Well, it’s August again, which means it’s Festival time. I’m looking a lot more forward to it this year than I have in the past—I’ve moved away from the city centre, into a more quiet villagey place, which means I’ve fewer loud people trying to get me to see their shows (and have less dodging into traffic around tourists as I walk to work). At the most, I pass performers on their way to events, or the occasional person handing out a single flyer, obviously on their way to crash at some hostel.

Of course, it’s not quite Festival yet. After all, the Book Festival has two weeks until start, and that’s the only one I ever properly attend. However, this week is Fringe previews–so cheap tickets and interesting times are ahead!

Last night, as my first festival event this year, I went to see Axis of Awesome, which I was first exposed to via this YouTube video:

It was a fabulous way to start the festival – I laughed through the whole thing. And yes, they finished with Four Chords, but had tweaked it—additions included Lady Gaga, Barbie Girl, and AULD LANG SYNE.

I was giggling all the way home.

Coming soon: bellydance workshop review and current knitting projects, as well as more festival!

Tags: festival,fringe
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Here’s a hint: if you think about a blog post so long that you’re sure you’ve written it and posted it by the time you go to bed, double-check. You may very well be wrong.

Anyway, to continue from Friday! When I applied to colleges I found one that had a medieval reenactment group. Due to one thing and another, it’s also the college I attended. I almost didn’t join the group, though—I had second thoughts before signing up, and only attended my first meeting because I heard some of my friends were going. I was quickly sucked into both costuming and combat. Fast-forward four years, and I’d served in four of the ten positions on the committee (in order: tech, historian, chessboard, publicity).

That group was That Medieval Thing.

A banner I made in my last year, during a chessboard rehearsal, after our nice one was stolen.

Combined with my fabulous classes in medieval literature and culture, and I’d been hit—I needed to continue in my medieval studies. If it weren’t for TMT, I wouldn’t be in Scotland. It’s amazing that it took me until starting my PhD to realise what I wanted to write on. The late Middle Ages in England and France had been my focus the whole time I was in TMT—I’d convinced the committee more than once to set our festival or feasts there. The day-in-day-out of TMT revolved around costume and combat—if you went to one of those, you’d be sure to know everyone. Now my whole PhD is on costume, and one of my chapters is specifically on arms, armour and heraldry. How did it take me this long?

I’d thought I’d write more than this, but I find it difficult to write on something that held such meaning for me. I honestly don’t think I gave the group the best I could have, but I certainly got the best out of it (my career).

Yesterday was their twenty-fourth Medieval Festival, and it’s the second I’ve missed. I hope they did fabulously. Since I wasn’t able to visit, I wandered my Scottish home, into museums and other important places, reminding myself through artefacts what it was all about.

I ended up here.

A tourist spot now, but once it was alive, active, used for the purpose it was built for. Because it’s not about the objects. It’s about the people.

TMT 2007

Tags: art vs. academia,festival,life,reenactment
Categories: Academia, Arts
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I blame it on my mother (this is a good thing). I was in those indistinguishable years between about six and nine, and my mother, always on the lookout for a fun semi-educational experience, took me and some friends to the Renaissance Faire. I actually don’t remember much—I don’t even remember how many times we went. Most of my memories involve strange men lasciviously hawking sticky buns, a woman with a banana in her bosom, getting an ocarina, and really wanting a snood. Surprisingly enough, bellydance doesn’t even figure in. Though ATS and Tribal Fusion have their roots in troupes that performed at Californian faires, I don’t remember seeing any bellydancing.

That was the Northern California Renaissance Faire, since either gone under or under new management. I didn’t rediscover RenFaires until we moved across country, brought on by a combination of factors—a growing addiction to fantasy literature, a need to play dress-up even as a teen, and several online friends (and a riding instructor and voice teacher!) who loved faires. I rediscovered the glorious costuming, the ridiculous amount of fun, the mixture of history and fiction and pure fantasy.

I was hooked. So much so that during undergrad I went on a RenFaire binge. In one season I managed to hit the faires in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and southern New York.  Therefore, I feel mildly qualified to give a review of these East Coast faires. I attended several years ago, though, so take my comments with a bucket of salt.

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, though large and thus filled with tons of entertainment and shopping, is too sterile for my tastes. I don’t want my RenFaire to have pavement, thank you. If my skirt stays clean, it’s not a proper faire. End of story (plus, as a combat geek, their fights left me underwhelmed).

New York Renaissance Faire was simply confusing! I remember having difficulty keeping track of the schedule (and loos), finding venues in the middle of nowhere, and feeling like we were wandering through a labyrinth. It definitely requires multiple visits to get a hold on just where things are (and, therefore, to see everything–you have to find it first!). However, in its favour it had the most fun and interactive actors at any of the larger faires.

New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom is small, and that’s a good thing. Unlike the other three faires, people will interact with you even if you’re in garb (less likely at the others; they focus on people who aren’t obviously obsessed). Also, they have the best fight choreography hands down. No so much on the shopping (though I bought a gorgeous rapier there), and its entertainment is limited, but what it does have is of quality equal to other faires I’ve attended.

Yet Maryland Renaissance Festival will always be my home faire. Dirt paths and tightly-packed venues and shops make it seem like a proper Renaissance village. Most of my faire kit comes from here (very high quality vendors) and I still have plans to order a pair of boots from there someday (they mold them to your feet!). I have favourite acts (though their combat could use a little sprucing), and I even know some of the actors. Also, it has cheesecake on a stick. That’s an automatic win.

But anyway, what does this have to do with anything? Well, you’ll have to wait for Part Two this evening.

I should make a snood.

Tags: costuming,festival,reenactment
Categories: Arts, uncategorized
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So my last two weekends have been FULL of dancing. The first was the InterVarsity Folk Dance Festival (IVFDF) in Durham, which was quite fun. Social folk dancing = ridiculous amounts of fun. Folk dances that are meant to be watched, on the other hand, are ridiculous amounts of funny—and that’s why you have to love them. They’re too silly not too!

I spent most of that weekend going to music workshops, such as sea shanties with the Young Uns and Welsh songs , but I also discovered two (new-to-me) folk dances: molly and rapper.

The above group Gog Magog (dancing starts at 1:09) were also the ones who taught the workshop on molly dancing. Molly is supposed to be danced ridiculously seriously and militaristically, as it is a full-out piss-take on morris dancing and the like. It is the straightman comedian of folk dancing, and it is ridiculously fun. Particularly when you get to shout.

A video of rapper can be viewed here; it’s the best I’ve found so far but embedding is disabled.

Somehow I ended up doing two rapper workshops, which seeing as I didn’t even know what rapper was until I saw a dem on our first night was mildly surprising. It’s one of the sword dances of England, and I have to say, highly enjoyable. There’s a major sense of fulfillment when your side (the name for a troupe) performs a figure well, and major comraderie. This sense of “chill awesomeness” (technical term!) continues, apparently, in proper rapper performances: A PUB CRAWL. Seriously. Proper rapper performances are pub crawls—popping into pubs, performing, partaking of a pint, pleading for a penny, and proceeding onward.

The whole weekend, however, was worth it simply for the contra dancing. Contra is actually from the US, but I think it’s mostly an everywhere-but-the-West-Coast thing (which is why I didn’t discover it until I left!). And I LOVE CONTRA. It’s like a high-octane version of Scottish country dancing (which is saying something in itself) with more progression and faster spins. And I LOVE spinning. I’ve yet to find a video that properly displays contra, so you’re just going to have to go find a group to dance it with. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Another highlight of the weekend was the disco ceilidh. Yes, disco ceilidh. My friend Yolande and I developed a disco version of the Gay Gordons (a staple of ceilidh dancing). and that was awesome.

However, as much fun as IVFDF was, I feel like I’m getting to be too much of an Old Lady to go to all-weekend folk dance stuff. Not insomuch as I’m too old (there’s people decades older than me attending!) or because I didn’t have a good time—I did. But I don’t like dashing from place to place, I don’t like limited access to sleeping venues (or showers!!), and I don’t like getting back from something at 2am. Going to bed at 2am, yes, but being out until 2am. On the other hand, if the whole weekend were bellydance… let’s just say I’m annoyed that I won’t be attending Raqs Brittania.

Which leads us to this last weekend: the University Dance Show! I have little to say about this, other than that there is much love to the people who came to see us. There was a consensus amongst the folk I talked to, at least, that ours was one of the top performances. Eventually I hope to post video of the performance, but until then:

Run away, Egyptian dancer! Run away before the scary tribalista eats you!!!

Tags: bellydance,festival,folk dance,tribal fusion
Categories: dance
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Following off of yesterday, I didn’t just go to talks and signings at the Book Festival. I also went to three workshops: on fantasy, on writing for teens, and on graphic novels.

I’m afraid to say that the one on fantasy was mildly disappointing. It was more of a “basics of writing” with fantasy overlaid on top, and I didn’t learn too much. What I did learn, however, was excellent, and I really wish that it had been more of that. The most helpful bit (as I’m planning on writing a steampunk novel for next NaNoWriMo) was on ‘tech level’. That is, it should be established early within the context of the novel. If you’ve got swords within the first ten pages, don’t save the zeppelins for a hundred pages in, or else your reader will be quite thrown.

I honestly don’t remember too much about “Writing Graphic Novels”, other than the fact that it was fun. The presenter also really drove home the point of choosing the moments of your story to illustrate, to choose the ones that really move it forward. He had as look at this by handing out pages with nine panels on them, and then having us scribble-illustrate the most important plot moments from one of three movies: Jaws, The Wizard of Oz, or Star Wars. It was HARD! He also discussed panel transitions, and all of these together really hit home. Of course, now I feel like I have to rewrite the series that I’ve been slowly illustrating…

Finally, the workshop for teenage stories was helpful mostly because of the writing exercises we did. The presenter was really intent on getting us into the shoes of a teenage protagonist, so we practiced creating one and wrote a few things in their voice—the hardest of which was describing yourself (the author) through the character’s eyes. And then we went on an adjective-free adventure, and I nearly died. Those latter four words, by the way? Typical of “teenage” writing. Hyperbole is important—“teenage” voices often resonant when they look at the world through a dichotomy of “it was the most awesome/awful thing ever!” Luckily, my Californian roots lead me to write like that anyway. I mean, totally.

Overall, three books reached the forefront of recommendations. Stephen King’s On Writing was highly recommended by both the fantasy and the teenage-writing presenters, and as I’ve been intending to read it anyway, I need to pick it up. Conversely, Scott McCloud’s writings was recommended by the graphic novel presenter and came up in the Ian Rankin/Neil Gaiman talk. Finally, Writing for Comics by Alan Moore was recommended by Mark Millar, and referenced by Neil Gaiman (who never read the book, having received the advice straight from Mr. Moore’s lips).

Overall, this year at the Book Festival really felt like the Year of the Graphic Novel Comic Book.

Geez, I hate the term “graphic novel”. It sounds so pretentious. It’s a comic, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Hmph.

Tags: books,comics,festival,writing
Categories: creative writing
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The greatest killer to my pocketbook over August was the Book Festival. I love the Book Festival: two big tents of books (children’s and everyone else’s), writing workshops, and OMG IS THAT NEIL GAIMAN?!

Yes, yes it was.

Last year I met Terry Pratchett. This year there’s a list, and in order of appearance it was Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman (TOGETHER!), Alexander McCall Smith, and Mark Millar. They were all incredibly sweet people. But let’s handle that individually!

Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman spoke together, and were ridiculous amounts of fun. They enjoyed the BSL signer a little too much, and because of that I now know how to sign “balls” in BSL. But there’s a far better recap of their speech here that you should read if you want to know exactly what went on. I’ll fast-forward to the signing, shall I?

I was really quite nervous to meet Ian Rankin, especially as I’m miserable with small talk. I shouldn’t have worried—we had a very nice chat about the uni (and how, when he was there, one of my supervisors was a “hot up-and-coming lecturer”!), and when I told him I also want to write fiction, he was very encouraging. If I ever find him in one of the local pubs, I think I must buy him a pint.

I at least had some small-talk chatter to fall back on with Neil Gaiman, as I follow his Twitter. However, I had a minor freak-out when he took a look at my name (written on a sticky note to make signing books faster) and pronounced it CORRECTLY. This is a rather huge deal for me, as on a mission trip once I was called “Elsie” and “Elsa”, and once spent a semester of Spanish being called “Ellis”—and that was after my friend tried to correct the professor! Neil Gaiman was, of course, already known to be on the ‘awesome’ list, but when I told him this story his scoffing at such moronitude only raised him further.

I initially planned to see Alexander McCall Smith because my mum loves him, and I was interested in hearing him speak, as he’s local too. However, Mr. Smith wins the “most awesome author” award for this year. If you peak at the picture above, you’ll see that the name in the books is not mine. When I went to his signing, I informed him how it kills my mother that I get to go to the Book Festival (and see him) and she can’t. He paused, then told me to ring her on my mobile, and he’d say hello. Made my mother’s day—and mine, too!

Mark Millar is cool. I mean this with all the gravitas a slang word can hold. I know many people I would call “a cool guy” or “pretty cool”, but Mark Millar is cool. If Terry Pratchett’s Monks of Cool weren’t rather dated, I would suspect that Mark Millar inspired them. How cool is Mark Millar? He invited everyone at the talk and signing to the pub afterwards (alas, I couldn’t go).  He had a proper chat with every single person at the signing. He didn’t swear because there were kids in the audience, but he made sure to see how the signer signed “eviscerate”. While we’re at it, here’s a pic of the wonderful signer, whose presence was most excellent:

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes – Mark Millar is so cool that he knows Damon Lindelof. He wore a suit, and drank wine through the whole thing. That’s how cool Mark Millar is. And like Ian Rankin, he encouraged me to give up my day job and just get into the entertainment biz.

Of course, if I gave up my day job, I wouldn’t be able to have a nifty title for my blog, and then where would we be?

Tags: authors,books,comics,fandom,festival
Categories: Arts, comics, creative writing
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So it’s nearly 4am and I’ve had FAR too much coffee today and can’t sleep, so what better time to write a blog post?

It’s Festival season here, which means that anyone interested in theatre, music, dance, comedy, etc. is going to have a hard time focusing on what they should be doing–in my case, research. I don’t feel too bad about it, as I just got back into town earlier in the week and am experiencing a wonderful (caffeine-aided) round of jetlag, but the guilt will certainly set in next week… when I’ll be fresh and ready to enjoy the Festival. There’s a steampunk version of Hamlet that looks interesting, and a Hawaiian legend I want to see. But there’s also a bibliography that needs a good cleaning, a study plan that needs scrutinizing, and supervisors that hopefully won’t give me too much coffee (as has happened before).

I don’t think this is a bad dilemma to be in, though. Bibliography-cleaning is a down-and-dirty job that I can do with music or a movie, and peering at my study plan will refocus me. And, as I will tell anyone who will stay still long enough, I adore my supervisors. They are the most supportive people I could ask for, I am honoured that they treat me like a young peer to be mentored, and I come out of every meeting with them feeling challenged AND competent. Managing to boost my confidence while pointing out my weakness? They obviously must be awesome.

But it was one of them that noted that research shouldn’t get in the way of having a life. The stuff I do outside the office is just as important as the stuff I do inside the office, and each reflect on one another — though it’s rather awkward when people start ranting about the “changes” made to the Arthurian legend in BBC’s Merlin, and I start going of about canonicity and legitimacy within the Arthurian corpus.

Art and academia should go together – after all, my chosen discipline is based in the arts. But how do they go together? Obviously, I’m still trying to work that out. I’ll keep working it out, be it while watching interesting interpretations of Shakespeare or while browbeating myself over which chapters I need to cut from my doctorate.

Until then, what are your thoughts? Comments? Questions? Citations?

Tags: art vs. academia,festival
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