What we need now is a giant, orange, hedgehog.
Ye gods, just barely in under the month-without-updates line. But there were reasons. Those reasons were Swancon.
Thanks to our decisions that we were going to meet the theme of "Chronopolis - The City of Time" at this year’s con by dressing as the female cast of Chrono Trigger, our costumes were always doomed to take a lot of work. I’m not sure I initially appreciated just how much. The character I opted to dress as (Marle) wears a fairly simple outfit, but a *lot* of gold jewelery, all of which had to be made from scratch in a procedure which would eventually require two large sheets of black cardboard, three packets of gold foil and one full can of spray adhesive. And that’s not counting the pendant or the hair piece. Or the tricky nature of the lining around the edge of the top, or...
In short, a big job. Factor in a lot of last minute changes to the SF comp stories, a few jobs for work, several uni assignments and all those other random odds and ends that pop up when you’re busy; and you start to realise why assuming that I was over the worst of the work by my last post was not actually a very good assumption. Since I’m not a natural born blogger, this is the point where little things like LJ posts start to fall off the back of the truck. And my site? Don’t even ask about my site. Two and a half months since the last update? You must be hallucinating.
Swancon 2004 was, without a doubt, the best I have ever attended.
Half the fun of any con will always be the chance to hang out with a bunch of other fans for a few days; a lot of whom you hardly even see outside of a convention. (Which when you think about it should probably take a lot of pressure off the organisers. Reliable authorities assure me it doesn’t.) This years program, however, was not without its own share of highlights. Friday’s weaponry panel could easily have made Con Highlight in its own right (informative, very cool and hilariously funny all in one; and with more shiny, pointy, sharp things than you could poke an futuristic, button-operated katana at). Then there was the Fan Eye for the Mundane Guy panel (no description necessary), and a number of interesting writing related ones. So right away this con is off to a great start.
Saturday, cut to the awards ceremony, where not only did phred_has_sonar take the Tin Duck for Best Fan or Unpaid Work (and against some tough competition too) but I came runner up in the Amateur SF Competition!!
I would rant further about how very cool this is, but on second thoughts, I may just let the exclamation marks speak for themselves.
I entered two stories; and that was as much to prove to myself I could have something written by the deadline as anything else; but something I noticed well before the con from those I’d asked to read them was a very clear division over which was better. Not that many people, sure, but it was a perfectly even split each way. So while I had no real idea of whether I had any serious chance at winning at that point, we figured at least if I did, we’d finally get the matter resolved.
The prize was awarded to both stories. Somewhere underneath being thrilled, I am much amused.
Sunday was the Masquerade day. Despite requiring modifications practically right up to the last minute and far too much time and fuss on hairspray, the costumes came out well enough to be worth all the effort. I strongly suspect over 90% of all photos I appear in this year will come out of the Masquerade - many, many were taken. As ever, the night itself was great fun: other costumes to gawk at, the discovery that my clothes turn blue under UV lights (pleasingly appropriate given that Marle’s clothes look blue on the sprites in the actual game, despite being white in the official art used to design it) and a few good songs played, not to mention an excuse to dance a lot and point a crossbow at people. The only minor disappointment was the CT characters not being recognised much.
All that aside, if I had to choose just one thing that made this con memorable, it would probably have to be getting to know the guest of honour (who, just for the record, turned out to be a really awesome guy). We wound up getting a lot of opportunities to talk to him over the weekend, during which period he even found time to read and give feedback on a couple of stories by me and jaseroque - something that really impressed us considering how busy even non- guests of honour usually are during con-time. Sure hope we manage to keep in touch.
On one final note, this years con came virtually angst-free.
And now I’ll shut up. Possibly for another month or two.
Thanks to our decisions that we were going to meet the theme of "Chronopolis - The City of Time" at this year’s con by dressing as the female cast of Chrono Trigger, our costumes were always doomed to take a lot of work. I’m not sure I initially appreciated just how much. The character I opted to dress as (Marle) wears a fairly simple outfit, but a *lot* of gold jewelery, all of which had to be made from scratch in a procedure which would eventually require two large sheets of black cardboard, three packets of gold foil and one full can of spray adhesive. And that’s not counting the pendant or the hair piece. Or the tricky nature of the lining around the edge of the top, or...
In short, a big job. Factor in a lot of last minute changes to the SF comp stories, a few jobs for work, several uni assignments and all those other random odds and ends that pop up when you’re busy; and you start to realise why assuming that I was over the worst of the work by my last post was not actually a very good assumption. Since I’m not a natural born blogger, this is the point where little things like LJ posts start to fall off the back of the truck. And my site? Don’t even ask about my site. Two and a half months since the last update? You must be hallucinating.
Swancon 2004 was, without a doubt, the best I have ever attended.
Half the fun of any con will always be the chance to hang out with a bunch of other fans for a few days; a lot of whom you hardly even see outside of a convention. (Which when you think about it should probably take a lot of pressure off the organisers. Reliable authorities assure me it doesn’t.) This years program, however, was not without its own share of highlights. Friday’s weaponry panel could easily have made Con Highlight in its own right (informative, very cool and hilariously funny all in one; and with more shiny, pointy, sharp things than you could poke an futuristic, button-operated katana at). Then there was the Fan Eye for the Mundane Guy panel (no description necessary), and a number of interesting writing related ones. So right away this con is off to a great start.
Saturday, cut to the awards ceremony, where not only did phred_has_sonar take the Tin Duck for Best Fan or Unpaid Work (and against some tough competition too) but I came runner up in the Amateur SF Competition!!
I would rant further about how very cool this is, but on second thoughts, I may just let the exclamation marks speak for themselves.
I entered two stories; and that was as much to prove to myself I could have something written by the deadline as anything else; but something I noticed well before the con from those I’d asked to read them was a very clear division over which was better. Not that many people, sure, but it was a perfectly even split each way. So while I had no real idea of whether I had any serious chance at winning at that point, we figured at least if I did, we’d finally get the matter resolved.
The prize was awarded to both stories. Somewhere underneath being thrilled, I am much amused.
Sunday was the Masquerade day. Despite requiring modifications practically right up to the last minute and far too much time and fuss on hairspray, the costumes came out well enough to be worth all the effort. I strongly suspect over 90% of all photos I appear in this year will come out of the Masquerade - many, many were taken. As ever, the night itself was great fun: other costumes to gawk at, the discovery that my clothes turn blue under UV lights (pleasingly appropriate given that Marle’s clothes look blue on the sprites in the actual game, despite being white in the official art used to design it) and a few good songs played, not to mention an excuse to dance a lot and point a crossbow at people. The only minor disappointment was the CT characters not being recognised much.
All that aside, if I had to choose just one thing that made this con memorable, it would probably have to be getting to know the guest of honour (who, just for the record, turned out to be a really awesome guy). We wound up getting a lot of opportunities to talk to him over the weekend, during which period he even found time to read and give feedback on a couple of stories by me and jaseroque - something that really impressed us considering how busy even non- guests of honour usually are during con-time. Sure hope we manage to keep in touch.
On one final note, this years con came virtually angst-free.
And now I’ll shut up. Possibly for another month or two.