I've been trying to write up notes on Vegascon for days -- less the usual interruptions, and a couple of unusual ones -- and I'm very much afraid it's not going to be what the die-hard fans are hoping for.
See, I have what is evidently the magical power to speak to people who are especially charming, attractive, brilliant, famous, etc., without losing my ever-loving mind. It's not a matter of iron willpower. Whatever gene codes for fear of God, expressed in modern-day America as gibbering in the presence of celebrities, I don't have it.
I get the gibbering; I've said and done plenty of idiot things when in the throes of one of those horrible involuntary brain-destroying crushes, just like everyone else. It happens when you hold someone in high regard, are emotionally invested in getting their regard in return, and fear that you will somehow do something so profoundly moronic they'll decide it's best to avoid you forever more. The process of trying to deal with perceiving their awesomeness and work your mouth at the same time sucks up so many computing cycles that you end up inadvertently reenacting that one Eddie Izzard sketch about how young boys deal with suddenly noticing they like young girls -- " 'Ello, Sue! I've got legs! D'you like bread?" and so forth.
Bar the stupid-making crushes previously referenced, I just don't do that. My problem is generally not so much, "Will they think I'm impressive, or consider my life accomplishments to be pitiful and worthless?" It's more, "Will they think I'm impressive, or assume that I'm making this shit up?" I -- an actual human being, so far as I am aware -- fail most versions of the Mary Sue Litmus Test, even when I leave off the questions that are tautological when asking about yourself. It's not so much an issue in Boston, where I can network with people who function mostly like me, but I used to go into conniption fits whenever I had to interview for something. Given all the freaked-out reactions I get IRL, I figured if I put all of the things I'm technically qualified to do on my résumé, they would assume that not only was I a liar, but that I wasn't even a very good one.
(Besides which, I really don't know what I could possibly say in thirty seconds that would make Misha Collins think I'm off-puttingly weird. I've never even run a charity race in drag.)
The upshot of this is, since talking to people who happen to be on TV is neither particularly stressful nor particularly emotional for me, I'm not going to have the sort of razor-sharp, nanosecond-resolution recall that impassioned fangirls would. Those kinds of snapshots are chiseled into your brain by adrenaline. As far as my hypothalamus-pituitary axis is concerned, I'm just talking to regular people. I'm not disappointed by this; I think people are fascinating. But I think you guys might be, since these interactions are clearly something different for you.
The vast majority of stuff I caught by going to the con that I would have missed online was the emcee bits that typically nobody bothers to release into the wild, and some of the audience interaction that isn't caught by the cameras, which are mounted at the back of the auditorium. Almost none of this involves Jared, Jensen, or Misha, as someone has a camera pointed at them damn near 100% of the time they're at the front of the room. You could see pretty much exactly what I did by rummaging around YouTube for a while. Moggie and I didn't have the chance to get any autographs, and the photo sessions run by very quickly, without time for much conversation. Pretty much the only thing I got off of J2M that I might not have otherwise is that Misha is a fluent speaker of Human Subtitles -- I never literally said, "Please feel free to paw me for comedy purposes," but he pulled that out of the conversation anyway -- and it's not exactly difficult to figure that out.
See, I have what is evidently the magical power to speak to people who are especially charming, attractive, brilliant, famous, etc., without losing my ever-loving mind. It's not a matter of iron willpower. Whatever gene codes for fear of God, expressed in modern-day America as gibbering in the presence of celebrities, I don't have it.
I get the gibbering; I've said and done plenty of idiot things when in the throes of one of those horrible involuntary brain-destroying crushes, just like everyone else. It happens when you hold someone in high regard, are emotionally invested in getting their regard in return, and fear that you will somehow do something so profoundly moronic they'll decide it's best to avoid you forever more. The process of trying to deal with perceiving their awesomeness and work your mouth at the same time sucks up so many computing cycles that you end up inadvertently reenacting that one Eddie Izzard sketch about how young boys deal with suddenly noticing they like young girls -- " 'Ello, Sue! I've got legs! D'you like bread?" and so forth.
Bar the stupid-making crushes previously referenced, I just don't do that. My problem is generally not so much, "Will they think I'm impressive, or consider my life accomplishments to be pitiful and worthless?" It's more, "Will they think I'm impressive, or assume that I'm making this shit up?" I -- an actual human being, so far as I am aware -- fail most versions of the Mary Sue Litmus Test, even when I leave off the questions that are tautological when asking about yourself. It's not so much an issue in Boston, where I can network with people who function mostly like me, but I used to go into conniption fits whenever I had to interview for something. Given all the freaked-out reactions I get IRL, I figured if I put all of the things I'm technically qualified to do on my résumé, they would assume that not only was I a liar, but that I wasn't even a very good one.
(Besides which, I really don't know what I could possibly say in thirty seconds that would make Misha Collins think I'm off-puttingly weird. I've never even run a charity race in drag.)
The upshot of this is, since talking to people who happen to be on TV is neither particularly stressful nor particularly emotional for me, I'm not going to have the sort of razor-sharp, nanosecond-resolution recall that impassioned fangirls would. Those kinds of snapshots are chiseled into your brain by adrenaline. As far as my hypothalamus-pituitary axis is concerned, I'm just talking to regular people. I'm not disappointed by this; I think people are fascinating. But I think you guys might be, since these interactions are clearly something different for you.
The vast majority of stuff I caught by going to the con that I would have missed online was the emcee bits that typically nobody bothers to release into the wild, and some of the audience interaction that isn't caught by the cameras, which are mounted at the back of the auditorium. Almost none of this involves Jared, Jensen, or Misha, as someone has a camera pointed at them damn near 100% of the time they're at the front of the room. You could see pretty much exactly what I did by rummaging around YouTube for a while. Moggie and I didn't have the chance to get any autographs, and the photo sessions run by very quickly, without time for much conversation. Pretty much the only thing I got off of J2M that I might not have otherwise is that Misha is a fluent speaker of Human Subtitles -- I never literally said, "Please feel free to paw me for comedy purposes," but he pulled that out of the conversation anyway -- and it's not exactly difficult to figure that out.
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