Day in the Life of an Idiot

 As you all know (since I swear I talk about it constantly), Shawn is having her knee surgery on Tuesday, October 8. What I had not factored into all of this is that my favorite local con, ConFABulous, runs October 11-13. Shawn is still going to be heavily medicated by the 11th. Also, everyone who talks about this surgery--including Shawn's own surgeon--says that the first week is Hell Week. So I think I was being foolish imagining I can attend this con in any way, much less run two games. 

It kind of breaks my heart, but there will always be next year. 

I has made me more determined to get serious about starting an RPG group of my own. So, I guess: watch this space. I would really love a group of folks that would let me try running mini-campaigns in a bunch of different systems. I even found what looks like a really fun, light way to get started in D&D called Solidarity: Drunk Girls* in Bathrooms.

I also had to let my cousin know that Shawn and I are not going down to St. Louis, MO, later this month for her COSA (Counsel of State Archivists) conference. Things have gotten complicated at Shawn's work, plus see above. Shawn is very paranoid (and I think rightly) about picking up any infections too close to her big surgery. Apparently, if the replacement bone stuff they use gets an infection in it, it can be nearly impossible to get rid of--and sometimes the only solution is to REDO the surgery. No one wants that. Plus, Shawn has planned the timing of this perfectly and if the surgeon calls it off, who knows how far out the next available time is, you know?

It's just tough because it is interfering with a lot of the things I love, including road trips!  

But, all these things aren't nearly as important as Shawn health.  And ConFABulous will be there for me next year. COSA will be somewhere else next year, but we can always just plan a trip to Saint Louis sometime! So, it's not all lost. But it's just such a bummer to have to cancel on people.

PART ONE.

 The first part of which begins like this. I'm going through my online calendar just to make sure that I have all my WorldCON panels sorted out and in the right time zone, when I look at "The Immersive Possibilities of Horror Audio" and I happen to notice...

...I'M THE MODERATOR. 

I'm pretty sure that I had checked that I didn't really want to be a moderator, but, just to be clear, I don't entirely mind. I clearly approved it? And, in many ways, I'm the perfect person to do this since I am NOT a podcast producer. Even Jennifer Brozek, who I'd initially thought was "just" an author, (like me) does a horror flash fiction podcast called Five Minute Stories.

BUT. It feels really weird to moderate a panel if you haven't at least heard of some of the work that the panelists have been involved in? So, I now have a "listening list" (like a reading list, only for podcasts) that includes: Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program, "Mother," She Wrote, The-Channel-Show, and Five Minute Shorts. One of the other people on the panel who didn't include his email seems to produce dozens of award winning podcasts of things like Murder on the Orient Express, Long Night in Egypt, etc. 

Specifically, I am supposed to be discussing the immersive possibilities, which are described thusly: Eerie, unsettling, and spooky tales are a perfect fit for audio dramas. Our panelists converse on modern horror audio dramas, like The Lovecraft Investigations, The Magnus Archives, and Old Gods of Appalachia, and how they use clever sound design, ambient audio, and other audio techniques to immerse their audiences in the world of their stories.

Audio techniques.

Wish me luck, y'all. I know jack all about audio techniques!  But, I suppose that my ignorance is where I will start. What are the basic audio techniques you might use to create atmosphere in your horror podcasts? Why are wind chimes inherently spooky and lonely sounding?

But, so that's kind of the stuff of nightmares. 

Luckily, my panel isn't until Saturday and I can spend some time listening to the various podcasts and thinking up my questions. I do also hope to talk to the panelists about the actual podcasts listed since I'm a huge fan of all of them.


PART TWO.

It's not just WorldCON that is haunting me this week. Let me just go down everything I have to do. Tonight, Monday, at 6 pm, I'm going to be attending a ConFABulous programming committee meeting that I foolishly volunteered to be part of. Actually, I did this last year, too, and it was fine. Unfortunately, I have been feeling incredibly brain dead when it comes to panel ideas for a GLBTQIA+ (mostly gaming) convention. In fact, in desperation, I looked at what is being offered at WorldCON this week, in the hopes that it might at least clue me into what the hot new queer books/podcasts/movies/TV are this year. Alas, WorldCON has a number of queer-focused panels, but.. they don't name their sources!  So, like they're going to talk about Queer Characters in YA Fiction, but they don't say, "like so-and-so in such-and-such." So, I need to spend a least part of today trying to put my finger on the pulse of what people might want to talk about at a queer gaming con. IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS, PLEASE COMMENT BELOW. 

Okay, moving on. Tuesday afternoon I have a "how to" training session for WorldCON online. I am also meeting a friend for an online chat later, but that's fun and not work. That will be the carrot to the stick, if you will. I suspect the first will be tedious, but necessary. I always attend these, if possible, because there's always some secret that they forget to tell you in their written instructions that is both obvious and easy to miss. Like, where on the right hand side of the screen the whatever button is. (And we all know how crucial the whatever button is.)

Wednesday I might have started back up with my problematic D&D group because they are running an all warlock mini-campaign, which just sounded too fun to resist. Do I want to talk about this? Maybe, but not today when I'm generally feeling overwhelmed. I promise to post about it in a filtered/locked post.

Thursday, I have my first WorldCON panel at 7:00 AM, and then, exactly twelve hours later, I host my writers' group in-person at my house. My writers group, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that we need to meet in-person again (Congratulations! There's currently a surge in COVID cases across the nation!) I agreed to this with much grumbling because 1) see above (the grumbling), and 2) there has been a lot of noise throughout the years since we had to pivot to Zoom about how hard it is for people to concentrate online, etc., etc., and despite the fact that this has never been true for me, I do believe that it's a real issue for other people and I legitimately want to respect that (the agreeing).   

May I just say? Despite this insistence, we have yet to have an in-person meeting where everyone actually shows up. At least two people have been (or will be) missing every time we do in-person meetings--we've only had one so far, and, to be fair, at least one of the absentees this time is from someone who will be in Glasgow, so I suppose I must forgive. However, I suspect this trend will continue because MOTIVATING YOURSELF TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE IS HARD. This was my number two reason for not wanting to go back to in-person. (#1 being that COVID is not over, despite how much we want to think it is.)  Luckily, I grumbled loudly enough that we are actually only meeting in-person for half of our regularly scheduled meetings. On the second Thursday of every month, we are in-person, but on the fourth Thursday we are still Zooming. I think that second bit (the Zoom meeting) will actually ensure that our group continues to actually function. We also all agreed that, should it just be easier (snow/weather emergency or what-have-you) we can just shift to Zoom. 

Who knows? Maybe I will press that button Thursday if I feel overwhelmed. 

Friday, thank god, I have nothing on. But then Saturday is my big programming day (including the one I'm moderating!) and I have one panel each, Sunday and Monday of next week. 

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

I mean, I am actually incredibly chuffed (as one might say in the UK) about my WorldCON schedule. I'm very pleased and feel very, very lucky to be taking part in so many wonderful panels, but I like to really prepare for panels, so I am feeling like it's finals week, you know?

Okay. I'd better go off and try to figure out what the queer youth of today are up to!

 
Image: me (left) and Eleanor Arnason (right) at ConFABulous this weekend. Photo by tallgeese 

This last weekend was ConFABulous a small, local con that caters (mostly) to GLBTQIA+ fans of SF/F and games of all sorts. I was in attendance all three days, though I only showed up on Sunday to do some TTRPGing. 

Friday night around 6 pm, I picked up Eleanor at her place and we drove together to the con. The con hotel was a Crowne Plaza Aire, but local people will know it as "the good MarsCon hotel." (MarsCon has been at the Airport Hilton for the past decade, but some of the earlier iterations of that con were held at this hotel and I have very fond memories of those weekends.) Eleanor and I were on a panel called "Two Former Guests of Honor Talk about Whatever the [Bleep] They Want." The title is a bit of a misnomer, since we were both former GoHs of Gaylaxicon since ConFABulous doesn't really have GoHs, but since ConFABulous started as the local alternative to when Gaylaxicon was being held elsewhere, we figured close enough. 

The conversation really was broad in scope. We talked about dinosaurs, yaoi, why people write SF and play RPGs in tough times, Spenser's Fairy Queen and six dozen other topics. It made sense at the time... mostly.

Eleanor was done after that, so we headed to the bar so she could decompress, have a beer and something to eat before heading home. We ran into our friend Anton and one of his partners and so we hung out and chatted for awhile before heading home. 

Saturday, I had a panel on Japanese and Chinese graphic media, basically, which I shared with a fellow named David. I... found this panel somewhat difficult to be on. David, as it happens, is very new to the manga/manhwa fandom and I think to conventions, as well, at least at a guess? I mean, typically, where there are two people on a panel the first person introduces themselves says a little something about what they want to talk about, and then the other person gets a chance to introduce themselves? Well, David just started and didn't stop. If I am feeling generous, it was probably nerves? Regardless, I spent much of that panel fighting for air and a chance to direct the conversation even a little.



Image: Me, looking at David's copy of MDZS and wondering if I will ever get a word in edgewise. Photo credit same as above.

However, talking to people over food later, it's unclear that the panel felt as bad from the outside as it did from the in. I did note that it might have been nice, since the con is so small, to have checked with the level of understanding of the audience because the few people who broke in with questions and comments, seemed pretty well versed in the basics, one woman even lived in Korea for years. So, I feel like it was FINE, but there were missed opportunities.

I went home for lunch on Saturday because I knew it would be my longer day. When I came back, I played the Thieves' World roleplaying game. When I was a teenager, I loved the Thieves' World anthologies. It was one of the earliest shared world anthologies (at least that *I* knew about) and the stories tended to follow the lower classes, which, to me in 1978, was a shiny new idea. You mean you can write about the underclass and not just princes and elves??  These books probably sparked my life long interest in reading about class dynamics in SF/F. So, I ate these up. I have not tried to re-read them, though tallgeese (the GM) did and said that he was surprised by what felt like a bit ahead of the times inclusion of gender-bending/gender-queer folks and Furries. The game itself was quite fun. In what is apparently a trend, I played a witch-barbarian, who I decided was non-binary. There was only one other player and that worked out really well, honestly? We had a good rapport.  I am not one to comment on game mechanics (because I don't care if the dice ever go clickety-clack, I'm there for the playing pretend parts) But for those who might be interested, our GM used Swords of the Serpentine.

On Sunday, I came back early in the morning to play Hearts of Wulin which is a Powered by the Apocalypse game. David, of the disastrous panel joined in, and I was initially very worried how the table dynamics would shake out, but he was a very considerate and fun player, as it happened. I don't think this table's players clicked quite as well as when it was just me and one other person, but there is, as I have been thinking about ever since, a lot of pressure on the players of PbtA games to provide story elements and, what is sometimes called in D&D, "flair." So, the quality of the role-playing part of the game really depends on how into your character you are. I think this is actually why David was a good player? He basically revamped a favorite wuxia character of his and amused me (and I *think* the rest of the table, though maybe just me) by showing us the costume changes that his character was going through. For me, I felt a bit a loss because so much of why I am not a huge wuxia or xianxia fan in general--much of Chinese culture and history is opaque and unknown to me. 

But, this is not to say I didn't have fun in this game. I just found role-playing in it a bit more challenging. Unlike one of our other players, I actually adore games like this that focus on relationships, but those are also more difficult to fully explore in a one-shot... though I felt very satisfied by how it all went down. I think I'd really love to try to play a Hearts of Wulin campaign at some point, but I would have to find other people into it and given that only two other players showed up to this game besides myself, I have no idea if I'd be able to drum up interest in anything more than a one-shot. 

Anyway.

I would say the con was a success all around. How was your weekend?