A Weekend: Parties, Pop Culture, Food, Gaming

[tcpip]

Friday evening attended Jenne's birthday gathering in Brunswick. She's a syncretic Jewish Pagan, and hopefully will be giving an address soon at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on such matters and their relationship to peace and healing. Saturday was spent at Supernova: Pop Culture Expo, by which they mean a sci-fi expo (indeed, it seems that contemporary pop culture is sci-fi). Spent some time chatting with Rowena Cory Daniells, especially on poor mapping by fantasy authors and then ran into Nyssa C-P where I got to play generous uncle by purchasing her a wooden cosplay sword.

Saturday night we hosted a dinner party with Chiara B. (whom I haven't seen for 15 years plus), recumbenteer, Louise B., and tau_iota_mu_c where my culinary skills were put on generating a variety of middle-eastern dishes; I constructed Arabic salatet hummus, Turkish cerkes tavugu, Hebrew salat pichei avocade gezer bermitz tapuzim (I didn't think that would work), Persian dizi joojeh, Turkish imam bayilidi and Egyptian ruzz di sukkar. What? You want English? OK,chick-pea and onion salad; cold shredded chicken with walnut sauce; chilled avocado, carrot and orange; chicken and bean casserole'; braised aubergine with tomatoes and onions; sweet rice with raisins and almonds.

On Sunday our regular Young Gods game finished the crossover story of the epic flood of Yu the Great from Chinese mythology and an attempt by Sedna from Inuit mythology to reintroduce a new glacial age. It worked quite well with a combination of the very foreign mythology and some intra-party conflict of views. The eleventh issue of RPG Review is in its final stages, but as a preview there's an interview with Jonathan Tweet, one of the most important game designers of the last twenty years.

Comments

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Of course, if they called Supanova a 'sci-fi expo, half the cool people wouldn't go because sci-fi is for nerds ;P

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It was very much a family-geek affair. It reminded me of the Royal Show in some ways, except... people in Jedi suits.

What I find interesting is how twenty or so years ago, a sci fi convention was very much a bunch of seriously strange people tucked away in a hotel in a sort of sealed environment. This struck me as being very mainstream.

What was missing of course was much of a genuine interest in science at all, hence my literary snobbery of calling it a sci fi expo, rather than sf.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Annnnnnd I think you just hit it on the nail on why people go to things like Supanova rather than the more established cons like Swancon. The number of well-known media guests probably has something to do with it too. I went to Brisbane Supanova to meet Katee Sackhoff and the first photo session with Tom Felton (Drace Malfoy) sold out in something like 5 mins.