally vidding it to Stargate or Highlander.
I'm pathetic, because these are all my notes on that panel.
My most extensive notes were on the PotC panel.hippediva was leading it. We talked about Volroy and Murtogg and their Pirate counterparts, Pintel and Ragetti. hippediva went into the situation of homosexuality at the time. That often between sailors inheritance rights overruled marriage inheritance rights in certain situations. From there we discussed the political situation of the times, how democracy was by its nature not only a different form of government, but in fact went directly against the government. A pirate captain was voted on. Navy sailors were appointed. Relating this later to adrienne2 she commented that anyone who could blame Bootstrap for being part of the mutiny should note that mutinies were decided by majority vote, not consensus. It was briefly mentioned that the first insurance plans arose from piracy. So many gold doubloons (sp?) awarded for lost limbs, etc.
We went on to discuss Will Turner, some characterization issues in fanon and canon. Someone was annoyed with the movie in how she figured there was no plausible way Will could have thrown the sword into the door so hard that Jack wouldn't have been able to pull it out. After putting some thought into this, we realized that it was perfectly plausible for Will Turner, the blacksmith, to be able to do this. On the other hand, it would have been highly implausible for Orlando Bloom, the lithe and slender elf with the romance novel hair, to be able to do this. We pondered the plausibility of Will having "pirates blood" in him and needing to return to the sea. After all, being a blacksmith is about as grounded a profession as you can get. We pondered whether the choice to be come a blacksmith was personal, based perhaps on traumatic childhood expierences at sea, or rather upbringing, which taught him that pirates were the most evil things ever.
One woman (God I wish I could remember people's names) pointed out that the movie gets a bit ridiculous in distinguishing good and bad pirates. Even if pirates just wanted to improve their quality of life, they raped and pillaged in order to get what they wanted. Even if all they did was steal, back then stealing really wasn't a victimless crime. Back to the whole insurance not existing yet discussion. A person's possessions were everything. The only crime greater than theft was murder.
Back to parallels. We had Volroy/Murtogg and Pintel/Ragetti. Parallelism like this was kind of a theme in this movie. Norrington and Will essentially go on the same journey in the movie, literally and figuratively. They make the same trip by sea. They start out thinking "pirates = bad" and are forced into the realization that the world is not as black and white as they might believe.
Similarly, Jack and Elizabeth are counterparts. They're both clever and smart mouthed and able to figure their way out of any fix. They both fuck up, occasionally, as well. They've both got that free spirit thing going on. They both get captured by the same people and use similar information to try to barter their way out of their situation. Hell, they even both yell "Parley!" upon capture. There's that one deleted scene in the movie where Jack explicitly tells Elizabeth that he and she are peas in in a pod. (Of course, this is perfect justification for both Jack/Will and Sparrington.)
Someone made the point on the Disney morality. That essentially everyone who is considered "good" in the movie is motivated by love. Norrington, who at one point is called a fine man, if not a good man, is motivated by his belief in the common good. The welfare of everyone. Which would essentially put him on higher moral ground than everyone else in the movie and, for that matter, everyone else in the society at the time. Most everyone in the movie but Norrington puts themselves and their close loved ones above, say, soldier number twelve who got killed in the zombie pirate attack. There were various things that Will and Elizabeth did that put others in danger because their first priorities were each other. There were various things Jack did to put everyone including himself in danger because of his first priority, his ship/freedom.
And now we come to the Jeremiah panel. I found this one very interesting, though I was more a spectator than an active participant. Mainlykillabeez and maygra and morgandawn carried the conversation, wherein we spoke at length of all the religious implications in the show, that managed to not be preachy, but instead weave a very interesting mythos into the shows plotline. Me had Meghan (sp?) the Christ figure, who died for others sins and took the evil with her. We had her favored apostle, Mark(us), who spread her good word. The spirit of her word, in any case, as she gave him no explicit directions, but taught him what kind of man he needed to be.
The series is post-apocalyptic, and it's quite interesting to look at it as if it is, in fact, the apocalypse described in the book of Revelation. The burners is another name for a certain type of avenging angel in Revelation (if I'm remembering that comment correctly). The presense of God seems to be stronger in the world after this apocalypse, kind of like after the flood. The Bible states that people should become like children. In this series, we have a disease that wipes out everyone but the children, and looking at it from a sci-fi perspective, maybe this disease didn't leave the children alone at all. Maybe it changed them in some fundamental way, but didn't kill them like it did the adults.
The question of faith isn't so much the question of believing in God as it is believing in hope. In having hope.
Some panels I didn't attend were the Harry Potter one, "The Sins of the (God)Fathers," and "The Tipping Point" which from what I can tell centered on what it is that finally piques someone's interest enough for them to join a new fandom. There was a board with suggestions of future panels. Changing fandom taboos. Thoughts on how fandom has changed in other ways (and I remember someone making the comment wondering when threesome fic had gone from being considered het to being considered slash).
The vidding one was kind of interesting for me. We discussed metaphor versus literalism and mixing of the two. We went through a sample song and thought up possible themes and techniques to use for the lyrics. That was interesting for me in that it was kind of working backwards. I never think about what theme's and metaphors I'm going to use until after I've chosen my subject. I kind of have a sense of how I want the vid to move after I hear a song, but anything beyond that I need to have a subject to figure out. We discussed use of irony. One vidder in the room, Versaphile (do you have an lj name?) said how she loved irony in vids. My favorite kind of vids are the ones that look ironic when they start out but turn out to be literal, like
sdwolfpup's Coin Operated Boy, or a few of my vid ideas that are brewing in my brain, a couple of which I mentioned._par_avion noted how people in the panel seemed to be really, really against being too literal. When I looked at the song we were pondering, my idea for it turned out to be more literal than anyone else's ideas. "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads, and I immediately connected it to John Crichton from Farscape. Other people were mentally vidding it to Stargate or Highlander.I'm pathetic, because these are all my notes on that panel.
My most extensive notes were on the PotC panel.
hippediva was leading it. We talked about Volroy and Murtogg and their Pirate counterparts, Pintel and Ragetti. hippediva went into the situation of homosexuality at the time. That often between sailors inheritance rights overruled marriage inheritance rights in certain situations. From there we discussed the political situation of the times, how democracy was by its nature not only a different form of government, but in fact went directly against the government. A pirate captain was voted on. Navy sailors were appointed. Relating this later to adrienne2 she commented that anyone who could blame Bootstrap for being part of the mutiny should note that mutinies were decided by majority vote, not consensus. It was briefly mentioned that the first insurance plans arose from piracy. So many gold doubloons (sp?) awarded for lost limbs, etc.We went on to discuss Will Turner, some characterization issues in fanon and canon. Someone was annoyed with the movie in how she figured there was no plausible way Will could have thrown the sword into the door so hard that Jack wouldn't have been able to pull it out. After putting some thought into this, we realized that it was perfectly plausible for Will Turner, the blacksmith, to be able to do this. On the other hand, it would have been highly implausible for Orlando Bloom, the lithe and slender elf with the romance novel hair, to be able to do this. We pondered the plausibility of Will having "pirates blood" in him and needing to return to the sea. After all, being a blacksmith is about as grounded a profession as you can get. We pondered whether the choice to be come a blacksmith was personal, based perhaps on traumatic childhood expierences at sea, or rather upbringing, which taught him that pirates were the most evil things ever.
One woman (God I wish I could remember people's names) pointed out that the movie gets a bit ridiculous in distinguishing good and bad pirates. Even if pirates just wanted to improve their quality of life, they raped and pillaged in order to get what they wanted. Even if all they did was steal, back then stealing really wasn't a victimless crime. Back to the whole insurance not existing yet discussion. A person's possessions were everything. The only crime greater than theft was murder.
Back to parallels. We had Volroy/Murtogg and Pintel/Ragetti. Parallelism like this was kind of a theme in this movie. Norrington and Will essentially go on the same journey in the movie, literally and figuratively. They make the same trip by sea. They start out thinking "pirates = bad" and are forced into the realization that the world is not as black and white as they might believe.
Similarly, Jack and Elizabeth are counterparts. They're both clever and smart mouthed and able to figure their way out of any fix. They both fuck up, occasionally, as well. They've both got that free spirit thing going on. They both get captured by the same people and use similar information to try to barter their way out of their situation. Hell, they even both yell "Parley!" upon capture. There's that one deleted scene in the movie where Jack explicitly tells Elizabeth that he and she are peas in in a pod. (Of course, this is perfect justification for both Jack/Will and Sparrington.)
Someone made the point on the Disney morality. That essentially everyone who is considered "good" in the movie is motivated by love. Norrington, who at one point is called a fine man, if not a good man, is motivated by his belief in the common good. The welfare of everyone. Which would essentially put him on higher moral ground than everyone else in the movie and, for that matter, everyone else in the society at the time. Most everyone in the movie but Norrington puts themselves and their close loved ones above, say, soldier number twelve who got killed in the zombie pirate attack. There were various things that Will and Elizabeth did that put others in danger because their first priorities were each other. There were various things Jack did to put everyone including himself in danger because of his first priority, his ship/freedom.
And now we come to the Jeremiah panel. I found this one very interesting, though I was more a spectator than an active participant. Mainly
killabeez and maygra and morgandawn carried the conversation, wherein we spoke at length of all the religious implications in the show, that managed to not be preachy, but instead weave a very interesting mythos into the shows plotline. Me had Meghan (sp?) the Christ figure, who died for others sins and took the evil with her. We had her favored apostle, Mark(us), who spread her good word. The spirit of her word, in any case, as she gave him no explicit directions, but taught him what kind of man he needed to be. The series is post-apocalyptic, and it's quite interesting to look at it as if it is, in fact, the apocalypse described in the book of Revelation. The burners is another name for a certain type of avenging angel in Revelation (if I'm remembering that comment correctly). The presense of God seems to be stronger in the world after this apocalypse, kind of like after the flood. The Bible states that people should become like children. In this series, we have a disease that wipes out everyone but the children, and looking at it from a sci-fi perspective, maybe this disease didn't leave the children alone at all. Maybe it changed them in some fundamental way, but didn't kill them like it did the adults.
The question of faith isn't so much the question of believing in God as it is believing in hope. In having hope.
Some panels I didn't attend were the Harry Potter one, "The Sins of the (God)Fathers," and "The Tipping Point" which from what I can tell centered on what it is that finally piques someone's interest enough for them to join a new fandom. There was a board with suggestions of future panels. Changing fandom taboos. Thoughts on how fandom has changed in other ways (and I remember someone making the comment wondering when threesome fic had gone from being considered het to being considered slash).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 05:25 am (UTC)