Origins 2004: Wrapup

So yeah, Origins was great. The three Somervudlians all agreed we had a great time. I am definitely reënergized about games, Looney and otherwise. This doesn't mean I will leap back into doing regular demos again -- now that I'm reacclimated to the "waking world" I remember the reasons I had for dropping this activity, and they are not bad reasons -- but I now see that I was wrong to turn my back on the whole community. I missed so much!

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to Looney stuff over the last couple of years, so the official adoption of labcoats as rabbit-identifier was new to me; I don't recall it being this official two years ago. AFAIK (and correct me if I'm wrong) cthulhia was the first to apply the labcoat-and-bunny-ears dresscode, at Arisia 2001, and it didn't immediately catch on universally, so it was interesting to see how it's developed. The ears remain optional, though several of the more gung-ho Looney fans wore them; a new trend I saw this year was their attachment to hats (bowlers and "mad-hatter" hats, mostly), which looks entirely appropriate, and more on-model, anyway. Though the simple OOB ears-on-headband style tends to always look cute on girls. (The hats also look cute on girls. Or maybe Looney-fangirls are all just cute anyway.)

After five years of doing the Big Experiment, Looney Labs has definitely become a well-recognized part of Origins. While wandering around the expo in labcoat (or with labcoated others) I'd be approached and questioned or complimented about Looney stuff (a lot of people thought we were all employees, which is funny, but understandable) from every sub-flavor of gamer present, from the swarming armies of Pokemon kids to the cliques of grizzled 60-year-old wargamers. I also like how the Looney Look mixes with the rest of the con. When people were "in costume" at all they tended more towards the anime-goth-matrix-vampire style, with the bondage pants and the trenchcoats and all (some where LARPers but I suspect that many dressed like that normally), so wearing this shiny white garment with happy buttons (and being semantically meaningful about it) was pretty cool. In the insane and often cynical microcosm of the Origins expo, I felt like a walking statement of optimism.

(It reminds me of doing a double-take after walking past a female officer of the Galactic Empire, in a form-fitting gray uniform complete with the, uh, the rank insignia that looks like old tape recorder buttons I guess (you know, those things) and her evil cap's visor pulled low over her eyes, emphasizing her delicately imperialist jaw of evil. With this last detail, I was thinking that she totally could have been a bad-guy femme fatale from some sort of Indy Jones / Star Wars mashup project. Maybe she is actually a filmmaker and is going to do this herself. Good.)

(How come nobody at these things ever dresses like the Rebel Alliance? I guess Storm Troopers are funnier and more visually interesting than some schlobs in safety-orange flightsuits. Plus I guess if both sides showed up they'd feel obligated to point their blasters at each other and say "There's one! Pshew pshew!" all the time so maybe it's for the best.)

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Columbus was TEH GAY, or at least the part of it we were in. Pride flags all over everywhere, up and down the streets. Frequent newsrag dispensers featuring cover art of pouting and shirtless young men. Countless tiny art galleries. Seriously, it looked like the nightmare scenario that fundamentalist leaders no doubt envision should TEH GAY succeed in its insidious government takeover plans. I was amused.

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I need to get a hairdrier. I look good in those photos in part because my hair looks nicer than usual, and this was because I had been experimenting with the hairdrier provided in the hotel bathroom. Now I'm back home and my hair has reverted to its typical lumpy-puff.

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This was the first time I had flown since 2000, the year I made two round-trips to SF. Security wasn't obtrusive at all; the only obvious enduser-affecting change was the necessity of deshodding, and even that wasn't insisted on at either airport. However, the hypertuned metal detectors (though surely they detect more than just metal, nowadays; what's the correct name for them?) are more often than not tuned to scream at the presence of footwear, and the guards recommended taking shoes off anyway. We also had to wait in two screening lines at Columbus instead of just one (first one was to examine checked-in luggage), but it just felt like an extension of the familiar screening process, and at no point did I or my baggage feel unduly manhandled.

The flights themselves were OK, mostly. I don't enjoy flying, so I appreciated their short duration. The flight over was nice and smooth, with me distracted for most of it via Cribbage with cthulhia. (Which I lost.) The flight back was not so good. Turbulent, capped with a steep descent and a genuinely harrowing landing; the whole plane wobbled, banking left and right violently and very low to the ground while making its final approach, and bouncing back into the air at least twice upon landing. I was seriously having this-is-the-end-type thoughts, it was so bad. The passengers around me broke into laughter when it was clear that we weren't to die that day; there was really nothing else to do. I just turned my little air-nozzle thing to full blast and sat very still for a few minutes.

The pilot said nothing about this, which makes me frown. I always prefer it when the pilot explains or at least acknowledges strange maneuvers or happenstances. Oh well.

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Origins 2005? I'm not saying 'definitely', but I will rescind my earlier post that I wouldn't go again as a 'just' an attendee, since I now feel that I've figured out the correct way to attend. Good good.

I really did have a great time with allay'all what was there, and look forward to seeing you all again.

Forgotten bits

I keep remembering things about Origins I neglected to include in the previous post. Will post as able.

Though the photos I took didn't really capture this (since I'm not too comfortable in shooting complete strangers), there were more young Looney fans this year then I've ever seen before. The Lab would fill to capacity with 17-and-unders excited to play Fluxx, Chrononauts, or Zendo every night at around 7 or so, as the hall outside would be choked with multiple Werewolf villages with disconcertingly Logan's Run-aged populations. (Though that was one game where parents would often join their kids, even if they weren't "gamers". Choice overheard quote: "I'm his mother and I know when he's lying!") I suspect this time coincided with the closing of the Pokemon tables, though I never really asked anyone.

I was witness to a young boy ascending into labcoated Rabbitdom on the spot after he won a seat in the Pokemon tournament finals, discovered Zendo while waiting for his turn to come about, and then chose to ditch the finals to play more Zendo. Wow. And let me officially congratulate Kory and the Looneys for Zendo's glorious victory, as it took home the Best Abstract Board Game award. Zendo is and might always remain one of my favorite games, and I hope they sell lots and lots of them as a result of this win.

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Anthropological survey: attendees were, unsurprisingly, largely white, though I think there was an inversely proportional relationship between ethnic diversity and age, which is interesting. I speculate that we can thank CCGs like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh for this, as they've captured the hearts and minds of entire schoolyards like probably no other analog game has before.

Not sure about the sexual divide. The Lab, with its largely abstract games, probably had a fifty-fifty split among both Rabbits and visiting players, but I'd imagine that the CCGs I just praised are not so much here since they're all about fight fight fight and that's generally not the best way to attract female audiences. The cavernous CCG room was way too scary for me to examine in detail, though, so I can't say for certain.