Of Swords and Parasols

 My father picked me up from the airport last night and told me mom has the stomach bug.  This morning dad is sick (meaning I had to open the shop when I wasn't planning to work more than an hour or two today) and mom says she's feeling better and asks if I wanted her to make me scrambled eggs.  I DID NOT WASH MY HANDS EVERY TIME I WAS WITHIN 5 FEET OF A BATHROOM OR MY HOTEL ROOM DOOR FOR 5 DAYS TO AVOID CONCRUD ONLY TO BE FELLED BY STOMACH BUG INFESTED SCRAMBLED EGGS ONCE I WAS BACK IN TEXAS.  (15 minutes later while she was eating her own scrambled eggs: "This might not have been a good idea"  SIGH)

A mostly good time was had.  The "mostly" is because of a Not All Nazis incident at a panel I did not attend but heard a lot about both during and after the panel.  Good writeups here  and here from attendees, as well as a statement here from one of the panelists.  Here is the official Wiscon statement about it.  I WAS at the post-mortem panel where it was discussed and tweeted the discussion there as thoroughly as I was able  (short version:  most of the people most affected by it weren't at the panel either because they had already left or because they were too emotionally exhausted from 2 days of fallout to go and here more.  As an unfortunate result, the two most vocal people were a woman concerned that the offending panelist being banned was a slippery slope and she'd be banned for stating any opinion someone disagreed with, but more importantly, a man who was a friend of the panelist who kept going on about how she did nothing wrong and how the other panelists and the audience wanting to not talk about sympathizing with Nazis and move on but the offending panelist repeatedly bringing it up was just a consentual back and forth.  He also talked about how banning the panelist would have negative long term consequences and be very "damaging" to the convention.  He kept going even though the moderator made it clear more than once that they were there to talk about procedures and the running of the con, not if the banned panelist felt hurt.  Another audience member summed up the situation from an outsiders point of view with an analogy about how they could eat a peanut butter sandwich just fine but that a peanut butter sandwich could harm or kill someone with allergies, and they wouldn't try to make someone allergic eat a peanut butter sandwich.  Others who spoke up about the incident in the post-mortem focused more on if they thought how the banning was handled and announced was the best way to do it, or if there may have been a better way.

Since I dove straight back into work (which I have been neglecting to make this post) I probably won't do much more in the way of writeups but will try to link to other writeups of panels I attended.  Most of my twitter feed since last Thursday is of the con, though, including livetweeting some panels.  My twitter is meganbm123.

Wisconsin dwelling folks, how should my Texas dwelling self pack for WisCon next week? (For context, it's been at least 90f almost every day since mid-March.)

When SyFy’s Krypton-set 200 years in the past and about Superman’s grandfather trying to restore the family honor-was announced, I thought it sounded like a decent but not overly original SciFi show, but not a good Superfamily show. When it premiered, it added an element to the mix in which Adam Strange has traveled through time to stop Brainiac from stopping Superman from ever existing. At that point, and for several episodes, I thought it was a decent and enjoyable but not overly original SciFi show that had the kind of enjoyable cheesiness going for it that most SyFy shows have, but that was actually held back and restrained by the connections to Superman. The exception to this was the complicated relationship between Lyta Zod, our main female protagonist and lover of Seg El, Superman’s grandfather, and her mother, Jaina, a more morally grey character who tries to balance duty and her love for her daughter. Lyta and Jaina are black, so while this does have the awkward result of making one of Superman’s greatest enemies, General Zod, be black, it also centers some of the most emotionally fraught relationship complications around them.

Fittingly, the Jaina centric episode, House of Zod, is the episode that shifts the plotline to one where the Superfamily elements become a strength.

( spoilers )

 Who here (1) is going to WisCon and (2) is interested in taking over one of the spontaneous panel rooms  to squee about Nirvana in Fire (original and sequel) and/or historical and fantasy cdramas in general/get recs for more to watch because you just started the genre with NiF (and/or have shows to rec to people who did)?

 My laptop charger decided to die on me (I've been having a little trouble with it for a while) and apparently Dell doesn't allow BestBuy to carry the replacement chargers which means /i have to order it online and WAIT.  Thankfully I got a small backup laptop for travel to replace my netbook that died a year or so back (but that thing served me well for many years) but I don't actually have anything set up on it yet.  Also, the keyboard is small and some things on the keyboard work differently from the keyboard on my Dell so this is an adventure.

 Everyone needs to join half of tumblr in exclaiming over this surreally terrifying (and not in a good way) house.

There are three or four different styles going on in the front of the house. 

 There are literally at least a hundred statues that look like they're  going to  move a few inches every time you turn around until the 4th time you turn around and there's a closeup of a porcelain face and the camera cuts away while you scream.

There's a ceiling that's meat to look like crochet.  Or cake frosting?  Both?

At least 3 different staircases.  Maybe four? Are there only 2 and the pictures were taken so that they look different? Hard to keep track.  Every staircase looks like it comes from a different house.  Most rooms look like they belong to different houses though.  Does every bedroom have its own staircase?  Why is there a murderspike on the master staircase that would make Agatha Christie proud.

The garage walls are actually kinda neat, but why does that car look like a museum exhibit?

Is picture 52 a pit, or another staircase?


Why does part of the pateo look like a gaudy walled off prison yard with a BBQ pit?

Why are all the beds in the middle of the room?  Why do they look like twin beds?  Or is it that they look like coffins covered by shrouds?  Why does every bed need so many statues surrounding them?

Why is the house only shown on sunny days?

Why is there plastic tarp everywhere?  Even in the garage!

Are the present owners vampires whose minions turn into statues while they sleep, and the tarp is there s no blood gets on the floor when potential buyers who don't follow the rules drop by?

Grand Prince is the first of this year’s sageuk offerings, and based on the first three episodes, definitely the sageuk you’ve been waiting for if you’re exhausted by all the youth romance sageuks from the last year and a half or so. The initial descriptions did make it sound like another of the same, with an ambitious prince trying to win a woman his brother was also in love with, but the creative team-Jo Hyun Kyung, the writer of Maids, and Kim Jung Min, the PD of Joseon Gunman, The Princess’ Man and the recent-ish Hometown Legends revival-gave plenty of reason for hope. The more information that came out, the less concern there was for a rehash of recent romantic triangles (thankfully-I watched a bit to most of all those and none were actually shows that I thought were particularly good), though I know most had a good deal of popularity with international internet fandom, with the trailers showing a different show than early teasers, and the first 3 episodes are an even more different show.

Grand Prince features fictional characters loosely based on historical ones. The core basis for the story is the conflict between Grand Prince Suyang (later King Sejo) and Grand Prince Anpyeong over the former’s political coup taking control and power from their young nephew, King Danjong, and eventually exiling him. In history, Grand Prince Anpyeong is exiled and later put to death, and King Danjong is successfully supplanted soon after that, and also poisoned not long after. Plenty of other political murders and exiles and executions also happened along the way. Despite the ruthlessness of his methods of becoming king, King Sejo ended up an apparently pretty able and competent king, as such things go.

How much history Grand Prince will use beyond the general inspiration is up in the air, but I suspect the show intends to primarily do its own thing. This world’s version of King Sejong is long gone and has only warranted a couple of mentions. Instead, the palace is effectively (and efficiently with a side of ruthlessness) ruled by Park Mi Kyung’s Queen Shim, who serves as her son’s advisor and aide and her grandson’s regent, long after her historical counterpart died. In addition, the little king is only three when his Unnamed-After-Three-Episodes father dies, as compared to King Danjong’s ten years old. Joo Sang Wook’s Lee Kang, aka Grand Prince Jin Yang, is our representative for Prince Suyang. At this point, I’ll be surprised if he becomes this universe’s version of King Sejo, as the drama is pretty consistent about his being a terrible person. He’s also a strong argument for the existence of self fulfilling prophecies, as most of his nastiness revolved around having been banished from the castle as an infant because he would bring bad fortune to his older brother (bad fortune that the third prince apparently wouldn’t bring) and kept from his family. Growing up a seething ball of abandoned and neglected (as much as a prince sill kept in a nice house with servants can be) and ignored by most of his family until effectively being turned over to an uncle who apparently lives off of bitterness over his own younger brother, the then-current king, being chosen over him. I mean, Kang probably would have turned out somewhat bad regardless, but all that is just begging to have someone grow up to be an angry ball of resentment. Yoon Shi Yoon’s Lee Hwi, aka Grand Prince Eun Song, is our representative for Prince Anpyong. Unlike his historical counterpart, Hwi has no apparent ambitions, for the throne or otherwise, and spent his childhood through early adulthood being a lighthearted ball of fluff adored by his parents and oldest brother, and just going around making lovely paintings and calligraphy, and trying to convince himself that Big Bro Kang loves him as much as he claims even though he kinda knows better. To be fair, I doubt even Kang knows how much actual affection is mixed in with the jealousy and resentment.

( another wall of text here )