Previously, the only non-anime con I've been to is C2E2 2017, so I really wasn't sure what to expect from CONvergence. But a bunch of my friends told me they went and had a great time, and I was going with a bunch of people I knew, so I was sure that it would be at least pleasant.

It was more than pleasant. It was amazing.

Tuesday

After my Japanese lesson, I took the train out to the suburbs, where smtemp met me at the train and drove me to her house. While she went shopping for more supplies, I watched shane.suydam edit together a troll soundtrack in Audacity for one of the other cars and downloaded some of Gail Simone's Red Sonja run to sustain me for the drive north. When smtemp got back we loaded up the coolers and then took them outside, along with the luggage, and right as we opened the trunk the storm hit:


We threw all the luggage into the car and hid inside for about fifteen minutes, and right as we got ready to leave again, the rain picked up, so smtemp pulled the car up, I jumped in, and we drove off.

The road was mostly clear, though with intermittent patches of rain and a beautiful sunset. smtemp and I talked about fireflies and Japan and music and then around 9:15, forty-five minutes late, we arrived at seloy’s house near the border with Wisconsin. When we walked in, she was working on posters for the party they were all planning:


seloy made us some pizza and poured us some wine, then went back to the posters while she and her roommate we ate. When we were done, everyone else jumped up to bring things up from the basement, while I--having no idea what went where--sat in the living room. When we learned that shane.suydam was still forty-five minutes away, though, activity slowed down quite a bit, and we mostly sat around and drank wine for a while until he showed up shortly after mabown did. Just before midnight, we started packing the van, finishing around one o’clock. There were a lot of decorations to pack--they were obviously putting in a lot of effort into the room--and it took a lot of finagling to make all the gear fit into a van and smtemp’s car. But it worked!

seloy: "Good fittings."

The gear stowed, we retreated indoors with our personal luggage. seloy offered all of us more food and water, and I declined. We sat around for a few minutes until our tiredness grew too much, and then we all separated to various rooms and went to sleep.

I appreciated the row of stuffed animals that had been set up watching me in seloy's library, as I slept on the "nightmare futon."

Wednesday

The nightmare futon wasn't so bad, as it turned out, and other than waking up before dawn and having to go back to sleep I slept pretty well. I woke up again at 8 a.m. and hopped in the shower, but then on seeing that mabown was still asleep on the couch downstairs, I retreated back to the library and entertained myself on the internet. Through even without a connection, I would have been fine here for a while:


When smtemp came in and said that everyone was awake, I came downstairs and joined mabown while seloy made tea, coffee, scrambled eggs, and French toast for everyone. When alicia.beck.16 arrived we were all assembled and started to pack the last few odds and ends into her car (and whatever space was left in the other cars). At 10:45 a.m., 45 minutes late, we piled into cars and caravaned out, aiming for the Green Owl restaurant in Madison. smtemp and I spent a bunch of time talking about music together--she had a The Birthday Massacre playlist on Pandora--and I introduced her to The Lounge Kittens, while she played Digital Daggers for me. The weather cooperated, though traffic did not, but we were all within five minutes’ of each other when we arrived at Madison’s only vegetarian and vegan restaurant.

When I saw they had a beet-juice drink, I had to order it:


The service was slow and somewhat surly, but when my curry cauliflower wrap finally arrived after thirty minutes it was very good. We scarfed down our food, paid, and left to make the second, much longer portion of the journey accompanied by shane.suydam's troll soundtrack.

It started with Peanut Butter Jelly Time, as an example of the aural extravaganza that awaited us.

The road up to Minneapolis through Wisconsin was just as beautiful as smtemp had promised, with just as many porn stores and restaurants advertising their plethora of cheese options as I had been told of. We briefly stopped at Starbucks for drinks and somewhere just south of the Minnesota border for gas, and after a half-day of driving, we were navigating through the streets of Minneapolis looking for the parking garage so the crew could unload. shane.suydam was several minutes behind, but smtemp and alicia.beck.16 arrived at the same time, so we parked near the loading area and started throwing everything out of the cars.

It was barely-controlled chaos, honestly. While we unloaded, alicia.beck.16 went to go check in to the room and the rest of us scrambled around to get everything onto the carts and let the gophers take it over to the party room. The person handling the loading area kept trying to keep us moving and was sometimes a bit short, but eventually I took the last load of plywood pieces up to the room and the drivers moved their cars, making the end of the long transit up to the con.

Not the assembling of the party room, but I didn’t have anything to do with that.

With the lot of us hungry after the work we had put into moving gear, and with registration closed until 9 p.m., we decided to go out to dinner, though not before a lobby portrait:


Our first choice, a Japanese steakhouse nearby called Ichiban, had just closed recently and seemingly unexpectedly--The sign outside said they were closing, but not until July 30th--so we went to a nearby kaitenzushi restaurant called Sushi Train. I don’t tend to eat a lot of sushi in America, since after living in Japan, most of it doesn’t measure up, but this was good. They had plenty of sashimi and even inarizushi, so I took plate after plate and stuffed myself with the knowledge that I wasn’t sure how much and how consistently I’d be eating over the next four days.

seloy: "Men don’t like it when you expose their weak points."
Me: "And then shoot them in the giant glowing spot for massive damage."

In the registration line, seloy and mabown started chatting with the people in front of us about Star Wars Celebration. I stepped up to the desk, the woman struggled to pronounce “Dorchadas,” and then I had my badge. After a detour to pick up the last of the luggage left in the car, we returned to set up the party room.

And by "we," I mean "everyone else":


On the way over to the party room, I passed another room being set up as a Japanese tea room.

I sat in the party room while everyone set things up and seloy talked with Tyronne.Davidson, who had gotten a very late start. When he at last arrived, she told me that he hadn't eaten anything all day and was going to go out for food, but that he had left my name and key at the front desk so I could get myself up to the room (1138, George Lucas reference!), so she gave me a room key, I got my luggage from their room, and I set out to navigate the Minneapolis Skyway. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected, and I was only thrown by two things: that I had to descend into the convention center in order to cross to another Skyway passage, and that the Hilton was too good for the rest of the Skyway and its doors were already locked when I arrived even though the Skyway doesn't close until midnight. After a few minutes in the room, Tyronne.Davidson came back from a smoke break and after introductions we quickly found that we had gaming in common. He had played World of Warcraft from vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King, so we talked about raiding, Hakkar blood plagues, Vaelastrasz the Guildbreaker, the proper location for Karazhan, discipline priest PVP, and a bunch of other stuff I havent talked to anyone about in a long while. He also told me some stories of his play through of Red Dead Redemption, and I talked about playing through the Legend of Zelda series.

Tyronne.Davidson: "Games."
Me: "Games."

At 2 a.m., we finally had enough, and we made our beds and went to sleep.

Thursday

I woke up at about 9:30 a.m., just before Tyronne.Davidson, and after a few minutes of checking Twitter, a shower, and getting dressed, I was back in the Skyway and on my way to the con. smtemp had texted me saying everyone was awake and I should come by if I wanted food, so that was my plan. They had brought so much food it would be a shame to let it go to waste. After a few minutes’ walk past some people in cosplay who I’m sure were talking about Breath of Fire and another group of folk singers, I took the elevator up and met everyone in the room for some delicious breakfast.

It wasn’t too long before I was the only one there, though, as the women went to continue assembling the party room and the men went shopping to pick up some extra supplies, so while I munched on the Dots pretzels that seloy and shane.suydam insisted were the greatest pretzels in the world (they were really good), I pulled out my physical schedule book and set to entering events into my calendar, safe in the first thing I learned--that the con basically didn’t start before 12:30 p.m. and good thing, because there was a lot more variety in the events than I was used to from ACEN. I spent forty-five leisurely minutes looking through the guide, putting events in my calendar, and munching on snacks until I was satisfied I had found a wide variety of panels, and then I left to go to the party room. On the way I ran into Tyronne.Davidson, who was trying to use his hands to direct ice into a cooler to bring to the party room. I helped him with an old copy of the The Pennsylvania Gazette from my bag, and then we went on to the party room, on which work was proceeding:


I spent an hour or so helping put up fake wood paneling on the walls and then eating sandwich meat (no time for an actual sandwich) before the time had come for the first panel I wanted to attend: "Superheroes and PTSD." I don't know much about superheroes, but I certainly do know about PTSD (though fortunately from the outside).

After a bit of lost wandering through the Hyatt, I found the panel room tucked way in back and sat down in the semicircle of chairs. After some technical problems with the mics, the panelists introduced themselves and discussed the superheroes they were hoping to talk about: Superman (and most DC comics characters), the Hulk, Harley Quinn and the X-Men, and Batman and Spiderman, the last two said by panelist (and guest of honor) Peter David. They started with a definition of PTSD--emotional distress, nightmares, flashbacks, physical reactions such as anxiety attacks, mood alteration, hypervigilance, and so on, all lasting longer than a month--they started discussing the Hulk, who apparently had been psychologically abused by his father as a child. One panelist suggested that the personality of the Hulk came from his abuse, as a defense mechanism, and the gamma radiation only created the physical manifestation of an already-existing personality. Apparently there was a modern version of the Hulk where the parts merged, and Bruce Banner had to repair a lot of the damage to the Hulk's image that the Hulk (as it were) had caused. This segued into a comparison between Batman and the Black Panther, both of whom suffered similar tragedies and came from a similar social position, but Batman was so psychologically damaged because he was cut off from society (other than Alfred) and the Black Panther still had human connections that kept him from being so scarred by the trauma he suffered.

Furthermore, everyone knows who the Black Panther is, so he's not isolated behind the mask the same way that Batman and a lot of superheroes are.

At this point the panelists took questions, and one audient member asked asked about Iron Man, who I guess has a publicly-known identity? It turned into a bit of a back-and-forth with the audience, though several panelists said that the depiction of Tony Stark's PTSD through the MCU was one of the best that they had seen, and that the movie makers had brought in consultants specifically to help portray it realistically:

Lathan Murrell: "So remember--one of the best solutions for dealing with mental health is time travel."

The next question was about Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, and the panelist interested in CPTSD mentioned that Harley Quinn had an abusive childhood and despite popular conception, her whole personality wasn't forged by the Joker, and it wasn't until Poison Ivy came along and provided a model of a healthy relationship that she started realizing she deserved better.

The ending advice was: do not avoid your symptoms, find someone to talk to, it is possible for untrained people to help a lot, and you can't recover from trauma while it's still happening.

Peter David kind of took over the panel, interrupting people and telling somewhat off-topic stories , but I was really happy with the other panelists' comments.

I took a moment to eat a snack after I left and then walked back to my room through the surprisingly-empty Skyway to rest. Refreshed, I walked back to the Hyatt and past an adorable toddler Sora walking in front of his Donald Duck mother, dragging a keyblade bigger than he was, and into the dealers' room, where I almost immediately happened on a Roman legionnaire:



And not too long after, on Spike and Faye:


I was curious about the dealer’s room, since I’ve only been in the ones at anime cons and briefly to the one at C2E2. There were a lot fewer anime goods, obviously (though there were some), and more of what I’d think of as Renn Faire dealers—leather goods, fantasy art, steampunk stuff, tabletop RPGs (including a GURPS dealer, to my surprise), that sort of thing. I did a quick walk around to get an idea of what was available and then left to go to the “Writing Religion” panel.

CONvergence seems to have a pretty high atheist presence, and I know that Minnesota Atheists are running a party room this year, but these issues look different as a member of a minority religion. There was an atheist moderating the panel, but the other panelists were mostly Christians and one pagan:

"My name is Shauna, I was raised hippie."

Though the panelist on the far left, Tim Lieder, was Jewish, much to my surprise.

They started off talking very broadly about how they incorporated religion into their writing, and guest of honor Bryan Thao Worra opened with the importance of not just showing a monoculture with one religion per species or country, and of showing a variety of levels of belief. Another panelist pointed out that if gods are explicitly depicted as both real and known to be real, that brings in a lot of other questions like how powerful they are, why they act or don't act, what their personalities are like, and a lot of other things that might take away from the story being told. Another mentioned that she primarily approached it from the context of believable ritual, about something that sounds like it would lead to a religious experience and not just people singing silly songs or wearing silly clothing. Then Worra briefly discussed the difference between "Eastern" and "Western" religions and their views on reincarnation vs single-life self-perfection--not a view I really endorse, with beliefs like Pure Land Buddhism and Kabbalistic gilgul out there, but a lot of people do follow that kind of easy mental scheme.

One panelist mentioned that she takes a different tack on religion based on whether it's high fantasy or urban fantasy. In a high fantasy world, a god showing up and smiting a city might just happen sometimes. If a god shows up and smites New York, that asks a lot more of the reader as they wonder how the world looks anything like the modern one (albeit maybe with known-about magic). Worra brought up that Westerners tend to think of religion as exclusive due to the nature of the Abrahamic religions, whereas the rest of the world, and indeed the entire world historically, took a much more pragmatic approach. If there's a jiangshi around, most Chinese people are not going to object to Taoist alchemy being used to defeat it, no matter their personal beliefs.

Honestly, I wouldn't either. That's one less jiangshi around afterward.

One person had a question about D&D-style clerics with provable, repeatable miracles on demand, and Worra brought up the necessity of having fallible, imperfect gods that aren't transcendent so there's room for doubt:

Worra: "This god isn't the greatest at fertility, but he's trying really hard."

三拝様、頑張ってください。

There was another question about religious charlatanism in a fantasy context, and how does one write fake religions. Unfortunately, a rude audience member took it on herself to answer the question rather than let the panel members do it, and mostly side-stepped it by bringing up Scientology and ignoring the issue of actual gods with priests who do actual miracles and how a fake religion asserts a place for itself in that environment. This did lead to a comment about Mythos religions, though, and how not every religion is necessarily looking for the same things from its deities.

Audience member: "What would be your example of something where the writer really doesn't understand the religion they're writing about?"
Tim Lieder: "The New Testament."

There were a few people who wanted writing advice for their own stories, but you always get people like that.

The final thoughts were pet peeves: when the religious character is the bad guy, when religion means "some guy up front chanting in front of a crowd," when people who think Judeo-Christian is a real thing think that Judaism is just Christianity without Jesus, and when writers use deities a lot of real people believe in (South Asian ones, for example) as enemies or superhero identities. Then time was up.

I went back upstairs, where the party room was really coming together:


The others put the finishing touches on the party room, including showing around a couple interested passersby, and then retreated to the sleeping room, where they got into their costumes and and complained about their appearance:

"I wish I wasn’t fat!"
"I wish I wasn’t flat!"

People got ready and left one by one, and when it was down to just smtemp and shane.suydam, I decided to go out and see what was happening elsewhere. I wandered down to the party rooms but all of them were closed other than the ochaya, and rather than go camp in there for a while I took the elevator back down to the first floor and past a Breath of the Wild-era Terri (Eng: Beedle):


I wandered around trying to find some water, past summer vacation Night King, and eventually into the party rooms. I walked past a few, ducked briefly into the Anime Fusion room for grilled cheese, walked past the Midnight Society, and entered Salty’s, where there were people playing fighting games and an A.I. Mugen tournament taking place in the back room. I chatted with one of the people running the room:

Her: "Who are you cosplaying as?"
Me: "I always dress like this."

...and bet on the matches, but after I lost two bets I passed off the controller to someone else, said goodbye, and moved on. On the fourth floor, the Fallout-themed Vault 131 (I’m guessing a combo of Vaults 13 and 101) immediately drew me in, especially when the barker told me about the spicy atomic blast they were serving. I waited for about ten minutes, taking in all the amazing decor:


And then showed my ID and took an atomic blast, basically an extra-spicy margarita. It was delicious and I got a ribbon to go on my badge, so I left in a great mood.

I went through the fourth-floor rooms without stopping at any and then up to the fifth floor, this time stopping at the ochaya. I got some cold mugicha and sat down next to three Minneapolitans who had come together. We talked about the con and Swedish linguistics for half an hour before they moved on, and I drank one last cup of green tea, said my ご馳走様でしたs, and finally moved over to the Bubbles and Baubles party room.

I told shane.suydam to surprise me, and while I was waiting, someone in line behind me saw the “beeees” poster and invoked the name of Nic Cage, causing smtemp to reach beneath the counter and pull out the Nic Cage drink and ceremonial mask. Then I got my drink, and while it was a dubious muddy brown-green color, it was delicious.

I played a bit of trivia with Tyronne.Davidson and the people I had met in the ochaya, and then continued my wanderings. To Kefka’s Barbecue, the USS Nokomis, the Magic School Bus (with nostalgic snacks, and where I met a fellow MOT ✡️), Mos Icee Cantina, Vice City, Earworm (conspiracy-themed), and then retired to the refreshment station for some oolong tea, the traditional refreshment during times of drinking.

I went back to Bubbles and Baubles and spent most of the rest of the night there, sitting on the couch, drinking Fireball, and chatting with people. When the room closed at 1 a.m., we locked it up and tried to go to the con suite, but they had run out of both toast and rice, so we grabbed candy and fruit and then went back to the sleeping room. smtemp offered us drinks, but no one really took her up on it, until seloy offered everyone sake jelly shots. I declined since I figured they were treif, though apparently they were very difficult to drink:

smtemp: "Do I seriously have to jack this off into my mouth right now?"

Around 2 a.m. things died down, and Tyronne.Davidson and I walked back to our hotel, talking about the differences between being a member of a visible vs an invisible minority, and basically soon as we got back, we went to bed.

Friday

I woke up at 9:30 a.m. and didn’t realize it for a while, since the light coming through the window was so diffuse. After I checked the clock, though, I got up and showered and started moving. smtemp texted me to say that people were gathering in their room to plan where to go for brunch, but it was almost time for the first panel I really wanted to attend.

Second panel I had put on my calendar, but putting a panel on keeping a sense of wonder alive at 9:30 in the morning seems like giving medicine to healthy people, to me.

As I exited the Skyway into the hotel, I found Manny and Glottis:


I kickstarted Ehdrigohr when it came out back in 2013 and wrote a review of it when I read it later that year, but I've never played it or heard much about it since. When I saw that Allen Turner was a guest of honor and giving a panel on the game, I put it on my calendar immediately. After some technical difficulties with the projector and Turner asking us to sit in a circle near the front since the room was pretty empty, he got started with introductions around the circle, explaining that "edrigohr" was an onomatopoeia for the sound of creation, and then asking us why we were here. I got a high-five when I said I kickstarted it. Most people had recently heard of it or thought it looked interesting from the panel description, but one other person said that he was there because his wife was Chippewa.

Turner started taking about his youth work, and how he tried to get some of the kids he worked with into Dungeons and Dragons and they weren't into it at all. They weren't interested in robbing tombs or in killing most of their enemies and generally just didn't want to be murderhobos. He tried to find a setting that worked for them, but nothing really fit, so he started developing his own world, drawing on his Lakota heritage. That's what ended up as Ehdrigohr years later.

He said that he focused on explicitly monstrous enemies ("shivers," in the game) to avoid issues of sapient races that are always evil, and based the enemies on depression--the shivers come out when it gets dark, and they relentlessly attack humans and no one knows why.

Turner: "There are a lot of games with sanity systems, where you see a bad thing and you're like, 'Oh my G-d, I’m about to go CRAAAAAAZY'!"

In Ehdrigohr, characters accumulate Sorrow based on their life experience, and too much prevents people from dreaming, and too much time without dreaming and without being connected to other people means that those too heavy with Sorrow just fade away, leaving a black stain on the ground. And some people will do anything to avoid that fate, including pledging themselves to darkness.

He mentioned something I don't remember from the game--a fifth great society called the Rooks, who listen to people's stories of Sorrow and take them into themselves as tattoos. They go around robed and masked so that others can't arbitrarily read the stories. They go north during the polar night, to fight shivers on the line and hold back the darkness, and if they survive, they take off their robes at the first spring sunrise and the light burns the Sorrow away.

One person asked how to write stories about other culture, and Turner answered that the best way to do that was to reach out to members of that culture and bring them into the process. That led to a follow-up about imposing too much on members of other cultures to explain themselves to the majority, and the answer was to develop a pre-existing relationship so it doesn't come off as "Hey, explain your life to me so I can make money off of it."

Turner: "You're trying to give people wine, but before you do that, you have to create a bottle. The point isn't the bottle, the point is the wine. But you need the bottle to give people the wine."

He ended by mentioning the game world is based on the idea of motion, that if you keep moving and don't try to stay in one place forever, you can see your way through whatever darkness that's coming. I don't know that I necessarily learned more about Ehdrigohr by attending the panel than I knew from reading the book, but I’m glad I had the chance to hear from the game's creator.

And we got a free poster!


smtemp texted me that they were all down in the hotel restaurant, so I went down and arrived just after they had gotten their food. I sat down, stole some fries, ordered food, and joined the conversation:

Tyronne.Davidson: "They haven’t found One Piece. There, I just caught you up on twelve years of One Piece."

And

mabown: "I mean, I think the Matrix series is terrible, but."
shane.suydam: "Yeah, but we all know you're uncultured swine."

We paid and left, heading over to the dealers' room so smtemp could pick up a corset she had ordered last near, but which had never been delivered. We spent an hour looking around the room while smtemp bought a bunch of things, and then joined alicia.beck.16 back in the room to rest. We munched on apples and cookies and complained about modern anime fans and aging:

mabown: "We're old! When you get older, you get wider. Except for you, dorchadas."

...until seloy and alicia.beck.16 left to go to the Chair Rikering contest. The others said that they were going to start getting ready for their party room, so I left with smtemp to go figure out the garbage situation for the party room. We didn’t really get a straight answer, but I did get a sneak preview of the Rivendell room, which wasn’t open last night, and I found the Lone Wanderer:


I got a text from Tyronne.Davidson asking where I was and opining that I had to be at the Chair Rikering, so I said that I was on my way and smtemp decided that she would come too.

I’ve only ever seen a single episode of The Next Generation, so I don’t have any strong feelings about Riker or his use of chairs. But I’m familiar with it from YouTube videos and people discussing it, so I went. It turned out that Tyronne.Davidson had entered himself as a contestant...and he made it to the final round! Whereas the first three rounds involved pickups lines or personal advice, the final round was a simple contest of chair-ability using increasingly more esoteric and complicated chairs like a stool, Ikea furniture, or a papasan chair. Unfortunately, he was the first one eliminated, and I left pretty soon afterward.

I sat in the hallway for a bit and then went to the "Meditation 101" panel. I've just recently started meditating every day (or nearly so), and the event description mentioned finding the kind of meditation that was right for you, so it was great timing. After quick introductions--most of the panel got interested through martial arts, though one person got into it through yoga--they started on specific techniques. The first was to pull two or three Dixit cards (the original exercise was Tarot, so that works as well), choose one that's resonant, then write about it. What the picture is, what one likes and dislikes about it, and how it's relevant to one's life. The card I drew was a marionette sitting on a throne, which, I, hmm. This is a journal, true, but I’m not going to write about it. I'll just say that it's extremely relevant to me at this particular moment.

One panelist brought up the instrumental component of capoeira, which I hadn't realized was a thing, and how making music has a meditative effect. Another...honestly rambled a bit about Zen meditation and the various types and tools, mudras and mantras and so on.

"Tibetan Buddhists like to pick a particularly bodhisattva and imagine what it would be like to be that character. Kind of like LARPing the Buddha."

I was especially interested in his mention of 只管打坐 (shikantaza, "meditation focusing only on sitting in stillness without seeking enlightenment"), and despite the pounding music from the panel next door, he led us through a brief mediation of focusing on the quietest sound we could.

A few people talked about "metta" meditation, the Buddhist word for חסד chesed, and how it's harder for Americans to find compassion for themselves than for their close friends, so while many meditation practices start with the self, they're often modified to start with best friends and then move on to enemies, and only then focus on the self. The Zen meditator pointed out that in many languages, the word for "spirit" and "breath" are the same (Ex: Hebrew רוח ruach). One panelist demonstrated standing meditation and how, for example, holding out one's arms doesn't require a lot of aerobic action, but can raise heart rate and the increasing fatigue in the muscles means that the longer you hold the pose, the more of your concentration it takes, meaning that it becomes increasingly difficult for your mind to wander.

Sadly, the "questions" were more of a comment, really, but I’m glad we got a flier at the entrance.

I walked outside to make a quick phone call, and then came back inside and found the King in Yellow:


I took a quick duck into the sensory room for a couple minutes' meditation, and then wandered around trying to see if there was a video gaming room like at ACEN. I found a LAN gaming room and a VR room, and a huge amount of space devoted to tabletop games, but no classic console games or arcade. I can appreciate so much space devoted to RPGs--even now, when I hear "gamer" I think "tabletop"--but it wasn't what I was looking for.

I did find a second Stardew Valley sign, though, advertising that Mayor Lewis was looking to get his "shorts" back. The first was a notification that Abigail was hungry, and then this. Something was afoot.

I continued wandering around for a bit when I overheard someone say "Cells at Work," and I turned around to see one of the Hataraku Saibō germs:


When I took his picture, he gave me a ribbon and said that if I found the other Hataraku Saibō cosplayers I could collect the whole set. It makes me sad I didn't grab a picture of Red Blood Cell when I saw her yesterday.

I went back to the room where smtemp and mabown were getting ready for the party. I ate a few snacks and then left to go to Bubbles and Baubles myself, where after I stood in line for a few minutes and got a drink of BEEEES, Londo Mollari made an appearance:


I chatted a bit with people until smtemp pulled me into the bathroom to fix her corset. While I was doing that, she realized she had forgotten the wine, so I got a keycard from shane.suydam, went to grab the wine, and returned to the room. I came back with the wine, dropped it off, and went to check out the other rooms. Rivendell, with cucumber-water Entwash, Kefka’s Barbecue for the Friday-night exclusive Fire III (spicy vodka and fireball with chili flakes), the Lilith (with sea shanties performed live), Junior’s Bar, and the Supernatural Bunker. Then I went back to Bubbles and Baubles, but I wasn’t there long before there was a suggestion to go down to Salty’s to play some fighting games. I drank most of Tyronne.Davidson’s drink to free him up, and a bunch of us went down to drink tomato-based drinks and play fighting games. I beat Tyronne.Davidson in Soul Calibur V, and then lost to a rando, and then beat alicia.beck.16’s younger son in a best two of three extremely-close-fought game. Then we went outside so Tyronne.Davidson could smoke. Once he was done, I hung out in Bubbles and Baubles for hours, skipping the panel about dystopia I had thought about going to in favor of creepily sitting behind a table, getting complimented on my aesthetic, and having people ask if I was giving tarot readings. Eventually we closed up the room at 12:45 and I followed everyone to the con suite, where this time they had both rice and toast still available. Thus stuffed, we retired to the room, where we assembled Japanese snacks and chatted:

seloy: "I want to apologize to people for having been such a huge weeb."

...until I realized it was 3 a.m., whereupon I said my goodbyes, walked back to the Hilton (Tyronne.Davidson had already left), and went to sleep.

Saturday

This time I woke up at 11 a.m., after Tyronne.Davidson. He had had a mustache-related accident and was now clean-shaven, but he told me that there were plans afoot for sushi, so I hopped in the shower, got dressed, and took the Skyway over to the Hyatt lobby, where we all met up and went out to Sushi Train once again. There was a panel called "Representation vs Tokenism" that I thought about going to, but I thought that a lunch with my friends would be a more valuable way to spend my time.

When we got back, smtemp took Tyronne.Davidson up to get him some volunteer hours, shane.suydam went back to the room, and the rest of us followed seloy to the auction room to look at all the nerd memorabilia, including a copy of Ogre, some Terry Goodkind novels, a chart for proper reading order of the Discworld novels, a picture of Gonzo reclining seductively on a couch, He-Man figures, and a whole lot of stuff I just didn’t recognize. seloy put in a bid on something and then went to check out the art auction, but my walls are full, so I split off and chased down Princess Sorsha and General Kael for a picture:


smtemp had tried to get us a slot at the Artemis Bridge Simulator Room, but the only available spots left were at 10 p.m. during the room party block. I sat in the lobby for a bit watching the crowd until I looked up and smtemp was right in my face. She and the others had come to find the woman dressed as Totoro who had hidden soot sprites throughout the hotel and was collecting them for badges. Someone had taken seloy’s officially-licensed soot sprite plush out of Bubbles and Baubles last night, and they wanted to let the Totoro cosplayer know that if someone turned it in, that she could give it back. That done, we all went back to the room briefly to rest before going over to Bubbles and Baubles to help put the room back together in preparation for the last night of parties. Someone had tried to lean on one of the PVC pipe "trees," and bits of the wall covering had come down, so I helped hang that up while smtemp tidied up the bar and alicia.beck.16 counted the tip money. I stepped out briefly to take a phone call, and then the time came for the next panel.

I wanted to go to "Pagans in Popular Media" partially due to 90s nostalgia (the time I personally remember when paganism was really breaking into the mainstream), and partially out of curiosity. There were only two panelists, one who had been on the "Writing Religion" panel and one college student, and they gave brief introductions and mentioned a couple personal stories, like traveling and giving a talk on paganism, only to find a Bible left directly on the bed when she got back to her hotel room.

"The Satanists are doing some amazing things for religious freedom. I never thought I'd be saying this, but."

They mentioned the use of dead languages and how Latin is often used, but when Latin is the "magical language" it's often part of a worldview that explicitly privileges the Christian view of Heaven and Hell and that general cosmological structure. One audience member, who said she worked in the film industry, said that a lot of religious ritual isn't exciting on screen (hence all the robes and chanting), and asked if they had any good examples of media with depictions of paganism. They both couldn't think of any visual arts, but they mentioned Mercedes Lackey (of course). Then the panel kind of degenerated into an argument about the new Sabrina and what exactly "witch" means for ten minutes.

Someone in the back asked the panelists to define "paganism," and they mostly provided a negative definition--it's not Christianity, it's not Judaism, it's not extant polytheist religions like Shintō or Hinduism or African traditional beliefs. They did bring up the crossover between paganism and "spiritual but not religious," how people who identify as the latter often do so due to dissatisfaction with Christianity and a desire to look elsewhere for spiritual fulfillment. That led to the panelists talking about prejudice in rural areas for a bit before an audience member asked about depictions of paganism on social media. The response was to talk about the debates around magic as it relates to hexing Trump, though fortunately not actually revisit those debates.

Then there were more audience members who wanted to talk about Sabrina. I know basically nothing about it, but the impression I got from the panel is that the witches go around saying, "I bid you dark greetings" to each other.

One person brought up the witchy aesthetic, Strega fashion and so on, and the panelists were divided. One thought the emphasis on flowing dresses or layered black shawls cheapened the religious aspect. The other thought that at least witchy fashion was a better stereotype to leap to than "I bid you dark greetings." One audience member with an Italian accent talked about the remake of Suspiria as a good portrayal, but unfortunately no one on the panel had ever seen it, so they weren't able to speak to it. Then some asshole started pontificating about Sabrina and interrupting the panelists, until another audience member pointed out that the panel had almost entirely been complaining about various media and not so much actually talking about positive examples (and also gave a shout out to Strega fashion). They did at least give over the last five minutes to recommendations.

Basically, if you imagine a bunch of pagans in a room together, that's how the panel went.

I walked back out into the cool air (the panel room had been very stuffy) and looked for interesting cosplay. The NCR Ranger with modded armor I only spotted as I was going up the escalator away from him, and when I passed the genderbent Ramón Flowers there were too many people in the hallway, but I did find an excellent Loki:


Everything I know about Loki I learned from geek osmosis, but I can appreciate the craft that went into this. And the glowing Cosmic Cube is great.

Having been to a panel on paganism, I decided to pull a 180 and go to a panel given by a Jesuit monk: "Modern Monarchies: Life in the Vatican" by Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory. He started off saying he was interested in comparing a real-world absolute monarch to the fantasy monarchies he reads about:

"Of course, one doesn't become pope by having their father be pope, one hopes."

There was a quick movie at the beginning about the Vatican Observatory, the national observatory of the Vatican, then he showed a photo of the various ambassadors to the Vatican who were visiting in 2012. Including ambassadors from Iran, who apparently are fond of the Vatican as a fellow theocracy. There was another movie, about the history of the Vatican Observatory, and then he showed some photos of Castel Gandolfo where he lived for a long while:

"That was where I had my office, and the room below is where the pope stayed when he used this as a summer home, so I was the one guy in the Catholic Church above the pope."

After a bit of ripping on the Da Vinci Code, showing the book description of the Castel and the Astronomy Library (much more elaborate in the book than in real life) and his expy "Father Mangano," he got into the actual structure. There are two separate chains of command, based on the pope as head of the Catholic Church and the pope as head of Vatican City, and while Brother Consolmagno is appointed by the Church, everyone he works with is appointed by the City.

He talked about an astronomy conference he went to about peaceful use of space, which wasn't super controversial until Trump announced space force three days before the conference, so all of a sudden "Space is good. Peace is good. Thank you" was a side that someone took, and he showed up in newspapers as the Church's envoy upbraiding the president of the United States.

Next up was a discussion of living in an ancient building, and how fantasy books often don't talk about echoes off stone walls making it impossible to hear anything, vermin in the walls, condensation leading to mold, a water system built millennia ago by the Romans, and other hazards of centuries-old construction. In fantasy castles, where does the water come from? Where does the food come from? Who staffs the castle? Who pays for all this? Brother Consolmagno said that he'd really like to see a fantasy novel with a focus on the economy, since so much of European history was driven by rulers trying to pay for things or because rulers could not pay for things. He also talked a bit about bureaucracy and how it's the same everywhere, how bureaucrats think that popes come and popes go, and they've been running the Church for two millennia and it's worked the whole time, so why change? But a bureaucracy will work even if there's a vacancy or the ruler is an idiot.

"How many office meetings do you see portrayed in Rivendell? Well, one, there was that one big meeting."

in 2006, they had to switch buildings due to skullduggery, but they managed to delay the move for three years while the new building had individual room showers installed, the same style of electric plug in each room, air conditioning, and all modern conveniences in a building built in 1632.

He ended by recommending The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison and the Godstalk books by P.C. Hodgell as good books about the realistic exercise of political power. The latter I've read, after greyselke recommended them to me when we were dating, and can say they're fantastic.

"I think the Jews have it right—G-d is someone you argue with."

I have a lot of quotes from him here and they barely scratch the surface. He was extremely funny and a great speaker.

I left and walked past a Johnny Bravo cosplay and someone I’m pretty sure was cosplaying shironui model Minori, and then I found the Scooby gang:


After a quick dinner of chicken tacos, I went upstairs, stopping to take a picture of Commander Shepard:


I headed back up to the room for some fruit and being told that I dressed like a dystopian future assassin. While seloy, mabown, and smtemp got ready for the last night of Bubbles and Baubles, I wasted time on the internet. And helped the ladies cinch up their corsets when I could. After an hour, I decided to go out and see if I could find what all those Stardew Valley posters had been about. I quickly found Auron and Lulu:


But no Stardew Valley, so I checked in at the room parties. I had a Dragon’s Breath (grain alcohol and jalapeño) at the Continental Hotel Professional Lounge (presented by the Guild of Assassins) , a Highland Fling (scotch and amaretto) at MacStallion's, an Incinerator (cinnamon whiskey and apple juice) at the Rapture Masquerade Ball, a Greenman (coconut rum, peach schnapps, melon liqueur, and pineapple juice) at Paddy’s Avidgeek Pub, an All Hail the Rum Cloud (blue curaçao, coconut rum, Bacardi superior, and pineapple juice) at Nightvale Community Radio, a pineapple upside down cake shot at Alice’s Tea Party, and another grilled cheese at the Anime Fusion room. I did one more circuit looking for Stardew Valley--the posters were still up, but I didn’t find anything else--then went back to Bubbles and Baubles.

I hung out there for a little bit, drinking the Nectar of a Thousand Sorrows (red wine and root beer), and shortly after smtemp left to go explore the other rooms, I left as well to check out the T.A.R.D.I.S. Graveyard and the Saturday special drink at Kefka's Barbecue. They didn't seem to have it, though, so I got a Light of Judgement instead (not sure what was in it).

I also got a picture of Black Mage:

I did another quick sweep of floors one through four looking for Stardew Valley and again came up short, though I did find a woman with an extremely-unlucky 死 (shi, "death") tattoo on her left wrist, and I heard a conversation that could have come out of the 80s outside the anime showing room:

Old Man: "Jo...Jo...'s Bizarre...Adventure."
Old Woman: "Did you know there are some cartoon movies that are X-rated?"

I went back to Bubbles and Baubles briefly, but the room was too hot (thermostat set at 66°F, it was 76° in the room) so I went to the ochaya for cold mugicha--slightly ripping my pants as I sat down --and then went outside and read Twitter until it was time for the next panel I wanted to go to: "ASMR."

It you're not familiar, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is the tingly feeling some people get in in their heads when they hear low voices, or get their heads rubbed, or hear rhythmic noises, and so on. As I said when smtemp laughed at me about it, it sounds like a sex thing, but it's not. There were two panelists and their introduction was nothing more than their names before they spent some time defining ASMR. Just after the introduction, they opened it up to questions, and one person brought up "fast ASMR"--usually ASMR videos are slow and deliberate, but apparently there are some people who do very frantic ASMR videos and that works for some people. One panelist mentioned that foreign languages are often a good way to trigger ASMR, since it removes the tendency to listen to the meaning of the words and just focus on the sounds. Then it turned into recommendations for ASMR producers, none of which I bothered to write down because I could get that from lists online. One audience member said that he has never heard of ASMR before seeing it on the panel listings, and asked why people sought it out. The panelists said that it was good for sleep, and also it's the opposite of adrenaline junkies--it's like chasing relaxation.

One audience member suggested that it's not just a neurological response, it's also about intimacy. That's why ASMR videos often involve whispering, and the performer being very close to the camera, sometimes caressing it. Another suggested that it works almost like a drug, that over time people can end up losing their ASMR due to overexposure, and how to deal with that. The panelists suggested just mixing things up, trying a new sensation or a new methodology, in much the same way that doctors will try to avoid drug resistance from developing.

I felt bad for thinking it, but one panelist had a very soothing, calm voice and one panelist had a very nasal voice and sniffed a lot, so I was constantly jarred out of my calm when the latter cut in to speak.

When the panel was done (twenty minutes early), I went back to Bubbles and Baubles where it was still incredibly hot, but more tolerable. We closed the room at 12:30 a.m., but there were still people inside, and a couple people found me to talk. One of them was a redheaded woman, almost my height, who had studied abroad in Japan and was used to being stared at. Together we convinced her girlfriend that being stared at in America conditioned us to being stared at in Japan, and the girlfriend friended me to later ask me about teaching in Japan.

We went on a quest to get toast, but right before we showed up, they ran out of toast. We ate some rice and then I ran into the people I met in the ochaya and we commiserated over the lack of toast:

Tyronne.Davidson: "Waiting in line for toast is some white-ass shit."

We went back to the room and broke out the water and Japanese snacks:

seloy: "This is hard and gross."
Tyronne.Davidson: "Name of your sex tape?"

While we ate, we talked about how dating sucks for basically everyone. Eventually most of the group want to bed or drifted away, so smtemp and I went on an adventure. We went down to the movie room where they were playing Happy Death Day 2U and caught the last ten minutes of it with a friend, and then the three of us went to the dance for a while, where, after seeing me dance, the friend asked me if I had any bones and whether or not I was made of liquid. Learning to dance at Dracula's Ball pays off once again.

I danced with smtemp for a bit, and when we left, we realized there really wasn't anywhere else to go or anything to do. So smtemp went back to her room, the friend walked me back to my hotel, and then I said goodnight and went to sleep at almost 5 a.m.

Sunday

We both woke up at 11 a.m. and after I took a shower, Tyronne.Davidson and I walked through the Skyway over to the Hyatt and bought Chinese food down in the lobby. We had just sat down when smtemp texted us and said everyone was back in the room, so we went up to a scene of hungover devastation. shane.suydam was trying to eat half a muffin and failing, alicia.beck.16 was burrowed under the covers, and mabown was slumped over the chair in the corner. I told everyone I was planning to had to the Harisen Daiko performance at 12:30 p.m., and pretty soon all of us except alicia.beck.16 were sitting in the main stage area.

I did take a picture:


...but a lot of taiko performing is in the motion, so a picture doesn’t do it justice. They started out with more traditional songs with a bank of drums and chanting out 掛け声 (kakegoe, "calls used during performances"), but once they finished a couple of those they moved into a more nerdy repertoire, including the use of other instruments. They played a medley from Witcher III, the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, Where There’s A Whip from the 1980 animated Return of the King, the Game of Thrones theme (everyone died at the end), the Muppets phenomenon theme, the warp flute theme from Legend of Zelda, and they ended with the Avatar: the Last Airbender theme, including people doing the dances from the intro. There was a lot more physical comedy than I was expecting, people dressed up in costumes and dancing around, but I liked it a lot.

It was an interesting take on taiko and I'd love to see more of it. There's a place for purely traditional arts, but there's also a place for things like the kagura performance I saw at the Yaenishi Talent Show where the monk pulled out a gun and shot Tamamo-no-Mae.

When the performance ended, shane.suydam and smtemp were finally hungry, so they went to grab tacos while I chatted with alicia.beck.16's husband and kids. But I saw someone go by and I had to take her picture:


After I took her picture, she asked me if I wanted to learn how to pick locks. I said yes and she pulled out tools and a lock pick, and she demonstrated the proper picking technique. I tried a few times, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. She said there was a local meetup if I wanted to come and get more practice, and when I said I was from Chicago, she suggested DC312. Then we introduced ourselves, and parted ways soon after.

Not sure it’s my thing, but maybe I’ll check it out.

I heard that everyone was in the room, so I went up there to grab an apple before our time slot for Artemis came up:


If you’re not familiar with Artemis Bridge Simulator, it’s basically the crew of the Enterprise with the serial numbers filed off. There are six stations--captain, helm, coms, science, weapons, and engineering--each controlled by a single player. So weapons fires all the weapons, but needs to rely on engineering for power, science for targeting info, helm to be in range of the target, and the captain to gives orders of who to fire upon. I’ve only played it once before, and then I was engineering. This time Tyronne.Davidson grabbed engineering before I could, so I picked science instead. I was a bit leery when I heard that I had to be talkative, but it turned out fine. We destroyed a bunch of Krelian ships, including a final battle against two fleets led by a Torgoth Juggernaut, and while we did lose a space station (whereupon the captain led us in a moment of silence), that was the only real setback we suffered. The game ended because our forty-five minute time slot was up, not because of any failure on our part.

I took a quick call and then joined everyone in the party room, where they were striking Bubbles and Baubles.

We went down to wait in line for the closing ceremonies, where we discussed combining the Nectar of a Thousand Sorrows (red wine and root beer) and the Transmogrification Potion (blue koolaid and vodka), which was advertised by a seloy-drawn interpretation of Thomas crawling forth from his tank engine, to make the Train of a Thousand Sorrows--simultaneously a terrible drink and a Dark Souls boss. After they let us in, we watched the screens play a bunch of tweets from the con, like this one about "General Hugs" or this quote from Allen Turner about the dreams of a culture. Then the ceremonies began, with an Avengers: Endgame skit, which I didn’t have a lot of context for, and a skit involving the robot mascot of CONvergence having to become an adult and not being allowed to have fun anymore, since this was the 21st annual CONvergence.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a con opening or closing ceremony before, so I had no idea what to expect. They showed the winners in the art show and the masquerade (including a Medli and a cultist Zenyatta, both of which I saw but didn’t get pictures of), had more skits that didn’t land with me but did with the audience, thanked all the guests of honor

"I'm Brother Guy and I’m an observer from the Vatican. ...what kind of convention has both Chuck Tingle and an observer from the Vatican? Only here."

They brought out the executive committee and thanked them, told us next year’s theme--"Myths and Legends"--and then they let us go.

We went to the hotel restaurant across the street after everyone worried about my dietary restrictions at the fondue place they were originally thinking of, and even then we had a discussion about kashrut because four out of seven people ordered steaks that came with butter on top and smtemp wondered if it was kosher to mix butter and meat (answer: no). After dinner, it was back to work striking the party room, which took up another couple hours. At 10:30 p.m., the room was mostly clean and everything in it had been packed away in the van, so we retired to the sleeping room to construct Japanese snacks and see what food was still edible:

mabown: "Someone else can take care of our bag of rotten apples."

By 2 a.m. people were pretty much exhausted, so we split up with a promise to wake up a bit earlier the next morning. I had a long conversation with Tyronne.Davidson about our relationships, about the difficulties of being with someone who's so terrified of taking up space that they feel like they have to submerge themselves into their partners:

Me: "I was married to a manic pixie dream girl for ten-and-a-half years. I’m good, thanks."

And then around 3 a.m., with the knowledge that we could keep talking for several hours' more, we went to sleep.

Monday

I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and I refused to get that little sleep, so I rolled over and went back to sleep for another three hours. Tyronne.Davidson and I cleaned up our hotel room and went over to join the others, where he said goodbye and I helped load up the rest of the luggage into the cars. We thought about getting brunch, but people really just wanted to get going, so I stashed my luggage in smtemp's car, climbed in, and we were off.

We spent the first hour of the ride with the music off, just talking, until we both got pretty hungry and searched the roadside signs for an exit with a Culver's. We found one in Menominie, and as we got out smtemp laughed and said we'd stand out like a sore thumb. And she was right.

An old man in a cowboy hat asked me if I would "take [his] side," and I was very confused until he clarified that he was commenting on my height. And then when I told the man behind the counter to have a good day, he said, "It’s been going good so far!" I’m not used to this kind of small-town friendliness because even though I lived in a small rural town, it was a Japanese small rural town where the interactions between me and my neighbors were always mediated through me being foreign and not fluent in Japanese.

The food was good, though:


We got back on the road and, other than one stop for gas, drove straight through to seloy's house. We spent most of the ride talking about nightcore music and about relationships:

smtemp: "You boys always want those manic pixie dream girls, but there’s a huge ball of insecurities underneath."

When we got back to the house, seloy and alicia.beck.16 had already unloaded their car, and right as we finished unloading the next car the van pulled up, so the unloading took place with only minimal problems. But not with no problems:

seloy: "Zero skeletons fit in my garage."

I also broke a bannister when I slipped on the stairs and put my weight on it! I guess at least I didn't break myself?

We were all sweaty and tired and drained from the weekend and the drive, so we didn’t gather for dinner or do anything commemorative. We hugged, said our goodbyes, and smtemp drove me home.

She said something interesting on the way, when she was talking about the upcoming Galena trip that I also signed up for. A lot of the suburban friend crew have the image of me as kind of straight-laced and uptight, disapproving in a school principal kind of way. I had wondered why they were always apologizing to me for silly or risqué jokes and various shenanigans. None of that ever bothered me, and I was always curious why I provoked that response. Was it because I'm the most religious person there? Because I was so distant for so long? I’m not sure what I did to cause it, but now at least I can work against it.

I guess it's the downside of my aesthetic being "elf." Sure, I’m tall and thin, with flowing red hair, but elves are also often arrogant and dismissive. And in the past, I frequently was kind of dismissive. I kept people at arm's length deliberately. Well, no more. I didn't do that on this trip, and it meant that I got to really be part of the group, and it was fantastic.


I had such a wonderful time! As I said, I've only ever been to anime cons before, so I wasn't sure what I was getting into. The answer was "The Enchanted Forest!" But also a smaller con that's not blown up into a gigantic mess like ACEN is past the edge of becoming. I never had to wait in a huge line, I got into everything I wanted (as long as it didn't conflict with something else), and I didn't go to anything that wasn't worthwhile. Next year is a bit up in the air, since the con moved hotels this year and so CONvergence 2020 is in August rather than July, but if everyone goes I'll gladly come with them.

It was also nice to not feel like an ancient relic. At anime conventions, I always feel like I'm one of the oldest people there at 36. Admittedly, that does fit with anime--lisekatevans and I were pretty scornful when Cowboy Bebop revealed that grizzled, world-weary ex-cop Jet Black is 36--but it's still disorienting sometimes. At CONvergence I was right in the middle of the age range, which is about where I should be.

I used to make a con circuit, from 2005 to 2008, going to multiple cons every year. Maybe it's time to get back into that again.

Here’s one last picture of all the Bubbles and Baubles staff in their costumes: