Blog – Page 28 – Lise Fracalossi

In Which I Contemplate a Gentleman Bastards Pirate LARP

I do like me some pirates, and have at times considered writing a pirate-themed media (or historical) mashup game. I think playing Devil to Pay sated my urge for this, but I was thinking… I could use pirates in a fantasy setting.

And then, since I apparently only write fan larps, it dawned on me: there are pirates in Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards sequence. They play quite a significant role in the plot of Red Seas Under Red Skies, in fact, rescuing our heroes when they get in over their heads. There’s a pirate brotherhood (the Council of Pirate Captains), made up of the members of five different pirate crews, which meets in Port Prodigal, which is basically the wretched hive of scum and villainy for pirates on the Sea of Brass. And Port Prodigal is itself pretty dang spooky…

Of course, as soon as I start thinking of this idea, in the car on the way to work (boo going back to work), the song I think of as being a Locke and Sabetha song (Imagine Dragons’ “I Bet My Life”) came on the radio.

SIGNS AND PORTENTS.

Some additional thoughts:

Despite the portentous song, I don’t think any of the main characters would be in the game.
The crew of the Poison Orchid, who are supporting characters in RSURS, probably would be, however.
I imagine the basic setup being something like “meeting of the Council of Pirate Captains in Port Prodigal to discuss Things,” but I don’t have much more than that at this point.
Yes, I realize this runs the risk of casting apps which call for this to be The Other Other All Zamira Drakasha game. I’m willing to take that chance.
I suspect this would take place pre-RSURS, maybe during the time of Lies. It has to be late enough that most of the Ghostwind Isles pirates have been wiped out, but given characters I want to include, not post-RSURS.
I really loved the adventure mechanic in Ex Ignorantia (which is basically a choose-your-own-adventure story, sometimes with abilities), and I think it would be neat to do something with that, maybe as “away missions” from the main meeting. Would it be too much to start the game with “you need to get to Port Prodigal — do you choose the Trade Door or the Parlor?”
The Camorr Wiki is not nearly so complete as other fan wikis, so much re-reading would have to happen. (This is both a plus and a minus — the books are great, but I have so little reading time…) For example, I can’t even get a list of the crew members of the Poison Orchid.
For as much as Zamira’s characterization is based on her being a mother, I doubt anybody wants to play the mini-game of “babysit Paolo and Cossetta.”
Naturally, there would be plots involving a Serious Lack of Cats.

Will I actually write this game? Dunno. I suspect a lot will depend on how soon I finish the first draft of Lioness…

Intercon Overscheduled

It was an exhausting and exhilarating and strange weekend at Intercon O, and I am feeling some serious con crash now 🙁

For posterity, what I did:

I spent much of Thursday daytime having a panic attack, because this is how I greet Intercon, apparently. Maybe one day this won’t be so, but this year, at least, I was freaking out about preparing my panels and getting up to speed with all the characters I’d be playing.

Pre-con: I participated in a bunch of panels — so many that I was basically incoherent at the end of Thursday, having talked and thought too much that day. These panels were:

Turning a Work of Fiction Into a LARP (moderator), with Quinn D and Lisa P.
Film Noir Fashion: Dress of the 1940s (a presentation I did all by my lonesome). Three people showed up, counting Matt, and one of them left halfway through 🙁
Why We LARP (moderator, again), with Tony M and… I don’t even remember who else.
Useful Handsewing Techniques for LARPs. No one showed up, except Steve K, who had no interest in learning about hand-sewing. It ended up being “social hour with Lise.”
So You Want to Run a Game: Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself, with Steve K and Chad B.

The biggest disappointment was the lack of interest in the stuff I put together. I think this is the last year I’m going to do presentations/workshops on costuming topics, at least by myself.

Friday afternoon I played in run A of Shadow Over Mars, a first in a series of one-shot larps set in the Space 1889 setting. I was Chloe Monteil, an angry Frenchwoman, gunner on the ship The Moon of Shastapsh.

Imagine I’m saying, “Zese British bastards!”

It’s amazing how much mileage I can get out of being French and angry — four hours worth, at least. I got to shoot things, and swear in French a lot, and I ended the game by dying(?) dramatically — I was stabbed and pulled off the ship, yelling “MEEEEEEEERRRRRDDDDDEEEE!” on the way down.

Quote from the game: “Ze only people I trust right now are zese two,” (points to A.J. and Jeff D’s characters, two ex-naval officers), “because zhey are trying to sleep with me.”

Bingley, A.J’s character, nodded and said, “I admit there may be some truth in that observation.”

Also, I got to play off Steve B, Consequences con chair, who was returning to Intercon for the first time since G. That was delightful 🙂 I’m looking forward to seeing him and all my Consequences crew again in November!

Finally, the game was responsible for this sign, which entertained me greatly:

Friday evening I ran Midsummer Mischief, that delightful Wodehousian game which I like so much that I keep running it for Americans. The game ran very smoothly, many people got engaged (and un-engaged, and re-engaged, and re-un-engaged), pigs were loosed, and Nuance wore a fabulous hat as Lady Constance. She also was part of one of the best exchanges in game:

“Was that before or after you started blackmailing my brother?”
“Before! I mean, after! I mean…”

Warren T, who played Lord Emsworth (and who was one of the writers/GMs for my Saturday game), also showed up wearing a bathrobe and carrying a book about pigs, which I think says everything you need to know about that dreamy peer, Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth.

Most of Saturday I was in Ex Ignorantia, an eight-hour game of Lovecraft in academia. I played Briony Travis, socially clueless grad student in the physics department. It will surprise no one to learn that there was, in fact, some Mythos stuff going on in my plots 😉

Nothing says “srs bzns grad student” like a Rowsdower MST3K t-shirt, a suit jacket (with bonus cat hair), red shoes, red button earrings, and a Nyankochan sakuramochi purse.

I think what I liked so much about this game was the fact that… it’s a lot like a game I would write! By which I mean, it has fairly detailed mechanics, but it also has great writing, and characters that are much, much more than cardboard cutouts.

Like seriously, the writing. From what I understand, most of what I interacted with was done by Kristen H, as she was primarily the writer for my faction’s plot. Everything from my character I identified a leetle too much with, to the adventures in the sacred groves, to our trip to Carcosa to stop the summoning of Hastur, was beautifully evocative.

The upshot of the game was that Dagon/Cthulhu got control of the earth, minus a few patches carved out by lesser summonings. Briony ended up in one of those with Geoffrey, Will F’s character, after losing most of her faction to the trip to Carcosa.

(Also, as far as HPL knowledge goes, these people knew their stuff <3)

Alsoalso, I got snubbed by Nyarlathotep, so there’s that.

Alsoalsoalso, the fact that the game was mostly run by people who had been in MM the night before makes me wish there were such thing as a Lovecraftian Wodehouse game. Of course, it would have to be named after that chapter in LoEG Black Dossier: “Wot Ho, Gods of the Abyss.”

Saturday night, I played in A Song of Mergers and Acquisitions, which promised Game of Thrones-style politics in a corporate setting. I was Helen Zakarian, assistant to the president of the Congress, with no particular house affiliation. (There is a GoT character who is my analog, but it would be spoilery to say who).

I wanted to like this game — I very much like the type of character I was cast as — but in many ways it didn’t work for me. On the whole, it was a rare game that would have benefited from more mechanics.

For one thing, it’s the sort of game which needs an information economy, and there just… isn’t one. Plus, my character sheet gave me very little sense of my character and what I wanted, and so bargaining couldn’t really happen. I had so many conversations that were, “I can tell you incriminating things about Stark! In return could you… oh. I see you’re already going to vote the way I want you to.”

There was also the fact that no one apparently knew until the end of game that all the votes required a two-thirds majority. Which, despite the fact that almost everybody agreed on everything (another problem: not enough conflict for a GoT game), meant that nothing passed. (In part this was my own oversight: I said to Baratheon — played by Kevin R — something like “Everyone agrees on reducing tariffs!” and he conveniently decided not to correct me).

On the whole, I think this game has a lot of potential, but the writers might not want to shy away from mechanics so much, as it would do a great deal to make the game feel like a GoT game.

And that was basically my con, game-wise. I sadly did not have wakefulness for any parties, which was to my detriment 🙁

Sunday was Packing the Car: the LARP, which I always have to play alone because Matt is in Sunday games 🙁 There was also the “chatting in con suite” part of the day, in which I discovered that Alex P’s first Intercon game was also my own (A Question of Faith, at Intercon F). I also received a bag full of real British Cadbury from Suey, listened to Mike Young talk about the terrible games he has been in, and went to the now-traditional Chicago/Brit-contingent dead dog at Priya, an Indian restaurant in Lowell. I spent most of that chatting with Laurie and Ian, first-time Interconners who turned out to have a ton in common with us.

This is what a fuckton (metric) of Cadbury Dairy Milk looks like.

Oh, and I went to closing ceremonies long enough to learn that a) Sharp & Sensibility is running in Delaware in October, and b) it’s the same weekend as the final event of Cottington Woods 🙁 🙁 🙁 I may decide to go without Matt. We’ll see.

I also learned that there will be another Whateley’s game in the fall, and Matt insists that this year is the year we finally get out to Chicago to play.

And now… Intercon P is Pirates, and I’m cogitating ideas for new games. Oh no…

The Intercalm before the Interstorm (also, Barbara Stanwyck love)

Intercon O is coming up this weekend! It’s like LARPer Christmas!… wait, no, that’s the day after Halloween.

Nevertheless, it’s big, and I have a lot of prep to get done, for games I’m running, games I’m playing, and stuff I’m doing at pre-con.

Here, have a to-do list:

Finish Film Noir fashion presentation
Review/update hand-sewing handouts
Put together kits for hand-sewing workshop
Put questions together for panels I’m moderating
Do pin curls and 1940s makeup for presentation on Thursday night? Maybe? But that’s probably too ambitious. Pin curls are hard, yo.
Finish packing Midsummer Mischief (we’re 90% there — but we still have romance contingencies, room envelopes, etc)
Review Midsummer Mischief GM materials
(Re)Read Shadow Over Mars materials
Find pants for Shadow Over Mars costume (Savers?)
(Re)Read Ex Ig materials — make notes, if necessary
Assemble Ex Ig costume(s) — I’m imagining my costume evolving over the conference sessions
Re(Read) Song of Mergers & Acquisitions materials
Assemble Song of M&A costume
Gather stuff I’m loaning
Pack!

Probably my biggest task is putting together the presentation for my Film Noir Fashion (fashion of the 1940s) presentation. All of the history of costume presentations I’ve done in the past have been about eras that have significantly less documentation. But now I’m getting into the “we have photographic evidence of this period, and LOTS of it,” and it’s a little like trying to drink from a firehose.

For comfort, I look at pictures of Barbara Stanwyck, who, as we all know, is my spirit animal. Pinterest offers me much in this vein, from pictures of her as a 15-year-old Ziegfield girl who still went by Ruby Stevens, to her iconic blond-bewigged Double Indemnity femme fatale, to an elderly matron in The Big Valley. I have some definite favorites:

This one from 1940 will probably be in my presentation, since it’s a good example of a very popular color of the period (copen blue) and a very popular dress style. But man. That sultry look! That perfect cat-eye! The touch of animal print!

I don’t care who says she wasn’t “starlet beautiful,” I think she was gorgeous.

And she liked beagles!

Here she is with Clark Gable, flipping off the camera. I cackled when I came across this.

And a quote from her:

“My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.”

Relevant for Intercon, too, I think 😉

Pluses and minuses, February 18, 2015

– Winter is seriously depressing me. We’ve gotten more than six feet in just the past month, and it looks like Snowpiercer outside my window. (Regrettably, I don’t even get Chris Evans as a consolation prize).

– As I’ve posted elsewhere, snow canceled my trip to Boskone. Poop.

+ Melatonin seems to be working well, which means that I can actually get up at a decent hour again.

+ I reached 48,000 words on Lioness, and revealed one of the Big Reveals of the novel.

+/- Received a rejection on another G&F query/partial I had sent for #PitMad, back in December. On one hand, rejection; on the other hand, it was personal and very kind, and this after I had forgotten I even had it out there.

– In about a month, I will have been querying G&F for a year, on and off. At some point I suppose I have to give up. But at the same time, I’ve only queried like twenty agents over that time, so.

– I’m still really not getting much out of reading A Game of Thrones. Sorry, fans. If I had come to it earlier in life, I might have, but at this point I don’t want any more fantasy worlds where women are this marginalized.

It’s funny, because I LIKE the female POV characters, and they don’t lack agency, at all. I have nothing but good to say about Catelyn, Daenerys, or Arya. Even Sansa!

But then there are the bit parts for women, which seem limited to “serving wench,” and “whore.” There’s the constant use of “slut” and “whore.” There’s the constant threat of rape and child mutilation thrown around for funsies. And sure, yeah, we’re clearly SUPPOSED to have our skin crawl around Viserys, and his use of same, but… it’s just tiresome. Really fucking tiresome. I keep rolling my eyes and wishing for [SPOILER] to happen quicker.

And maybe it gets better in later novels, but… I just don’t care enough to find out? If I’m going to read gritty and grimdark, I’ll go back to reading Joe Abercrombie, because at least I’m pretty sure he’s doing trope reversal.

+ I finished listening to The Broken Kingdoms, at long last. Sorry it took me so long, but that middle section, where Oree is with the New Lights, just draaaaagged for me. That said, the ending was exciting, and the novel is a study in how to do multiple ending beats well.

And yeah, it’s utterly ridiculous that there is no audiobook for The Kingdom of the Gods. Booooo.

+ I started listening to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone yesterday, which was recommended to me by… I don’t remember who. So far, I’m enjoying it. The narrator, Khristine Hvam, is just superb.

Is this supposed to be YA? I find it hard to believe, with all the talk of dicks in the first few chapters. And yet, YA certainly is edgier than it was when I was a teen… Anyway, Karou is clearly a female wish fulfillment character, and I am totally okay with that. More than okay, actually — I think there need to be more of them, so long as they are interesting characters in their own right. And Karou is! The only weirdness is when she displays a very… external view of her physical body, describing herself like a third-party would describe her. That sort of makes me frown. But we’ll see where it’s going…

+ I have tickets — in the third row! — to see the live Night Vale show in March.

+ Writing group this Thursday. Assuming it doesn’t get snowed out…

+ I’ve gotten Falanu nearly to 50 in TESO.

34 Things Lise is No Longer Allowed to Do in ESO

I will not sing “Blue Entoloma” to the tune of “Smooth Operator” whenever I come across said plant.
Nor will I tell my husband to “wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute” when I come across cotton
Same with “Flax! Ah-aaaa! Savior of the Universe!”
Ditto “Hey Jute.”
I will not refer to trickster god Rajhin as the Dickster God, even if he is.
I will not yell “puppykiller!” whenever I kill a clannfear
Or at random, just for the fun of it.
I won’t insult the Tribunal’s ill-gotten divine powers in a Sheogorath voice.
I mustn’t speculate about the sex life of Idesa and that dark elf noble, no matter how many times I visit the forge in Windhelm.
Nor greet vendors with “Sauce!”
Lyris is an important NPC, not an email management software.
I have reached my quota on saying, “Shadowfen… I can’t believe I’m still in Shadowfen.”
Should I find any Argonians in Shad Astula, I must not shout, “Yer a lizard, Harry!”
Similarly, it’s probably not a good use of my time to make an Argonian sorcerer named “Scar-Like-Lightning.”
Nor do I have enough time to make a metrosexual Bosmer.
I will not suggest Mannimarco/Vanus Galerion slash.
Even if the former IS the King of Worms.
Epic Violet dye is a privilege, not a right.
I will not refer to Eyes-of-Steel as Thighs-of-Steel.
I will not call potency runes “prunes.”
When visiting a kwama mine, I shall not sing “Kwama Chameleon.”
I mustn’t be an Elder Scrolls hipster in zone chat.
Especially not to speculate that cliff racers were the real cause of the disappearance of the Dwemer.
The lyrics to that common tavern song are not, “Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond, the heart and soul of men.”
Speculation on the qualities of one’s grotto (frigid, or fungal) is in poor taste.
Same with Questionable Meat Sacks.
Ditto wormwood.
It is anachronistic to name my horse “Barenziah.”
I will not question the humility of Ordinators — at least not in their presence.
I shouldn’t use Piercing Javelin to fling mobs through the world.
Especially when my husband is tanking them.
Especially because “I just like the sound of it.”
No matter what Ultimate I have slotted, it’s not effective against barrels.
I will not refer to fishing as “PvF.”

Inspired by The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army

Play TESO with me! (redux)

Last year, before The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO, or ESO) went live, I was cajoling you all to play with me. I had a lot of fun grouping with friends in the beta, but when the actual prospect of paying came up, most people I knew were not sufficiently interested.

But! As it turns out, in March it will go to the Tamriel Unlimited plan, which means it will be free to play with purchase of the base game. Very similarly to the freemium model SWTOR uses, you can still subscribe to get an ESO Plus membership that will give you bonuses like a monthly allotment of points to spend in the Crown Store for important things like guar mounts 😉

I have Thoughts about the F2P model and how it pisses me off that people expect everything to be free (and often happily accept shitty freemium models). OTOH, I also really want people to play with me! Right now Matt and I are the only ones regularly on in our guild 🙁

I admit, I go through periods where I’m not interested in playing, but I’ve been digging in again lately and having a lot of fun. After a year, I still don’t have a veteran character; my highest level is my Dunmer templar in Ebonheart Pact, Falanu Dren, at 42. With her and Matt’s Dunmer dragon knight, we just finished Eastmarch, with its many very silly quests. To give you some examples:

Meeting a bunch of naked Nords bathing in a hot springs who ask you to retrieve bath salts for them. Bath salts which, it transpires, turn you into zombies.
Throwing cat pee at hunters to prevent vampires from attacking them
Thane Jeggi, whose condition for coming to the war council is making sure there is mead there.
The sheer number of quests that involve entering homes through the window rather than the door.
Glorious cultural exchange! Actually, this one starts in… Deshaan? Shadowfen? with a group of Nords who want to better understand Dunmer culture. As part of this, you dress them up in ridiculous clothes. Naturally.

Eastmarch, being in the province of Skyrim, also hearkens back to the game of the same name. The geography is vaguely similar — I remember the sulfur pools south of Windhelm, the White River, Skuldafn… And actually, the final quest of the zone, like the final quest in Skyrim, involves fighting your way through the ruin of Skuldafn and visiting Sovngarde.

We took a break with our EP characters to play our Aldmeri Dominion ones — Br’ihnassi, my Khajiit nightblade, and Matt’s Altmer dragon knight. They are both level 23 and in the middle of hell, I mean, Grahtwood. (Grahtwood is mostly hellish because it’s so hard to navigate; there are mountains and giant trees blocking your path at every turn).

I had a moment of lore squee the other night when I realized a quest involved the town of Gil-var-delle. The name sounded familiar to me, and the quest mentioned the town had been attacked by Molag Bal. “Is this the town mentioned in 2920: The Last Year of the First Era?” I wondered. I went and looked — it is! Gilverdale or Gil-var-delle is the town that a random Khajiit king made a deal with Molag Bal to destroy, because he didn’t like a bard that came from there. Since TESO is all about Molag Bal, it makes sense for it to be mentioned here.

It’s stuff like this that keeps me playing 🙂

I was trying to express to Matt how the depth of the lore, and its self-awareness, creates this amazing tapestry that I, as a writer, wish I could build into my own creations. It also provides the background radiation that makes creepypasta like this scary. (And seriously, I still long to one day write a horror story like that).

Anyway! I also have to recommend the UESP guild, which is where I get most of my socialization on these days. Good people, not your usual internet assholes. My one regret is that most of their high-level toons are Daggerfall Covenant, which I don’t even have a character in. Although there was an AD group last night doing Craglorn stuff…

(I have since made a DC character, an Imperial dragon knight, Corvus Duronius. But I haven’t started playing him yet. He has an eyepatch, which made Matt giggle and say, “Arrrr, welcome to Starbuccaneers, may I take your order?”)

So that’s that. I have no clever conclusion! Play ESO with me, and know the beautiful lore that is the Elder Scrolls!

More Incredibly Brief BPAL Yule Reviews

Still testing my way through these…

Chanukkiyah. Olive oil, beeswax, glowing amber, sweet sufganiyot, pomegranate, and fig. Fruity, with an almost-herbal note that is probably the olive oil or the beeswax. Reminds me a little of Jack. Not something I find terribly pleasant to wear, though.

Gelt. A bounty of chocolate coins! Dry cocoa and golden amber! Yup. Smells like chocolate. I’ve got enough chocolate scents, and frankly I don’t like smelling like chocolate frosting all day.

Yuletide. Ripe, bursting, blood red holly berries pricked by sharp, waxy holly leaves. Berries and a sort of piney incense. Mostly it dries down to the incense note to me; Matt claims the berries last longer for him. He’s a much bigger fan than me, but I like it well enough to wear.

Rose Red. The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut. Holy shit, is it. I put on just a few drops, and I’m going to spend the rest of the day smelling like a florist’s shop. Maybe it will attract prettyboy assassins? That said, I think I like it. Do I bottle-like it, though?

I also see that the Lupercalia scents are up (link probably NSFW), and it’s a Smut year. Smut, a semi-limited edition, is perhaps one of my signature scents. I still have most of a bottle — but is that enough to last until the next Smut year?

Codex Weekend Warriors 2015

I’ve off-handedly mentioned that I’ve been participating in the Codex Writers’ Group Weekend Warriors (WW) contest, but I don’t think I’ve explained it, have I?

Basically, WW is a flash fiction writing contest, where “flash,” in this case, is defined as fiction less than 750 words. (Definitions vary; I’ve seen it go up to about 1500 words or so). For five weeks in January/February, writing prompts will be posted on Friday, and the contestants have the weekend to write a piece of fiction. It doesn’t have to be speculative (even though Codex is an SFF writing group), and it doesn’t have to directly follow the prompt, but it does have to be less than 750 words.

During the week that follows, all the other writers in the division (this year there are three: Puppies, Kitties, and Bunnies) rate all the other stories in the division. At least, this is supposed to be how it works, although in theory nothing is forcing you to read and rate the others — except that your own ratings are held captive until you do! (Clever, that). At the end of the five weeks, the final score is calculated from the three highest-ranked stories, and the winner is based on that. (So it behooves you to participate more than three times, although you don’t have to).

I participated in week one, writing a space opera-ish story of a cultural misunderstanding. This was as much a surprise to me as anyone; I hadn’t planned to participate, but I found myself stuck in a cold basement for most of a day (Ye Olde Commons, for those LARPers among you) with a notebook, an idea based on a vague misremembering of a prompt, and very little else to do. The story I wrote was fun, but it really wanted to be 1000+ words, and cutting it down to 750, I’m beginning to think I weakened it. The ratings reflected this — but hey, I wasn’t dead last!

MoreoverÂ I have a story! A story I can try to sell! I’ve heard tales of Daily Science Fiction (DSF) eagerly awaiting submissions based on WW entries, and I know that even stories that have done poorly in the contest have sold. So I’m eager to take the feedback I’ve gotten on the story and turn it into something I can maaaaaybe publish.

(If not, you’ll see it here eventually…)

So I was super-psyched to give WW a try again this weekend, week 3. (Arisia kept me from participating last week). The story came easily to me this time, based on the prompt “Write about an unusual wedding, birthday party, or other celebration.” I finished it on Saturday, and did some edits on Sunday. I had no trouble keeping it under 750 words; 700 was the length it wanted to be. Now, let’s see if it’s any good…

By the way, if you’re wondering why I’m not naming my stories, or even the division I’m in, it’s because this is all anonymous. We had to pick neato pen names and everything! You’ll find out soon enough which are mine, I suppose, either when they’re announced on Codex, or when they get published, here or elsewhere.

I’ve begun reading this week’s stories, too, and I feel so lucky to do so. They’re all so good — which is a function of CodexÂ being a curated forum — and on the dark side this week (which is a function of the prompts). I’ve rated almost everything I’ve come across an eight (out of 10), and I’d be happy to read most of these in a magazine. Bodes ill for my little story, though…

—

In other writing news, I got my rejection from F&SF this weekend for “Powder of Sympathy.” It was about as I expected, but I’m glad I finally got off my ass and submitted it. Finlay wrote some nice personal feedback, though:Â “I was hooked by the opening scene of this story, but overall it just didn’t connect with me so I’m going to pass on it.” Meh. Story of my writing life — premature narrative ejaculation.

I think I know where I’m going to send this one next (Clarkesworld), but I’m debating whether or not I want to read it over and make any further changes, first. Of course, that way so often lies madness…

#TBT, the text edition (Thursday, January 22nd)

I love the idea of Throwback Thursday, but I never participate — mostly because I seem to perpetually lack pictures of myself.

Words, however. I’ve got words in abundance.

So have some words from the past.

January 22, 2004. So…. if I got a webcam so that I could keep an eye on Burnbright during the day while I’m at work, would that be a redeeming use of a webcam? (I suspect this wasn’t long after I got him — which I think was in November of 2003)

January 22, 2006. After seeing this casting questionnaire for a LARP I’m attending at InterCon this year, holy shit, I’ll never complain about casting questionnaires again. This one is quite literally likely to reduce me to tears. My favorite “bug-eyed monster”? My favorite universe? Essay questions involving theremin and Vogon poetry? ::cries::

Holy shit, that was for Across the Sea of Stars, at my very first Intercon, Intercon F. Man… I was complaining about casting questionnaires even then? When I had filled out, what, two of them? (And, um, sorry, Jeff D. I understand the purpose of casting questionnaires a lot better now).

Also I believe that the job interview I’m preparing for (mentioned at the end of the entry) is for the job I eventually accepted (and eventually lost) at an educational marketing company. DON’T DO IT, LISE. DON’T GO INTO THAT SCARY CAVE.

January 22, 2007. HOLY SHIT VETIVER. Ah, so this was when I was first discovering BPAL. Little did I know then how much Matt would end up liking Highwayman, and how little subsequent bottles would smell like that imp.

Arisia 2015

Importing this post from LJ; please excuse the markup.

I hadn’t been to Arisia in… possibly a decade? I know the last time I went it was at the Ziggurat/Q-bert Hotel/the terrible Hyatt in Cambridge, and there was a snowpocalypse that weekend, and we drove home to Watertown in that. At that time, I promised I wouldn’t go back until it was not at that hotel. That took five years or so, and at that time I wasn’t attending many conventions besides LARP ones.

But this year, the delightful Phoebe R. had a show, Mrs. Hawking, going up on Friday night, and having read the script, I really wanted to see it performed. Plus, N.K. Jemisin, whose work I enjoy, was the author GOH, and I thought she would have some interesting things to say. And, of course, there’s the fact that nearly all my friends go — the ones that aren’t doing Mystery Hunt, that is.

So I bought a membership very last minute, and went! I had an amazing time, too. There was some concern that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the con in time for Mrs. Hawking, but I was able to work remotely from the hotel on Friday afternoon, so that worked out well.

Things wot I did:

– A long-ish wait in the registration line with my roomie natbudin on Friday night, in which I ran into approximately everyone I knew, ever.

– Went to Mrs. Hawking, which was wonderful to see staged, especially the action scenes. Things like the scene at the club — where Mrs. Hawking uses a knife as a step to climb up into the rafters — worked surprisingly well with the set. (I suppose not that surprising, since the set was basically a deconstructed jungle gym). If I have any complaints, it’s that the sound wasn’t great, and I ended up having to move to the front rows to hear better.

– Attended the “Tricksters of All Trades” panel on Friday night, with Jemisin, Andrea Hairston, Daniel JosÃ© Older, Vikki Ciaffone, and Catt Kingsgrave. What an entertaining panel! A lot of it was Older and Hairston talking about Yoruba gods and Santeria orisha who were tricksters, like Eshu and Elegba. This was fine with me, since they were clearly very excited about the topic, and brought that to the table. It succeeded in making me want to read Older’s new book, Half-Resurrection Blues, if nothing else! Jemisin talked about the tricksters in the Inheritance trilogy — primarily Sieh — and very obligingly told us all to cover our ears at the right point if we didn’t want to be spoiled on The Awakened Kingdoms. (I’m making my way through The Broken Kingdoms right now).

– Went to Tess’ Friday night party — sadly, never made it to laura47‘s — which was mostly WPI grads and related folks. I talked with Brian E., who was wearing a great Earthforce uniform, about the Elder Scrolls for a while (“are you in the Morrowind camp, the Skyrim camp, or the wrong camp?”) and to hanasaseru about Cottington Woods. I drank moscato and a Dark & Stormy that was mostly rum; sprrwhwk showed up later in the evening, and we ended the evening chatting in his room, drinking most of a bottle of Templeton Rye — the favorite drink of Al Capone, I’m told!

– I spent most of Saturday with the worst hangover of my life — and blind, because I had thrown out my disposable contacts before I realized I’d forgotten to bring my glasses or any other pairs with me 🙁 As a result I went to very few events, but in the afternoon, I was able to catch up with juldea, who had a similar prescription to me, and used the same brand of disposables, and gave me some of hers.

– I did stop in at the “Avoiding Culturefail” panel, but I ended up feeling so sick I had to leave. It didn’t help that the room was approximately 300 degrees, I couldn’t see the panelists, and they kept talking not about how to avoid culturefail in writing SFF, but the ethnic makeup of the U.S. post-WWII. While that could be an interesting topic, a) that wasn’t what the panel was about, and b) it wasn’t.

– Able to see and feeling half-human, I went to Jemisin’s reading at 4pm. She had three unpublished pieces in the world of the Inheritance trilogy she could read, and she let the audience vote on which — one from the POV of Glee (Oree’s daughter), one from the POV of Nahadoth, and one from the POV of… a character I haven’t met yet. Well, since I’m not far enough along in The Broken Kingdoms that I wanted spoilers about Oree or her offspring, I voted for Naha, and so did most of the audience. So we listened to a really cool piece, set before The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (I think? Time is wibbly-wobbly if you’re a god), which was about him being convinced to fight back against the Arameri.

I had questions I wanted to ask about the piece in the Q&A, but unfortunately, we were subjected instead to inane questions like, “What do you think the future of books is?” (To which Jemisin replied, “… could you be a little more specific?”) and “Why did you decide to write this piece?” (“For the same reason I write anything?”)

– A Codex dinner was planned, but fell through; I ended up having drinks at the bar with John Murphy, Joy Marchand and her husband, and the aforementioned Kevin (who it is uncanny to hear called “Kellan.” I will never get used to calling friends by their pen names). I tried to convince Joy to come to Intercon or Festival, as she was interested in trying out LARP; John told us about the “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That” anime panel, which apparently went pretty far off the rails, and didn’t actually discuss short series, like it had promised to. Instead we gave him some of our suggestions — Baccano, Spice & Wolf, Madoka, and of course I had to mention Hellsing and Gankutsuou 🙂

– I went to PMRP’s gender-swapped radio play of “Space Seed,” the famous classic Trek episode that introduced Khan. It was delightful — nothing like gender reversal to really make it clear how creepy 1960s sexism was! Adria–who I know from NPCing Shadows of Amun, and who most people know for being on The Quest — played Spock, and was delightful in that role. Liz Salazar (I think that was her name?) who played Khan was amazing too, as was the gentleman who played the unfortunate historical officer Khan seduces.

– I browsed the art show, since the dealer’s room wasn’t open that late on Saturday night. I especially liked the photography series of cosplayers/costumers in costume and in street clothes. I also really enjoyed the exhibit for the artist GOH, Lee Moyer, who I did not realize had done the cover for The Broken Kingdoms and for one of the Kushiel books. And, apparently, several Lovecraft collections; there were a few HPL-with-tentacles portraits. If I had $375, I would have taken one home! I also enjoyed his series of gender-swapped classic author pinups (i.e. Miss Carroll, Miss Dumas).

– While in the art show, I noticed a guy dressed in what I noticed immediately was cavalier-era garb (I guessed 1620s at first). This is impressive, because while Arisia has a lot of cosplay, most of it (that isn’t re-creation) tends towards the medieval or steampunk; the cavalier era doesn’t get a lot of love. I asked him about it, and he told me he was part of the Salem Trayned Band, a re-enactment group of one of the first civilian militias in the U.S., dating to around 1630. I missed their pike demonstration, alas, but I saw him later on the “So You Think You Can Write A Fight” panel.

I turned in early on Sunday, due to my severe lack of sleep the night before, and was up, feeling mostly human, at 9am the next day…

– The first panel I made it out to on Sunday was the end of the “So You Think You Can Write A Fight” discussion, where audience members read fight scenes they had written, and the panelists critiqued them. Among the panelists I recognized not only Uncle Jim (who I expected), but also aforementioned re-enactor (Mark Millman?), giving advice on halberds, and Gie, who I knew not as an editor for an SFF erotica magazine (which she apparently is!) but as someone I played Masquerade with, back in the day. To me she will always be the Assamite cheerleader who wanted to be a Toreador. Who also, apparently, knows a lot about martial arts and writes lesbian vampire pr0n.

– I ran into John Murphy again at this panel, and together we ended up going to “Tales from the Slush Pile,” held in a room which was entirely too small for its popularity. Gie was on this panel, as well as Joy Marchand, Cecilia Tan, Joy Crelin, Hildy Silverman, and Inanna Arthen. Since many of these editors dealt in erotica, a lot of the examples of terribleness from the slush pile were bad smut. Although, kudos to Gie for pointing out that sometimes the line between ridiculous and hot is paper-thin.

– I spent some time in my room writing after this. I wanted to prep for my 4pm event (more on that in a minute), but I happened to look at the writing prompts for this week’s round of the Codex flash contest, and one of them sparked an idea for a short piece in the world of Lioness, telling the story of how Yfre ended up accused of treason and nearly hanged. The prompt in question was “someone has made a terrible mistake and someone else must pay for it,” which is pretty much the definition of what happened to Yfre. I knew I couldn’t make it 750 words without ruining it, however, so I was in no hurry to finish that day. Which is fine, because nevacarusoand Nat came back to the room around then, and we ended up chatting about various things.

– I headed off at 4pm to my final event of the con — the pitch session with Nora Jemisin, which I had to sign up for ahead of time. To be fair, this was really more of a practice pitch session — as she pointed out, she’s not an agent or an editor, and her agent is pretty much not taking new clients. (I did query her already!) So I got my ten minutes with her, pitching G&F. My pitch came in under five minutes, which was the perfect length, and she said she was intrigued by it, but offered suggestions for making it better. One of the best pieces of advice she gave me was when I asked how to deal with the fact that there are two protagonists, but trying to focus on both in a query letter comes out muddled. She suggested I send the Serevic-focused one to male agents, and the Mirasa-focused one to female agents — because everyone wants to read a story with a character of their own gender. I had never thought of doing that before, but it makes perfect sense.

I mentioned I was also a VP grad, and we chatted very briefly about that. (I asked her if The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was her submission piece; she told me it was actually The Killing Moon, it just took a lot longer to sell).

All in all, she was cordial and complimentary of my pitch, which left me a bit reeling! I tried not to be too much of a fangirl, but I did tell her in parting how much I enjoyed her work.

And that was the end of the con for me! I had to go home Sunday night because someone was coming to my house the next day to fix my central vac. Also it’s pretty much all I feel up for writing, because I have come down with a cold and feel like my head is stuffed with cotton.