Redemption con report
Mar. 4th, 2005 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayAnyone who might possibly be in England at the end of February 2007 must go to Redemption. Fabulous con :-)
Friday
I set out rather later than planned, mainly due to bad packing planning and a slight oversleeping problem. Oops. Wasn't too late to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paranoidangel42's place, possibly because poor Baby hit speeds on the motorway that she usually doesn't see. She did shake a bit and the rest of the journey was at a slightly more sensible speed *g*
The morning was absolutley beautiful. We'd had a bit of snow overnight so the countryside had a dusting of whiteness. For some reason I love the way that snow seems to outline trees, making them look as though someone has sketched them in instead of being living creatures. I was very tempted to stop the car and take photos, but resisted.
Leaving PA's would have been faster if I hadn't locked the keys in the boot (trunk for the Americans/Canadians on my f-list). Oops. Lovely man from the RAC came out and broke into my car for me - thankfully I'd de-alarmed the car before locking the keys in because it took me a while to sift through the luggage and find the keys.
Finally got on the motorway again and drove through intermittant snowfalls to Hinckley. On arriving in the carpark, PA and I agreed that you can always recognise con people even before they get into costume and put on badges. Hmm.
lonemagpie and sweetheartwhale were manning the registration desk - had to take a second look and make sure that sweetheartwhale wasn't really Londo Mollari. Rather convincing costume there, especially to someone feeling rather tired and fuzzy. PA and I headed for our room, dumped luggage and sat down to work out what we wanted to do. Damn, if only we had a cloning machine *g* We both decided to go to the first books panel and set out early to scout out the dealer's room and PA's stewarding duties before it.
The books panel was on 'Old vs. New' - fascinating, although it threw up a lot of hard SF titles and authors that I've not particularly familiar with. The conclusion seemed to be that there are as many good modern books as there are oldies. Yay. PA then went to her first stewarding duty and I found myself heading for the 'Man of Iron' reading. So. Damn. Funny. 'Man of Iron' was a Blake's 7 scrip written by Paul Darrow that was never filmed. For good reasons. But it was just...indescribable. So bad, but so very funny. Anyone who's heard me rant about certain fanfic writers who are very, very bad? Man of Iron makes them look competant. Thankfully the bad is outweighed by the unintentional funny.
Hope that appears at '07 - definitely going to be in the audience.
There were a number of panels that I wanted to go to after this, so I went to supper instead. This was followed by the opening ceremony and Og stole the ceremony with his election speech. There's a clip floating around somewhere. Followed this with a panel on paper zines and the web - very cool to hear from both sides. I've bought a couple of zines over the years, but my fandoms have been principally web based. It was interesting to hear from fervent zine supporters, particularly now that the web has made publishing fanfic so much cheaper for everyone.
The zine launching session afterwards didn't materialised, so instead I sat around and chatted for a while before wandering back to the ceilidh for a while before the 'Historical swordplay in the UK' panel - very cool and fascinating. I got to hold some of the swords, Steve K explained stuff well and even staged a couple of fights.lonemagpie and sweetheartwhale restaged a sword fight from B5, pointing out the foibles of certain heroic-looking stances when faced with someone as pragmatic as Londo Mollari :-)
The panel overran and I arrived back at the ceilidh just as it was ending. And managed to leave my camera in the panel room. Damn. Went back, but it was too late and I resolved to pick the camera up before my first panel the next morning. Not one of my more sensible decisions, as it turned out.
Saturday
Morning wasn't nearly as scary as it usually is at cons. Possibly because I got to wake up two hours later than I usually do at SG cons. Made it down to breakfast and ran along to the room I'd left my camera in afterwards. A search (not thorough, as it turned out) of the room failed to turn up the camera and nobody had handed it in at Ops or the hotel reception. Reaced the conclusion that the camera had probably been taken by a cleaner and wandered off to the end of the panel on 'Is there anything new in m/m'? I must get to that one in a better frame of mind next time because it sounded fascinating, but I was rather distracted.
Eventually went up to my room to get a signal on the mobile phone so that I could call the parents and check that my stupidity was covered under the household insurance. While I was up there, I got a message that a friend at home was in the middle of a romantic disaster so I spend most of the feminism in SF panel chatting to her and counselling on the 'phone. Darn. I resolved afterwards that nothing was going to spoil my con and promised myself that when the morning was over, everything would start getting better. Spookily, I popped into Ops at 12.01pm in a very vain hope....and my camera had just been handed in. Yay! The con immediately improved.
The guest talk by Jason Carter was fabulous. Very funny guy with a great line in natty hats. He can also remember the words to 'I Am The Very Model Of A Modern English Gentleman' (I suspect that I've got the title wrong there), which impressed PA.
The next panel was on fanfic writing styles - very interesting and it was cool to hear from other people about the way they write and the problems they encounter. From there it was down the hall to 'Federation or Ministry of Magic: Which is more corrupt?' And that's the Blake's 7 Federation, not Trek :-) Conclusion? MoM edges out the Federation in the corruption stakes. And Dumbledore is probably evil.
The second books pane was on books as security blankets - some of the books that people cited were surprised me, possibly because my security blankets are comfort books rather than scary books. Jim Mortimor wasn't on the organising panel on any of the book panels but he made a lot of interesting and valuable inputs and was a fun guy to talk to. We wandered along to the panel on exposition together and had a geeky joy moment about why we write and what kind of reaction we want from our audience. The exposition panel was much more interesting than it sounds on paper. The amount and manner of exposition is dictated a lot by the medium - in TV scripts, those "as you know..." briefing moments can be rather awkward, but some amount of exposition is needed in books. Obviously don't have a character give a ten-page monologue on the history of the world in the first chapter (not that I've ever done that, of course), but you do need some details about surroundings, characters etc. It's how to handle it subtly that's the real trick :-)
Wandered into the Zocaolo after this and found a Doctor Who novelisation that got the inner geek excited :-) Managed to fit in some supper before the 'Why isn't there more f/f?' panel. This was a very interesting panel. There were a couple of blokes in there who admitted to wanting to read f/f (very brave in a room with many lesbians in), but not being able to find it. The admission that they didn't want to read "straight men's lesbian porn" was particularly cool. I'm not sure that we reached a conclusion because there seems to be a mixture of reasons: not being able to find it on searches (probably because anyone outside the slash world doesn't know the terms to look for), f/f slashers often asking for more realism than m/m slashers want and intimidating potential writers, m/m being more popular with the straight women who make up 90% of the fanfic community...the list could go on. I managed to pimp Pink Rabbit and, more importantly, their links page to the men looking for the f/f slash. Just wish that I could have remembered the URLs for a few other archives and good personal sites. Damn. I'll remember to bring a list of links to that panel if it's run again :-)
The fancy dress and cabaret began so the discussion had to break up. Not beforespacefall pimped ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
connotations to me, the British slash con. Must check finances and work out whether I can go :-)
I was pleasantly surprised by the fancy dress and cabaret. Great costumes and some fine acts. The amazing fiddler stuck in my mind as well as the filker singing 'Stand Behind Your Man'. Too funny :-) I wish that I could remember the lines...
PA felt unwell and departed upstairs to lie down. Not being a huge disco fan, I wandered up to our room a few minutes later and kept her company watching The Bill until the final panel of the day that I wanted to see - 'Blokes who like slash'. I was most fascinated to hear from (I think) straight guys who like slash for the same reasons that I do - good plot, good writing, good sex. Somehow that makes me feel slightly better about being a lesbian writing m/m slash :-)
Felt completely knackered by the end (11pm) and decided that an early night was in order so that I could enjoy the final day of the con properly.
Sunday
Getting up wasn't too aweful, probably because we got up two hours later than an SG con again. One of the many positive points to Redemption :-)
PA was quite careful with breakfast after the previous evening and I...er...ate two croissants, which is three times what I usually eat at brekkie. And imbibed much coffee, obviously.
The first panel was a discussion on editing fanfiction. I think the organiser wanted to keep it on the copy-reading side rather than the more beta-ish side, but as is usual with these panels we side-tracked a little. We somehow ended up in a discussion on running archives and message boards. Huh.
I'm sure that I went somewhere after this, but I didn't go to any of the panels in the programme book for this period and I can't for the life of me remember where I ended up. Er.
Ah, yes, I hit the zine library and spent a (rather cold) hour happily ensconsed.
At noon there was a writing workshop with Jim Mortimor, Colin (er, something) and Una McCormack. I would have liked to ask Jim how he got published - somehow the question escaped my mind every time I saw him. Darn. Una's story gave hope to all fanfic writers who want to be paid authors (her first DS9 novel, Hollow Men, will be published in a couple of months and can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk here) and Colin showed a distressing familiarity with Eastenders. At any panels that Jim attended, he insisted on changing the seating arrangements to a circle rather than row and this was no exception - a very sensible arrangement, to my mind, and perfect for Redemption-style panels. The workshop ended up in a discussion of problems, ideas and everything to do with writing. We overran, got chased out by the next panel and adjourned to the bar for an extension to the panel with beer. I left at 2pm for a panel on fanfic writing, after Jim had successfully campaigned for me to try out Battle Star Galactica and Firefly. I now have both of those on my waiting list with Amazon rentals - Firefly is arriving first by virtue of the shorter queue and I've enjoyed the first three episodes greatly.
At 3pm there was a workshop on fanfic writing. I went in expecting the same issues to come up as we'd discussed at the writing workshop so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this was a different panel in tone and content. It helped that we had a number of people from the writing workshop in there and the questions and discussion could therefore be directed more to the specific issues that arise in fanfiction. I discovered that the fanfic world is scarier than I'd believed (Transformers fanfic? And apparently it works?), but that we all have similiar things to think about at the root of our writing.
The next panel was 'What do we think of the new Dr Who?'. I think that it was hoped the new Doctor Who would have begun airing by now, but instead the panel became fifty Who fans getting very excited, squeeing with dignity and discussing our many hopes and fears for the show. It was one of the few panels where I felt nervous about contributing (hey, Jim Mortimore was one of the chairs and he *writes* Doctor Who novels), but spoke up a couple of times anyway because I couldn't resist. Damn, I'm so excited about it :-)))
Now, technically the next item was the closing ceremony but it was by no means the end of the con. The Ruler of the Universe was announced - an unsurprising win by Og, but at least the total vote count was slightly less than the number of voters - and the Green Drazhi won the Drazhi war games. Cue some slight gloating at PA's (purple) expense :-) I believe that other con reports have mentioned Jason Carter inciting Londo to strip so I'll say little - except to make a mental note to check the transparency of any shirts that I buy before wearing *g*
The con may have officially closed, but there were still a few program items. 'Tolkien: You can just burn the rest of your fantasy books' was very cool. PA discovered that she actually doesn't read much fantasy, despite having LotR as her favourite books. I was surprised to discover that there are really people out there who feel that LotR is the only fantasy book they need - there's so much depth to it that all other fantasies seem shallow and insipid by comparison. It was a view point that I'd never considered before. As a confirmed book geek and a person who tends towards fantasy more than sci-fi, it had never occurred to me that LotR could be the only book people would need. There are so many other stories and ideas to read! The point that there are so many bad derivatives of it is valid, but there are authors out there who are doing different things as well that I just can't limit myself to only one book.
For PA's benefit, a few book titles/authors tossed into the pot were:
Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana (very good - not a magic ring in sight)
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold - usually sci-fi, but her fantasy novels are very good and quite different from the usual quest stuff
Terry Brooks - Shanarra (not a favourite of mine - never got on with his writing style)
Stephen Donaldson - Tales of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (must finish reading Da's copies)
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time series
Dianne Wynne Jones
Adding a couple of my own:
Diane Duane - the Young Wizards series (fantasy set in our world - children's books but very different from Harry Potter)
Lynn Flewlling - Night Runners series
Juliet E. McKenna - Tales of Einarinn
I thought about going to a panel afterwards on what we'd like to see at Red '07, but instead went to supper and had a good chat withgmul before toddling off to the final books panel. This was technically on crossing the genre divide, but quickly became a general books chat that was great fun. The runners of this series of panels had the right attitude - they pulled the panels back to topic when needed, but in this panel they let the conversation flow organically and we ended up sharing lots of ideas on books and reading in general. Book geeks love talking and evangelising about books :-)
The final panel that I went to - in fact, the final panel of the con - was on the future of SF and fantasy. We were in the largest (and, coincidentally, the warmest) panel room, all the guests were there and I think that everyone who wasn't leaving that night was also there. It overran, went wildly off-topic and couldn't have been a better end to the con panels.
When we eventually finished, all that was left was sitting in the rotunda having D'Argo's Wake. This was bascially everyone sitting up and chatting until we couldn't stay awake any longer. Stood and sat around with various people that I'd been chatting to to over the weekend, including a woman who's name escapes me but she made some interesting comments on SG fanfic. We also ate lots of cookies, which had the advantage that I didn't have to take them home with me. On the downside, I couldn't take them home with me *g* PA and I eventually called it a night at around 2am, due to my need to be awake for motorway driving.
Monday
Ack, I forgot to reset the alarm until later. Darn. Wandered down to brekkie, met Jim Motimore on the way back upstairs and promised to join the hard-core conners for a final chat after checking out. Despite the extra time we had, PA and I still only just made the check out time. This was mainly due to my lameness at time-keeping, I'll freely admit.
We checked out and lugged our stuff down to the rotunda for a final chatter until we absolutely had to leave. I ended up promising to check out Blake's 7 (and PA has generously leant me the first season *g*) and failing to talk to Jim Mortimore about Doctor Who. We did chat about children's drama and fantasy shows and a '70s show called Timeslip has been added to my Amazon rental list. Eventually we had to admit the con was over and it was time to leave. We drove home through occasional heavy snow blizzards, stopped at a Little Chef that managed to be colder than the room used for the fanfic panels and dropped PA off at her house without locking my keys into anything. Somehow during the drive we came up with an idea for running a panel next time and I agreed to work on it. Must be insane :-)
I had a fantastic time. There were so many panels that I'd love to have gone to, but just couldn't because they clashed with other panels that I really wanted to attend. Sitting in circle to chat during smaller panels was a great idea - got conversation going much better than sitting in rows facing the chairs. I tried to pimp Atlantis and instead came home with a list of shows to check out myself. I also have a few books that I want to look into, a zine borrowed from PA that I would have sworn I wouldn't read last week and a head filled with ideas and memories inspired by the weekend. I'm even making notes on writing my Edinburgh volcano disaster movie. First I need to learn script-writing, though - but it can't be worse that 'Man of Iron'. Unless it turns out bad and missing the funny bad.
There are other things that I want to say, but it's taken me two hours to write this and it's showing. Verbal diarrohea anyone?
Friday
I set out rather later than planned, mainly due to bad packing planning and a slight oversleeping problem. Oops. Wasn't too late to
paranoidangel42's place, possibly because poor Baby hit speeds on the motorway that she usually doesn't see. She did shake a bit and the rest of the journey was at a slightly more sensible speed *g*The morning was absolutley beautiful. We'd had a bit of snow overnight so the countryside had a dusting of whiteness. For some reason I love the way that snow seems to outline trees, making them look as though someone has sketched them in instead of being living creatures. I was very tempted to stop the car and take photos, but resisted.
Leaving PA's would have been faster if I hadn't locked the keys in the boot (trunk for the Americans/Canadians on my f-list). Oops. Lovely man from the RAC came out and broke into my car for me - thankfully I'd de-alarmed the car before locking the keys in because it took me a while to sift through the luggage and find the keys.
Finally got on the motorway again and drove through intermittant snowfalls to Hinckley. On arriving in the carpark, PA and I agreed that you can always recognise con people even before they get into costume and put on badges. Hmm.
lonemagpie and sweetheartwhale were manning the registration desk - had to take a second look and make sure that sweetheartwhale wasn't really Londo Mollari. Rather convincing costume there, especially to someone feeling rather tired and fuzzy. PA and I headed for our room, dumped luggage and sat down to work out what we wanted to do. Damn, if only we had a cloning machine *g* We both decided to go to the first books panel and set out early to scout out the dealer's room and PA's stewarding duties before it.The books panel was on 'Old vs. New' - fascinating, although it threw up a lot of hard SF titles and authors that I've not particularly familiar with. The conclusion seemed to be that there are as many good modern books as there are oldies. Yay. PA then went to her first stewarding duty and I found myself heading for the 'Man of Iron' reading. So. Damn. Funny. 'Man of Iron' was a Blake's 7 scrip written by Paul Darrow that was never filmed. For good reasons. But it was just...indescribable. So bad, but so very funny. Anyone who's heard me rant about certain fanfic writers who are very, very bad? Man of Iron makes them look competant. Thankfully the bad is outweighed by the unintentional funny.
Hope that appears at '07 - definitely going to be in the audience.
There were a number of panels that I wanted to go to after this, so I went to supper instead. This was followed by the opening ceremony and Og stole the ceremony with his election speech. There's a clip floating around somewhere. Followed this with a panel on paper zines and the web - very cool to hear from both sides. I've bought a couple of zines over the years, but my fandoms have been principally web based. It was interesting to hear from fervent zine supporters, particularly now that the web has made publishing fanfic so much cheaper for everyone.
The zine launching session afterwards didn't materialised, so instead I sat around and chatted for a while before wandering back to the ceilidh for a while before the 'Historical swordplay in the UK' panel - very cool and fascinating. I got to hold some of the swords, Steve K explained stuff well and even staged a couple of fights.
lonemagpie and sweetheartwhale restaged a sword fight from B5, pointing out the foibles of certain heroic-looking stances when faced with someone as pragmatic as Londo Mollari :-)The panel overran and I arrived back at the ceilidh just as it was ending. And managed to leave my camera in the panel room. Damn. Went back, but it was too late and I resolved to pick the camera up before my first panel the next morning. Not one of my more sensible decisions, as it turned out.
Saturday
Morning wasn't nearly as scary as it usually is at cons. Possibly because I got to wake up two hours later than I usually do at SG cons. Made it down to breakfast and ran along to the room I'd left my camera in afterwards. A search (not thorough, as it turned out) of the room failed to turn up the camera and nobody had handed it in at Ops or the hotel reception. Reaced the conclusion that the camera had probably been taken by a cleaner and wandered off to the end of the panel on 'Is there anything new in m/m'? I must get to that one in a better frame of mind next time because it sounded fascinating, but I was rather distracted.
Eventually went up to my room to get a signal on the mobile phone so that I could call the parents and check that my stupidity was covered under the household insurance. While I was up there, I got a message that a friend at home was in the middle of a romantic disaster so I spend most of the feminism in SF panel chatting to her and counselling on the 'phone. Darn. I resolved afterwards that nothing was going to spoil my con and promised myself that when the morning was over, everything would start getting better. Spookily, I popped into Ops at 12.01pm in a very vain hope....and my camera had just been handed in. Yay! The con immediately improved.
The guest talk by Jason Carter was fabulous. Very funny guy with a great line in natty hats. He can also remember the words to 'I Am The Very Model Of A Modern English Gentleman' (I suspect that I've got the title wrong there), which impressed PA.
The next panel was on fanfic writing styles - very interesting and it was cool to hear from other people about the way they write and the problems they encounter. From there it was down the hall to 'Federation or Ministry of Magic: Which is more corrupt?' And that's the Blake's 7 Federation, not Trek :-) Conclusion? MoM edges out the Federation in the corruption stakes. And Dumbledore is probably evil.
The second books pane was on books as security blankets - some of the books that people cited were surprised me, possibly because my security blankets are comfort books rather than scary books. Jim Mortimor wasn't on the organising panel on any of the book panels but he made a lot of interesting and valuable inputs and was a fun guy to talk to. We wandered along to the panel on exposition together and had a geeky joy moment about why we write and what kind of reaction we want from our audience. The exposition panel was much more interesting than it sounds on paper. The amount and manner of exposition is dictated a lot by the medium - in TV scripts, those "as you know..." briefing moments can be rather awkward, but some amount of exposition is needed in books. Obviously don't have a character give a ten-page monologue on the history of the world in the first chapter (not that I've ever done that, of course), but you do need some details about surroundings, characters etc. It's how to handle it subtly that's the real trick :-)
Wandered into the Zocaolo after this and found a Doctor Who novelisation that got the inner geek excited :-) Managed to fit in some supper before the 'Why isn't there more f/f?' panel. This was a very interesting panel. There were a couple of blokes in there who admitted to wanting to read f/f (very brave in a room with many lesbians in), but not being able to find it. The admission that they didn't want to read "straight men's lesbian porn" was particularly cool. I'm not sure that we reached a conclusion because there seems to be a mixture of reasons: not being able to find it on searches (probably because anyone outside the slash world doesn't know the terms to look for), f/f slashers often asking for more realism than m/m slashers want and intimidating potential writers, m/m being more popular with the straight women who make up 90% of the fanfic community...the list could go on. I managed to pimp Pink Rabbit and, more importantly, their links page to the men looking for the f/f slash. Just wish that I could have remembered the URLs for a few other archives and good personal sites. Damn. I'll remember to bring a list of links to that panel if it's run again :-)
The fancy dress and cabaret began so the discussion had to break up. Not before
spacefall pimped connotations to me, the British slash con. Must check finances and work out whether I can go :-)I was pleasantly surprised by the fancy dress and cabaret. Great costumes and some fine acts. The amazing fiddler stuck in my mind as well as the filker singing 'Stand Behind Your Man'. Too funny :-) I wish that I could remember the lines...
PA felt unwell and departed upstairs to lie down. Not being a huge disco fan, I wandered up to our room a few minutes later and kept her company watching The Bill until the final panel of the day that I wanted to see - 'Blokes who like slash'. I was most fascinated to hear from (I think) straight guys who like slash for the same reasons that I do - good plot, good writing, good sex. Somehow that makes me feel slightly better about being a lesbian writing m/m slash :-)
Felt completely knackered by the end (11pm) and decided that an early night was in order so that I could enjoy the final day of the con properly.
Sunday
Getting up wasn't too aweful, probably because we got up two hours later than an SG con again. One of the many positive points to Redemption :-)
PA was quite careful with breakfast after the previous evening and I...er...ate two croissants, which is three times what I usually eat at brekkie. And imbibed much coffee, obviously.
The first panel was a discussion on editing fanfiction. I think the organiser wanted to keep it on the copy-reading side rather than the more beta-ish side, but as is usual with these panels we side-tracked a little. We somehow ended up in a discussion on running archives and message boards. Huh.
I'm sure that I went somewhere after this, but I didn't go to any of the panels in the programme book for this period and I can't for the life of me remember where I ended up. Er.
Ah, yes, I hit the zine library and spent a (rather cold) hour happily ensconsed.
At noon there was a writing workshop with Jim Mortimor, Colin (er, something) and Una McCormack. I would have liked to ask Jim how he got published - somehow the question escaped my mind every time I saw him. Darn. Una's story gave hope to all fanfic writers who want to be paid authors (her first DS9 novel, Hollow Men, will be published in a couple of months and can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk here) and Colin showed a distressing familiarity with Eastenders. At any panels that Jim attended, he insisted on changing the seating arrangements to a circle rather than row and this was no exception - a very sensible arrangement, to my mind, and perfect for Redemption-style panels. The workshop ended up in a discussion of problems, ideas and everything to do with writing. We overran, got chased out by the next panel and adjourned to the bar for an extension to the panel with beer. I left at 2pm for a panel on fanfic writing, after Jim had successfully campaigned for me to try out Battle Star Galactica and Firefly. I now have both of those on my waiting list with Amazon rentals - Firefly is arriving first by virtue of the shorter queue and I've enjoyed the first three episodes greatly.
At 3pm there was a workshop on fanfic writing. I went in expecting the same issues to come up as we'd discussed at the writing workshop so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this was a different panel in tone and content. It helped that we had a number of people from the writing workshop in there and the questions and discussion could therefore be directed more to the specific issues that arise in fanfiction. I discovered that the fanfic world is scarier than I'd believed (Transformers fanfic? And apparently it works?), but that we all have similiar things to think about at the root of our writing.
The next panel was 'What do we think of the new Dr Who?'. I think that it was hoped the new Doctor Who would have begun airing by now, but instead the panel became fifty Who fans getting very excited, squeeing with dignity and discussing our many hopes and fears for the show. It was one of the few panels where I felt nervous about contributing (hey, Jim Mortimore was one of the chairs and he *writes* Doctor Who novels), but spoke up a couple of times anyway because I couldn't resist. Damn, I'm so excited about it :-)))
Now, technically the next item was the closing ceremony but it was by no means the end of the con. The Ruler of the Universe was announced - an unsurprising win by Og, but at least the total vote count was slightly less than the number of voters - and the Green Drazhi won the Drazhi war games. Cue some slight gloating at PA's (purple) expense :-) I believe that other con reports have mentioned Jason Carter inciting Londo to strip so I'll say little - except to make a mental note to check the transparency of any shirts that I buy before wearing *g*
The con may have officially closed, but there were still a few program items. 'Tolkien: You can just burn the rest of your fantasy books' was very cool. PA discovered that she actually doesn't read much fantasy, despite having LotR as her favourite books. I was surprised to discover that there are really people out there who feel that LotR is the only fantasy book they need - there's so much depth to it that all other fantasies seem shallow and insipid by comparison. It was a view point that I'd never considered before. As a confirmed book geek and a person who tends towards fantasy more than sci-fi, it had never occurred to me that LotR could be the only book people would need. There are so many other stories and ideas to read! The point that there are so many bad derivatives of it is valid, but there are authors out there who are doing different things as well that I just can't limit myself to only one book.
For PA's benefit, a few book titles/authors tossed into the pot were:
Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana (very good - not a magic ring in sight)
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold - usually sci-fi, but her fantasy novels are very good and quite different from the usual quest stuff
Terry Brooks - Shanarra (not a favourite of mine - never got on with his writing style)
Stephen Donaldson - Tales of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (must finish reading Da's copies)
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time series
Dianne Wynne Jones
Adding a couple of my own:
Diane Duane - the Young Wizards series (fantasy set in our world - children's books but very different from Harry Potter)
Lynn Flewlling - Night Runners series
Juliet E. McKenna - Tales of Einarinn
I thought about going to a panel afterwards on what we'd like to see at Red '07, but instead went to supper and had a good chat with
gmul before toddling off to the final books panel. This was technically on crossing the genre divide, but quickly became a general books chat that was great fun. The runners of this series of panels had the right attitude - they pulled the panels back to topic when needed, but in this panel they let the conversation flow organically and we ended up sharing lots of ideas on books and reading in general. Book geeks love talking and evangelising about books :-)The final panel that I went to - in fact, the final panel of the con - was on the future of SF and fantasy. We were in the largest (and, coincidentally, the warmest) panel room, all the guests were there and I think that everyone who wasn't leaving that night was also there. It overran, went wildly off-topic and couldn't have been a better end to the con panels.
When we eventually finished, all that was left was sitting in the rotunda having D'Argo's Wake. This was bascially everyone sitting up and chatting until we couldn't stay awake any longer. Stood and sat around with various people that I'd been chatting to to over the weekend, including a woman who's name escapes me but she made some interesting comments on SG fanfic. We also ate lots of cookies, which had the advantage that I didn't have to take them home with me. On the downside, I couldn't take them home with me *g* PA and I eventually called it a night at around 2am, due to my need to be awake for motorway driving.
Monday
Ack, I forgot to reset the alarm until later. Darn. Wandered down to brekkie, met Jim Motimore on the way back upstairs and promised to join the hard-core conners for a final chat after checking out. Despite the extra time we had, PA and I still only just made the check out time. This was mainly due to my lameness at time-keeping, I'll freely admit.
We checked out and lugged our stuff down to the rotunda for a final chatter until we absolutely had to leave. I ended up promising to check out Blake's 7 (and PA has generously leant me the first season *g*) and failing to talk to Jim Mortimore about Doctor Who. We did chat about children's drama and fantasy shows and a '70s show called Timeslip has been added to my Amazon rental list. Eventually we had to admit the con was over and it was time to leave. We drove home through occasional heavy snow blizzards, stopped at a Little Chef that managed to be colder than the room used for the fanfic panels and dropped PA off at her house without locking my keys into anything. Somehow during the drive we came up with an idea for running a panel next time and I agreed to work on it. Must be insane :-)
I had a fantastic time. There were so many panels that I'd love to have gone to, but just couldn't because they clashed with other panels that I really wanted to attend. Sitting in circle to chat during smaller panels was a great idea - got conversation going much better than sitting in rows facing the chairs. I tried to pimp Atlantis and instead came home with a list of shows to check out myself. I also have a few books that I want to look into, a zine borrowed from PA that I would have sworn I wouldn't read last week and a head filled with ideas and memories inspired by the weekend. I'm even making notes on writing my Edinburgh volcano disaster movie. First I need to learn script-writing, though - but it can't be worse that 'Man of Iron'. Unless it turns out bad and missing the funny bad.
There are other things that I want to say, but it's taken me two hours to write this and it's showing. Verbal diarrohea anyone?
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Date: 2005-03-05 07:49 am (UTC)Having been strongarmed by
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Date: 2005-03-05 11:57 am (UTC)Definitely an event that I'm hoping will appear again on 07's programme :-)
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Date: 2005-03-05 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 11:41 pm (UTC)Worryingly, I had been thinking all this time it was referring to the Star Trek one. Possibly due to the results of the 'are they the same Federation' panel.
her first DS9 novel, Hollow Men
Technically, she's written half of one already http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743483510/qid=1110065730/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3_3/202-4675519-9320618)
despite having LotR as her favourite books.
I know I read/write a lot of LOTR fanfic, but I wouldn't describe it as one of my favourite books. I would say that I don't read fantasy despite Alice in Wonderland being the best book ever though.
For PA's benefit, a few book titles/authors tossed into the pot were:
Thank you :)
including a woman who's name escapes me
Janine
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Date: 2005-03-06 10:28 pm (UTC)I thought that this year's format worked well and I'm glad that it didn't cover the ground that the other writing workshop discussed. Fanfiction has some unique problems and constrains that you just don't have to consider in original fiction. I thought that the two workshops complimented each other well and the timing was particularly fortuitous.
I'll be very interested to see what format these workshops have in '07 :-)
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Date: 2005-03-06 10:33 pm (UTC)I went in assuming that it was the Trek Federation (mainly due to my relative unfamiliarity with B7) and this was one of the panels that pursuaded me to check out B7. The ideas that were discussed sounded much more interesting than the Trek world. Bad Trekkie, me :-)
despite Alice in Wonderland being the best book ever though.
D'oh! I could remember that you had a fantasy novel as your favourite book and completely blanked on it being Alice. Probably because it's not a book that I particularly enjoy :-) LotR was just an assumption, really.
Thank you :)
You're welcome. I always love a chance to pimp great books :-)
Janine
Thank you! I think the problem was that I couldn't see her name badge and temporarily forgot that she ran the B7-HP corruption panel and I could have checked for her name there :-)
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Date: 2005-03-07 10:21 pm (UTC)I think in the Federation discussion we decided that the Star Trek one was America's idealised view of the world and the B7 one was our realistic one. And anyway, Blakes 7 is interesting.
Probably because it's not a book that I particularly enjoy :-)
I was wondering where the LOTR came from. But how can you not like Alice? How can anyone not like it, it's great! :)
I think the problem was that I couldn't see her name badge
I checked her name badge when she came over to talk to us, which gave it away a tad :) Plus I have a good memory.
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Date: 2005-03-07 11:24 pm (UTC)From a world building and political view, it certainly is. And I agree with the assessment of the two Federations :-)
How can anyone not like it, it's great! :)
::wince:: I don't know. I just...get a headache. I remember really enjoying it as a child and a teenager, but now it just doesn't catch me anymore. Maybe I've just grown too entrenched in reality and can't quite cope with the oddness and randomosity of events. Or something.
Plus I have a good memory.
You do. I'm sure that I spoke to dozens of people and have only remembered a handful of names. Gah.
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Date: 2005-03-08 07:20 pm (UTC)I loved Alice as a child and only re-read it fairly recently (I was quite excited by the notes at the back, linking it to what happened in the real world with the real Alice). Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of my childhood, and it's all quite innocent. Plus it's funny. You can't go wrong with funny.
Linking
Date: 2006-03-15 09:11 pm (UTC)Re: Linking
Date: 2006-03-16 06:45 pm (UTC)