CONvergence.. Day... Three?
Jul. 8th, 2017 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse I'm at the Caribou/Einstein's Bagel across from the con hotel; Mason is at home, still asleep. My extroverted introvert announced last night that he has had a tremendous time, but he is officially DONE with people. I understand completely. I may be an extroverted extrovert, but that doesn't mean that a five day con doesn't wear on me.
Yesterday was an especially busy day. I had only two panels, but they were spread out over a whole day. My first one was at 2 pm and my final one started at 8:30 pm. Plus, I wanted to be sure to catch Lois McMaster Bujold's signing because I had a faraway friend who wanted an autograph, and that was at 12:30 pm. Naomi had invited me to meet her and a friend at Caribou at 11 am, too, and while the kids and I managed to get to con by 11... we did not find parking until almost ten minutes later and I showed up at the Caribou around 11:30. I sent the kids off to DQ for lunch and ran off hoping hadn't blown my chance to hang out.
Luckily, I didn't miss Naomi. Even luckier, Tyler Tork, his wife (whose name currently escapes me), and Bryan Thao Worra were there. I have always liked Bryan, ever since some Minicon somewhere lost to the annals of time where he was the only person at a Krueshenko's party who could tell me what had happened to Captain America after Cap had been shot (I'd been catching up with Marvel comics at this point and I was a little desperate for news.) Plus, I've been following his travels via Facebook and, in the way of social media when it works as it should, that has bred a certain sense of connection and familiarity in my heart (even if Bryan doesn't necessarily feel the same way, you know?)
So we had a lovely chat about all sorts of things because everyone there was super-interesting. I could have had my own little con right there, all day, but Naomi being GoH and Bryan, being Bryan (and a former guest of honor, like myself,) had places to go. I wandered over to the signing, disappointed that there were no books by Lois to be had in the dealer's room. For whatever reason, there is only one bookseller in the dealer's room, and they're a publisher, so they are only selling their own authors... which I don't think includes any of the GoHs? I might be wrong about that. However, the con has dealt with this by having a certain number of author books for sale at the merchandise window, which normally mostly sells con tee-shirts. I was able to pick up something for my friend there and get it signed.
I wandered around for a while and, by chance, ran into the entire Slash panel (my 8:30 pm panel) in the cosplay poolside atrium. We were chatting and squeeing about Yuri on Ice and other current fandoms that are seeing a lot of slash action and we ended up talking a bit about Free! and I awkwardly recommended my Bleach/Free! x-over TO THE WOMAN WHO PODFICC'D IT (Opalsong) who, even more AWKWARDLY, I HAD ALREADY MET, in person, a couple of years ago.
At that point, I decided I may have "won" CONvergence for being the most braindead person, ever.
My first panel was "Take a Pew, Pew, Pew" about religion in science fiction, which I think went well, though... in the way of CONvergence panels, it wasn't necessarily very in-depth. The cool part of that panel was that we had a woman on it who is a Church of England vicar. She has written an FAQ about what vicars do, to which I teased, "since most Americans only know about vicars from the BBC" and then my friend/fellow panelist Bill cut in to add, "And yet somehow she left out all the bits where she solves crimes once a week!" But, so you see, that was the tone. It was funny and clever, but not terribly deep. I still had fun and learned some, so that was worth it.
I had wanted to hit Naomi's reading after that, but the kids were hungry so we went over to Friday's. By the time we got back, I was able to see "Refugee Life Hacks" which was amazing and Saymoukda Vongsay is my new girl-crush. She is brilliant and funny and bad ass, and I am now a devoted fangirl. I may actually have to attend poetry readings and theatre in my future just to catch more of her work.
The kids and I met up to watch "Judging a Book by its Cover" which is one of those annual "comedy/improv" panels that CONvergence does. The idea is that a team of panelists is shown a real-life book without its cover and they have to not only guess the title, but make up the story of the plot, as though they're experts on the book. It's one of those that's intentionally over the top. Even if you've read the actual book, you're supposed to come up with all the silly. It was very silly. I enjoyed it a lot. Plus, I found out that the vicar's husband is none-other-than Paul Cornell, who came over to introduce himself and tell me he enjoyed the panel, etc. That was kind of cool, because Paul has long been one of the "cool kids" of CONvergence.
My slash panel went much as it always does. As I was telling a friend, the point of it is to be a sort of "a state of the union" of slash--and overview of what's new and what's trending, and while I participate in the slash fandom regularly, I'm not an expert on All of The Things. So I had a great time because I love everyone on the panel, but I'm not a MAJOR contributor to the discussion. I talked enough not to feel excluded, but I'm pretty sure Bess and Jo could run that panel on their own. If you're curious what we recommended this year, Jo helpfully put together a great list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvaiDBDu6KFfQGH76lgbG9QvMFXQsJe-ZarsD7e7SvM/edit
Okay, I have to run off and collect my badge from the car, because of course I left it on the seat... and then I'm off to my 11 am panel today "Women of a Certain Age" with Lois McMaster Bujold.
Yesterday was an especially busy day. I had only two panels, but they were spread out over a whole day. My first one was at 2 pm and my final one started at 8:30 pm. Plus, I wanted to be sure to catch Lois McMaster Bujold's signing because I had a faraway friend who wanted an autograph, and that was at 12:30 pm. Naomi had invited me to meet her and a friend at Caribou at 11 am, too, and while the kids and I managed to get to con by 11... we did not find parking until almost ten minutes later and I showed up at the Caribou around 11:30. I sent the kids off to DQ for lunch and ran off hoping hadn't blown my chance to hang out.
Luckily, I didn't miss Naomi. Even luckier, Tyler Tork, his wife (whose name currently escapes me), and Bryan Thao Worra were there. I have always liked Bryan, ever since some Minicon somewhere lost to the annals of time where he was the only person at a Krueshenko's party who could tell me what had happened to Captain America after Cap had been shot (I'd been catching up with Marvel comics at this point and I was a little desperate for news.) Plus, I've been following his travels via Facebook and, in the way of social media when it works as it should, that has bred a certain sense of connection and familiarity in my heart (even if Bryan doesn't necessarily feel the same way, you know?)
So we had a lovely chat about all sorts of things because everyone there was super-interesting. I could have had my own little con right there, all day, but Naomi being GoH and Bryan, being Bryan (and a former guest of honor, like myself,) had places to go. I wandered over to the signing, disappointed that there were no books by Lois to be had in the dealer's room. For whatever reason, there is only one bookseller in the dealer's room, and they're a publisher, so they are only selling their own authors... which I don't think includes any of the GoHs? I might be wrong about that. However, the con has dealt with this by having a certain number of author books for sale at the merchandise window, which normally mostly sells con tee-shirts. I was able to pick up something for my friend there and get it signed.
I wandered around for a while and, by chance, ran into the entire Slash panel (my 8:30 pm panel) in the cosplay poolside atrium. We were chatting and squeeing about Yuri on Ice and other current fandoms that are seeing a lot of slash action and we ended up talking a bit about Free! and I awkwardly recommended my Bleach/Free! x-over TO THE WOMAN WHO PODFICC'D IT (Opalsong) who, even more AWKWARDLY, I HAD ALREADY MET, in person, a couple of years ago.
At that point, I decided I may have "won" CONvergence for being the most braindead person, ever.
My first panel was "Take a Pew, Pew, Pew" about religion in science fiction, which I think went well, though... in the way of CONvergence panels, it wasn't necessarily very in-depth. The cool part of that panel was that we had a woman on it who is a Church of England vicar. She has written an FAQ about what vicars do, to which I teased, "since most Americans only know about vicars from the BBC" and then my friend/fellow panelist Bill cut in to add, "And yet somehow she left out all the bits where she solves crimes once a week!" But, so you see, that was the tone. It was funny and clever, but not terribly deep. I still had fun and learned some, so that was worth it.
I had wanted to hit Naomi's reading after that, but the kids were hungry so we went over to Friday's. By the time we got back, I was able to see "Refugee Life Hacks" which was amazing and Saymoukda Vongsay is my new girl-crush. She is brilliant and funny and bad ass, and I am now a devoted fangirl. I may actually have to attend poetry readings and theatre in my future just to catch more of her work.
The kids and I met up to watch "Judging a Book by its Cover" which is one of those annual "comedy/improv" panels that CONvergence does. The idea is that a team of panelists is shown a real-life book without its cover and they have to not only guess the title, but make up the story of the plot, as though they're experts on the book. It's one of those that's intentionally over the top. Even if you've read the actual book, you're supposed to come up with all the silly. It was very silly. I enjoyed it a lot. Plus, I found out that the vicar's husband is none-other-than Paul Cornell, who came over to introduce himself and tell me he enjoyed the panel, etc. That was kind of cool, because Paul has long been one of the "cool kids" of CONvergence.
My slash panel went much as it always does. As I was telling a friend, the point of it is to be a sort of "a state of the union" of slash--and overview of what's new and what's trending, and while I participate in the slash fandom regularly, I'm not an expert on All of The Things. So I had a great time because I love everyone on the panel, but I'm not a MAJOR contributor to the discussion. I talked enough not to feel excluded, but I'm pretty sure Bess and Jo could run that panel on their own. If you're curious what we recommended this year, Jo helpfully put together a great list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvaiDBDu6KFfQGH76lgbG9QvMFXQsJe-ZarsD7e7SvM/edit
Okay, I have to run off and collect my badge from the car, because of course I left it on the seat... and then I'm off to my 11 am panel today "Women of a Certain Age" with Lois McMaster Bujold.