Vericon report
Jan. 25th, 2009 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timerippleFriday: I met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kayselkiemoon at the bus station and, after dinner with friends, we headed to Cambridge for Vericon. This was my first Vericon, and I was very impressed with it. We missed the evening panel, but caught the two readings that kept going until the devoted maintenence staff kicked us out.
Saturday: We arrived in Harvard Square, ate a quick breakfast at Au Bon Pain, and hit the convention for the first panels. I was very impressed with the panelists. I don’t know what I was expecting, and I wasn’t necessarily surprised, but was rather very impressed with them. These are intelligent, educated people who’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the kinds of things they write, about the world. Lunch involved a minor debate. People were feeling like Mexican food, and there was talk of Qdoba. Now, in a worrrrld where the best burritos in Boston are made right around the corner from the convention site, this is blasphemy. Luckily my powers of persuasion carried the day, and we wound up at Felipe’s Taqueria. Mmmmmm burritos.
After lunch I hurried back to the Harvard Bookstore and got both volumes of The Orphan’s Tales signed. I was third in line and thus did not have time to work myself into a dry-mouthed panic over what to say.
ME: I read somewhere that you speak ancient Greek?
CMV: Yup. ...?
ME (raising hand): Classics major.
CMV: Awww-right!
US: Greek is awesome! *fistbop*
No, really, there was a fistbop.
The evening activity options included a milk-and-cookies storytime and later a masquerade ball, but I chose instead to mosey over to the anime room, which was no longer showing anime but had scheduled a live-action samurai movie based on a manga by Tezuka Osamu.
As I said, there were other, more glamorous activities on offer. But give me the choice between attempting to dance and getting all sweaty in a room full of strangers, even with a mask on, and sitting comfortably watching attractive young samurai hunt demons, and my preference is pretty obvious.
The movie was Dororo, and it’s quite recent. Based, as I said, on a Tezuka manga, which explains why the anime room was showing it. I enjoyed it quite a lot. The demon-hunting samurai (I’ll call him Roninstein) is a young man whose warlord father has promised his son’s body to 48 demons in exchange for military invulnerability. The baby, limbless and eyeless, is rescued by a shaman and given new, invulnerable body parts. Upon his shaman-father’s death, the grief-stricken Roninstein sets out to kill the demons and thus recover his real body parts. Each time he kills one of the 48, the body part consumed by that demon grows back and displaces the fake body part.
He has inside his left arm an inscribed blade o’ vengeance (TM), which is helpful with the demon-killing.
Three body parts and one belly-dancing spider-demon later, a young cross-dressing thief witnesses Roninstein in action, hears his story from the Old Blind Musician character, and decides to accompany him. She wants the blade o’ vengeance in order to avenge her parents’ deaths. She’s sworn to kill the warlord responsible and all his family, and also not to be a woman until she meets a Real Man. Roninstein tells her to go away. She beats a tiny drum and yells “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” at him a lot. They bicker over which of them gets to be named Dororo. She wins. He tells her it means “little monster”. She yells “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” some more.
So, that settles that.
Merry butchering of demons ensues to the strains of cheery guitar music. No, really, it does. The fight scenes actually are hilarious. This is fun buddy-movie stuff. Then they find out exactly who Roninstein’s real father is...
Savvy readers and watchers will know by now exactly what kind of narrative this sets up. Roninstein, devastated by the death of his shaman-father, is moving farther away from him and losing the last physical ties as his fake body parts crumble into dust and are replaced by flesh and blood. His quest brings him closer and closer to the mystery of his past and his unknown, real family as, limb by limb, he turns into a real boy. Or a Real Man.
That’s handy for Dororo, of course, since she’s supposed to be on an emotional journey toward meeting a Real Man. And she’s gotta help him with the demon-slaying so she can steal or inherit the blade o’ vengeance, so that’s all handy too. And of course, there can only be so many baby-trading power-hungry murderous warlords in one movie...
Which, in a drama series, would lead to episodes upon episodes of tasty, delicious angst. But this is a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and it’s very conscious about the kind of narrative it sets up, so it does some fun things at the end that could mean sequel(s). Or not.
And this movie is very conscious of some of the things the setup implies. There’s a scene where Dororo and Roninstein, flushed with demon-killing victory and the recovery of Roninstein’s real voice, roll around on the ground in a muddy rainstorm getting soaking wet and screaming each other’s names. (At which point the entire audience cracked up. The entire audience, I should mention, was about five people, because most people will pick the getting-sweaty-with-strangers option every time. Sigh.)
The consciousness extends to all of the samurai movie cliches that I was able to identify. For example, there’s the “ronin walks into a lunch joint looking for work, local warlord’s son and his gang show up and start a fight” scene, which is heavily truncated because everyone knows it’ll just turn into the “ronin kicks bully & co. butt” scene anyway, so might as well save time and fight choreography. There’s another scene where Roninstein’s up at the castle and Dororo and the Old Blind Musician are standing back-to-back on a bridge. OBM asks, “You gonna wait for him?” Those who have seen classic films such as Musashi Miyamoto will know that some women will wait by a bridge for fifteen years or longer and then die tragically. Dororo snorts, says, “We all have our own path,” and marches off.
Also Roninstein is very pretty, which we all know is important.
All in all an excellent weekend. I met some fantastic people, heard lots of smart, articulate people talk about books, and ate tasty, tasty burrito. I also need to remark upon how well everything stayed on schedule. Things started promptly, ended mostly on time, and were spread out enough to allow for intrabuilding travel time. Well done, Vericon people. Well done.
kayselkiemoon at the bus station and, after dinner with friends, we headed to Cambridge for Vericon. This was my first Vericon, and I was very impressed with it. We missed the evening panel, but caught the two readings that kept going until the devoted maintenence staff kicked us out.Saturday: We arrived in Harvard Square, ate a quick breakfast at Au Bon Pain, and hit the convention for the first panels. I was very impressed with the panelists. I don’t know what I was expecting, and I wasn’t necessarily surprised, but was rather very impressed with them. These are intelligent, educated people who’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the kinds of things they write, about the world. Lunch involved a minor debate. People were feeling like Mexican food, and there was talk of Qdoba. Now, in a worrrrld where the best burritos in Boston are made right around the corner from the convention site, this is blasphemy. Luckily my powers of persuasion carried the day, and we wound up at Felipe’s Taqueria. Mmmmmm burritos.
After lunch I hurried back to the Harvard Bookstore and got both volumes of The Orphan’s Tales signed. I was third in line and thus did not have time to work myself into a dry-mouthed panic over what to say.
ME: I read somewhere that you speak ancient Greek?
CMV: Yup. ...?
ME (raising hand): Classics major.
CMV: Awww-right!
US: Greek is awesome! *fistbop*
No, really, there was a fistbop.
The evening activity options included a milk-and-cookies storytime and later a masquerade ball, but I chose instead to mosey over to the anime room, which was no longer showing anime but had scheduled a live-action samurai movie based on a manga by Tezuka Osamu.
As I said, there were other, more glamorous activities on offer. But give me the choice between attempting to dance and getting all sweaty in a room full of strangers, even with a mask on, and sitting comfortably watching attractive young samurai hunt demons, and my preference is pretty obvious.
The movie was Dororo, and it’s quite recent. Based, as I said, on a Tezuka manga, which explains why the anime room was showing it. I enjoyed it quite a lot. The demon-hunting samurai (I’ll call him Roninstein) is a young man whose warlord father has promised his son’s body to 48 demons in exchange for military invulnerability. The baby, limbless and eyeless, is rescued by a shaman and given new, invulnerable body parts. Upon his shaman-father’s death, the grief-stricken Roninstein sets out to kill the demons and thus recover his real body parts. Each time he kills one of the 48, the body part consumed by that demon grows back and displaces the fake body part.
He has inside his left arm an inscribed blade o’ vengeance (TM), which is helpful with the demon-killing.
Three body parts and one belly-dancing spider-demon later, a young cross-dressing thief witnesses Roninstein in action, hears his story from the Old Blind Musician character, and decides to accompany him. She wants the blade o’ vengeance in order to avenge her parents’ deaths. She’s sworn to kill the warlord responsible and all his family, and also not to be a woman until she meets a Real Man. Roninstein tells her to go away. She beats a tiny drum and yells “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” at him a lot. They bicker over which of them gets to be named Dororo. She wins. He tells her it means “little monster”. She yells “Yo, yo, yo, yo!” some more.
So, that settles that.
Merry butchering of demons ensues to the strains of cheery guitar music. No, really, it does. The fight scenes actually are hilarious. This is fun buddy-movie stuff. Then they find out exactly who Roninstein’s real father is...
Savvy readers and watchers will know by now exactly what kind of narrative this sets up. Roninstein, devastated by the death of his shaman-father, is moving farther away from him and losing the last physical ties as his fake body parts crumble into dust and are replaced by flesh and blood. His quest brings him closer and closer to the mystery of his past and his unknown, real family as, limb by limb, he turns into a real boy. Or a Real Man.
That’s handy for Dororo, of course, since she’s supposed to be on an emotional journey toward meeting a Real Man. And she’s gotta help him with the demon-slaying so she can steal or inherit the blade o’ vengeance, so that’s all handy too. And of course, there can only be so many baby-trading power-hungry murderous warlords in one movie...
Which, in a drama series, would lead to episodes upon episodes of tasty, delicious angst. But this is a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and it’s very conscious about the kind of narrative it sets up, so it does some fun things at the end that could mean sequel(s). Or not.
And this movie is very conscious of some of the things the setup implies. There’s a scene where Dororo and Roninstein, flushed with demon-killing victory and the recovery of Roninstein’s real voice, roll around on the ground in a muddy rainstorm getting soaking wet and screaming each other’s names. (At which point the entire audience cracked up. The entire audience, I should mention, was about five people, because most people will pick the getting-sweaty-with-strangers option every time. Sigh.)
The consciousness extends to all of the samurai movie cliches that I was able to identify. For example, there’s the “ronin walks into a lunch joint looking for work, local warlord’s son and his gang show up and start a fight” scene, which is heavily truncated because everyone knows it’ll just turn into the “ronin kicks bully & co. butt” scene anyway, so might as well save time and fight choreography. There’s another scene where Roninstein’s up at the castle and Dororo and the Old Blind Musician are standing back-to-back on a bridge. OBM asks, “You gonna wait for him?” Those who have seen classic films such as Musashi Miyamoto will know that some women will wait by a bridge for fifteen years or longer and then die tragically. Dororo snorts, says, “We all have our own path,” and marches off.
Also Roninstein is very pretty, which we all know is important.
All in all an excellent weekend. I met some fantastic people, heard lots of smart, articulate people talk about books, and ate tasty, tasty burrito. I also need to remark upon how well everything stayed on schedule. Things started promptly, ended mostly on time, and were spread out enough to allow for intrabuilding travel time. Well done, Vericon people. Well done.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-28 02:34 am (UTC)Seriously, I have so much admiration for people who can put together an event like this and keep it running well. Everyone who worked so hard to make it happen deserves lots of appreciation and praise.