Swancon 2010 report Thursday-Saturday
Apr. 5th, 2010 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgNo Swancon plan survives contact with the enemy.
This is what I can currently recall about Swancon 2010 (part the first):
Thursday
Registration: mostly harmless. A little difficult to hear over the echoes. First of many occasions where I found it difficult to hear over the noise.
Cocktail Party. Billed as a mixer, but like many such things it was a large mostly empty room with sadly underdressed people shouting at each other and avoiding offers of mini quiches. I went in hard and recycled some glam from a former masquerade costume, including a relatively comfortable corset. I was still in that early transitioning phase (from Before Swancon to Actually At Swancon), so a bit nervy. Also, felt like an idiot. A very visible idiot. Started to introduce Barry The Clue Bat to the world, but should probably have limited the number of demonstrations. To zero.
Standing up is hard work, and my knees tend to lock, so without the benefit of alcohol and defeated by the noise and shouting I went back to my room and slipped into something more comfortable.
Panel: Buffy Review. I'm a bit Buffy rusty, but I was surprised at how many episodes I recognised by name, and generally agreed with the panellists about what was quality and what was not.
Much as I wanted to see any or all bits of the next items (Sex and evolution; 2010 Trailers; Vampires are passe) I retired tired.
Friday
Workshop: Learn a fight choreography. I observed with interest, but some melancholy. I *miss* kung fu :-(
Opening Ceremony. Awkward and pointless, as they often are, but mercifully brief.
Panel: Parasites. a.k.a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
drhoz does icky things with noodles. delicious_irony speaks of frightening things. Excellent. Scott Sigler did not have much to contribute.
Art Show: Minded the art show for a bit. I really wish it wasn't necessary to remind people to not touch the art, eat all over the art, or photograph the art without the express permission of the artist. Or rather I wish I didn't *feel* it were necessary. I did designate a stray object The Thing You May Handle As Much As You Like, to help take the strain. I'm pretty sure I just contributed to the strain.
Not so many entries this year, but a huge number of plushy things. Loved the giant tarantula backpack. Excellent Tom Baker Dr Who portrait bylogansrogue. Was nice to see Brian C back with ancient fishies. I bid on one print of his that took my fancy but forgot to check on it and was outbid.
GoH Speech: Scott Sigler. Unbowed by technological infidelities, Scott described his tortured path into the world of publishing. Reasonably amusing, and explains a lot about why it's been so hard to acquire his work until recently. Also explains the blank faces last year when he was announced as the GoH. Turns out it was sheer fluke that I'd heard of him at all.
Aussiecon promotion. Didn't make it, but was instead waylayed by and enjoyed a long and interesting chat withjennyblackford. I'm not going to Melbourne anyway, so it's best if I don't know what I'm missing.
Panel: Safe Spaces. On how we can build community awareness of the needs and wants of self and others. And more. The discussion was at times frustrating, but a goodly number of people turned up. Baby steps.
Blackout. Spent the next couple of hours fighting off, caving to, then struggling out of collapse. Bad stuff :-( But, managed to pull one out of the fire to get to...
Competition: Iron Brain, and clearly the highlight of the con for me. I was intrigued by the idea of the Iron Brain competition. Named in honour of the infamous Terracon Iron Stomach competition (if you don't know what that is, consider yourself fortunate), the goal of the Iron Brain was to seek the person most able to read aloud really really awful prose, without collapse. It was originally described to me as reading "with a straight face" and I didn't think I could manage that in a million years, but I wanted to take the challenge. The knowledge that the advanced rounds were rated R18+ only cemented my conviction that I'd fail.
We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
In fact, so cemented was my conviction that I came very close to not volunteering at all, but an empty chair stared me in the face and the magic words were uttered:
"Points for hand actions."
Ah. If hand actions were required then this was *not* about keeping a straight face; it was Ham. I like Ham. I pressed for details: Could I role my eyes? Yes. Could I smirk? Yes.
Yes
The trickiest part, and indeed the point on which most people were eliminated, was that the readers had to pronounce the words as written, typos and all. This was quite difficult at first, since reading is based on pattern recognition. The typos most likely to get through proofing are those which most closely resemble the shape of the correct spelling. In other words, they're hard to see. Still, it *is* possible to consciously fight off the urge to read by pattern matching, and this make it easier to spot the odd error. Unfortunately, this destroys your faith in real words: hilarity ensues.
Literally interpreting incorrect grammar and punctuation was also fun, although it's hard to verbally express some apostrophe errors.
We took turns reading passages of gawd-awful text. With hand actions, although I might have been the only one to get into that side of things. Sword and scorcery, Harry Potter slash, other things. When the pr0n came it wasn't nearly as nasty as I'd feared (although with a higher rate of WTF? than anticipated), but the rate of hand actions slowed a bit. I was shaking so much it was often hard to read from the page.
It came down to myself and Tim, a lad of steely nerves who seemed able to calmly recite anything put in front of him. He works in advertising, so is clearly accustomed to quantities of bull. And he's a boardgamer, which might help.
At some point I progressed from a terrified gibbering mess to a wildly theatrical and bloodthirsty gibbering mess, which seemed to go down well, for I won and then went back for more :-)
A monster was born. I had to stay up talking for another couple of hours to wind down sufficiently for sleep, so it was a very late night.
Saturday
Panel: No you can't have a flying car... Interesting discussion on the realities of getting new technology to the marketplace, featuring the joys of funding. My kind o' thing.
Outing: I think I went out at this point and located some plain steamed rice. I managed to complicate this task admirably.
Panel: NASA's Budget Proposal. NASA's recent budget changes were framed by the media as ZOMG THE DEATH OF SPACEFLIGHT, yet greeted with some enthusiasm by professionals of my acquaintance. Now I know why. A very interesting presentation. I'm a sucker for science funding stories it would seem. Ooh the excitement.
Interlude: collapse.
Xena retrospective: Caught the end of this and it was fun to see some old clips.
Panel With Me On It: The Blockbusters of Shame. I'd joked about spending this panel dissing Twlight, but that was a joke. Unfortunately because of my fatigue I spent waaaay too much time just incoherently saying how awful Twilight was. Bad me, but the discussion as a whole seemed to survive that, and some of the audience seemed genuinely shocked to hear that I own 64 McCaffreys.
Workshop: Rumble in the Prose. A workshop on writing fight scenes. I've always wanted to try writing a fight scene; it seems strange that my blog has never provided the opportunity, but there you go. However, I was not about to make my action writing debut under such conditions, so I simply observed. Always fun to watch others suffer for their art ;-)
Masquerade. By this point in the con I was already feeling more than a bit overexposed. Descending into the foyer with Husband in matching motion capture suits was probably not the best way to seek peace. There are photographs somewhere, and one day I might link to them. OK, here are some. We're the people in black covered in orange dots (the first three shots). More photos here.
Numbers were down this year although the quality continues to grow. The room was dressed nicely, but there was no structure to the evening which I found tiring. We're here: what now? The music was not me-dance-friendly, but I enjoyed talking to people (not so much the shouting part) and announcements were eventually made. The individual winner was obvious, but I'd forgotten about the Team division, so I was honestly surprised when we won as a pair.
Holy crap but I was tired.
Sunday-Monday
To follow.
This is what I can currently recall about Swancon 2010 (part the first):
Thursday
Registration: mostly harmless. A little difficult to hear over the echoes. First of many occasions where I found it difficult to hear over the noise.
Cocktail Party. Billed as a mixer, but like many such things it was a large mostly empty room with sadly underdressed people shouting at each other and avoiding offers of mini quiches. I went in hard and recycled some glam from a former masquerade costume, including a relatively comfortable corset. I was still in that early transitioning phase (from Before Swancon to Actually At Swancon), so a bit nervy. Also, felt like an idiot. A very visible idiot. Started to introduce Barry The Clue Bat to the world, but should probably have limited the number of demonstrations. To zero.
Standing up is hard work, and my knees tend to lock, so without the benefit of alcohol and defeated by the noise and shouting I went back to my room and slipped into something more comfortable.
Panel: Buffy Review. I'm a bit Buffy rusty, but I was surprised at how many episodes I recognised by name, and generally agreed with the panellists about what was quality and what was not.
Much as I wanted to see any or all bits of the next items (Sex and evolution; 2010 Trailers; Vampires are passe) I retired tired.
Friday
Workshop: Learn a fight choreography. I observed with interest, but some melancholy. I *miss* kung fu :-(
Opening Ceremony. Awkward and pointless, as they often are, but mercifully brief.
Panel: Parasites. a.k.a
drhoz does icky things with noodles. delicious_irony speaks of frightening things. Excellent. Scott Sigler did not have much to contribute.Art Show: Minded the art show for a bit. I really wish it wasn't necessary to remind people to not touch the art, eat all over the art, or photograph the art without the express permission of the artist. Or rather I wish I didn't *feel* it were necessary. I did designate a stray object The Thing You May Handle As Much As You Like, to help take the strain. I'm pretty sure I just contributed to the strain.
Not so many entries this year, but a huge number of plushy things. Loved the giant tarantula backpack. Excellent Tom Baker Dr Who portrait by
logansrogue. Was nice to see Brian C back with ancient fishies. I bid on one print of his that took my fancy but forgot to check on it and was outbid.GoH Speech: Scott Sigler. Unbowed by technological infidelities, Scott described his tortured path into the world of publishing. Reasonably amusing, and explains a lot about why it's been so hard to acquire his work until recently. Also explains the blank faces last year when he was announced as the GoH. Turns out it was sheer fluke that I'd heard of him at all.
Aussiecon promotion. Didn't make it, but was instead waylayed by and enjoyed a long and interesting chat with
jennyblackford. I'm not going to Melbourne anyway, so it's best if I don't know what I'm missing.Panel: Safe Spaces. On how we can build community awareness of the needs and wants of self and others. And more. The discussion was at times frustrating, but a goodly number of people turned up. Baby steps.
Blackout. Spent the next couple of hours fighting off, caving to, then struggling out of collapse. Bad stuff :-( But, managed to pull one out of the fire to get to...
Competition: Iron Brain, and clearly the highlight of the con for me. I was intrigued by the idea of the Iron Brain competition. Named in honour of the infamous Terracon Iron Stomach competition (if you don't know what that is, consider yourself fortunate), the goal of the Iron Brain was to seek the person most able to read aloud really really awful prose, without collapse. It was originally described to me as reading "with a straight face" and I didn't think I could manage that in a million years, but I wanted to take the challenge. The knowledge that the advanced rounds were rated R18+ only cemented my conviction that I'd fail.
We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
In fact, so cemented was my conviction that I came very close to not volunteering at all, but an empty chair stared me in the face and the magic words were uttered:
"Points for hand actions."
Ah. If hand actions were required then this was *not* about keeping a straight face; it was Ham. I like Ham. I pressed for details: Could I role my eyes? Yes. Could I smirk? Yes.
Yes
The trickiest part, and indeed the point on which most people were eliminated, was that the readers had to pronounce the words as written, typos and all. This was quite difficult at first, since reading is based on pattern recognition. The typos most likely to get through proofing are those which most closely resemble the shape of the correct spelling. In other words, they're hard to see. Still, it *is* possible to consciously fight off the urge to read by pattern matching, and this make it easier to spot the odd error. Unfortunately, this destroys your faith in real words: hilarity ensues.
Literally interpreting incorrect grammar and punctuation was also fun, although it's hard to verbally express some apostrophe errors.
We took turns reading passages of gawd-awful text. With hand actions, although I might have been the only one to get into that side of things. Sword and scorcery, Harry Potter slash, other things. When the pr0n came it wasn't nearly as nasty as I'd feared (although with a higher rate of WTF? than anticipated), but the rate of hand actions slowed a bit. I was shaking so much it was often hard to read from the page.
It came down to myself and Tim, a lad of steely nerves who seemed able to calmly recite anything put in front of him. He works in advertising, so is clearly accustomed to quantities of bull. And he's a boardgamer, which might help.
At some point I progressed from a terrified gibbering mess to a wildly theatrical and bloodthirsty gibbering mess, which seemed to go down well, for I won and then went back for more :-)
A monster was born. I had to stay up talking for another couple of hours to wind down sufficiently for sleep, so it was a very late night.
Saturday
Panel: No you can't have a flying car... Interesting discussion on the realities of getting new technology to the marketplace, featuring the joys of funding. My kind o' thing.
Outing: I think I went out at this point and located some plain steamed rice. I managed to complicate this task admirably.
Panel: NASA's Budget Proposal. NASA's recent budget changes were framed by the media as ZOMG THE DEATH OF SPACEFLIGHT, yet greeted with some enthusiasm by professionals of my acquaintance. Now I know why. A very interesting presentation. I'm a sucker for science funding stories it would seem. Ooh the excitement.
Interlude: collapse.
Xena retrospective: Caught the end of this and it was fun to see some old clips.
Panel With Me On It: The Blockbusters of Shame. I'd joked about spending this panel dissing Twlight, but that was a joke. Unfortunately because of my fatigue I spent waaaay too much time just incoherently saying how awful Twilight was. Bad me, but the discussion as a whole seemed to survive that, and some of the audience seemed genuinely shocked to hear that I own 64 McCaffreys.
Workshop: Rumble in the Prose. A workshop on writing fight scenes. I've always wanted to try writing a fight scene; it seems strange that my blog has never provided the opportunity, but there you go. However, I was not about to make my action writing debut under such conditions, so I simply observed. Always fun to watch others suffer for their art ;-)
Masquerade. By this point in the con I was already feeling more than a bit overexposed. Descending into the foyer with Husband in matching motion capture suits was probably not the best way to seek peace. There are photographs somewhere, and one day I might link to them. OK, here are some. We're the people in black covered in orange dots (the first three shots). More photos here.
Numbers were down this year although the quality continues to grow. The room was dressed nicely, but there was no structure to the evening which I found tiring. We're here: what now? The music was not me-dance-friendly, but I enjoyed talking to people (not so much the shouting part) and announcements were eventually made. The individual winner was obvious, but I'd forgotten about the Team division, so I was honestly surprised when we won as a pair.
Holy crap but I was tired.
Sunday-Monday
To follow.
