I'm just back from EasterCon, and I had an awesome time!
At the opening ceremony, Phil Dyson made the point that EasterCon (and fandom) is about community, and welcoming diversity, and keeping hope alive in a world that is getting worse all the time - and the convention certainly delivered that.
I met lovely people. I volunteered at the registration desk, so got to meet some quite famous people as I gave them their badges, and some old friends from previous cons. I also got to be the lady with the clipboard in the art show who sticks red dots on the works of art that have sold - and there was such a lot of fantastic art! And not only paintings - there was pottery, and models of alien planets, and jewellery and fridge magnets, and I treated myself to a silky scarf with dragons on it.
There were fascinating panel discussions. I didn't get to everything I wanted to see, because of volunteering, or timetable clashes, but the wonderful thing now is that a lot of those panels were streamed and are available on replay, so I'll be able to see everything I missed in person. The Tech Team are amazing.
There was a panel on SFF in the West Midlands - I now know where in Birmingham the Two Towers are, and the Eye of Sauron, and was delighted that Phil Rickman was mentioned for his Merrily Watkins series set in Herefordshire.
The panel on SF and Trans history was fascinating (so many fascinating panels!), and I enjoyed Digging the Future (with a real archaeologist on the panel).
There was a lot about revolution and resistance - a panel about the TV series Andor, and Why Writing and Tactile Art is Revolutionary (and AI is evil), and Folklore as Resistance, and Fanfic as Resistance, and lots more. One panelist had done her PhD in Religion in Fantasy Fiction - and her thesis is available online (Meg McDonald), so I'm going to look that up.
Scott Edelman was on several panels - he does a very good podcast called Eating the Fantastic, where he chats to someone over dinner, and he said he recorded four episodes over the course of the Con, and had his very first Birmingham balti.
I was vaguely aware that Juliet McKenna had written a couple of books featuring the Green Man, so I finally got round to going to Wizard's Tower Press in the dealers' room to get them - only to find that she's now written eight! So that'll keep me occupied for a while.
I joined the Filk Circle every night. On the first night there were several people who had come along for the first time, and by the third night we were firm friends and singing along to each other's songs. Loved the Canadian comedy songs, and the Eagle of the Ninth song that Valerie Housden sang.
I ate my way down the menu of the Souvlaki food truck - I love Greek food. There were three food trucks outside the hotel for meals. I also had a couple of very nice crepes from the crepe truck, and walked around the lake a couple of times to the World Bar for food.
Oh, and my favourite 'overheard at the Con' comment - I think it was from the Tactile Art is Revolutionary panel? "Be so weird AI could never!"
