I met a number of cool people at the con, and I regret not having gotten pics of more of them. In particular – Kevin Riggle, who hung out with me a fair bit of Friday, and Anaea Lay (author of Your Cities) who was my “con girlfriend” in that we hung out much of Sunday and went to the awards together. She has just posted the first post-Hugo-win interview with Author Ken Liu (of Paper Menagerie, which deserved the Hugo so much! It was beautiful. Much better than that Movement thing I wrote about)
This is Anaea Lay (far left), I went up to her after a panel because 1) she was cute, and 2) I figured I could actually start a conversation with the whole similarity-of-names thing (originally my first name was pronounced exactly like hers except with an “sh” sound added to the end). Turns out they do both have origins in greek antiquity. :)
Learned a bit more about myself too. Figured I had most of that stuff ironed out already, but it turns out that growing as a person doesn’t mean you’re done growing, it just means you’re done making all the noob mistakes and can start working on slightly more complex mistakes now. :) My actual girlfriend (as opposed to Con girlfriend) recommended that I not mention that I have a girlfriend at the con. We’re monogomish, and she’s got a bit of experience with that, but this was my first time without her by my side. It’s easier when you present as a couple, how do you slip that in when the SO isn’t there? I tried that and I hated it. Several times I was about to mention her and I had to stop myself. It made me feel skeevy and dishonest, and I didn’t much like myself. A lot of people in SF/F fandom identify as poly (I still dislike the term… I’m not poly, I’m just monogomish) so I shoulda just been direct about it. Bleh. Lesson learned.
On to further coolness!
I went to the live recording of The SF Squeecast. I went for two reasons – 1) Cat Valente was there, and I’d seen her on a previous panel. She’s smokin’ hot, and she’s got an intense charismatic prescence about her. It makes you want to be near her more. (she’s second from the left) 2) I needed something light and fun to lift the spirits, and podcasts are usually that sort of entertainment. Especially, one would assume, podcasts with the word squee in them. It did not dissappoint! It may have been even better than the Disaster Response in SF panel in terms of pure fun (hard to say). Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant, far left) stole the show, she is an absolute RIOT. If the hyper chibi anime girl jumped into the real world, she’d be Seanan. If fact, she might actually BE an escaped anime charecter, she looked distinctly dissapointed a couple times that she couldn’t pratfall on command. I’ll post a link to the episode once it’s available, it was a blast.
I now understand the Newflesh trilogy a little better. It’s just Seanan romping around having a blast in a B zombie movie. Hell, Shaun is basically Seanan. I can see why she gets Hugo nominations from her fans. It’s impossible not to like her, and you want to have a good time along with her. Deadline is still a bad book (as highlighted in the FAQ), but now I understand.
The Awards themselves were a blast. Scalzi was very entertaining (as always), the pomp was great, the whole thing was awesome. And I got a pic of me with Zach Weiner!!!!! WOOOOO!!!
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