Minicon Report

I am showing my age still doing one of these. But I used to enjoy other people's reports of the conventions they attended back in the day, so here we are.

I did not attend Minicon on Friday. I had no panels, and when I found that out, I made an appointment to get my second Pfizer booster. I( Read more... cut for COVID booster reaction details (all fine, but may be more than people want right now.) )

After getting fancy coffee to-go from our usual coffee shop, I went to Minicon for my first panel, "The Whole, Entire MCU" at 11:30 am Saturday morning. I left the house around 10:30 am and it only took about fifteen minutes on the highway from ours to the hotel's front door. Minicon is now at the Hilton Doubletree in Saint Louis Park (another nearby suburb.) I have to admit that I'm getting used to layout of this particular hotel because it's been a favorite for a number of local conventions, including Gaylaxicon. But, there are a lot of odd tiers and stairways, some of which don't lead exactly where you might expect.

I had plenty of time to register, get my badge, and run into magenta and Martin. We chatted about their experience at Paganicon and an upcoming shared panel on utopias. Eleanor Arnason dropped by to say hello to Magenta and failed to recognize me (a common problem this convention,) since not only are we all masked (Eleanor and I usually see each other quite regularly, but over Zoom) but also my hair is so much, MUCH longer than anyone has ever seen on me. I have not cut my hair since the pandemic started and my hair grows very fast--and is unexpectedly curly. So, even if you think you might be able to imagine me with longer hair, many people do not factor in the curls. Plus, I did not aid memories by eschewing my usual con outfit, which normally includes a silk shirt and a vest of some kind. Instead, I just wore my usual "street clothes" of a queer t-shirt and an open plaid/flannel button down over that (1990s are calling, Lyda, they want their grunge rock fashion back!)

naomikritzer, who knew I was getting my booster texted me just as I was about to sit down for my first panel, wondering if I managed to wake up for the con. I feel bad that I had to leave her in limbo for an hour, but introductions were starting. The MCU panel was fun because we did more than just squee. We had some fairly interesting discussions about ethics and the themes present over the whole of the multiverse, as it were.

After the panel I reassured Naomi that I was, in fact, not only at the con but feeling surprisingly good despite poor sleep. Of course, she'd gone into a panel of her own by the point.

I know I talked to a bunch of people in the hallway including my friend Greg, whom I accidentally greeted with a boisterous "You're ALIVE!" which, I mean, I truly felt excited to discover this fact, but maybe was a strange assumption to have mentally made that he might no longer be with us. Pandemic brain, I guess? My response was very spontaneous and genuine, but I did apologize and say that what I'd meant to say was "I'm so glad to see you," but I'd forgotten "how to people," as the kids used to say, but now everyone does.

The utopia panel, in my opinion, went well but had an energy problem. I was not the best panelist for it because I'm not good at list panels. I've never read enough, for one, and secondly I'm much much more of a concept person than a "here is a literature survey" sort. Both are good types of panels, I'm just a good person for the second. I think despite my woeful unpreparedness for it being a panel of the second sort, we did get into some interesting stuff including considering non-Western ideas of utopias. There were some technical difficulties with the mics on that panel and Eric's voice is so soft these days that that added to some of the bits I found less smooth than some of my other panels. (Generally microphones were a bit of a problem for this con.)

Because I am not yet doing restaurants, I zipped home for charcuterie with Shawn. I was enough exhausted from the bad sleep from the night before that I lay down for a very quick nap at home, when, of course, Naomi texted with a "where are you? Do you want to hang out?" I did! But, I wasn't planning on being back at the con until 5 pm.

At 5 pm, I had my reading. I discovered that I'm at that point in the new novel where the beginning has to be rewritten to match the tone of the end. Which was not the greatest thing to discover while reading the beginning. Rewrites are in progress.

Naomi and I finally hung out! YAY! I went with her and Beth F. (are you on DW?  Am I  following you?  I don't actually know) and Anton Petersen over to a restaurant to hang out with them while they ate. We had a lovely conversation about all sorts of things, most of which I have forgotten, outside of the fact that Anton is starting a new convention: https://quantum-con.org/

I had a final panel that night "Page 117,"  in which a number of panelist read page 117 of books unknown to us (their covers were wrapped to obscure all information) and then we tried to guess what kind of book it was, who the author was, etc. This honestly should not have been as much fun as it was, but it really was quite entertaining. It was a good mix of good readers, everyone was starting to feel a bit silly since it was later in the evening, and so we just generally had a lovely time reading and guessing. It helps that spiderplanet , whose books these were, has very wonderfully eclectic tastes.

Then, I drove home and collapsed. 

On Sunday I got up relatively early, felt very well rested, and so Shawn and I had a kind of Easter brunch despite the fact that our holiday is actually how Easter and (I believe Passover) are determined. Ostara, which has most of the "Easter"  traditions that are kind of confusingly non-Christian--bunnies and eggs is actually Spring Equinox, which was in March. But, we had some left over cardamom bread from our charcuterie grocery run and, it turns out, cardamom bread makes AMAZING French toast. I  happened to have some bacon, so we fried up that and had a lovely, filling brunch.

My panel at 11:30 am was one which I was moderating, which was "Mentioning the Unmentionables."  I am UNCERTAIN why I was chosen to moderate over Naomi who was also on the panel, because it meant that I had to wrangle our Wyrdsmiths colleague, Adam Stemple, as well as making sure Katie, the one non-Wyrdsmith on the panel, had opportunities to talk. I was, as should be expected, boisterous and full of poop jokes. So, you know, high intellectual content. Though I do think we got into some interesting considerations about it all. Anyway, I found it very fun.

From there I did a bit of hanging out with folks in the hall and in rooms, including finally having a chance to talk to the GoH, Jo Walton for a bit. 

I had one final panel about anime and manga, which actually went fairly well despite the fact that I was late and almost lost my moderator position, which might have been disastrous as the panel was low on female representation (which is actually kind of odd in manga and anime fandom.)  But, I wrestled it back under my command and we had some fun doing personalized recommendations for folks. 

I would have stayed for closing ceremonies, but I was quite wrung out by all the humaning and peopling. 

Did any of my other DW friends go? What did you think?