(no subject)

[morganmuffle]

So... Nine Worlds? I had a fantastic, if completely exhausting, time and came away with quite a few books but even more book recs.

There were some ups and downs (I was very sad I didn't get into Laurie Penny's panel, it WAS disturbing that the whole of the African Speculative Panel was white even if they couldn't help that Tade Thompson had had a car crash (he's alright) and I generally disagreed with quite a lot of the Historical Fiction/RPF panel but they left hardly any time for questions and... well yes. I had issues with that panel. OH also with the Slash & Feminism panel *sighs* a little too much taken for granted and assumed and if you've never read any MPreg fiction then don't go on to explain what it's all like...)

But that last paragraph aside it was mostly ups including:

• ALL THE GIN *coughs* I went to a gin tasting and pretty much liked all of it but it was nice to discover just how much more I like gin with just water than with tonic (except for a few specific gins). ALSO I liked Hendricks a lot but I also very much enjoyed the £10 bottle of Oliver Cromwell from Aldi which is a great discovery AND we got to be amongst the very first people to ever try the brand new Burleigh's London Dry Gin (tastes a bit like Dandelion & Burdock? It was definitely different). Worryingly the other thing I discovered I very much liked was the gin made from Brussel Sprouts... but you see it tasted of absinthe (or at least of aniseed).
  
• Dancing at BiFrost (even if they played the actual Doctor Who theme not Doctorin' The TARDIS) because we DID get to dance to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme tune <3
  
• Watching/Playing Slash even though I think we weren't entirely sticking to the rules there were definitely some interesting pairings invented along the way and some even had backstory.
  
• The incredibly detailed archaeological expedition to the Argonath (and even more interestingly the Mines of Moria) that H (Helena?) Gruenefeld imagined/described. I absolutely love treating the history of fictional places as real and she's RIGHT nearly 1000 years of Orcs inhabiting the mines should leave you SOME idea of their culture & day to day life.
  
• Learning about how Astronomy & Photography have challenged each other throughout their respective histories. If you ever get to hear him speak Dr Marek Kukula is absolutely fascinating (and also very much one of us- later he admitted that all the astronomers at the Royal Observatory got drunk and went to see Armageddon and agreed that they'd pick Bruce Willis to send in a similar RL situation *g*)
  
• The fanvid show... or rather the slightly hysterical bit at the start of the fanvid show when everytime the lights were switched off they came back on (anti-fandom poltergeist?) before we realised the switch to separate the lighting tracks in the different rooms hadn't been switched off *g* The porn writers agreed to write in the dark if we could be a bit quieter.
  
• The talk by centrumlumina on her demographics of fanfiction survey. I haven't stopped thinking about it since- there were many flaws which she herself pointed out but it's a fascinating piece of research and needs doing properly at some point (she wasn't convinced by the various audience members who told her to write a PhD on it, especially as she's a physicist *g*) If you haven't before then you should really read through her AO3 census tag!
  
• Finishing the weekend with the Science of Afternoon Tea on the Steampunk track was the perfect ending for me- science and tea and the smell of freshly baked scones! The only way it could have been better is if we'd been allowed to eat the scones!.

Also of course there were all the lovely people I saw several of whom I'd failed to realise were going at all and one or two of whom I failed to recognise in their super cosplay outfits /o\

And now I am totally ready for LonCon... or not ready at all. One of those two things. *does not panic*