montfelisky | NineWorlds 2018: A Summary

This was my first year staying in the con hotel since the convention moved to the Hammersmith Novotel rather than the (nominally) Heathrow Radisson Blu and it was both so much nicer than commuting from home to the convention or staying in the Radisson ever was. The staff were so lovely and I thought it was incredibly sweet how a lot of them costumed up for the convention. And it was nice being able to get up in a leisurely fashion and have breakfast with friends instead of frantically navigating the whims of TFL on a weekend.

Thursday

I arrived on Thursday evening after work - another first, as normally I travel down on Friday morning. But I was very excited about staying in the nice hotel beds and there was a panel I wanted to go to first thing the following morning. I arrived, checked in, then went for dinner with

happydork,

such_heights and

purplefringe at Wagamama, where I had a "vegatsu" (vegan katsu curry with seitan strips). I couldn't remember if I liked seitan, but it was delicious and solved the problem I used to have with Wagamama's vegetarian katsu curry - namely that they replace the chicken (protein) with vegetables (carbohydrate).

Aliette was sharing a room with me and arrived a lot later that evening, having travelled across France before travelling across London - she was late enough that she decided to forego dinner and dine instead on blondies (baked by meeeee!) and brownies (not baked by meeeee!). Our room had a lot of cake and weirdly the quantity of snacks grew rather than dwindled over the weekend. A lucky situation! Aliette bought a chocolate fondant cake which will now occupy my dreams for the rest of the year with its molten deliciousness.

Friday

I got up for breakfast and a 10am panel: Historical Accuracy In Costume For Film/TV, which had Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, Elly Platt, Lizzie Biscuits and EK McAlpine as panelists and

happydork as their very excellent moderator. I have to admit I went to this one mostly because it had three of my friends involved and so I wanted to be supportive, but it was really engaging and very interesting. The main thing I took away from it is that women's clothes all used to have pockets as a default and men had to keep their stuff in their codpieces, so history has done us all a great and terrible wrong by reversing this.

Aliette was hosting a fountain pen meet-up at 11:45 so I went to that to play with all her pens and inks and fell thoroughly in love with them and determined to buy my own VERY IMMINENTLY as a reward for overcoming various hurdles - but then Aliette gave me one of her spare TWSBI fountain pens later in the convention because she is a pen-pushing ANGEL and I will send her all of my family's riches (read: our recipe for hamentaschen) in return.

qian came to meet us post fountain pens and the three of us went to Sagar for lunch, where I had a paneer dosa and some of

qian's brinjal curry.

I spent some time lobbyconning and catching up with friends before my next panels, which were consecutive at 5pm and 6:45pm. The first was The Only Way is Indie at 5pm, where I sat at the other end of a row from another woman who suddenly turned into

cosmic_llin - there are few things nicer at a con than a surprise friend in a panel - followed by Policy and Administration - celebrating the back room in genre. This was probably one of my favourite panels of the whole con. We talked about tax collectors and good roads and the improbability of any sophisticated weapons system working first time without testing. Diana Wynne Jones got namechecked a lot. It was also one of the most rapidly filled panels I attended, which says a lot for the attendees of NineWorlds being huge nerds.

Dinner was Nandos with Gavia, Grace and

qian. I had hummus with peri-peri drizzle (a favourite) and then, much later, some halloumi sticks, after the dude established that two people at the table had in fact ordered separate portions of halloumi. I had forgotten my wallet (to my SHAME!) and so

qian very nicely paid for me. <3

Saturday

I got up for 9am (NINE AM!!!!) to go to Elly's talk Dressing for Dystopia - what should you wear for the end of the world? which she made it in for like a hero despite TFL attempting to thwart her at every step. One of the things I most appreciate about following Elly on social media - aside from the fact she's great - is I feel as though I've learned so much more about sustainable fashion as a result. This talk was hugely informative and entertaining and had a lot of excellent stills from Mad Max: Fury Road. Main things I learned: in an apocalypse, you want good boots, lots of layers, a big coat with pockets and, ideally, a cape to put over the top of it all so you can swoosh around discreetly.

This was followed by Grace's panel on Storytelling in VR. This was hugely interesting and I feel as though we could have one of these panels every year to cover the developments in VR. One of the things I most appreciated was Grace and Vanessa Thompsett talking about the ways in which VR gaming could be used to raise awareness (and empathy) of the way other people experience the world. Grace talked about writing an experience to simulate a microcosm of what living with Generalised Anxiety Disorder can feel like, and also of a Google Glass simulation she and her flatmates put together which made her realise that her partner saw the world from a totally different perspective to her (he is substantially taller, so the top of the mantlepiece is not a secret for him), and Vanessa talked about how she would like to see VR raising awareness of what it's like to live with chronic pain - with a bar that starts filling up with pain if you stand for too long, and hyperawareness of chairs or anywhere else you can rest. It made me think how useful it would be to have a simulation like that to explain to people why I don't like going to pubs/bars or other social spaces where I might have to stand for a long period of time as part of the experience, while my joints gradually stiffen and inflame. Of course I also don't like paying London prices for a pint of bread liquid but the pain is the main thing!

After two back-to-back panels, I felt a bit panelled out. I went to the vendors room and bought some beautiful yarn and then skipped the apparently amazing Xena panel to sit in the park with Grace and eat crisps. Grace had another panel to get to after that, so I went to my room and practised Krav Maga until I worked out how to do one of the things with which I had been struggling - then I celebrated with a small nap.

This sufficiently revitalised me that I went to the talk I wanted to at 3:15pm, Layers of Meaning: the dimensional differences between English, Chinese, and Sign Language given by Haplocke Sixpence (this is such a beautiful name!). It was an absolute delight of a talk, full of linguistic joy although Haplocke said she is not an academic linguist, and it was so interesting to learn more about BSL in particular and how very literally it embodies its meaning in the sense of using your body to express every component of it. I came out desperately wishing there were about 20 more hours in the day that I could use for studying languages.

In the evening, Gavia persuaded me to drink espresso martini and then we danced at the Bifrost disco until 1am. I had a very quick shower to wash the glitter off of my face and then crawled into bed.

Sunday

I crawled out of bed for breakfast, feeling a trifle fragile around the eyes (less hangover, more lack of sleep) and then went to the talk given by Hannah Hazi on The Golem: Jewish folklore and modern interpretations. She did one a couple of years ago on midrash and fanfiction and this one was every bit as brilliant, though with much more discussion of antisemitism because while the early stories of the golem are all about it being a protector and a guardian forged and guided by someone righteous, once the gentiles got their hands on it from the 19th century onwards it started to become a figure of potential malevolence guided by someone (a Jew) who was either stupid or evil. Typical goyim being goyim and ruining the things of ours which they touch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And no points at all to the person in the Q&A who had been there for this entire talk, which should have given them the context to critically evaluate the answer to their question already and yet still felt the need to ask, "Is it appropriative for gentiles to write golem stories?"

(This question always, ALWAYS comes off as seeking approval from the group whose story you want to use and quite honestly it's awkward because no one wants to give permission to someone who might cock it all up. There's no certificate of permission for this. Write your damn story and do your damn best not to make the crappy antisemitic mistakes already covered in the talk and if you do a bad job then that's on you.)

After this I went off to pack up, discovering a rogue

qian snoozling in our room. Then we ported the huge quantity of snacks we had left over to bar where we hung out with

such_heights and

purplefringe and I went off to the vendors room again and bought myself a hammerhead shark necklace by birchplease_hq.

My last panel of the con was Portrayals of Migration in SF, which had Aliette and Jeannette Ng being brilliant as panelists. I'm sad that I have the fewest notes from this panel because by this point in the con I was starting to fade, but there was a really interesting thread of conversation about how cultures and traditions on Earth might be changed as we go out into space - how do you have a lunar festival (or a lunar calendar) if you are in fact living on the moon?

qian and I went off for a late lunch and I had sweet and sour tofu, rice, seaweed and some steamed vegetable buns at a very delicious restaurant. By the time we finished, I was feeling con-done and so we went back and said our goodbyes and then ended up snagging a rogue Aliette on the way to the tube station.

And I got home and discovered my family had all returned from northern France.

Overall, on a personal level I think I probably enjoyed this NineWorlds more than any of the previous. It felt like I finally knew enough people not to have "friend fear" at any point, and I wasn't trying to do all the panels, and every single panel I did go to was excellent. Aliette was an extremely lovely roommate (and did not seem to hate me for snoring like a dragon every night), although I did miss

qian very much - next year I will be better at wrangling a triple room if we all go again! But I appreciated so much being in a space where everyone understands the need to bugger off to your room for a wee lie down at any given moment in the afternoon because I do basically spend my entire life longing for a small nap.