Last week, I attended the 5th Biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses. The conference is exactly what the title would have you believe - plus so much more. It is a gathering of academics and fans, coming together to celebrate, discuss, and analyze the works of writer/director Joss Whedon. It is also a community that I feel blessed and thrilled to have become a part of.
This year's conference was held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, which only added to my desire to attend after a paper proposal I submitted was accepted back in February. I had recently received my first real publication credit as a contributor to Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion, and the fact that my opportunity to attend Slayage grew out of something that amazing to begin with still boggles my mind a little (OK, a lot).
Like any first-time attendee of a conference, I didn't really know what to expect. Not only was this my first ever academic conference - I had also flown literally coast-to-coast for it, I didn't know a single person there, and I was at turns terrified and overwhelmed by pretty much everything around me. Not to mention how nervous I was about having to present a paper in front of who knew how many people. The litany in my head went something like this: You're going to miss a flight and be stuck in Toronto Your presentation is going to go badly You won't be dressed well enough Your paper isn't very good and everyone is going to know it but maybe they'll be too nice to say so Oh and whatever you do, don't keep any apples in your bag when you go through customs because apparently bringing apples to Vancouver is illegal.
True story, folks.
Then the first day of the conference came around, people actually started showing up, and everything I was worried about just kind of...stopped mattering. I was early for registration, and I sat there expecting to see lots of academics with expensive suits and at least a monocle or two in the mix. What I got instead was a crowd of friendly people wearing jeans and t-shirts that celebrated Firefly, Serenity, Buffy, and Doctor Horrible, among others. Everyone was so happy to be there, and it didn't matter if you were at your fifth Slayage or your first - the one thing made abundantly clear by and for all was that you were welcome here.
Over the next four days, a few of my friends from home texted me to see how things were going. I jokingly texted back to them "These are my people, I belong among them." But after thinking about it a bit, I realized just how true that silly phrase turned out to be.
See, I've always been a geek in one way or another. Granted, 21 years isn't all that long to be anything, but still. As terribly hipster as it sounds, I was a film and comic book geek before it was 'cool'. I was in high school when people almost always laughed at geeks and nerds, not with them like they (sometimes) do now thanks to shows like The Big Bang Theory. I'm the kid who read books on the playground and dreamed about wearing a cape like Superman when I grew up (I don't know who I'm kidding - I still do that). Movies like Back To The Future (the greatest movie of all time as far as I'm concerned), Christopher Reeve's Superman, and Star Wars thrill me to the core even when most of the people I know don't really understand why. I have never been embarrassed to call myself a geek or a comics nerd - but man, sometimes it can feel lonely, at least to this small-town kid from rural Maine.
I guess that's why I (and people like me) look to characters like The Doctor from Doctor Who, or Superman, or The Avengers, or any of a hundred thousand others like them out there in the fictional world. They're alone, more often than not, and they choose to rise above and thrive both in spite of and because of this. They're all the inspiration we think we need.
But I'll do you one better. Because if there's one thing this summer has been teaching me, it is that we don't need to look just to fictional characters to find inspiration. We have each other. I only started realizing this earlier this summer, and Slayage was really the defining moment in helping me form an understanding about how true it really is. Over the last few months, I've met new friends and gotten back in touch with old ones, and I found out that they're a lot like me. I'm not the only one who is just as happy spending his day inside watching a movie, reading or scrolling the internet than going outside and do something involving crowds of other people and sunlight.And there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean I'm antisocial and strange. It just means I enjoy different things than other people.
Slayage took things a step further. There I found not only people who love the same shows and things that I do, but who love them enough to take them seriously as creative efforts and truly believe that shows like Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Sherlock, and Supernatural have things to teach us, that they are more than just shiny things to look at for an hour one night a week (or for hours at a time on DVD). Plus we had puppets. Puppets are cool.
At Slayage, I felt like I really belonged entirely, for the first time in a very long time. It wasn't just me and my few friends, lurking in a corner and talking about things that made people who overheard us ask "Are you speaking English?" (Also a true story.)
Most people who know me know that I'm an introvert, and it's often really difficult for me to get up the nerve to get involved in conversations with other people. At Slayage, you couldn't shut me up. I was treated as being among equals (despite my lack of any sort of academic degree), and I never once felt that I was looked down upon or that people were just putting up with me until I went away. I made friends at Slayage, ones I hope to keep for a long time to come. I saw other people express what I already felt for myself - that these movies and shows I grew up on and continue to watch are more than just teenage escapism. They matter, almost as much as the people who watch them matter to each other.
What Slayage did was give me a chance to experience the dynamic I have with my friends at home happening on a much larger scale with a wider range of people, letting the same things bring us all together. For someone like me, belonging is one of the most important feelings in the world, and Slayage gave me that. So to everyone from the conference who might be reading this, thank you. Sincerely. You probably didn't know it at the time, but everything you all did made a huge difference to me - a difference I didn't realize was possible. You all helped me feel a sense of confidence in myself that I wasn't even sure was there. So thank you.
To anyone reading this who hasn't had the chance to experience what I did in Vancouver: go out and find your own version of Slayage. Maybe it's a Magic or Dungeons and Dragons game on Thursday night with some friends. Maybe it's a Doctor Who marathon. Maybe its as simple as going to a crowded theater to watch a movie. Maybe it is one of a hundred other possibilities. All I'm saying is, don't be afraid to find out which one is yours.
Never be ashamed to be where you belong. Embrace it.
Plus we had puppets. Puppets are cool.
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