Someone to fall back on

Last night, Shawn had a volunteer gig at the Ramsey County Library in Shoreview. As longtime readers know, my wife really doesn't like to drive. She's licensed, but she's generally a nervous and timid driver. On top of that, Shawn has some PTSD from an accident that happened while she was pregnant with Mason. Thus she mostly avoids driving, outside of emergencies (though she did some while I was in DC at Capclave. Go, Shawn!)

Anyway, what this means that I tagged along to the event as taxi driver. Shawn was in her meeting with the Friends for an hour... and I was left alone like a kid in a candy store.

I brought home eleven manga. Like, my bag was literally stuffed with books.

I finished one already: Two Guys at the Vet Clinic / Doubutsu Byouin no Ofutari-san by Sinonome. It's a boys' love/yaoi about a one-sided crush between a veterinarian and his boss. I'd say it's nothing to write home about, but I'll end up writing all about it over on my manga review site which you can check out if that sort of stuff interests you: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

Okay, onward!

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Gaylaxicon, SUNDAY

There are a couple of things that I forgot to talk about on Saturday. One of the coolest things that happened on Saturday is that at the Murderbot panel I ran into a polycule that I'd met at the last ConFABulous. I instantly recognized them because they all wear matching rainbow masks, but also they're half the age of most of the people at our con. Plus, I feel like I would recognize them anywhere they all (there are at least four members of this polycule) because they played in a last minute Thirsty Sword Lesbians game that I threw together last ConFABulous when it was revealed to me that one of their number had come all the way from Chicago JUST to try playing this game (and when they arrived the sign-up was filled.) I still use a term that one of the players came up with for the future social media, which is "Blab" (as a Twitter/Insta/Facebook stand in.)

Anyway, I gave them my contact info and I hope they actually reach out. Three of the four are local and so they invited me to possibly come run a game with them at some point. I hope they actually do reach out. I liked the four of them quite a lot. 

So that was really cool. Plus, I finally got to meet pameladean 's partner Cameron.  She was deep in discussion with my friend Rachel Gold and their partner(? friend?) Stephanie, so I think we exchanged nothing more than a confused back and forth (because Rachel bought a copy of Cameron's book for me, but it wasn't clear who was paying and if the book had gone to me or Rachel.) Still, it was nice. I'm only sorry that Cameron wasn't feeling up for being on more panels. I would have loved to have showcased her and her work more. ConFABulous is less of the kind of con where writers go, but maybe since she'll have a new book out maybe we could consider if she'd make a good GoH (again, if she's up for such a thing.) ConFABulous really doesn't do GoHs, but at least Cameron is local so it's not like it would cost the con a lot.

Sunday, of course, is generally the low key day at most conventions. Anywhere else people are hungover, etc. I, myself, was crispy. That midnight performance meant I got only five hours of sleep. So, I was definitely feeling "Sunday at the Con" in a very traditional way.

I put several "not to miss" panels on early, in the hopes of catching any folks who weren't conned out by that point.  I really wanted to catch "Problematic Favs" at 10:30 AM, because it was a panel that David Lenander suggested and I had initially resisted writing up, in part because Greg Ketter was a GoH. Greg, for those of you who aren't from the Twin Cities and/or don't know, runs Dreamhaven Books & Comics. Dreamhaven was the literal mailing address for Neil Gaiman for many, many years--so much so that the Minnesota Book Awards assumed that Neil actually lived in Minneapolis (he didn't, at the time he was living in Wisconsin, which disqualified him for the award and I was at leat partly responsible for making that clear to the MN Book Awards folks. That, however, is a story for another time.) Lisa Freitag, Greg's wife, had told me at some point that Greg is still very much in denial and won't talk about Neil. So, I started to self-censor myself/the convention, but then I thought, "No. That's not cool." David L. clearly really needed to process some of this stuff, so probably that means a lot of our local community does, too. Also, so many of us in the fannish queer community, particularly trans folks, are still pissed at the active harm that JKR continues to do. So, I decided, no, let's have at it. But, to make it work, I had put naomikritzer in charge because I know that Naomi has the skillset (and the wherewithal) to actually shout someone down and cut off the ramblers--which a lot of people (including myself) often THINK they have, but which Naomi has actively demonstrated on other panels I've seen her on.

Turns out this was a good choice.  

Most of the discussion was high level--there were some real, meaningful confessions and feeling and advice, but, inevitably, someone wants to relitigate this or that. Naomi just wasn't having it. In fact, at one point the person she had to actively cut off was David L., and I'm not sure I'd've been able to do that since he's an actual friend of mine (and Naomi's, to be fair. Also, I hope David is okay and knows it was done out of love.) We also had another guy, who I later found out was also disruptive in the "Superman is WOKE and other Media Malarky" panel, who was apparently wandering back and forth between the two panels demanding to be caught up on what he'd missed while listening to the other one. 

Maybe not the best start to Sunday, but you can't say it wasn't high energy!  *makes awkward face*

Post that start to the day, a bunch of us hung around and debreifed in the little lounge area behind registration. This is where I got a chance to talk to one of our special guests, Blue Delliquanti (https://www.bluedelliquanti.com/  <--if you are at all a fan of graphic novels and don't know their work, here's my recommendation: GO READ THEM NOW.)  It was from Blue and Lee Brontide, however, that I found out that that one guy was bothering both panels. Apparently, the only panel that went off without a hitch during the first hour was "Gay Vikings," which is only hilarious because I heard from both Dax and Eleanor Arnason that they felt unprepared. Adam Stemple who moderated the panel said that they were both so knowledgable and prepared it was almost ridiculously smart. I'm sort of sad that I coudn't be in three places at once. 

I conspired with tallgeese to blow off my final panel of the con, "Ask a GM" in order to finish the Star Trek session we started on Saturday. This was another one of those probably-not-a-good-adult-decision moment for me, but I tried to mitigate it by warning Don K., one of my co-panelist that I was intending not to be there. I totally got the Disapproving Dad look from him, which normally I can't withstand, but the truth was I was so exhausted at this point I would not have made a good panelist. I probably should have explained it that way, but I didn't. Now I have to live with my guilt.

And while that sounds flippant, I do actually feel a guilty even now. I'd put myself on that panel so that there would be a woman GM to represent. I also know that several people were curious what I might have to say about GMing, so I feel like I let them down. 

But, God got me. I was, in fact, punished for my sins.

I decided to try to play a new character at the Star Trek game (a Vulcan doctor) and there was so little for the Chief Medical Officer to do in the third act of that game, that I literally threw her on a grenade at the end of the game just TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO. 

Despite that, I'd say it was, generally, a really good convention. It helps that I was able to recruit so many skilled panelists. However, I think that, should we do a Gaylaxicon again (and if I lose my mind an volunteer for the programming committee again) I would do a few things differently.

1. Three tracks of programming was a bit ambitious, I think. I mean, you can't know how many attendees you're going to get, but three tracks is probably best for conventions that are regularly pulling THOUSANDS, rather than hundreds, especially since our crowd was also dipursed into two tracks of gaming as well. So, we essentially had five tracks of programming (if you count the games) and that just split the numbers too much. So, even the most popular panels weren't filling the rooms as much as I'd've liked. Maybe two tracks going forward? Two + gaming, at any rate.
2. The other really big mistake of mine was my assumption that someone else would've alerted Dreamhaven to the names of our attending professionals. I heard through the grapevine that JM Lee left the convention early (and irritated) because he discovered that none of his books were available in the dealer's room. I will make it a point to--as EARLY as possible--start feeding any book dealers a list of people's books to have on hand and/or alerting authors that they should bring their own books to sell at the signing tables. Joey (JM) was a really early recruit of mine (and he's trad published), so I can see why he was shocked not to see any of this books available. I will complain here, only breifly, that Greg is terrible about answering emails (as is Lisa). I would have had to make a regular DRIVE to Dreamhaven to physically talk to someone in the store, but I should have done it, anyway.
3. Then, obviously, as much previously discussed, I think the new rule going forward (again, if there is a forward) is no paneling after 7:00 pm. We just don't stay up that late. People can find their own fun the games room if they're late nighters, I guess. Midnight slash panel? Nope, "After dinner hour slash," is more like it.
4. Plan an actual lunch break for panelists. That way there's no way to accidentally (which I did to both Haddayr and Naomi) book someone over a period when they should go get a food. I had initially thought that the hotel restaurant would mitigate this since we had half hour passing time between panels, but it turned out they were closed at a time when someone could have popped down and grabbed a sandwich to go or whatever.
5. People really liked that half-hour passing time, though. So, that's a keeper.

Obviously, there were a number of things that I heard compliments about, regarding programming. Adam could not get over the quality of the topics and how amazing his fellow panelists were. I got this note from a lot of people, actually, so that made me feel pretty good. The other comment I heard a lot was that people were having trouble deciding among the topics in any given hour because they were all interesting. Again, I'll take that as a win, actually (though you could read it another way, I suppose. Depending on your preference for these kinds of conventions. There are people who like one-track paneling for a reason.) 

I don't know a lot about how the other departments did. Obviously, I participated in gaming, which, for me went well.  I think the banquet was, at least, a financial success. There were a ton of people there. I talked about some of the issues with the comedy show, but comedy is always a weird one for conventions as far as I'm concerned since, as I noted, humor can so easily fall flat with us neuro-spicy nerd types. The dealer's room seemed full and active, which is good, though tallgeese noted with some shock that we didn't seem to have a single vendor selling dice. Two of the community tables were perpetually empty: the Dungeons, Dragons & Drinks folks seemed to only show up long enough to refresh their free dice packages and Free Mom Hugs seemed entirely AWOL every time I passed their table, which was kind of weird. Possibly both groups thought we were a bigger con? I don't know what happened there.

But, yeah, otherwise, I felt it went off well.