Minicon report

I was only at Minicon for one day, Saturday.

The Minions panel, moderated by davidlevine, was a lot of fun. It was later described (by romsfuulynn, I think) as improvisational comedy with audience participation, and that described it pretty well. We talked about all the various ways to recruit, retain, and retain minions when you're the Evil Overlord; also, the difference between minions and henchmen, when to outsource, etc. Everyone seemed to have a good time.

The religion panel ("creating a believable fictional religion") was moderated by lyda222 and surprisingly, there were more Scientology jokes during the Minions panel than this one. It was lively, and I got to find out that Lois Bujold set up the religion in Chalion based in part on the desire to explore the idea of a non-dualistic faith.

I moderated the trans-mythic fantasy panel. That one was a little intimidating. I try not to talk too much when I'm the moderator; I try to ask lots of questions, and focus on keeping the conversational ball bouncing around. The problem was, one of the panelists (mrissa) got sick, so it was just me, hilarymoonmurph, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Lois is a tremendously interesting person and a completely amazing writer whose books I absolutely love (Curse of Chalion is one of my favorite books EVER in any genre) and someone that everyone in the audience would like to hear from. She's also somewhat quiet, and won't push her way into the conversation if it's steaming ahead without her. So, as a moderator, I want to be sure to create plenty of spaces for her to share her thoughts, but without putting her on the spot. This is always tricky, but gets much harder when there are only three people on the panel. I thought it went fine, though.

Then I had a signing. It turns out Lois WAS signing during that slot, but was not listed as doing so in the program. Some years, signings have been held right by the dealer's room, which can create serious congestion during the GoH signing, but is generally pretty advantageous to everyone: people with time to stroll and browse notice that oh, hey, look, Lois Bujold is signing right now! And they nip into the dealer's room and buy The Sharing Knife, which they've been meaning to pick up, and come out and have it signed on the spot. Everyone wins.

We were not by the dealer's room this year. We were on a hallway on the second floor, really far removed from the hub of activity. So far removed that I'm pretty sure Lois signed not one item. It was...quiet. I hope they put it back by the dealer's room next year.

On returning to civilization, I spotted porphyrin and her new baby. I got to hold Lilian, who is adorable; Stella demonstrated that you can get her to smile by scritching her head.

The dinner group included jiawen; I found out that Rachel went to college in my mother's home town, at the college my grandmother worked at for years. We agreed that the best thing about Springfield is Yellow Springs (an entirely different town, a half hour away) and discussed whether Springfield (where my maternal grandparents lived) or Dayton (where my paternal grandparents lived) was a more depressing place to spend time.

I had a reading after dinner, and then wandered around to some parties, chatted with von_krag and pegkerr, and stumbled home around 1 a.m.