Arisia article in the Phoenix

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Arisia 2011: Bigger, better, and building up to Boskone

Apparently Arisia is a sexathon? I must be doing the wrong events!

As for having once been part of Boskone, I guess fact-checking is dead. :)

Comments

[cos]

Arisia can be quite different things to different people. It's like when someone tries to describe what LiveJournal is like - what they see is the slice of LJ that comes out of who their friends and friends' friends are and what communities they're on. Arisia experiences are partly that - who you go to the con with and who they know - and of course partly what your focus is in your choice of things to go to. So now we know what kind of Arisia this reporter's friends are into. And yes, that is a real slice of Arisia, and one I've experienced (by choice) most years. But it's certainly not a representation of everyone's Arisia.

[madfilkentist]

One's experience certainly will affect one's reporting; no one could attend everything without tenfold self-replication. But a statement such as "half the panels are about the best ways to bang" is categorically false and demonstrates professional irresponsibility.

[eanja]

In particular, describing 6% of the con as half the con, with the specific implication that non-queer or older people will feel unwelcome, and that she personally feels like an outsider and can only cope with such things due to previous family exposure is very misleading. I've never had a kid in fast-track, but I still manage to be aware that Arisia has a lot of stuff for families and kids and isn't a place that they need to be warned away from.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad that my parents don't read the Phoenix! I'd hate having to explain why I took their grandchild to a round-the-clock four-day orgy and bondage festival. :D

[archangelbeth]

*SNRK*

I do admit, my kid has, at prior Arisias, gone into certain dealer's rooms which... Well, I think she was three or four when she had to be talked out of a little key-chain sized "pen-chain" flogger as a toy. (She really liked the sensation of running those little pen-keeper-chains through her fingers, I think.) Not that I was explaining any of the issues except that it was made of metal and I didn't want it being flailed around in the house! My tactic with such things was to deal with them very matter-of-factly and calmly, so as to discourage Curiosity About The Forbidden Thing That Makes Mommy Act Weird. Lecture-mode can work wonders to make anything Not Worth Investigating! And now, she's an adorable little prude. "Ew, grown-up stuff!"

(If anything, the kink selection at this year's Arisia was pretty small and mild, from what I saw. I don't think there were any dealer's rooms that my little prude wandered into and did an about-face, except one that'd been heavily Perfumed.)

I've also never had a kid in Fast Track...

[avivasedai.livejournal.com]

... and every year I read the description of their programming wishing I could go to a bunch of them! Kudos to Fast Track for putting together stuff that I-as-a-teen/kid would've loved.