Fan Expo: An Overview
In General
Starting off with bullet points, because I do love me some bullet points.
• Move over John Green! I have a new author crush. Hello, Max Brooks!! If you EVER get a chance to see Max Brooks speak, DO IT.
• LOVED that Max Brooks totally worked hard to keep pronouncing “Z” as “zed” instead of “zee” because he was in Canada. How awesome is that?!
• (Side note about Max Brooks – everything in World War Z has happened already, only without the zombie factor. Which makes it even scarier, imho.)
• Bought bunches of books. Need to now rearrange my TBR piles, as they are all precariously close to toppling over.
• I seriously heart Beau Bridges. I got totally star struck when I went to get an autograph, and couldn’t say a thing. Eep.
• Watched My Name is Bruce again – Bruce Campbell is the awesomest person ever. So awesome that I cannot even express how awesome he is.
• Also saw Bruce Campbell speak. Love his schpeel about how vital he is to the life and development of Spiderman. So awesome. Seen it on YouTube before, but it was funnier in person.
• So so SO excited for Tron: Legacy now! Saw the same stuff they showed at Comic Con, which apparently is rather secret – we had to check out cameras and phones before going into the panel. Looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.
• A little disappointed with the amount of (or rather lack of?) scifi merchandise. Was looking for some specific things, and they didn’t have those specific things. Will have to purchase online, methinks.
On Monsters and Such
The biggest highlights for me were definitely the panels on monsters in modern literature and on the facts and fiction of vampires. They were both hosted and moderated by Rue Morgue magazine and featured authors who write on the subject and covered a lot of the same ground (and so I’m going to talk about them together). The monsters in modern literature panel featured Max Brooks, Kelly Armstrong and Dr. Kim Paffenroth, whereas the vampire panel featured Kelly Armstrong, Dr. Elizabeth Miller (so adorable and so cool!), Karen Dales and Nancy Kilpatrick.
So! Points that were mentioned that I thought were awfully interesting!
As a whole, people seem to like stories about monsters because it was only fairly recently in the history of the world where humans were at the top of the food chain. We apparently have it built into our id (I think it was id – I never really got the whole Freudian thing) that we should be hunted. So the stories about monsters feed that feeling in our beings. That said, there are some monsters that aren’t as scary as others – mainly, there are those that you have to hunt out in this day and age, and there are ones that come to find you.
Monsters like vampires and werewolves are the ones that you typically have to go and find, that typically live in the more underground hidden type of world, and want to remain hidden from humanity. But monsters like zombies will come in search of you, which is what makes them more terrifying for some people. They will keep coming, and keep banging on the door until it eventually breaks down. Or something along those lines. (I know, so eloquent of me, right?)
(Side note: certain monsters become popular when different things are happening politically, environmentally, economically, etc. For example, the last time before this that zombies were really popular was apparently in the ’70s when the a lot of the same political and environmental issues were big concerns. Interesting!)
Monsters portrayed as a sympathetic lead, in the misunderstood hero with a good heart seems to have first majorly appeared with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles – they were one of the first to have the protagonist as the monster. And other authors have adapted that to their own writing and used monsters as their main characters – but of course, if you’re writing from the monster’s POV, you can only portray them as a monster for so long before you start wondering what it would be like to write about them in a less monster-ish sort of way. Which has lead to them being less monstrous in literature now.
Vampires as romantic heroes seems to have gotten a bit of influence from Byronic heroes. Heathcliff is not too much different from modern-day vampire romantic leads. And if Wuthering Heights was written now, he could very well have been written as a vampire. Which is rather scary. A lot of the romantic vampires (i.e. a certain sparkly vampire) are not even vampirish anymore (though that isn’t surprising to anyone). That said, there’s a divide growing among vampire fans – mainly those who wouldn’t normally be vampire fans if they weren’t romantic (don’t always like the scary aspect), and those who don’t understand the romantic side of vampires and prefer the horrifying aspect.
And… that’s totally all of the points that I thought were most interesting.
RIP IV Additions
And lastly, additional books bought this past weekend that have been added to the pool for the RIP IV challenge:
- • Angel of Death (Book one of The Chosen) by Karen Dales. She was one of the authors on the vampires panel and I was impressed enough with what she said to actually fight my way back into and through the dealers room after the panel just to get a copy of this book. The first few times I went through her booth, it didn’t sound appealing enough to buy yet another vampire book, but she totally changed my mind and I’m definitely going to be giving this a try now.
- • The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. Did I mention that I have a massive crush on this man? Gah!!
- • Fray by Joss Whedon. Have had my eyes on this graphic novel for a VERY long time.
After much humming and hawing, I’ve decided to participate in the RIP IV challenge. On one hand, I’m not a fan of challenges as they make me feel very restricted in what I read – I feel guilty that I’m not reading what I should be reading to get the challenge finished, or nothing that I own for that challenge really appeals to me too much at the specific point in time. On the other hand, I do love this genre of books. And so, with all that in mind, I’ve decided to go with Peril the Second: “Read Two books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose.” I think this will give me the option of not feeling too pressured in this challenge.