Kneel before the Bitchpants!
So this past weekend, Lindsay and I went to Archon. It’s a big (something like 2500 people) annual sci-fi/fantasy/anime/etc. convention in St. Louis. I’d found out about it from becka_kitty at Shipwrecked, and upon relaying it to Lindsay, she got really excited about it.
So after I got out of class last Thursday, I ran home, grabbed the rest of my stuff, and left town. To minimize that turnaround time, I already had most of my stuff in the car with me, I just needed to get some refrigerated munchies, and the perpetual last-minute odds and ends. I’d also been wearing the Utilikilt all day, to avoid having to change later, which led to me getting mentioned in the Free For All yesterday, with this line: “So I just saw my anatomy TA walking through the Underground wearing a kilt. Do I go to class or run?”
Granted, that doesn’t sound like it’s intended to be complimentary, but I mentioned it yesterday in both of my classes, saying that I had no idea who it was, and I wasn’t asking, but I thought it was really funny.
Anyway, back to Archon. Or at least the trip there. We got in at about 11 Thursday night, unloaded the car, and headed over to the conference center to poke around a bit. Not much going on yet, it was kinda the lull in between the end of organized activities and the beginning of the parties. But we met up with becka_kitty, who’d been around earlier in the day (and who was already pretty drunk), who led us around and introduced us to some people, before we all retired to the room to crash.
The next couple days were kind of a blur, and no, that’s not just the alcohol talking. The panel discussions were generally nothing worth mentioning, with the major exception being the Dead Gamers’ Society, which was largely just a brainstorming session for the sake of the brainstorming, but which was really interesting for the conversation it generated anyway. We came up with lists of games that we liked, but could never get anyone to play, games that should never have been made, games that we’d like to see made, formulaic plots in various sci-fi (and remotely related) series, among others.
I was specifically disappointed in the one entitled something like, “Seeing humans through an alien’s eyes”. About the only thing that made this one remotely worthwhile was the fact that there were a lot of people who were a lot more widely read than I was. It ended up being another brainstorming session of ways in which something could be different (to see how an alien would see us, we have to know what its perspective would be - if the alien is from a high gravity world, we’d look spindly and fragile, but we’d look blocky and robust to someone from a low-g world), usually superficial, and usually still bounded by human preconceptions.
At one point, I did call people on their fundamental biological assumptions, citing the conceit that scientists knew where life could and couldn’t exist, only to go look at those unlivable areas and go, “Oh. Well, then.” The main example that everyone knows about is the deep-sea geothermal vents, but other examples include swimming around in stomach acids, deep underground (no sunlight for primary production), and on the cooling rods of nuclear reactors. Which brings me back to another one of my rants, applicable to a surprising variety of subjects, that just because things happened to occur a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the only way it could have occurred. But people tend to think that things happened a certain way because they had to, because there was no other option. Which just shows how little imagination they have.
More of a workshop than a panel, we also attended a few sessions on historical swordfighting, one on rapier, one on some kind of heavy slashing sword, and one on an intermediate cut-and-thrust sword.
One of the highlights was the game I played to try out the Quick Ass Game System (QAGS, by Hex Games). I was given an elf character, and it had in the equipment section on its sheet “juggling balls”, so of course, I got mine out and started playing with them. I got the cleric to play with my balls as well, which caused the sky to cloud over, and a crash of thunder resounded. Thereafter, any mention of balls would make him shudder.
I started out with the idea of making my character (Stinkdrop Skunkfriend, only part of which was made up, the rest was actually rolled) ambiguous, both in his own gender and his orientation (a la Vaarsuvius of the Order of the Stick), but that didn’t hold. He very quickly went flaming. I played it up, and had a hell of a lot of fun with it. Lines like, “I don’t trust him. The embroidery on his eyepatch totally clashed with the feather in his hat!” Another, while in the middle of a battle with the Pigotaur (Porky Pig) in his lair (decorated like in the old cartoons), he said that he just wanted to live a tasteful life in peace, “You call this tasteful? You deserve to die!”
As the adventure continued, I picked up various bits of treasure, including a bagpipe, tambourine, and a pair of Bitchpants, which I promptly put on. (I asked if they were like assless chaps, but no, they were just polyester.) And I saw it, the Bitchpants were actually written up in the game book. Whenever the person wearing them said “bitchpants”, everyone around had to make what amounted to a Will save to avoid falling over laughing. The cleric prompted me to say it while fighting the Pigotaur, to make him fall over laughing, but he made his save. Nobody else did, and the idea backfired, but he got points for it anyway.
For the rest of the duration of the convention, for those people and anyone else associated, I was known as Bitchpants. Even when I was wearing a kilt.
Lindsay and I both picked up a hell of a lot of books, mostly used and cheap. I’ve nearly doubled my Heinlein collection, and added a couple Steven Brust that I hadn’t managed to acquire yet.
The other major acquisition was a replacement glass ball. My previous one disappeared with the rest of my juggling gear, and when I went looking for a new one, the only glass balls the place had in stock had globes engraved on them, which I really didn’t like, plus they were too small. I found a dealer at Archon, however, that had the large (80mm) plain glass balls, and picked one up.
Another replacement from that theft was a complete set of Munchkin cards, including all of the expansions. That loss really hurt, and I’m relieved now to have them again.
That’s all I can think of now. Definitely interested in returning to other similar events in the future.
So after I got out of class last Thursday, I ran home, grabbed the rest of my stuff, and left town. To minimize that turnaround time, I already had most of my stuff in the car with me, I just needed to get some refrigerated munchies, and the perpetual last-minute odds and ends. I’d also been wearing the Utilikilt all day, to avoid having to change later, which led to me getting mentioned in the Free For All yesterday, with this line: “So I just saw my anatomy TA walking through the Underground wearing a kilt. Do I go to class or run?”
Granted, that doesn’t sound like it’s intended to be complimentary, but I mentioned it yesterday in both of my classes, saying that I had no idea who it was, and I wasn’t asking, but I thought it was really funny.
Anyway, back to Archon. Or at least the trip there. We got in at about 11 Thursday night, unloaded the car, and headed over to the conference center to poke around a bit. Not much going on yet, it was kinda the lull in between the end of organized activities and the beginning of the parties. But we met up with becka_kitty, who’d been around earlier in the day (and who was already pretty drunk), who led us around and introduced us to some people, before we all retired to the room to crash.
The next couple days were kind of a blur, and no, that’s not just the alcohol talking. The panel discussions were generally nothing worth mentioning, with the major exception being the Dead Gamers’ Society, which was largely just a brainstorming session for the sake of the brainstorming, but which was really interesting for the conversation it generated anyway. We came up with lists of games that we liked, but could never get anyone to play, games that should never have been made, games that we’d like to see made, formulaic plots in various sci-fi (and remotely related) series, among others.
I was specifically disappointed in the one entitled something like, “Seeing humans through an alien’s eyes”. About the only thing that made this one remotely worthwhile was the fact that there were a lot of people who were a lot more widely read than I was. It ended up being another brainstorming session of ways in which something could be different (to see how an alien would see us, we have to know what its perspective would be - if the alien is from a high gravity world, we’d look spindly and fragile, but we’d look blocky and robust to someone from a low-g world), usually superficial, and usually still bounded by human preconceptions.
At one point, I did call people on their fundamental biological assumptions, citing the conceit that scientists knew where life could and couldn’t exist, only to go look at those unlivable areas and go, “Oh. Well, then.” The main example that everyone knows about is the deep-sea geothermal vents, but other examples include swimming around in stomach acids, deep underground (no sunlight for primary production), and on the cooling rods of nuclear reactors. Which brings me back to another one of my rants, applicable to a surprising variety of subjects, that just because things happened to occur a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the only way it could have occurred. But people tend to think that things happened a certain way because they had to, because there was no other option. Which just shows how little imagination they have.
More of a workshop than a panel, we also attended a few sessions on historical swordfighting, one on rapier, one on some kind of heavy slashing sword, and one on an intermediate cut-and-thrust sword.
One of the highlights was the game I played to try out the Quick Ass Game System (QAGS, by Hex Games). I was given an elf character, and it had in the equipment section on its sheet “juggling balls”, so of course, I got mine out and started playing with them. I got the cleric to play with my balls as well, which caused the sky to cloud over, and a crash of thunder resounded. Thereafter, any mention of balls would make him shudder.
I started out with the idea of making my character (Stinkdrop Skunkfriend, only part of which was made up, the rest was actually rolled) ambiguous, both in his own gender and his orientation (a la Vaarsuvius of the Order of the Stick), but that didn’t hold. He very quickly went flaming. I played it up, and had a hell of a lot of fun with it. Lines like, “I don’t trust him. The embroidery on his eyepatch totally clashed with the feather in his hat!” Another, while in the middle of a battle with the Pigotaur (Porky Pig) in his lair (decorated like in the old cartoons), he said that he just wanted to live a tasteful life in peace, “You call this tasteful? You deserve to die!”
As the adventure continued, I picked up various bits of treasure, including a bagpipe, tambourine, and a pair of Bitchpants, which I promptly put on. (I asked if they were like assless chaps, but no, they were just polyester.) And I saw it, the Bitchpants were actually written up in the game book. Whenever the person wearing them said “bitchpants”, everyone around had to make what amounted to a Will save to avoid falling over laughing. The cleric prompted me to say it while fighting the Pigotaur, to make him fall over laughing, but he made his save. Nobody else did, and the idea backfired, but he got points for it anyway.
For the rest of the duration of the convention, for those people and anyone else associated, I was known as Bitchpants. Even when I was wearing a kilt.
Lindsay and I both picked up a hell of a lot of books, mostly used and cheap. I’ve nearly doubled my Heinlein collection, and added a couple Steven Brust that I hadn’t managed to acquire yet.
The other major acquisition was a replacement glass ball. My previous one disappeared with the rest of my juggling gear, and when I went looking for a new one, the only glass balls the place had in stock had globes engraved on them, which I really didn’t like, plus they were too small. I found a dealer at Archon, however, that had the large (80mm) plain glass balls, and picked one up.
Another replacement from that theft was a complete set of Munchkin cards, including all of the expansions. That loss really hurt, and I’m relieved now to have them again.
That’s all I can think of now. Definitely interested in returning to other similar events in the future.