Is it possible to be this tired and live?
Aug. 10th, 2005 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bohemiancoastCame home via sleeper. Am exhausted. Con vv good. Appear to have contracted hideous incurable Bridget Jones virus along with most of fandom. v bad. Is there an antidote?
Ahem. Start again.
I spent most of the convention in and around the fan room and its associated programme, which were being run by the Plokta cabal with the help of the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fishlifters. I did get 5 hours sleep a night, except where I didn't. Um. I always left enough time to get five hours sleep and then an hour of getting up and getting breakfast before whatever I was doing, except that twice (Saturday and Sunday nights), I woke up after 3 hours sleep, lively, clear-headed and generally up for getting on with it ("still drunk", said the greek chorus). That allowed me to meet loads of interesting new and old fans who also tend to stay up too late.
I don't know to what extent the fan room suited the con. It worked exactly as we'd planned; the bar area was a bit more mixed, with more people I didn't know, still quite comfy though, and the lounge area was more comfortable and more prone to having my friends in it, but I think still welcoming to people who didn't know us all. I found it straightforward to find interesting conversations at any time, but I liked that it was also a place in which people could chill with a fanzine or a book, or whack each other with foam lightsabres. We gave away thousands of fanzines, and I must have had dozens of conversations where people looked at the massive stacks (no mouldering piles here; this was Greg's selection of duplicates of the better fanzines, alphabetised and sorted by continent. You aren't ever going to see a fanzine giveaway table like this again) and said 'where do I start' -- I'd pull out six likely fanzines more or less at random, suggest they read those and then write to editors for newer copies where the address is the same. We also raised money for fan funds through the auction, donations, a sales table, and the Great Tat Tombola -- we discovered that only the British understand what a tombola (a form of instant win raffle where you pull tickets from a drum and (normally) tickets ending in 0 or 5 are winners) is. Or what tat is for that matter.
We got a Hugo for Plokta, not bad after only 34 and-a-bit issues and 7 nominations. People tell me I squealed but I thought it wasfrostfox, who was sitting right in front of me and who had just won the Fan Artist Hugo. I am grinning like a maniac in all the photos. We hijacked the official Hugo photocall to get proper photos of the entire cabal together (apart from children and cats), though I haven't yet seen one that doesn't make me look wild-eyed and psychotic. After the photos we rode through the streets of Glasgow in an open topped bus brandishing our Hugos -- I recommend this. We then went to the Hugo Losers party, where the general excitement of the night caused me to take 45 minutes to notice I was in a massive queue for 1/2 glass of cheap tepid wine and a small plate of finger food. At which point we left. We spent a little while with the CUSFS gathering in the bar (Mike and I are apparently the first CUSFS alumni to win a Hugo, surprisingly); I regret not spending longer here as many of my oldest fannish friends were there, but I erroneously believed I had a duty to hit parties. I then realised that there were loads of parties, the proportion of people I knew was way down on the fan room, I didn't appear to have quite enough energy to 'work the room', and I was missing the Fannish Olympics back at the Moat House. So papersky and elisem rescued me, we returned, and Much Champagne followed. In our absence dmw had retained his knurdling record, and ednun had managed a perfect score on the entirely fiendish Towel Fu.
Here's a pic of my Hugo; other ignominies it suffered included Hugo Ring Toss (thanks toeyeliner297 for loan of bracelets) and How The Devil Are We Supposed to Unscrew This For Packing?
More later; I really am too shattered to write a con report. It was fun.
Ahem. Start again.
I spent most of the convention in and around the fan room and its associated programme, which were being run by the Plokta cabal with the help of the
fishlifters. I did get 5 hours sleep a night, except where I didn't. Um. I always left enough time to get five hours sleep and then an hour of getting up and getting breakfast before whatever I was doing, except that twice (Saturday and Sunday nights), I woke up after 3 hours sleep, lively, clear-headed and generally up for getting on with it ("still drunk", said the greek chorus). That allowed me to meet loads of interesting new and old fans who also tend to stay up too late. I don't know to what extent the fan room suited the con. It worked exactly as we'd planned; the bar area was a bit more mixed, with more people I didn't know, still quite comfy though, and the lounge area was more comfortable and more prone to having my friends in it, but I think still welcoming to people who didn't know us all. I found it straightforward to find interesting conversations at any time, but I liked that it was also a place in which people could chill with a fanzine or a book, or whack each other with foam lightsabres. We gave away thousands of fanzines, and I must have had dozens of conversations where people looked at the massive stacks (no mouldering piles here; this was Greg's selection of duplicates of the better fanzines, alphabetised and sorted by continent. You aren't ever going to see a fanzine giveaway table like this again) and said 'where do I start' -- I'd pull out six likely fanzines more or less at random, suggest they read those and then write to editors for newer copies where the address is the same. We also raised money for fan funds through the auction, donations, a sales table, and the Great Tat Tombola -- we discovered that only the British understand what a tombola (a form of instant win raffle where you pull tickets from a drum and (normally) tickets ending in 0 or 5 are winners) is. Or what tat is for that matter.
We got a Hugo for Plokta, not bad after only 34 and-a-bit issues and 7 nominations. People tell me I squealed but I thought it was
frostfox, who was sitting right in front of me and who had just won the Fan Artist Hugo. I am grinning like a maniac in all the photos. We hijacked the official Hugo photocall to get proper photos of the entire cabal together (apart from children and cats), though I haven't yet seen one that doesn't make me look wild-eyed and psychotic. After the photos we rode through the streets of Glasgow in an open topped bus brandishing our Hugos -- I recommend this. We then went to the Hugo Losers party, where the general excitement of the night caused me to take 45 minutes to notice I was in a massive queue for 1/2 glass of cheap tepid wine and a small plate of finger food. At which point we left. We spent a little while with the CUSFS gathering in the bar (Mike and I are apparently the first CUSFS alumni to win a Hugo, surprisingly); I regret not spending longer here as many of my oldest fannish friends were there, but I erroneously believed I had a duty to hit parties. I then realised that there were loads of parties, the proportion of people I knew was way down on the fan room, I didn't appear to have quite enough energy to 'work the room', and I was missing the Fannish Olympics back at the Moat House. So papersky and elisem rescued me, we returned, and Much Champagne followed. In our absence dmw had retained his knurdling record, and ednun had managed a perfect score on the entirely fiendish Towel Fu. Here's a pic of my Hugo; other ignominies it suffered included Hugo Ring Toss (thanks to
eyeliner297 for loan of bracelets) and How The Devil Are We Supposed to Unscrew This For Packing? More later; I really am too shattered to write a con report. It was fun.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 01:00 pm (UTC)So when is the next one????
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 01:26 pm (UTC)I've remembered what I left out of this -- it was intended to be run as a plokta.con within the Worldcon; committee were happy with that approach. What it actually felt like was a Novacon with more foreigners and less smoke, and with rather more members than you might expect, except not all at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 02:56 pm (UTC)And monster-sized congratulations on the Hugo.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 03:29 pm (UTC)Dr Who party night next time!!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 09:11 pm (UTC)It really helped me having only really done a plotka con before in being a friendly base in the sea of madness.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 11:42 am (UTC)*sob*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 12:21 pm (UTC)I'm glad it went well. Are you going to email me your address so I can send this thing?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 03:33 pm (UTC)PPS I blagged into the Hugo loser party (stunt Damien I think), skipped the queue as didn't want food and got a whole glass of wine !!! nyeh!!!!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 05:46 pm (UTC)V much loved the fan room, in fact that and the Hilton are what 'made' the WorldCon for me. I knew no-one attending except my dad and a few of his friends (all hardcore lit fans) who I hadn't seen since I was six, and the fan room introduced me to people I wouldn't have met otherwise and am v glad I did.
Am assuming that plokta.con would be in/around London as that is where the Cabal is based. If so I'll be there. Any ideas as to when the next issue is arriving? Did I ever get round to giving you my address?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 08:04 pm (UTC)Am sure Helen Fielding copes Just Fine with her sackfuls of cash.
plokta.con is sort of somewhere-near-London -- we've done Leicester, Basingstoke, Newbury.
No, we don't have your address. Send it to the locs address.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 03:54 pm (UTC)My adress is on my contact meme thing. There's a link to it from my profile.