What Do I Get From Going to Conventions?

Today's letter is a little later than usual due to travel.

I'm a fairly aesthetically-minded person. As a kid I equated make-up and fashion with being high maintenance and shallow, since that was what mainstream culture told me about women, so I refused to be "trendy" and instead...wore shirts from Hot Topic and pink clogs. It was extreme early scene/theater kid energy. As I grew up I formed strong opinions about how I wanted to express myself. I prefer stealth fandom objects - necklaces and special accessories that my favorite characters wear, patterns that appear in backgrounds, simple graphics or very specific jokes for shirts and totes and household objects. I'd prefer to have an accent wall of roundels from a specific TARDIS than a picture of the TARDIS itself (I have plenty of merch with the TARDIS on it, don't worry.) So, sadly, I can kind of be a judgmental asshole when it comes to how other fans choose to dress and behave.

But then I go to Gally, and surround myself with all types of fans, and have many different conversations, and spend about 72 hours ensconced in the hub of North American Who fandom and I sort of stop giving a fuck. It's a weird way to say it, but I think Gally makes me a kinder person. There are plenty of people in fandom I'd rather avoid than engage with, and having those boundaries is necessary and healthy, but there's also probably a large section of people I haven't thought about much that Gally lets me see what I'm missing. Attending the con recharges my fandom battery (while draining my social one) and gets me excited about everything and everyone there. Who cares that I don't like that TARDIS dress? Being gauche and cringe is an expression of love.

A running theme in a lot of the panels I was part of and attended this year was joy. Gatwa's era so far certainly refocuses on the joyful and silly aspects of time travel, something I believe a lot of fans are now clinging to as we head into his second season. Sustained collective joy and effervescence had a therapeutic effect, at least for me, and the combination of my favorite show with favorite people probably saves me on months of antidepressants.

Hearing that Gally is ending in three years is upsetting because it means one of the most joyful experiences in my yearly life is going away. I know there will be new conventions with their own traditions, new configurations of groups and fandom families, new places to congregate and share with each other, but I'm also worried that my fandom charger, my home base is disappearing. Regardless, the experience I had this year was predictably wonderful and I'm grateful for what I've been given to this point and for the next three years. You'd think being a huge fan of a show that's all about accepting change would prepare me for changes in my own life, but maybe that's what makes the story so enduring.

Note: If you're interested in my academic TARDIS Talk from this year (about Doctor Who visiting 1963), I'm including a PDF of my presentation in my next paid Friday letter.

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