MISTI-Con Day Four

[ravenna_c_tan]

Wow. What an amazing con this has been. I’m crying as I write this because I’m back in my room after the masquerade ball and I’m suddenly struck with the fear that this will be the last “real” Harry Potter con. I’m probably being silly, because this one was by all accounts so fantastic, so successful, so creative… why wouldn’t there be more? I don’t want all there to be left is massive celebrity cons like Leaky.

MISTI-Con was a bit like Burning Man–everyone here was a participant, really, there was no major division between “audience” and speakers/teachers/performers. Everyone was here to be here with each other.

Before I get into details, here are links to two photosets of Ball Costumes:

Set #1 and Set #2.

I started the day with a good breakfast at the Union Diner, which is right across the highway from the resort and which gives a “Wizard Discount” of 10% off. No, really, it said right on the receipt “Wizard Discount.” Yes, I went in full robes.

Oh God. That sad moment when you pack your wand away at the end of a con. It’s coming too fast. I don’t want it to end.

Sorry. Where was I? Right. Breakfast,

and then I FINALLY made it to one of the talks being presented by Lorrie drinkingcocoa! We were scheduled opposite each other at Ascendio and again yesterday a few times and she always has the most fascinating ideas for papers! Lucky for me she posts them on her LiveJournal so I can read them later, but it’s not the same as sitting there in the room. Fantastic work. I can’t come close to recreating her full explanation of the nature of remorse in the Potter series and how the Elder Wand really worked, but keep an eye on the DrinkingCocoa Livejournal and you’ll see when she posts it!

Then it was to a discussion of the Levi-Strauss Kinship studies on taboo and intermarriage as it related to pureblood society in the wizarding world. I also went to a discussion of being a child-free Harry Potter fan, and also attended Leanna Renee Hieber’s workshop on How to Direct Your Book, i.e. how to use the techniques of theater and film to improve your novel or writing. How to think like a cinematographer, director, and actor to the betterment of the fiction. It got me thinking about some of the techniques I use and how I can do more.

Dinner was then grabbed at the grocery store and eaten in the Snarry Suite hosted by Delta and Alisanne, where the Half Blood Prince movie was on TV. (ABC Family has been running the HP movies nonstop all weekend… funny coincidence.)

And then it was time for the Ball. I think I look not bad for having thrown the outfit together, literally, but tossing all the black and blue things I could easily find into my suitcase, with the thought that they would match the blue and black veil on the hat. It worked. (The hat is the one that Soiled Doves Mercantile made for me as a gift — the tarot cards on the hat match the reading that Kyle gets in the opening scenes of Magic University.)

The ball was the ball. It started a 7pm, which at this time of year means the sun hasn’t set yet. This actually made photographs a bit tricky for the first hour or so. Then it got darker… much darker… when the Dark Lord and a whole procession of Death Eaters showed up. There’s nothing like that moment when forty or fifty people — unbidden — all draw their wands for defence. Magical.

But this is the new age of Magical Cooperation, you know. So like a couple taking the First Dance at a wedding, Voldemort and Harry then performed a dance together that even ended in that stiff Voldie hug.

There was cake. There was dancing. There was the Time Warp. It all ended too soon… no really, because the local town apparently has a noise ordinance for Sunday nights. So it ended at 10:30pm.

Now the party is going on in the bar and in the common room and in the Snarry Suite, and I’m going over to hang out with the Snarry folks right now.

Tomorrow is the Leaving Feast and then we close the book on MISTI-Con!

Please please please people tell me there will be more cons like this!

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