On the Saturday of Otakon, an old man stopped John and I. He asked us for cash. He had just had dental surgery, you see, and needed cab fare. We would’ve been moved, but this same guy had stopped us with the same scam last Otakon.

I wasn’t about to forget him because I’m not too good at scams. Last year, we didn’t have any money so we vowed to wait with him and make sure he was okay. For some reason, he didn’t seem to want us to stay, and he wouldn’t let us call the police for help.

I’m sure that old man will be at Otakon year after year, because attendees are really compassionate people. At Otakon 2011, we collected $65,000 to donate to the Japan Relief Fund. Otakon was also recently named Customer of the Year by Visit Baltimore for being an all around great addition to the city. And if you want to really know about the kind things Otakon attendees have done, check out the comment thread on the Washington Post article I wrote about last week. The negative slant of the article has compelled commenters to recount random acts of Otakon kindness.

However, sometimes it’s tough for me to be nice because I worry it makes our fandom an easy target. There’s that perennial scammer, for one. But what really made me mad was watching this:

Do you feel transported back to high school? Just look at the popular girl picking on the nerd. Except these two are grown-ups, and the news station is framing it as if it is a relevant topic: nerds are having a grand old time and leaving everyone else in America to resolve the debt ceiling debate. We all know the two events aren’t at all dichotomous.

It’s stuff like this that makes me wish fandom was understood.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I tried to feed the trolls on Sunday of the convention. I was wondering if Baltimoreans knew we could see any tweet with the Otakon hashtag. I only got one response from an outsider, but several of my followers chastised me for getting mad. That’s just not how we behave. We aren’t supposed to ask outsiders to understand us. We’re expected to turn the other cheek.

After my poorly judged tweets, an observant Baltimorean wrote me an email:

“Have you heard the saying, ‘Never try to teach a pig to sing…?’ If you have you might not have heard the rest, ‘It wastes your time and annoys the pig.’”

The fact that hardly anyone responded to my tweets, even after I instigated an argument, shows that those outsiders didn’t actually want to understand. Outsiders view Otakon as they would a passing car crash, morbidly interesting for a mere moment.

If I want people to understand what I do, then as a professional fandom reporter, I’m in the wrong line of work. There are always going to be people who misunderstand fandom and take it out on me. But if I start to bite back, I’ll just get a reputation for being weird AND mean. If they want to find out more, they’ll look it up. They don’t need me tweeting my opinions at them like a Jehovah’s Witness pounding at the door.

Our best defense is to keep having a fantastic time with our hobbies and ignoring the naysayers. If you must say something, talk about how great the fandom is, like many of the commenters on the Post article. Stories about kindness help us. Lashing out just tires us out and wastes our time.

There are a lot of points of views on fandom out there. Our chance of ours being understood lies in our acceptance of everyone else’s.

1. Costumes

I admired the women the most. Whether from discipline or dedication to their historical characters, they didn’t seem to mind the heat. Though it was 100 degrees with high humidity, they were calmly perched on folding stools, knitting or lightly fanning themselves while wearing full, ankle length dresses.

I knew the heavy cotton of their gowns was just the beginning of the uniform. Underneath were layers of white linen: hoop skirt and pantaloons and bloomers and corsets, not to mention knee length striped stockings and boots. One woman had stripped to her corset and full body chemise. Somehow, she looked more nude than all of us visitors wearing tank tops.

I knew this much about their clothing since I was a reenactor myself. In college, I got the opportunity to camp with the 3rd US Infantry, a union troop. I wore an ill-fitting borrowed camp dress (preserved in a photo so unflattering I won’t post it and you’ll have to visit this link instead) with what felt like two extra outfits underneath to the Battle of New Market reenactment. It was late spring and comfortable. I can only imagine what kind of discipline you’d need in this heat.

Though I sympathized with the women, the men weren’t much better off. Since the Battle of Manassas was the first battle of the war, it was accurate for everyone to be in full uniform, up to the thick, woolen army jackets.

2. Dedication to canon

Accuracy is the first tenet of Civil War reenacting. I remember sitting around the fire with the 3rd US while some of the reenactors poked fun at Renaissance Fair revelers.

“Look at me in my fairy wings, I look like I’m from the Middle Ages,” one soldier mocked. (It’s also interesting to note that the Renaissance Fair diehards I’ve spoken to don’t think much of Civil War reenactors either — they’re “no fun.”)

Reenactors are sticklers for detail. Even in the heat, very few altered their outfits.

“What a pretty dress ruined by those flip flops,” a colonel on his horse called to a woman walking beside him, bonnet on and basket in hand. “And are your nails that pink naturally?” he continued to the first woman’s companion, joking about her anachronistic nailpolish.

After the first day of the reenactment, during which several soldiers were treated for heat exhaustion, a few liberties were taken. Women in camp dresses carried ice cubes and water to the troops. Fallen soldiers came back to life and crawled off the battlefield to cool down in the shade. One corporal poured water into his hat for his horse to drink noisily out of. Actually, that may have been an accurate detail.

3. Acceptance

The battle endured for three hours, after which the Confederate troops prevailed, just like they had 150 years ago. There were cheers in the stands whenever Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee, both present, rode by. White parents bought their children Confederate uniform caps as souvenirs.

I made a point to stop and interview any black female reenactors I saw. I hadn’t seen any at the Battle of New Market. First I met Elizabeth Keckley, a White House slave. Actually, this was a professional reenactor named Lillian Garland who felt a strong dedication to her character. In fact, she’d found 32 similarities between them, from their mixed race status to even their husbands’ names. Lillian’s husband was fighting on the Union side as we talked. Here she is with her freedom papers.

Next I spoke with an Ohio school teacher (in actuality, an Ohio paralegal), whose trip to petition in Washington had been delayed by the battle. She’s the woman on the right in the second photo of this post. She said she’d been reenacting since 1980 when she had joined a sizeable community of black reenactors and history buffs.

“But now, I’m getting old and the kids just aren’t interested,” she said.

We talked about the fact that most reenactors prefer to fight for the South. I suggested that maybe they’re hoping to win this time.

“That’s a good one,” she said, gasping from either laughter or heat. “Maybe they’ll win this time.”

However, she didn’t know any black reenactors for the Confederacy.

I was not so strong as the school teacher, so I made my way to a cooling tent, shaded with a big air conditioning unit inside. On the way, I met Miss Confederacy.

Miss Confederacy is from Kentucky. She’s in college studying to be a nurse. She said she’d love to major in history, but she doesn’t know what she’d do for a living. Her mother sewed the dress she’s wearing.

I asked her if she had friends on the “wrong side” of the war, as Confederate reenactors sometimes call it. She looked nervous, like she knew what I really wanted to ask.

“Once at the beginning of the reenactment, I came over to visit them at their camp. They joked that they should keep me there and let the rebels know they were holding Miss Confederacy for ransom,” she said, smiling.

As with the school teacher, I was too hot to even take out my notepad and get down her name. A Google Search for “Miss Confederacy” brings up articles about Jefferson Davis and the KKK and not much about pageants.

4. Outsider appeal

By this point I knew something was wrong with me. My vision was blurred and so were the photos I was taking. I felt drunk and everything sounded funny. I’d soon realize I was just very dehydrated. Luckily, I was not one of the many people who got heat stroke. A steady stream of ambulances drove over the battlegrounds to aid the unlucky ones.

I stumbled into line at a concession stand to get a lemonade. Standing in front of me was a man with a wet towel around his neck, listening to a tape recorder. I knew he was a reporter.

“How is your story going?” I asked.

“Not sure where it’s going yet,” he replied.

He was with the New York Post. I told him I was with nobody, but I am a journalist too so I like to ask questions. I told him about how I wanted to talk to black female reenactors.

“For me, talking to people is the worst part,” he said. I imagined his stories to be full of scenery and observation. I told him I used to be a reenactor, and I found it much easier to ask questions when I was wearing the same clothes as the people I wanted to talk to.

“Have you noticed that the TV reporters here are only looking at the most beautiful and weirdest people they can find?” he said. “I saw the Channel 7 guy interview the most gorgeous southern belle followed by the most scraggly bearded soldier.”

I thought about how TV media covered Comic-Con, focusing on the most scantily clad cosplayers and the most greasy comic collectors.

“Yeah,” I said. “What are people going to think?”