pedanther

So, how about that coronavirus, huh?

This weekend was going to be a very busy one for the band, with a performance at the monthly markets this morning and the rest of the weekend devoted to a series of workshops with a visiting conductor to get us into shape for the Nationals next month. Then the Nationals got cancelled because coronavirus, and then the markets got cancelled because coronavirus. So it's been a much more relaxed weekend than I was anticipating.

Swancon has also been cancelled because coronavirus. This has brought me to a realisation: for years, I've spent every Easter weekend at either Swancon or the Nationals, and now they're both off the table. Unless I come up with a plan quickly, I may be obliged to (dramatic musical sting) spend Easter with my family.

In more cheerful coronavirus cancellation related news, Broadway's Laura Benanti has created a Twitter thread for students whose school musicals have been cancelled to post bits of their performances. The performances themselves are great, and many of the stories are charming, and the thread itself is generating a few interesting moments of its own (like somebody posting a video of their school production of Matilda and getting an encouraging comment from someone who's played Matilda professionally). (via rthstewart)

I wasn't sure I'd go to Swancon this year, but within a few minutes of arriving at the opening sundowner I knew I'd made the right decision to come. Swancon is as much about the people as the events for me, and I've had Swancons in the past where I've had a good time because of the people even if the programme was a bit thin and I had no idea who the guest of honor was.

Well, the programme was a bit thin, and I had no idea who Charlie Jane Anders was before she was announced last year as this year's guest of honor, but I had a good time. (And, for the record, Charlie Jane Anders' new novel is amazing, and also she turned out to be one of the people because of whom I had a good time.)

At times, it felt less like I was at a convention and more like I was on holiday in Fremantle coincidentally at the same time as a bunch of people I knew and other interesting people I enjoyed meeting. I did make it to a few of the panels, but often on the basis of who was on the panel, so they were an extension of the running-into-interesting-people thing.

I went to the Doctor Who panel this year. I often don't bother, because in my experience trying to fit the entire year's episodes into a one hour panel doesn't lend itself to meaty discussion of any particular issue: it's name an episode, everybody quickly mentions what they liked about it, on to the next episode. But that turned out to be just what I needed this year, and I left feeling more optimistic about giving Chibnall and co a chance to show in their second season what they can do now they've had time to find their feet. I also learned, which perhaps I should have realised sooner, that the meaty discussion happens after the scheduled panel is over, when everybody from the panel and audience who doesn't have anywhere they need to be hangs out in the corridor discussing the bits they didn't get to cover earlier.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to Swancon next year. Next year's committee seem like they're on the ball, and I expect I'd enjoy hanging out with people even if the programme doesn't come together -- but they're holding it on the Anzac Day long weekend instead of Easter, and I have commitments at home on Anzac Day. (At least, I will have commitments at home on Anzac Day if I'm still in the brass band then; there's a non-zero possibility that by then I'll have become completely fed up with the way the band is being run these days and quit.) And also next year is the New Zealand Worldcon which I'm considering going to, and I'm not sure if I have the resources to do a Worldcon and a Swancon in the same year. On the other hand, if I am still in the band this time next year, we'll probably be going to the Nationals on the Easter weekend, so it would be possible for me to do the Nationals and Swancon in the same year for once.

1. I went to Swancon again this year, and had a good time. Based on past history, the odds are not good that I'll do a detailed write-up.

One memorable event was a discussion about gender-swapping -- examples of it being done such as the recent Ghostbusters movie, thoughts about the opportunities and pitfalls, and so on -- where there was an artist in the room who took suggestions for a series of sketches of characters people would like to see gender-swapped, with a camera set up so we could all watch the sketch taking shape while the discussion went on. The people whose suggestions were accepted got to keep the resulting sketch at the end if they wanted. I suggested "female Asian Iron Fist", which sprang to mind because the shortcomings of the Iron Fist TV series had been something of a recurring conversation topic at the convention, and without intially intending to keep the sketch. (For one thing, they were on quite large pieces of paper that looked like they'd be trouble to get home in my luggage unwrinkled.) I changed my mind when I saw the finished sketch, though; this is a character I would definitely read or watch a series about. I managed to get the sketch home mostly unscathed, too; now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.

Games I played included Original Flavour Fluxx, Pandemic, Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt Skullfyrez (which I enjoyed the mechanics of but found the theme/story off-putting), Joking Hazard, Tsuro of the Seas, Hamsterolle, and King of Tokyo. And also, on the same trip but not actually at the convention, Fury of Dracula; I played Dracula, partly because I figured that would reduce the amount of explanations required to the novice players but mostly because it was my copy of the game so I could be Dracula if I wanted.


2. The British Museum's contribution to International Tabletop Day is a video in which Dr Irving Finkel, the museum's curator of cuneiform artifacts, demonstrates one of the oldest board games in recorded history, the rules for which he reconstructed from one of the tablets in his collection. His opponent is Youtube-based science communicator Tom Scott.


3. As part of my preparation for the Star Wars Rolling Remix, of which I have previously written, I rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy all the way through for the first time in years. I was struck by how young the characters are in the first one, compared to my memory of them (which is mostly of how they end up in Return of the Jedi). Han, and Luke -- not so much Leia, though I think that's down to her not being allowed to grow up as much as the men, so she ended up much closer to her beginning -- but the one that really surprised me was Darth Vader. I had a fixed mental image of him as being a sort of looming menace with a lot of ponderous gravitas, but that's really something he grows into over the trilogy; in the first movie, he has a lot more extraneous movement, and talks more rapidly too. (And I think I owe whoever played Vader in Rogue One an apology for thinking his body language was wrong; it was a lot closer to Vader-at-that-age than I'd remembered.)


4. A while back I read A Shilling for Candles, the first mystery novel to be published under the byline of Josephine Tey. I started it mainly out of a sense of historical curiosity -- it inspired a film by Alfred Hitchcock, and Tey went on to write a couple of novels that I rather liked (although less so on re-reading them and becoming more aware of the author's prejudices) -- but it turned out to have an unexpected point of interest. The action takes place mainly in Devon, in and around the (I'm guessing fictional) town of Westover -- which is also the setting of Brat Farrar, my favourite of Tey's later novels.


5. I finally got around to reading The Collected Kagan, Baen's ebook edition of Janet Kagan's short stories. The quality is somewhat variable, as it's a collection aiming for comprehensiveness, rather than a best-of, but there are some great stories in there. (Eventually; for some reason, the compiler decided to lead off with some of the weaker stories, and I worry that, should anyone who isn't already a Kagan fan happen to give the book a try, they'll give up before getting to the good stuff.) For fans of her science fiction novels, I particularly recommend "Christmas Wingding", "Winging It", "Fighting Words", and "The Nutcracker Coup", which are in a similar mode to the novels. (Not to mention "How First Woman Stole Language from tuli-tuli the Beast", which is actual backstory for one of the novels.) I also highly recommend "Naked Wish-Fulfillment", which is a contemporary fantasy story and great in a completely different way.

1. When I saw the trailer for Home, the new DreamWorks movie inspired by The True Meaning of Smekday, I said to myself: "This looks like it's going to be fun and entertaining in a way that's almost completely different from the book." In this, I was basically correct. And I think that was probably the right decision by the filmmakers; The True Meaning of Smekday was such a thing in itself that I don't know if it could have been successfully translated to film, so much better to look at it as a source of inspiration for a good movie that is its own thing.

(Also, I was amused that, although they left out the running gag about the aliens giving themselves inappropriate human-type names, so we don't get J.Lo the Boov, they gave it a tip of the hat by casting J.Lo the human as the heroine's mom.)


2. As if I didn't have enough TV to catch up on (which reminds me: must catch up on Agents of SHIELD), the premiere of Thunderbirds Are Go was on at a time I could actually watch it, so now I'm following that as well. They've done a slightly odd thing where instead of going the usual reboot route and starting from the beginning again, they've actually advanced a few years from the point where the original series ended, so it's kind of like a sequel as well as a reboot, but because they've tweaked the setting and most of the characters it's a sequel to a version of the original series that never actually existed. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. I'm also not sure what to make of the fact that I get a swell of nostalgia every time the theme music plays, considering I never actually watched the original series.


3. I've been having ups and downs with HabitRPG lately. I got my first Perfect Day (completed all the habits on the daily recurring habits list) on the day before Swancon, though admittedly only because I'd disabled the habits I couldn't do while I was away from home, and those included most of the ones I really struggle with. (I then proceeded to blow the "Go to bed at a sensible time" habit every day of Swancon, so no more Perfect Days for me.) On the other hand, being away for a week threw me off my stride and I died twice in my first week back, after having managed to avoid dying at all up until then. Fortunately, dying in HabitRPG isn't too terribly painful - they don't want you to stop using HabitRPG, after all.


4. I have not yet given up on writing a proper post about what I did at Swancon. (I tried writing them as I went this year, but about halfway through the first full day I got too busy enjoying myself to waste time writing about it.)


5. I have not yet given up on writing a proper post about games I played at Swancon and on International Tabletop Day.

1. So, the National Band Championships? To our utter, utter astonishment, we won our division, and are now the Australian D Grade Champions. Discussions are underway about the practicality of going to next year's championships (which will have returned to the far side of the continent) to defend the title.


2. My hotel room number for the weekend (assigned entirely without any input from myself) was 42.


3. I got to more of Swancon than I'd feared, if less than I'd hoped (and in the process usefully expanded my working knowledge of the city's public transport options). I enjoyed what I got to, and caught up with the usual suspects, including leecetheartist and rdmasters, who as usual introduced me to several games I was not previously familiar with. (I particularly liked Winter Tales, where the movement of the pieces on the board is just the skeleton of the game, and the emphasis is on collaboratively spinning a story about what the characters represented by the pieces are up to. I like collaborative storytelling. Other games I was introduced to included King of Tokyo, a silly but fun game in which giant monsters slug it out for the chance to trash Japan, and Roll Through the Ages, which had a bit too much number-crunching and not enough story for my taste.)

The guests at next year's Swancon are to include Tamora Pierce and Isobel Carmody.


4. I have a new gadget, a Kobo ebook reader. I haven't really used it much yet, because when I'm at home I prefer to make inroads on the enormous pile of unread dead-tree books in my living room, and save the ebooks for when I'm travelling. (I had intended to put it to work on the trip back, but it turned out I couldn't actually activate it and load it up until I got home.)


5. Too many people dying lately. I particularly regret the loss of Richard Griffiths, who played one of my favourite fictional detectives, Henry Crabbe, in the TV series Pie in the Sky. If that doesn't ring a bell, his film credits include wicked uncles in both Withnail and I and the Harry Potter series. He also had a noteworthy stage career. By all accounts he was a really nice guy, and will be missed.

1. I went to Swancon 2012 (Doomcon) last month. I have not yet given up on writing a proper post about that.

2. What I've Been Reading Lately: The Idylls of the Queen, by Phyllis Ann Karr, is a murder mystery set in the court of King Arthur. One of the Knights of the Round Table drops dead at a dinner hosted by Queen Guinevere, a grieving kinsman accuses Guinevere, and it's up to Sir Kay to figure out who really did it and why. In the process of uncovering the murderer's motive, he also solves an earlier murder that everybody thought had been solved already. One of the big strengths of the book is the well-drawn and faceted characters. Which is no mean feat: my enduring impression of the Morte d'Arthur is of a succession of arbitrarily strange events that often left me wondering what on earth any of the people involved thought they were doing; this book offers a fairly convincing set of answers. And Kay's traditional reputation for cowardice and boorishness is here largely due to an entirely understandable tendency to roll his eyes at the ridiculous scrapes his fellow knights always get into when they go questing. I was also particularly impressed by Karr's version of Mordred.

3. I know there's at least one person on my friendslist who'd like to see a picture of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.

4. Likewise, there's at least one person on my friendslist who does those exchanges where you create an illustration inspired by someone else's fic, or a fic inspired by someone else's illustration, so I thought I'd point this out: in the IF Cover Stories minicomp, artists are being invited to offer images which will be used to inspire interactive fiction games.

5. I wrote the first 4 of these things two weeks ago, put it aside until I thought of a 5th, and my brain promptly checked it off as written. (Almost the same thing as "posted", right?) It should therefore be noted that the art deadline for Cover Stories, mentioned in point 4, is... um... today. Whoops. This is obviously why I usually put off writing posts until just before I post them.

I am going to Swancon. I may be some time.

It doesn't look like I'm going to find time to do a detailed Swancon report, so I should at least note some of the things I'd intended to write about:

* What I read on the train to Perth
* What I failed to avoid watching on the train to Perth
* My cunning plan to have fewer books at the end of the convention than at the beginning, and what became of it
* I had a picture in the art show (a personal first)
* I was on a panel (another personal first)
* It was a panel about why you should all be reading Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden Universe series
* Richard Morgan's guest of honour speech
* The King of the Copper Mountains
* Grant Watson's presentation on Walt Disney's animated feature films
* Why I went to the book launch for Jenny Blackford's The Priestess and the Slave, which I'd thought I wasn't interested in
* It wasn't because of the free ouzo
* Games I played for the first time (including Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game (we humans won, which I gather is not usual), Wings of War (I was the second pilot to shoot someone down, and the third to be shot down) and Rock Band)
* Games I played for the second time (Swancon Quidditch)
* Games I didn't get to play, but wanted to (drhoz's Cthulhu in Hollywood roleplaying scenario)

Off to Perth for Swancon tomorrow. No internet access while I'm there, so I'll be even quieter than usual (and fall even further behind on reading my friendslist).

I've decided to enter the Art Show this year, with a picture derived from the series of bizarre Things I sketched for DrawMo last year, with titles like "The next big Thing", "A Thing of the past", and "The simple Things in life are often the best". I couldn't settle on which one I liked most, so I compiled five of them together and called it "A few of my favourite Things". Now I'm alternating between paranoia that it'll get destroyed on the trip and paranoia that it'll survive and everybody will hate it, but on the whole I'm feeling cautiously optimistic and glad I'm trying something new.


In other news, my favourite clue from a cryptic crossword I did yesterday:
Worries owls when they try to fix problems (15)