Omorka's Lair

. . . Spouse and I are both still (a) headachy and logy, and (b) very clearly contagious, so I don't think we'll make it to Con-Jour after all. *mopes* I was looking forward to it, too. But I also don't want to be the source of a round of con crud. *sigh*

Is there a Facebook event for Owlcon?

Is the date for the 2010 Owlcon set yet?

There's one cover of "No Myth" on the iTunes Music Store.

It's an album-only track. :-(

I have got to get better organized about the local cons. I keep managing to get myself in situations where I miss the Friday events, and it takes me too long on Saturday to get into the swing of things.

Overall, it was a good con; I enjoyed the Guest of Honor's participation in the panel discussions, I was thrilled with the diversity of the panel topics, and there were several panels on gaming and gaming-related topics, which is always a big plus for me. There were a few slots when the schedule was packed, and several others where it was almost empty, but that always happens and even a great schedule coordinator can't always fill in the gaps. (Similarly, almost all of the panels were either gender-skewed - either one token woman or one token man - or single-gender, but again, I don't think that's due to a conscious decision on anyone's part.) I never stepped into the media room, which also happened last time, and I feel a little bad about that.

The art room was both fantastic (in several senses of the word) and a bit saddening. I saw a lot of great art, and bought much more than I normally do (including a couple-two-three pieces intended as gifts, and I'm now kicking myself for not having gotten a particular piece for my mother's birthday present). There was also a fair amount of Celtic-themed art, which I, of course, appreciated. However, there's still a lot of skinny-white-chicks-with-elf-ears in skimpy costumes - I imagine it sells, or there wouldn't be so much of it, but I'd like to see a little more diversity represented and less stereotyped representations of female sexiness. I also got outbid on a piece that I really wanted to give someone else as a gift, and I'm sort of kicking myself that I didn't just suck it up and buy it outright.

The dealer's room seemed a little toy-heavy this time. There was more garment-based stuff than last time, other than just the t-shirts (which were great as always), and I did like seeing that, although clearly I wasn't the target market price-wise. There wasn't anyone selling beads like last time, and there were a few other things like that that I was sad to see weren't there, but I'm guessing that wasn't profitable enough to bring back this year.

( One big cheer and two big boos (behind the cut due to some mild sexual content): )

Despite the minor gripes, I had a great time at the con, and I'm looking forward to next year's already!

So, there really wasn't much left after that, after all.

I did get the second piece from the art auction, a print of a color sketch of Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee. It's quite faithful, except that somehow the artist has drawn him with Elijah Wood's lips. The effect is . . . startlingly bishi given that Sam was supposed to be the buff hobbit. I quite like it. :) I also finally ran into lolleeroberts and ziactrice, which was pleasant, although we all seemed to be too tired to make much in the way of conversation.

I then went to two and a half roundtables. The first was "Why do they get it wrong?," about the numerous science errors horrendously committed by SF movies, and to a lesser degree SF literature. It was quite fun. It also pointed out to me something I knew but hasn't actually been conscious of: that all space fighter battles I've ever seen on film were scripted and visualized by someone who had airplane dogfights in mind, and all the fighters invariably move as if they're in atmosphere and generating lift with the wings somehow. (This despite the fact that a TIE fighter's wings are clearly not capable of generating lift!) Anyway, this was largely a bitch session, and a quite enjoyable and well-informed one, too.

The second was on fanfic. There were two panelists, one probably five years younger than my mother and one probably five years younger than me. Naturally enough, "fanfic" means something a little different for each of them. Again, I was vaguely aware that fanfic used to be the stuff of hastily photocopied fanzines stuffed in four dozen envelopes, and that the Internet has changed the world forever, but I hadn't really put that smore together, as it were. Around 1994, fanfic changed from something that was by definition very limited in audience and largely unknown (unless you got your Star Trek fanfic published as a novel, which obviously happened, but not to very many people) to something that every fifteen-year-old in a given fandom could find and read. In particular, publishing one's fanfic - literally, making it public - became trivially easy. And this has, in turn, changed how fandoms work in some fairly fundamental ways. It has also made slash /yaoi - well, not mainstream, but one of the flavors expected to be on the shelf. (More musings on this topic are likely to follow in a separate post.) Thanks, LiveJournal!

Speaking of LJ, the number of times it was mentioned at the con was astonishingly high - even excluding the fanfic discussion. Clearly this little diary service is onto something here. :)

Finally, I sat in on part of the "complaints and suggestions to the con board" panel. However, since they'd included a comment form as part of the registration package, I'd already filled that out, and didn't really have much to say. So when the Spouse arrived in the middle (my fault - I thought he'd take longer to get there than he did), I just ducked out. The point that gaming was . . . less than promised, by no fault of the ConCom . . . had already been made, and I had no other complaints.


A random note:

CMA attendees can be basically divided into two groups: those who treat it as a party, and those who treat it as a con. I have always intuitively treated it as a con, and I tend to get along better with those who also at least acknowledge its con-like aspects. I "cosplay" at CMA, albeit as an aspect of myself. (A different aspect than the aspect of myself I cosplay as when I go to a con dressed as Borealis.) Interestingly, the concert works in both the party mindset and the con mindset.

Got to the con just after lunchtime. Didn't really miss anything today, it looks like. There were a couple of panels on Friday I sort of regret missing, but I think on general principals I'm glad I stayed here and roleplayed instead, as I would have been there for four hours and really only used two. I snuck in in the middle of the "history of filk" panel with starcat_jewel as one of the two panelists, which was very good (at least the second half was) - lots of amusing stories. Also stuck my head into open gaming and waved at redneckgaijin.

Then I went to the dealers' room and did my best to support the financial backbone of the con. I bought: a pair of sculpey-type horns, grey with iridescent glitter and a brass "piercing" ring (most draconic horns she had on display, which I will wear backwards from the way most IA!DL members wear theirs); a dichroic glass bead, a bone spiral goddess pendant, a silver toe ring with a Czech faceted glass bead, and a pair of hairsticks; and two T-shirts. I also placed a bid on two pieces in the art auction - one a very nice dragon piece, which I got outbid on later at the actual auction, and the other a sketch of Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee, which I don't think anyone else bid on (I'll find out tomorrow morning, since I didn't stick around for the full art auction).

( Remainder behind the cut )