Philcon 2018
Nov. 19th, 2018 08:08 amPhilcon was a really great time, as usual. I mean, there are lots and lots of frustrating things about Philcon, don't get me wrong, but they're generally the frustrating things I have already factored in and know how to make my peace with, so I don't really think about how frustrating they are most of the time.
We were worried we wouldn't make a minyan Friday night, as several minyan regulars were unable to make it because of personal circumstances, but with luck, we managed to eke out ten men as we started Kabbalat Shabbat. It was, as usual, a lovely and centering experience of getting to praise God in a community with a bunch of wonderful Jewish geeks. Saturday morning, we didn't quite make a minyan, so we davened without a minyan and I gave a d'var Torah on the parsha in lieu of layning. I talked about Yaakov and the contrast between the first seven years he worked for Rachel, which are described as going by rapidly, and the second seven years he worked, which just are described as having passed. Ramban records an argument between Yaakov and Laban on his wedding night- Laban tried to argue that since Yaakov married Leah, these second seven years would also be working for Rachel, and therefore Yaakov should take as much joy in his work as he did the first time around when he also believed he was working for Rachel. But Yaakov rejects this argument- in his head, the second seven years were for Leah.But I suggested a second reason the second seven years didn't fly by, a tension in Yaakov's character and, inasmuch as Yaakov is Israel, a tension in Israel's character. I quoted Octavia Butler's "God is change" to an approving crowd of geeks, and then invoked the midrash on Arami Oved Avi as "My father was a wandering Aramean," contrasted against Yaakov yoshev ohalim. Perhaps Yaakov was inevitably going to be frustrated stuck in Haran for an additional seven years, because a part of him was a wanderer and needed change, and a part of him feared change and needed stability, and those two parts of him are represented by the first seven years and the second seven years.
After kabbalat shabbat, my brother and I made kiddush and ate dinner in our room and then I schlepped ten pounds of D&D books over to the gaming suite to run my 5th Edition adventure. It was a rerun of a one shot adventure I wrote a few years ago. It went over equally well this time. A couple players had to leave early, but they tracked me down on Saturday to ask how it ended, which I take as a promising sign that the success is not merely in my imagination. This time around the players unleashed a demon in the Demonarium and were eventually all fired.
After the game, I kind of um... stared at the wall for a while. It sometimes takes a lot of focus to stay 'on' as DM for several hours straight. When my head cleared, I went down to see a panel on angsty fanfic tropes, which was a delightful thing to see at Philcon. A panel on fanfiction not dedicated to justifying the existence of fanfiction, but just talking about a specific dimension of fanfic and what makes it work and how to use it effectively!!! Afterward, one of the panelists and I and the programmer director for the con brainstormed fic panel ideas for next year.
Saturday after davening I went to see Musical Guests of Honor the Chromatics sing a bunch of awesome a cappella songs about astronomy. "Shoulders of Giants", a song about Galileo looking into a telescope and learned through his own eyes facts about the universe nobody on Earth had ever known before, made me weep.
In the afternoon, I got a bit of a Shabbos nap, played some Splendor, talked to lots of awesome people, went to a panel on the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey that included Chip Delany telling stories about going to the premiere with Arthur C. Clarke, and was on the panel about intentional retro SF.
After a quick dinner, we went to the Masquerade, an hour in the filk room*, a lecture on Frankenstein as a story of female alienation with comparison to the Murderbot series and Imperial Radch series, and then listened in horror/glee as Gil Cnaan read Chuck Tingle's entire Space Raptor Butt trilogy aloud.
Sunday morning I checked out of the hotel room, browsed the dealer's room and grabbed the new 5E sourcebook and a Chromatics album, got a quick lunch, and then I had my panel on Mad Science vs. Real Science, which was fantastic fun, a great group of panelists and an enthusiastic audience. John Ashmead had the fantastic structural conceit that for science to move forward, there needs to be a cycle of engagement and disengagement between scientist and scientific community, with the periods of disengagement being consonant to greater or lesser degree with 'mad science'. Afterward I waited for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
freeradical42 to finish his late panel so we could drive home.
*One of the later verses of "Home on Lagrange", a filk about establishing space stations at the Lagrange point to the tune of "Home on the Range" goes
Which I am pretty not okay with, because I don't think jokes about Nazis belong in filk songs? Is this an unreasonable position? I complained about it and someone in the room tried to explain to me that "Lebensraum" is just the German word for living space, and I was ridiculous to suggest it had something to do with Nazis. Which is pure bullshit. Goyim can really suck sometimes.
Though maybe the problem reflects a deeper flaw of the song. "Home on the Range" is inherently about the mythical open frontier, and it ignores Native presence. "Home on Lagrange" reinterprets the song for space exploration, which needless to say is an effort to reimagine a frontier without the messy human realities of colonialism (there was some good albeit offhanded discussion of this problem with Star Trek on a different panel). So of course "Home on Lagrange" is going to use offensive colonialist language.
We were worried we wouldn't make a minyan Friday night, as several minyan regulars were unable to make it because of personal circumstances, but with luck, we managed to eke out ten men as we started Kabbalat Shabbat. It was, as usual, a lovely and centering experience of getting to praise God in a community with a bunch of wonderful Jewish geeks. Saturday morning, we didn't quite make a minyan, so we davened without a minyan and I gave a d'var Torah on the parsha in lieu of layning. I talked about Yaakov and the contrast between the first seven years he worked for Rachel, which are described as going by rapidly, and the second seven years he worked, which just are described as having passed. Ramban records an argument between Yaakov and Laban on his wedding night- Laban tried to argue that since Yaakov married Leah, these second seven years would also be working for Rachel, and therefore Yaakov should take as much joy in his work as he did the first time around when he also believed he was working for Rachel. But Yaakov rejects this argument- in his head, the second seven years were for Leah.But I suggested a second reason the second seven years didn't fly by, a tension in Yaakov's character and, inasmuch as Yaakov is Israel, a tension in Israel's character. I quoted Octavia Butler's "God is change" to an approving crowd of geeks, and then invoked the midrash on Arami Oved Avi as "My father was a wandering Aramean," contrasted against Yaakov yoshev ohalim. Perhaps Yaakov was inevitably going to be frustrated stuck in Haran for an additional seven years, because a part of him was a wanderer and needed change, and a part of him feared change and needed stability, and those two parts of him are represented by the first seven years and the second seven years.
After kabbalat shabbat, my brother and I made kiddush and ate dinner in our room and then I schlepped ten pounds of D&D books over to the gaming suite to run my 5th Edition adventure. It was a rerun of a one shot adventure I wrote a few years ago. It went over equally well this time. A couple players had to leave early, but they tracked me down on Saturday to ask how it ended, which I take as a promising sign that the success is not merely in my imagination. This time around the players unleashed a demon in the Demonarium and were eventually all fired.
After the game, I kind of um... stared at the wall for a while. It sometimes takes a lot of focus to stay 'on' as DM for several hours straight. When my head cleared, I went down to see a panel on angsty fanfic tropes, which was a delightful thing to see at Philcon. A panel on fanfiction not dedicated to justifying the existence of fanfiction, but just talking about a specific dimension of fanfic and what makes it work and how to use it effectively!!! Afterward, one of the panelists and I and the programmer director for the con brainstormed fic panel ideas for next year.
Saturday after davening I went to see Musical Guests of Honor the Chromatics sing a bunch of awesome a cappella songs about astronomy. "Shoulders of Giants", a song about Galileo looking into a telescope and learned through his own eyes facts about the universe nobody on Earth had ever known before, made me weep.
In the afternoon, I got a bit of a Shabbos nap, played some Splendor, talked to lots of awesome people, went to a panel on the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey that included Chip Delany telling stories about going to the premiere with Arthur C. Clarke, and was on the panel about intentional retro SF.
After a quick dinner, we went to the Masquerade, an hour in the filk room*, a lecture on Frankenstein as a story of female alienation with comparison to the Murderbot series and Imperial Radch series, and then listened in horror/glee as Gil Cnaan read Chuck Tingle's entire Space Raptor Butt trilogy aloud.
Sunday morning I checked out of the hotel room, browsed the dealer's room and grabbed the new 5E sourcebook and a Chromatics album, got a quick lunch, and then I had my panel on Mad Science vs. Real Science, which was fantastic fun, a great group of panelists and an enthusiastic audience. John Ashmead had the fantastic structural conceit that for science to move forward, there needs to be a cycle of engagement and disengagement between scientist and scientific community, with the periods of disengagement being consonant to greater or lesser degree with 'mad science'. Afterward I waited for
freeradical42 to finish his late panel so we could drive home.*One of the later verses of "Home on Lagrange", a filk about establishing space stations at the Lagrange point to the tune of "Home on the Range" goes
When we run out of space for our burgeoning race
No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart
If we just find a big enough wrench
Which I am pretty not okay with, because I don't think jokes about Nazis belong in filk songs? Is this an unreasonable position? I complained about it and someone in the room tried to explain to me that "Lebensraum" is just the German word for living space, and I was ridiculous to suggest it had something to do with Nazis. Which is pure bullshit. Goyim can really suck sometimes.
Though maybe the problem reflects a deeper flaw of the song. "Home on the Range" is inherently about the mythical open frontier, and it ignores Native presence. "Home on Lagrange" reinterprets the song for space exploration, which needless to say is an effort to reimagine a frontier without the messy human realities of colonialism (there was some good albeit offhanded discussion of this problem with Star Trek on a different panel). So of course "Home on Lagrange" is going to use offensive colonialist language.