in which the word interesting, and variations thereof, is used far too often: my Contiuum report

[nigeltde]

Ok so this is going to be long, I think.

Anyway, lainy122 has done a photo post and covered all the pertinent bits, and melinda_goodin has already written up a couple of panels excellently. Also, docbrite's reactions (and her bird-related squeeing) are great. So probably this is all redundant :-D

Right, well, first up, I adored Melbourne.

The artchitecture and art in the CBD (we didn't get anywhere else) is fantastic, a marked contrast to Adelaide's "wow! Concrete blocks stacked on top of one another! And sometimes they have rounded edges!" approach to civic planning. After we got in at about 9.30pm on Thurs, Lainy and I took a night walk around Melbourne and came across some really cool things, like the State Library and its submerged friend, the SBS building and its 24/7 broadcast on the giant telly, and, at the Crown, the pillars that shoot fire and a great photography exhibition by Robin Sellick that had some fantastic portraits of celebrities.

The next morning we went to the Victoria markets and bought various doodads. I got a deck of Batman: TAS playing cards :-D Then we met up with the lovely jiffy_spiffy, who is a fellow Smiths fan! Lainy made us have coffee at Starbucks, and she was extremely gleeful; after that we walked down to the Crown again (we walked a LOT) to shop at the awesome Warner Bros store there. Which is where I got the GREATEST! MUG! EVER!:



One of the things on her Jester hat is the handle! It's so brilliant. And nice and big.


Sad farewells to Meagan, and then we started trying to make our way to the Hilton, which is where the con was at. I left the map at the hostel and got us totally lost and poor Lainy had to walk about 2k out of the way with a busted knee.


We eventually caught a taxi and so arrived just in time for the vampire panel, which was packed and very interesting. The Blankety-Blanks panel was in the same room so we grabbed a chair and settled in to the second funniest panel of the con, which is where Fiona McIntosh (a delightful lady!) exposed to us her obsession with wanking, the word goldfish was said way too many times, and Jedi Apprentice novels were given out as prizes.

We then went to a handy little panel for first-time con goers, which is where we learnt the all-important 5-2-1 rule: five hours of sleep, two meals, and one wash a day. Danny Oz, the founder of Continuum, ran it. He was great presence throughout the weekend and although I never really talked to him he seems like a fantastic guy.


That night was the Great Debate, which had us all laughing our bleached anuses off.
The topic was "That Humans are Unnatural Creatures" and Jack Dann, a very funny man whose books I need to get hold of, moderated (somewhat unsuccesfully, considering his proud declaration of bias for the For team and his inability to stop Neil and Kim stealing his microphone). Kim Wilkins, Richard Harland and Poppy were For, Neil, Robin Hobb and Russell Kirkpatick were Against. Kim immediately threw the topic to the dogs when she brought up anus bleaching. Neil, playing on a definition of the word natural, twisted the topic to mean "That All Men are Bastards" and brought the house down. Poppy noted that it is "statiscally proven that humans prefer to eat McDonald's instead of food," a very good point, and Russell was very intelligent and funny and, being from New Zealand, made lots of sheep jokes. It all got very, hilariously, out of hand, and at one point Jack mentioned that we may as well all just shut up because Neil can do anything he wants and Neil did this wonderful little scrunch/squee thing that made me go all fuzzy. Jack was CONSTANTLY paying out Neil for being so popular. Anyway, at the end Neil informed us that Robin Hobb has magic eyes and a photographic memory, so we'd better vote for them or we wouldn't get our books signed, and bribed us with mints and chocolate. His cunning ruse didn't work, however; the debate was declared a draw and and the prizes (Freddos and Caramel "Carmel" Koalas) were thrown to the audience.



That night we also had a European Martial Arts panel, which was very interesting and contained real fighting and blood! melinda_goodin has a grood write-up here. I did love however that the typical longsword move, the over-the-head-axe-type motion (yes, after attending this panel I am now an expert), is called a "Strike of Wrath."

Later we went up to chaosmanor's room for a slashgirl "gathering" (NOT party, this is very important!). We met some lovely people whose lj names I never got, but we chatted and chatted and got told off by the hotel until Lainy and I had to back to the hostel (we were exhausted).


Saturday morning we began with the Moving out of Genre panel with Jack, Neil, Poppy and Fiona, and it was really interesting.
Neil noted that comics was a medium people mistook for a genre and said that he tried to write different things, not wanting to be "that guy who wrote those books." He mentioned a book he had written or wanted to write in '98 called Time in the Smoke, about a London configured along temporal lines (so you turn a corner and are in Elizabethan London), but stoped because both Neverwhere and Stardust (?) had come out recently and he didn't want to be "that English Fantasy guy." He also noted what a wierd genre leap it is for him to be writing children's books (he has something like 4 coming out in the next few years. It's getting to the point where his agent is calling him up and saying "Hey, you know that Christmas Card you sent us a couple of years ago? Want to do it as a kid's book?" Similar experiences in LA: "What a lovely day." "Genius! Make that into a movie!"). He also wants to do travel writing and go to a small Patagonian town called Gaiman by a "slow and peculiar route". Poppy just said that she was writing what she had to write; she fell into the horror genre by default, as a horror short story was the first thing of hers that got bought. She really just wants to write about the wonderful characters of New Orleans. When Liquor came out, people asked her if her husband ghostwrote it! She also said that is she had the time she'd like to write for food glossies. The point was also made by someone that publishers want fantasy authors to write kid's books at the moment, because parents buy the books and it's good for the authors to have a recognisable name.



Neil's Guest of Honour speech was fabulous. He said a little about Anansi Boys (people basically know how Good Omens got written: "I wrote a serious book and Terry danced behind me scattering jokes" and he wanted to do a funny novel on his own) and did two readings from it, both of which were, of course, excellent. He is a wonderful public speaker--witty, intelligent, charismatic--and very good at doing readings (and he does accents!). Then he showed us some bits from Mirrormask, which looks AWESOME, even if I still have absoltely no idea what it's about. But oh, the Dave McKeanness of it all! There was an interview from the electronic press kit that he showed us where, exhausted, he just started lying to the interviewer when he was asked about Dave's obsession with masks: "When he was four years old, Dave was terrified by a man in a mask. He had to be hospitalised. He was brought out of his catatonic state by nurses wearing Venetian long-nosed masks." Upon being asked by an audience member whether the movie was much like what he had envisioned while writing, he answered, "It became a lot like what Dave McKean envisioned when I wrote it." He had us all in stitches. Mirrormask doesn't have an Australian distributor, so write letters to Sony!


The forensics panel, like everything else, was interesting.
Apparently the first use of forensic entomology was in China in 1420 (the Chinese figure out everything first!). One of the panellists noted that murder mysteries hinge on the order in which pieces of information are revealed; a lot of foresics tests are so quick now that in order to keep your plot, you just add bureaucracy! A big theme in forensic detective novels is scientists complaining about lawyers. The panellists also touched upon the way the prominence of forensics in pop cultre has lead to criminals becoming more careful about crime scenes, and the possibilities for the future (with cybercrime, is it possible to disprove Locard's exchange principle?). The panellists also recommended two books as invaluable for research: Death to Dust by Ken Iserson, about the innumerable things that people to to dead bodies, and The Encyclopedia of Forensic Science by, I think, a guy named Brian Lang.



Some interesting points were brought up in the Fantasy and Fairytale panel on Saturday evening. Australian children, for instance, aren't expected to read fantasy anymore, it's all realism and crack pipes and prostitutes, and yet the Victorian ideal of the child as this precious thing you have to protect is still evident. Children's TV, for instance, is made for adults to approve of ("You will not have to worry about your child encountering an idea," said one of the panellists). The highlight was probably when Neil brought up the incredibly nasty children's stories of a woman named Lucy Clifford, writing at the end of the 19th century, and told one of them (this one). It was really creepy.


Somewhere in there we had a great Chinese dinner with a lovely old-school fan and slasher named Donna (if you're reading this, Donna, drop us a comment!) and hooked up with Jess from Perth (who kindly allowed us to stash our stuff in her room, and whose lj name I have no idea of) to watch an episode of Firefly ("Arial") and the bloopers (hee!) and the Serentity trailer (eee!). Then at night it was the masked ball, which Lainy and I didn't exactly prepare for, like, at all. But a cool dude was making balloon hats and he gave us one each! The costumes were absolutely amazing. There were any number of gothy outfits, some furries, Danny Oz and his wife and someone else as the Joker, Harley and Ivy, a Jack Sparrow, a TV's Frank (I think! But he didn't have the right hair), and so on. Amazing work by some people. Also somewhere in there we went to Neil's and Poppy's signings (squee!) and melinda_goodin made a Harry Potter run, being nice enough to grab me one at the same time :-D

Sunday morning we got up ridiculously early for the first panel, Myths of Warfare.
Alex, who presented it, was still recovering from the night before but it was very amusing and interesting. He told us about what a disastrous time the 1400s was for Europe, that dragons were probably crocs and snakes, that women fought often and well, and trained hard and were well-equipped, that arrows pretty much have Buckley's of piercing armour, and so on. I have more notes if anyone's interested but atm I can't be bothered typing them all up.


The Australian Folklore and Fairytales panel was extremely interesting and I was really looking forward to it (Lainy went to the Stephen King panel at this time, so ask her for info about that). It began with the panellists noting that they had a really interesting experience going to Europe, where mythology and history are tied directly to place and especially nature, and how this is not their experience within Australia. Of course this segued into Indigenous mythology and the Australian landscape, and the bulk of the discussion was about how appropriate it is to use Aboriginal mythology in fiction if you're a non-Indigenous Australian.
The panellists were all white and a woman in the audience asked for a show of people with Aboriginal blood. No-one put up their hand, although there was one other girl I saw there who I thought had Indigenous blood, which just goes to show you the demographic of the people who come to these cons (what *was* great to see was a 50:50 men:women ratio!). The point was made that Jack Davis, a famous Indigenous playwright who wrote mostly realist stuff, wrote one fantasy play set in Australia and featuring a leprechaun; all storytellers borrow from other cultures where needed. Still, there is the fact that borrowing from Greek or Roman mythology, say, is different to borrowing from Indigenous Australian mythology (I use the word mythology in the same way I might say Christian mythology) because it is a culture that is still continuing, and has various sacred aspects such as women's and men's business (it was generally agreed that writers should stay away from sacred stuff). The panellists also said that one of their main problems with trying to incorporate/use/ set a story around Indigenous mythology was that they were afraid of getting it wrong, and that it's very difficult to get it right.

The discussion then moved to the question of why there is not much non-Indigenous folklore and fairytale in Australia. A couple of reasons were identified: that we are mostly urbanised; that we have a small pop density of writers; that early colonists had such a hard life they didn't have time to invent and retell stories. None of these reasons alone are really satisfactory for me (especially the last one) and actually I thought they were exaggerating the dearth of non-Indigenous Australian mythology a little. But the good point was made that we don't seem to have the mythologised heroes like the US does (think Paul Revere, Davy Crockett, the presidents, etc), probably because we don't have the cult of individuality the US does, because the pioneer/pushing West experience has not been so ingrained in our national identity, and because the colonists avoided a war with the English (I'd further argure a contributing factor of liberal individualist ideologies the [modern] States were founded upon). The only real heroes like that that we have are cult ones, like Ned Kelly and the jolly swagman, who are, of course, criminals.


Not having read any of her work, and having had the impression throughout the con that she didn't really want to be there, I was not expecting to enjoy Robin Hobb's Guest of Honour speech quite as much as I did.
For one thing, she had a number of interesting stories to tell about her life in Alaska. She read the first chapter (?) from her latest book, Shaman's Crossing, which I enjoyed a lot. She also gave a speech on what it's like to be a mother and a writer. Apparently all her friends & writer friends thought she was a moron and were not shy in telling her so when she got pregnant in her teens and was determined to continue writing; then she became unexpectedly pregnant again at the age of 40 and endured it all again. She said there were lots of similarities between parenting and writing and that lots of the lessons learned from one career can be translated to the other one. For instance, being able to be in charge and set rules for yourself or your kids. Perseverence was another; both jobs are ongoing: you never finish being a parent or a writer. Time comes not in years but in moments, so DO NOT PROCRASTINATE (a lesson I must take to heart): you can only have one 9th birthday for your son; similarly, if you do not write down what's in your head now, you will be a different person later, and what you write will be different. Furthermore, you will never have more free time than you do right now. She was amusing and entertaining and I'm glad I saw her, and I think she was actually having a great time, but was just a very reserved person.



Next panel was another entertainment panel, LOTR in the style of... There were some great suggestions: cheesy romance (Lainy's suggestion!), which led exactly to what you would expect from Frodo and Sam, and had Danny "Gimli" Oz commenting upon the perkiness of Legolas's ears; Star Wars; a Western, which had fangirl (and slasher!) Rashmi as Sauron cracking the room up and telling Frodo "them's big spurs for a little man;" a cricket match, which had Gollum falling into Mount Doom in slow-motion reply, and others. It was a lot of fun.


During the lunch break we watched Neil's A Short Film About John Bolton, a funny mock documentary about a vampire-obsessed artist. It managed to be both completely predictable and extremely entertaining.

Then was Poppy's GOH speech in which she was the cutest thing ever.
Witness:



Yes, that is the table she is sitting on. She was too small to read from the lectern!

She tested the microphone at the beginning by saying "magpie lark, crested pigeon, ROYAL SPOONBILL!" and gushing about all the birds she'd seen that morning. The basic text of her speech is here, and if you know how she speaks it's even better. The story she read, The Heart of New Orleans, was excellent, and she does accents too! Her love for New Orleans just shines from her whenever she talks about it and the characters she sees in it. She said that one of her favourite hobbies is eavesdropping; once in a post office she heard: "You see that machine there? It's supposed to show you what you done did." "Yup. Sometime it do," which, with the accent, had us all cracking up. Slight digression: I read Liquor again on the train to Melbourne and I bought Prime there, so after I finish the two books I'm reading at the moment, and the one that has to go back to the library, I'm going to get stuck into it. I'm really looking forward to it; while I haven't fallen as totally in love with Rickey and G-man as I have with other characters, the environment is fascinating and the writing wonderful, and although I'd never eat half of what she writes about, I love reading about food.



The next panel was Gods and Monsters which pretty much covered the usual ground, monster as the other, the invisible, etc etc. One interesting titbit one of the panellists mentioned was a theory she'd read once that basically goes, we always have the feeling that there are greater, more powerful beings that can make everything better, dry us when we're wet, warm us when we're cold: our parents. We internalise this and then invent gods. Neil said that one of the joys of being a writer is that you're not committed to a set of beliefs (in a story). People ask him, "what do you believe?" and he says, "what have you got?" The panel got a bit away from what the moderator wanted (he tried to make it a more sociological study than one about fiction etc) and he and Neil started debating the difference between philosophy and religion. Neil came out with this gem: "It's only religion if you believe in it. Otherwise it's two people arguing about whose imaginary friend likes them best."

The Research and Methodology panel was interesting but I didn't take many notes. Basic message: do research in depth, but if it's going to fuck with your story too much, don't kill yourself worrying about perfectly accurate detail.

Then there was the Is blogging the fanzine for the 21st century? panel which was great in that it was so small it was pretty much a group discussion. The ground covered was pretty much what I've seen already discussed, mostly on lj, and it included a lot of griping about people who use lj (and yet according to a show of hands more than half the people there had ljs!). There was only one audience member who'd ever bought a fanzine, and needless to say, it wasn't me. I didn't take any notes for this one so Lainy, if I've forgotten anything cool that was said, pipe up!



Then last up was the slash panel! Lainy and I were looking forward to this all weekend :-D There were about thirty people there, including at least two guys, and ranged in age from 15 year-olds to people in their fifties. The mods were angstslashhope, chaosmanor, icegemini, and a slash-friendly author I've forgotten the name of. The discussion shot through many aspects of slash including its history, the writing of it, RPS, how it's affected us, and its inherent queerness. angstslashhope made the point that the term "slash" is like the term "queer," in that it's so inclusive; I've always been a bit anal about my definition of slash (it's not for original fiction, you can't use it for het pairings, etc) but I really like that idea so I'm going to try to relax about that. There was a show of hands for people who had started reading underage and over half the people in the room threw up their hand. Then there was a discussion of chan, and it turned out that the mood of the room was pretty negative on that front, especially in respect to Harry Potter, which was a little surprising for me because of all the aforementioned underageness. Some fans with kids said that it really creeped them out, which I can understand, but I don't really mind myself either way (I don't really read much of it, although after reading HBP I am itching to read some good post-HBP Harry/Snape).


Then there was the closing ceremony, then Melinda gave us a ride back to our hostel, then I ate an extremely nice Chinese meal, then we caught the train, then I read HBP, then we got home, the end. My god!

Comments

[lainy122.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I have nothing to add, because you covered it all nicely ^_^ *steals the Neil quote to stick in her own post*

[nigeltde]

You mean you managed to *read* it all? *g*

Neil = da bomb!

[lainy122.livejournal.com]

lol! Yes, I read it all *g*

Neil = da bomb!

Word that, girlfriend! XD

[nigeltde]

You have been on quite the icon-making spree! *pets shiny new Daniel*

[lainy122.livejournal.com]

Hehhe, indeed I have! *flaunts iconyness*

[nigeltde]

BAAAHAAAAAAAHAAAAHAAAAAA!

[lainy122.livejournal.com]

Rofl! Like it? I'm quite proud *bg*

[nigeltde]

You mean you...made that? It's not just a cropped screencap? I could have sworn that was in an episode.... ;-D

[lainy122.livejournal.com]

Ha, I WISH! *g* *brain would be mush*