Diacon Alley Day 2!

Started the morning waking up an hour early with jet leg and an idea for restructuring my whole talk. So I spent an hour re-doing my presentation and pulling more quotes from the Harry Potter books out to use to illustrate points.

And I discovered Songquake wrote a filk for me! http://songquake-fic.livejournal.com/15712.html It's an "ode to fandom" -- Song for St Cecilia of Slytherin, based on my review of the DH2 movie and "Hymn for St Cecilia's Day" with text by W.H. Auden and music by Benjamin Britten. It is awesomeness so go check it out!

Then came breakfast in the Great Hall, I mean, the Rutherford dining hall, where I once again curse the fact that the English teacup is only 6 ounces. I had to go back for more tea three times. Sigh. ( Read more... )

Diacon Alley Day #3

As predicted, I slept through breakfast. I think my jet lag is over, as I stayed up until 3:30 am and slept until 11:30am, which is the same as my usual schedule at home. So I was up and about just in time for lunch, having missed all the morning sessions. Ended up lunching in the dining hall with a bunch of people. The food's been quite decent here, by the way.

After lunch came Sebastian's (kabal42) talk on the film score music in the Harry Potter films. Film music serves the purpose of manipulating the audience's emotions on a visceral or unconscious level. He had clips and snippets from the films and talked about the things that each composer on the films did differently. John Williams, who is a big devotee of Wagner, uses a lot of Wagnerian leitmotifs, some of which were also reprised by the later composers, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper, and Alexandre Desplat. The clips included some where the music worked and some where it didn't. It was an enjoyable and fascinating talk.

Next came Anne Scriblerian's talk on using Harry Potter in the classroom to teach writing and English at university. She not only teaches a literature overview class that uses Harry Potter to teach marxism, feminism, etc. but also in her other classes, like the one on writing English, where she divides her class into the four Houses. In fact, for this talk, the audience had to sort themselves into houses, sitting in four parts of the room, and she awarded points to each house for correct answers, and active participation.

When that ended I went up to the Snarry Meetup which was halfway done, and after that ended it became the H/D Meetup. When an hour of that had passed, GatewayGirl declared it was then the Harry/anyone meetup, and we sat around talking about how it was possible to pair Harry with pretty much anyone in the entire series. Weirdest Harry pairing discussed? Harry/Aberforth's goat. Harry/Harry (noncon!) came in a close second.

And now it's time to get ready for the Victory Ball! After all, with the Deathly Hallows movie now done, the war is over, and it's time for a celebration. They'll have a live swing band and everything. And dinner. My stomach is growling a bit...

I better post this and get dressed! Tomorrow we have just a few more panels, the charity auction, and then it's over! Hard to believe!