My Arisia Recap

For me, Arisia kicks of the start of a new year and a new con (ie convention) season. Every year, I hem and haw as it's so close to another of my favorite cons, Boskone, but I think I'm finally caving to the fact that I love it.

TARDIS Venn Diagram. Squee! 

See Arisia is like a mini-Dragoncon, a con by fans, for fans. The panels, events and parties are more about fans and professionals coming together as opposed to big name stars and press. There are all different kinds of representation of fandom - costumes and cosplay, LARPing, shadowcast performances, panels on comics, TV shows, science, science fiction, etc, video and table top gaming, drum circles, belly dancing; the list goes on and on.

The con also does an amazing job at being inclusion across fandom, including gender awareness (including a gender-free restroom), first time Arisia attendees (there were pretty ribbons!), and designated wheelchair spaces in most panel rooms.

So here's this year's recap. Warning it's a wee bit long.

Panels
Always trying to learn something and/or improve the world, I attended four panel this year: Science: Diversity Needed,  Comic Books and the Women that Love Them,  Hugo Awards: Evolution, Revolution or Death? and Marvel Cinematic (and TV) Universe. I won't bore folks with the recaps since I did live tweet from thee panels, but I'll throw in key takeaways.

Science: Diversity Needed - different perspectives can help solve problems by offering us different ways/tools to solve them. One-on-one mentoring can be key to encouraging individuals to stay the course.



Hugo Awards: Evolution, Revolution or Death? - although not as productive as I'd hoped it would be, there were still some takeaway gems. Become a Supporting Member of that year's Worldcon (usually around $40). All Supporting Members get a chance to vote. Encourage your friends, family, science fiction groups to read great books that also happen to be by diverse authors about diverse subjects.

Comic Books and the Women that Love Them - (I attended in part because one of our League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen members was on the panel. Woo hoo!) If you're new to reading comics, pick up what interests you. Don't worry about the issues or stories that came before, you'll figure that out along the way.


Marvel Cinematic (and TV) Universe - no world-changing takeaways here, but a quick touch point on the four series being created for Netflix.


Food trucks
Super yay! Having a low-cost meal option that was also delicious was a fantastic idea. A big thank you to the folks that coordinated it. I only got to try Roxy's Grilled Cheese after waiting in line through wet cold snow, but the Green Muenster was worth it. The line waits were super long and it was sad when you heard that options were sold out. Maybe other local trucks will be more likely to participate upon hearing this year's success. Fingers crossed.

Volunteering
Since I decided last minute to attend this year's Arisia, my volunteer options were not as well-planned out on my part. I offered to help with Clear Ether, the at-con twice-daily newsletter and the Green Room. So I wrote articles, followed deadlines, and watched to see if they would be published. It was fun and I hope to do it again next year. Due to my last-minuteness, my Green Room volunteering didn't pan out, but that was really my fault. Thanks, Green Room for being great.

Late night
Friday night I let loose and enjoyed the Drum circle. I haven't been to a drum circle in years and alas, did not bring a drum. It was still relatively early when I arrived around 10pm, and the dancers were all ages. I jumped in for a bit, feeling the energy channeling out and in. There were too many folks about to go full trance-mode, but the energy spirals were fine enough. At some point, the dancers rotated out and turned into an impromptu belly dance, complete with swirling jewel tones and sequins.

I also attended the shadowcast shows of Rocky Horror in the round and Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Two things that make a shadowcast awesome for me: being able to see the original movie and the moments when the audience in unison, shows their appreciation, ie call-and-response, singing, throwing rice, etc. The shadow cast actors are just icing on the cake, bringing to life the thing that we already, unanimously love.

For Rocky Horror, the show started really late. Super fun was mostly everyone in the audience pre- and during movie Time Warping. There's just something special about a group Time Warp. Since it was billed as in the round, I figured the cast would be prominent and it was, but the screen showing the movie was in an awkward location. Also, our audience had some slightly overzealous audience members that kept yelling call-and-responses the whole time, so the whole audience rarely had a chance to sync up. Sigh. It happens.

Doctor Horrible has a much better set-up: actors on center stage, big screen on left showing the actors and a big screen on the right showing the movie. The audience singing was amazing! Woot woot. And a couple clever call-and-responses added nicely.

Oh and Saturday night a friend and I splurged on a couple glasses of the Oban scotch in the Birch bar. Delicious.

Gaming
I love tabletop gaming, so naturally I popped in and out to see what was happening. The room was a good size and I was surprised by how many RPG games were going on throughout the weekend. The games available to borrow offered a good selection, so Saturday night, some friends and I met up for gaming around 9pm.

Sunday I got to demo a new game from Games by Playdate called Slash, where players try to create the One True Pairing (OTP) based on cards in their hand.  I was demoing and playing (I know, tsk tsk) but almost every round ended up in a story throw down as to why one pairing should be chosen over another. Tons of fun!

Thoughts: there wasn't an easy way to find others who wanted to play. I'm not sure of a solution, but maybe a waiting area (similar to Unity Games) where folks can visibly be seen as wanting to play? Or maybe the game area could have a social media outlet to post a new game starting that wants more players?

Costume/Cosplay

The inclement weather is not a fan to costumers who stay at the non-con hotel, so I only wore my Agent of SHIELD Melinda May costume this time. There were lots of great costumes to see, including a steampunk Scarlet Witch and Batman. As part of my newsletter reporting, I did hear that as of Sun at noon, they had given out over 100 hall contest ribbons.This year, I felt like there were fewer costumes, but maybe it was due to the floor plan. Not sure, but other friends remarked on this as well.