RevelCon/RevelCon 11 (2000)-RevelCon 15 (2004)

RevelCon · RevelCon 01 (1990)-RevelCon 05 (1994) · RevelCon 06 (1995)-RevelCon 10 (1999) · RevelCon 11 (2000)-RevelCon 15 (2004) · RevelCon 16 (2005)-RevelCon 20 (2009) · RevelCon 21 (2010)-RevelCon 25 (2014) · RevelCon 26 (2015)-RevelCon 30 (2019) · RevelCon 31 (2020)-RevelCon 35 (2025)

RevelCon 11 (2000)

March 17-19, 2000.

RevelCon 12 (2001)

March 16-18, 2001.

Vid Show

A complete list of the vids shown at the convention and the winners is not currently available; below are the submissions by one vidding group.

Con Dog (Lorraine Anderson, Rachel Hughes, Mary Mousseau)

• Animated Cartoon of a Dragon Hanging Flyers At A Convention – A Tail Dragon Production – Original Art by Sherlock
• It’s A Pig from “By Jeeves” musical (Hercules: The Legend Continues)
• Once Upon A December from the movie “Anastasia” (Quantum Leap)
• Don’t Wipe It On Me Marie from the album “If Pigs Had Wings” (Ghostbusters)
• Beauty and the Beast from the Walt Disney Resort Album (Now And Again)
• You’ve Got A Friend In Me from “Toy Story” sung by Randy Newman (Quantum Leap)
• I Am A Rock by Simon & Garfunkel (Space Above & Beyond)
• One Down With One More To Go by Lorrie Morgan (SAAB)
• Go The Distance by Michael Bolton (ER)

RevelCon 13 (2002)

March 15-17, 2002)

In 2002, with Candace's blessing, Mercury took the reins. She ran the convention with her group of friends from 2002 (RevelCon 13 to 16) to 2005.

RevelCon 14 (2003)

March 14-16, 2003.

2003 Convention Reports

...Friday, March 14 - rode with Leah and Vivian to REVELcon. Arrived in time for my first panel, "Lord of the Slash." It turned out that Jan (in charge of programming) had put me on it because she knew that I was "willing to sit up there and talk about *anything*" - she didn't actually know that I was writing LOTR slash! So that was serendipitous. We talked about the whole idea of LOTR fanfic in general; Tolkien apparently was not displeased during his lifetime to learn that people wanted to write their own stories of Middle Earth. As far as LOTR slash went, however, opinions were sharply but politely divided. Carol arrived during the panel, as she had driven up separately.

A bunch of us Ratties - Carol, Lin, Beth, Lorelei, and me - went out to dinner at Whataburger afterward, where we rough-and-tough WW2 fans talked a lot about ... decorating shows! There was some friendly disagreement over the relative merits of Trading Spaces vs. Changing Rooms. Carol and I went home with Lorelei, who had not only graciously agreed to host me when I asked about it a month ago, but very kindly agreed to host Carol as well when I asked her the day before! We turned on the TV at Lorelei's house and there was... Trading Spaces! So I got to see an episode, which was great fun. I had brought along a tapeful of Hawaiian Eye at Lorelei's request; we popped it in to watch a few minutes of the very young and yummylicious Robert Conrad and wound up watching a whole episode.

Saturday, March 15 - Carol and I drove back to the con because Lorelei had a family event to attend; indeed, at some very early hour of the morning I got to meet Lorelei's sister, a very thin and elegant woman who said something about having cold brussels sprouts for breakfast because she couldn't find the tofu. (Lorelei confimed later that this was not a dream. Lorelei's daughter Amy, who has become a delightful young woman, informed me that her aunt is the salt of the earth, no matter what people say about her breakfast habits.)

At the con, we were introduced to a first-time attendee, Kim, who is a big Rat Patrol fan. Anita, who introduced us, knew that I used to edit the RP slash fanzine Flanking Maneuvers, but didn't realize that Carol had put on the Long Range Desert Convention! So she got two eager Ratties for the price of one! We were delighted to meet Kim and nattered away happily all around the dealers' room. She was looking for Hitch slash; I found her a used copy of an early Diverse Doings with Deb Hicks' wickedly erotic story "Devil Wearing Wings," which features Hitch prominently. We also introduced her to the other Houston Ratties, especially Lin, who is a big Hitch fan.

Later on, I had a long lovely chat with Kandy Fong, one of the pioneers of fannish music videos. She had brought a new tape from BASCon (with an _I Spy_ songvid, yay!), which I was happy to see and thrilled to buy. I didn't realize until she told me that she used to do ST slideshows with music, in the days before VCR's, which were like a precursor to songvids. Wow.

I had my second panel at 2 p.m., which was entitled "Sex sex sex - where do we draw the line?" Again, Jan had put me on it because she knew I'd talk about *anything*. The topic of the panel was really not sex per se, but the extent to which fandom self-regulates (or doesn't self-regulate) certain areas once considered absolutely verboten. Chanslash, incestfic, RPS, and other squicky topics were all discussed. While we certainly agreed that such things have become much more common and much less regulated with the advent of the Internet, those of us with long memories also recalled isolated examples of them in printfic (e.g. the K/S time travel novel _Fetish_, in which Spock is seduced by a sixteen-year-old Kirk). We also talked about the distinctive flavors of fic that tend to surround certain fannish universes, and I learned more about the _Smallville_ fanfic community than I *ever* really wanted to know.

I spent some time in the hospitality suite with Dee next, beta-ing in person a LOTR story she's working on. I enjoyed it much more than I expected from her initial description, particularly the richness of detail about daily life in Meduseld, and I look forward to the finished product. (No, I'm not going to say more!)

I went to one last panel, the Fannish Dictionary panel. I got a chance to ask what on earth "ship" means, since I've seen so many different uses. The consensus appeared to be that it refers to stories involving relationships, and that different people use it differently. Sigh. (Some use it to mean *any* story focusing on *any* relationship, straight or slash; others use it to refer to non-explicit hetero-relationship stories, while others restrict it even further to *canonical* hetero-relationships!) I learned a new term, "retcon," which is short for "retroactive continuity" - very important for shows like _Enterprise_ or movies like the _Star Wars_ prequels.

Next it was time for the Standard by Several pizza party, an enjoyable affair where we continued some of the discussion from the panel, talking about fandoms that import foreign words from the countries in which the shows originate. So, for example, anime fans use Japanese slang like "otaku" ("fanboy"), while LOTR fans use British slang like "poncy" ("gay").

I didn't stay for the cabaret - since Elaine's death I sometimes find it hard to attend - so Carol and Lorelei and I went back to Lorelei's and watched the pilot episode of Lorelei's latest fave, _The Big Valley_. I'd never seen it, and Carol barely remembered it, so it was new to both of us, and very enjoyable.

Sunday, March 16 - I remember that Lorelei fixed us a hot breakfast, but darned if I can remember what it was! We headed back over to the con for a last day of revelry. I got to see a very funny _Farscape_ episode called "Out of Their Minds" and spent a lot of time hanging out in the con suite. Somehow I wound up volunteering to help out in the con suite next year; Elf, the hostess, was very persuasive...

RevelCon 15 (2004)

Panels:

• The Great, the Bad and the Ridiculous: Live journals: Why do people read and/or write them?
• Daniel Wouldn't *Do* That: Character Snafus in CANON characterizations
• Coming Out as Slash Fan: Just exactly when is the right time to tell your mom, boss, or new boyfriend? (Obviously a Slash friendly panel)
• Characters of Color in SF: Who are they and why aren't there more?
• So You Wanna Write Fan Fic: A 'How To' Panel for New Writers
• New *Old* Fandoms (or Can You Say Rat Patrol)" New fans discover old fic (a slash friendly panel)
• Legalities Tackled and Latitude Taken: Legal dealings for your fan fic
• Sleeping With The Enemy - Or Your Boss, Partner, Captain or Co-Worker: Are these pairing feasible or just frenetic (A very Slash friendly panel)
• Old vs New West: Exploring the gamut from Alias Smith and Jones to Firefly
• Females on Film: Strong women in our favorite shows - do we really hate them?
• No Holes Barred (Or Why We Slash): Come tell us your take on slash - why you read it, write it, love it. (Slash friendly panel)
• So What Are You Doing This Time Next Year?: Join us at the panel that discusses the panels for next year's Revelcon

2004 Convention Reports

I was on three panels, plus attended a fourth.

My absolute favorite had to be the Sunday morning panel with Lorelei, Anita, Linda, and Glenda on "Coming out as a Slash Fan." Basically we all just swapped stories, some from the panelists, some from the audience, on our experiences - voluntary and involuntary - when people found out we're slashers. I shared the story of my son's recent introduction to slash (one of my friends told him about some Harry/Draco stories she was writing - instead of going, "eww" he began giving her story suggestions). One of our audience members told a great story about how her mom found out one day by walking in and catching a glimpse of what was on the computer monitor, but didn't seem altogether upset. Some time later, the audience member's *sister* spotted one of her zines and was horrified. She took the zine to their mom, slammed it down in front of her and said, "Do you know what your daughter is reading?!!!" The mom looked up calmly and said, "And your point is?"

Indeed, a common theme among the stories was that people are often not as shocked as we expect them to be.

I went with Lorelei to her panel on "New *Old* Fandoms" - that is, recently-developed fandoms centered on shows that have been around a while. Westerns seem to be developing young fandoms, apparently because the Hallmark Channel has their Rough and Ready Saturdays where they show many classic Westerns.

The panel was subtitled "Can you say Rat Patrol?" but we didn't actually spend too much time on RP, which was very restrained of us given that Lorelei and Linda were on the panel and Carol and I were in the audience (all of us Ratties to the max). I did bring up RP at the dead dog panel, which I caught about the last half of. Jan Meeks, who ran programming, was asking what panels we wanted to see next year. We talked about hot fandoms that were underrepresented this year because they were unexpected; I mentioned Master & Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean as present hot fandoms. So what will be the big hot fandom next year? Jan wondered. "Rat Patrol!" I said. "Get over yourself," she scolded, but in a fond way. I believe she's planning to leave some slots open for unpredicted hot fandoms/topics.

I also participated on a panel Friday afternoon called "The Great, the Bad, and The Ridiculous," which was about blogs. Anita, Kaytee, and Elf were on it as well. The subtitle was: "Live Journals: Why do people read and/or write them?" but we actually spent a good chunk of time simply explaining what they are and how they work; very few people at the convention were familiar with them.

Saturday I thoroughly enjoyed the "No Holes Barred" panel, in which Annie, Beth, Candy, Jan, and I tried to explain why we slash. Beth's explanation was my favorite: "Because it's fun!" Jan asked us what we thought of a new theory she'd read recently, that said women are taught to be ashamed of their own bodies and thus write slash because they can take pleasure in men's bodies but not their own, which rules out writing het. I said that I didn't disagree with the premise (i.e., our society does encourage women to be ashamed of their bodies), but I didn't like the way it was used to support the conclusion, which implied that if women did love their own bodies, they wouldn't write slash; in general I dislike the pathologizing approaches that start from the assumption that we write slash because there's something wrong with us. I much prefer Beth's explanation - that we do it because it's fun! - and we'd do it no matter how we felt about ourselves/women in general.

2004 Vid Show

• The Sentinel: Beginning to End (1st Place) - Creation's Reflections
• The Sentinel: The Guide (2nd Place) - Creation's Reflections
• The Sentinel: Why Don' You And I (3rd Place) - Jamie Ritchey
• Stargate SG1: The Stargate Cantina by brihana25 (Best Music Video)