Changes in our Society...good or bad? Thoughts for discussion.

[Lyanne]

I took my kids to Comic-Con last year, mostly because we had just moved to the area the year before and saw all the celebrities on the news, and thought we'd like to see some celebs too. There is a very broad spectrum of Comic-Con fandom. From people we steered clear of because they were a little too scary/made us uncomfortable....to people like us, who obviously had no clue what was going on, and probably in many fervent Comic-Con attendeees' minds, had no right to be there. It was a delicate balance between laughing at what we saw and trying not to judge, lol. There was one uncomfortable moment when I had to explain to my 16 year old daughter who/what "furries" were. I wasn't expecting to see any there, but my daughter is a big CSI fan and they had done a show on furries a while back (which is how I learned about them) so she may even have been exposed before and forgot.
One thing we did experience, without exception, was that every single person we interacted with was nice to us. It's a community within itself and just being in the building, or walking out in the city with your "swag bag" made you a part of that community. One couple we met, and waited in line with for 4 hours to get into panel rooms, actually gave us their sold out tickets to a private, 200 person panel with Zachary Levi. A $40 value and they had been sold out since the morning they went on sale. They did this simply because we were new and had arrived way too late to get into the public panel, and because they had seen Zachary Levi "sitting in" on another private panel they had purchased tickets to. These strangers wouldn't take any money, and wouldn't even tell us their last names or give us any information that would allow us to repay them in any way. We were completely blown away by the kindness and acceptance into the Comic-Con world. We are going back again this year, but rather than purchasing tickets to the convention, we are just going to hang out in the restaurants surrounding the convention center and go to the "supplemental" events.
As far as the topic...I think these kinds of alternative lifestyles have always been around, but the world is just a little more open to allowing people to be more public about it. It may simply be economical. Perhaps in the past, convention space would be denied to a group because the venue owners disapproved. It may be social. Perhaps today's venue owners aren't afraid that no one else will book their venue because of what kind of groups had previously been there. I might even venture to say....without trying to offend, that maybe the perception of having things forced on us is a reflection of our own feelings about whatever is becoming socially acceptable. Using myself and my family as an example: My parents were not thrilled that my husband isn't exactly like me. I hesitate to say race because there is no such thing as race. When I was born, it was illegal in this country for my husband and I to marry. When my parents met, their families and their churches objected to the union because they were of different faiths. My dad feels that "homosexuality" is being forced on him because he is forced to see gay characters on some of his favorite TV shows. IMO, he's just not ready for it. He was ready for interfaith marriage when he met my mom, he had to accept inter-racial (ugh, there's that word again) marriage when I met my husband, and if either of my brothers was gay, he would have had to accept that too.

As for the attendees themselves, I think many of them need psychological help. I personally don't think it's healthy to detach so completely from "real life", whether it be into anime, video games, or anything else. Even sports. I see grown men crying/abusing their loved ones/becoming violent because the Giants or the Red Sox lost and I feel they need some help too.