(no subject)

[heidi]

question to other comic con attendees - did the visually impared girl do the same "want to see you" thing to anyone other than Milo and Jensen?
Poor Jared to not be someone she wanted to see!
And how much do the Ghostfacers rock?!?

Comments

[shadow-of-doubt.livejournal.com]

I need more info! I know nothing. Please tell me anything SPN you know from the con!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

This girl stood up and asked the first question at the Heroes panel yesterday and said she was visually impared and all she wanted in life was to see Milo up close and he was nice and she got to and got a photo - but there is a section for handicapped people and she hasn't tried to sit in it at either panel I've seen her at, which would enable her to be relatively close - and yesterday it stopped everything for about 2 minutes which is a huge chunk of the 75 minutes we *had* for the whole thing and we got hardly any Q&A and while I am sympathetic, you're NOT supposed to make personal requests. They keep announcing it!

Then she did the same thing today at the SPN panel and we weren't *as* pressed for time because we only saw a bit of the ep from S4 but...

Was her dream to see Milo? Or Jensen? And poor Jared, not getting any love when his (current and former) co-stars do?!?!?

[shadow-of-doubt.livejournal.com]

That is so rude, and I can't believe she dissed Jared like that!

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Drive-by stranger here, and my apologies for dropping in on your blog,

Everyone's experiences of these things will vary, of course - I wasn't at SDCC, and have no idea who the girl is that you mentioned, or what her experience has been like. But I'm visually impaired from birth (6/60in both eyes - not sure what that is in US ophthalmology-speak, possibly something like 20/200?) and over about a decade of attending cons now, seeing any of the guests in any meaningful kind of way with my own eyes is just impossible when seated anywhere but the front couple of rows, which I've never been sufficiently zealous (or up early enough in the morning) to manage for any significantly popular guests.

Most cons nowadays do ostensibly cater for attendees with disabilities. However, the only time I've attempted to take organisers up on the offer to help was at a convention in London a couple of years ago, for an appearance by Joe Flanigan. The stewards were happy to validate me - but when one of them showed me to the assigned seats at the front, every seat had already been taken by other fans, all of whom had, I'm guessing, been queueing for a long time to get their places, and absolutely none of whom were going to be ousted from their seats by some theoretical disability concession on the part of the organisers.

Yes, maybe the room stewards should have ensured a few seats were kept clear, but they didn't, and they were (understandably) not willing to choose one of the seat-usurpers at random and try to physically remove them. Joe was about to come on stage by then, so I took my pretty substantial humiliation and grabbed a place at the back of the room, and I've never bothered to ask anyone at a convention to do me any favours from then on.

I'm sorry to be so long-winded about this. Maybe the suggestion implicit in your post and a few of the comments is right, and this fan is trying to use her disability to tilt the playing field unreasonably in her favour. Maybe, God help her, she's pulling a scam. But I just wanted to suggest that it's also possible that she, like me, learned the hard way at some point that the overwhelming majority of fans attending conventions will behave with complete and unblushing selfishness when it comes to looking after their own fannish interests, and maybe she just figured she might as well just join the crowd in that respect. I wouldn't emulate her, but I can sympathise with her point of view.

I still go to cons, meet up with friends and usually have a good time. I won't ever try to mention my impairment again at any of them, with the organisers, stewards or guests - the memory of that row of glaring callous faces on the front row was a very effective deterrent. I have a monocular, and I'm resigned to watching the action on screens or squinting at little indistinct blobs on the stage, because I'm old enough to know that genuine equality isn't something that's going to happen in my lifetime, at conventions or anywhere else for that matter.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I do totally understand your feelings - my grandma is almost completely blind and I know how she feels when she can't see someone she really wants to see. I think my issue with the woman yesterday and today is threefold:
1. Her saying almost the exact same thing regarding Milo and then Jensen - maybe seeing both of them was her fondest dream and she just couldn't choose, but asking once would've been fine, and asking twice- when a lot of the same people were in the audience for both - felt pushy, especially when they were the first questions of the day
2. They specifically announce again and again that you can't make a personal request - so I am a little irked if Comic Con didn't tell her yesterday that she shouldn't make such a request again. But that's my issue with Comic Con and not with her.
3. Poor JARED! They were both sitting up there and why couldn't she have asked to see both of them? He needs fangirling too!

Also, I wanted to add this. I have a friend who's on Comic Con's disabled services team, and from where I was at the Heroes panel, at least, yesterday, I could tell that there were a few seats left up until ten minutes before the start time for people with visual or hearing disabilities. Maybe she didn't know about the disabled services aspects, but someone should at least have told her at the Heroes panel yesterday so she'd have known today. But her not knowing is, again, not her fault, but a breakdown in Comic Con's communications to attendees, if that is the case.

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Yep, I can see that busting the rules twice over, for the same reason, would have been irksome to everyone else. Though I haven't been to a convention yet where someone - usually several someones - disregarded various of the con rules when it suited them to do so, to the discomfort either of the guest or the other attendees. All the people who take up extra things for signing, demand hugs and kisses, or push forward their children insisting that little Z will be heartbroken if he doesn't get a picture with his hero... Of all the excuses fans come up with for why they should use up 'common' time with guests to get an extra thirty seconds for themselves, I guess I find hers more plausible, just because there really is something unique about seeing someone you like /admire / crush on with your very own eyes, even if those eyes are a bit crap! And that's something that most other attendees really can do without having to push themselves forward.

As for Jared, I do feel for him, but I'm guessing he probably had a whole room full of people who were all too willing to compensate for a one-fangirl shortfall. At least I hope so!

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Oop, just saw your edit!

Again, that may also reflect her own experience of the reality of disabled services in action at conventions - and I know from some of the responses I got at the time that my experience of being let down was not at all unique.

I know that, no matter what it may say on the websites or in the (amusingly) small print on the tickets, I simply won't ever trust any convention organiser to make good on disability concessions - that undertaking to provide reserved seating, for instance. Once you've been on the receiving end of a whole gaggle of acid-faced strangers looking at you as if you were some scummy liar trying to cheat them out of their birthright, it's not something you do again for fun and frolics, unless you have substantively thicker skin than me.

Putting it bluntly, I wouldn't even trust the assurances of the stewards - not really their fault either, even the biggest and best conventions are notoriously chaotic on the day. And because of that, they're more likely to promote survival of the fittest: that's just how it is.