The hostility of this rhetoric often conflated the organizers with the attendees, who were primarily female and queer teens, many of whom were local and attending their first con. The largest concentration of this rhetoric is the Dashcon tag and user reblogs spread it quickly; one early Tumblr post – reblogged over 67,000 times – characterized con-goers as “white kids in flower crowns rioting for the anti-sexualization of women in media while holding panels about homoerotic subtext.” Comments on other social media sites like Jezebel swiftly adopted this derisive tone, describing attendees as “dorks who live in their parents’ basement” or “hormonal teenagers who enjoy drama way too much” in contrast to the “mature” fans on Tumblr “who discuss theories.”  Such misinformed and misogynist discourse was accompanied by paternalistic horror about the possible exposure of teenagers to an informational 18+ BDSM panel.

As a counter to this discourse, I want to highlight some of the more productive social and cultural aspects and implications of the con. For attendees, it is a vital safe space for self-expression and community bonding, intellectual engagement, counseling, and social empowerment for attendees. In turn, the implicit discomfort and hostility directed at them reveals how this space threatens social hierarchies regarding, in particular, female sexual pleasure and knowledge, “feminine” cultural production, “mass” tastes, and non-normative sexual/gender identities and practices.

I attended DashCon because I am interested in the way social media sites, particularly Tumblr, and their related cons provide young female and queer fans the opportunity to fulfill social, emotional, and educational needs that more traditional institutions do not. Last year, I participated in a series of articles for Antenna about LeakyCon, an established convention with a similar demographic. The advanced publicity of DashCon indicated a related agenda, with a “social issues” track of panels devoted to overlapping concerns of Tumblr users, including feminist politics and mass media representation, LGBTQA support, social justice concerns, mental health care and, ironically, ways to combat online hate and bullying. I enlisted a couple of con-goers who were also media studies students, and we shared the coverage of various panels and activities (although these observations are mine alone).

The most visible way DashCon created a safe space for female self-expression was the community’s respectful treatment of its many cosplayers. In cosplay, attendees dress as their favorite media characters, often spending days creating costumes. Because attendees respected the maxim that “cosplay is not consent,” they did not touch or take photos of cosplayers without their explicit permission. Veteran cosplayers often noted with relief how unmolested they felt at DashCon compared to mixed-sex cons where they are often groped.

In addition to cosplaying, the activities of this con followed others of its type, and included games, singalongs, autograph signings, fan art sales, as well as panels. The “social issues” and media analysis panels frequently overlapped in content and politics. Media fans, especially in this demographic, are often already engaged in trying to locate alternatives to dominant ideologies through media texts, and DashCon attendees were eager to analyze the social aspects of media culture. My colleague Paul Booth has called fandom, “the classroom of your life” and it certainly had that role at DashCon, where attendees were able to learn about topics that are still largely not covered in high school or even college classrooms, where gender and queer studies are rarely integrated into the curriculum as a whole.

The panelists, a combination of academics, activists, and/or social media specialists, embraced more radical rather than liberal political positions, drawing on many aspects of queer theory and critical race theory as well as media studies. Media analysis panels emphasized the importance and lack of strong female characters, queer characters, and characters of color, and the discussion leaders were able to personally speak to these issues as well as offer strategies to advocate for more diverse representation. Straight and queer women’s investment in male/male “slash” pairings was addressed in nuanced ways tied to, for example, the lack of equivalent development of female characters.

The panelists crucially tied media production to larger social structures, noting that “people blame the media, but these are institutional problems, social hierarchies that get represented by the media. There is no villain in the tower.” Instead, they emphasized the importance of education, an understanding of historical context and change, and an appreciation of the intersectionality of identity. Panels about contemporary feminism offered both scholarly analysis and an opportunity for young women to share their stories and concerns.

The rape culture panel, for example, began by asserting that instead of telling women how to avoid rape, we as a society should instead be focusing on teaching men and boys not to rape, a message that is prevalent on Tumblr but rarely appears in the mainstream.

All the panelists, while critical of DashCon’s management, have noted how impressed they were – as was I – with the engagement and thoughtful questions of the attendees. They have also tried to debunk misinformation, noting, for examples, the racial as well as gender/queer diversity of panels and attendees, and protesting their misrepresentation and the attacks on them.

This con provided young people with an opportunity to further expand the alternative communities that Tumblr offers them. While its larger problems are disappointing, DashCon’s grassroots project should be appreciated for what it did accomplish despite its organizers and attendees’ lack of social power and resources. Other attendees felt the same. Panelist Brin posted a video of her participation in the LGBTQ&A panel (below) and another con-goer posted that he found its cost was “a small price against my first time truly feeling in a community of people who would love and understand me with almost no effort at all.”

What perhaps struck me most about LeakyCon was the fluid approach to celebrity on display throughout. I first noticed celebrity as a theme in an early session on millennials and religion. In this session, led by Reverend Heather Godsey, the mostly millennial-age audience discussed the motivating inspiration they find in the “Starkids” theater troupe, made famous for their musical theater adaptation of Harry Potter into A Very Potter Musical (AVPM). AVPM (and its two sequels, the last of which debuted at LeakyCon, 2012) are lynchpins of the Con, and the large Starkids cast may very well be the con’s most beloved stars. Fans expressed admiration for the Starkids troupe, but not a distanced idolization. Fans conveyed a sense of intimate recognition; they saw the Starkids as modeling an accessible way of being (creative) in contemporary digital culture. In Reverand Godsey’s words:

It’s funny, in corporate fandom, like Doctor Who or Glee, there’s this sense that these are my idols; they’re on a pedestal; they’re up there. There’s a sense that Starkid is not on a pedestal. That the fandom looks at them, and says, “You are me. And I am you.”

The fifty or so young adults gathered in the room were eager to respond to this perspective. One audience member commented on the fan terminology “Starkid” itself, which encompasses both the theater troupe and their fans: “I kind of think that’s the reason why Starkid fandom just calls themselves Starkids.” This comment marks a difference between the Starkids fan self-conception and the majority of fan terminology in which terms for a fandom (Whovian, Gleeks, Sherlockians) do not automatically encompass the producers of the source text. So Starkids (fans and troupe together) have co-created a shared network and, arguably, community.

The conversation among congoers in this session did not uncritically celebrate or accept as “authentic” this sense of likeness between Starkid Troupe members and fans.. While they agreed that they admire the Starkids and take pleasure in being part of the shared category, they emphasized the fact that this seeming accessibility masks more complex differentials. They described how as LeakyCon goers they must navigate a tricky terrain. They must figure out how to express admiration without erasing boundaries in such a seemingly intimate sphere. As another audience member put it:

In a way, that almost makes the fandom harder to navigate, though. Where it’s like: I admire you a lot, and I feel like I know you but I don’t know you, and so it’s like awkward sometimes to try to figure out how that works.

These blurred lines of celebrity/microcelebirty (or perhaps we need a more fluid term to describe visibility in this age of self branding where it seems everyone has the potential of being a star) were on display throughout the Con in a range of different ways. Sure there was some sort of more traditional hierarchy of stardom at play, with categories determined in part by media (Harry Potter film stars, BTVS television stars, Anthony Rapp of Rent fame), reach in millennial culture (Hank Green), and centrality to fannishly popular media texts (the Starkids and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries). But at the same time, there was a palpable sense that the most beloved stars across these categories were those closest in spirit to their fans.

We often heard the question at panels, from fans directed to the actors or producers: “What are you a fan of?” These questions (also somewhat familiar from Comic-Con and the like) always seemed to me purposefully designed to erase the divide between the stage (with the panelists and microphones) and the audiences sitting on folding chairs in front of/below them. Those actors and producers that answered the most easily with robust details were clearly met with audience joy (for example Daniel Vincent Gordh, who plays The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ Darcy, not only said he’d be an academic if he couldn’t be an artist, but also rather adeptly, at least to this non-gamer, showed his cred as a gamer). Some did not even need to assert their identities as fans and geeks; it was simply a known and contributing factor to their celebrity. The Starkids gained their fame through creating what amounts to a work of musical theater Harry Potter fan fiction, and likewise The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is understood by many as a work of Pride and Prejudice fan fiction as much as it is an adaptation.

This positioning of the Con’s stars (or “special guests” as they were officially called) was perhaps most dynamically rendered in the con opening ceremonies number, which we discussed in our opening post.

This performance merges multiple fandoms and geekdom in a collective celebration of love of popular and audience culture. This number achieves its sense of multifannish queer multiplicity and collectivity through its casting of the con’s stars as different characters/fandoms, and specifically through their knowing performance of fandom (or their performance of knowing fandom). The lyrics transform the many subcultural references framing queer identity in Rent’s “La Vie Boheme” to fannish/geeky references, and ask that the various stars sing quickly in fannish slang, expressing fan emotion. My favorite line (and the line that drew the biggest laugh) offered the inspired rhyme of “cumberbitches catching snitches.”

I find this performance both moving and fascinating in part because the stars position themselves as members of the collective queer community of multifandom, seemingly erasing power differentials and embracing fannish mindsets, including a celebration of fannish creativity in what can be read as a larger cultural and social stance.

In my following posts I’ll talk more about that last point: the significance of the embrace of fannish production and transformation on the part of actors and producers within the context of Leakycon’s collective multifannish ethos.

A Lizzie Bennet Diaries cast video that accentuates these blurred lines between star and fan.

For more on LeakyCon 2013, read:

– Part one (“Where the Fangirls Are“)
– Part two (“On Wearing Two Badges“)
– Part four (“From LGBT to GSM: Gender and Sexual Identity among LeakyCon’s Queer Youth“)
– Part five (“Inspiring Fans at LeakyCon Portland“)
– Part six (“Redefining the Performance of Masculinity“)
– Part seven (“Embracing Fan Creativity in Transmedia Storytelling“)