In this year of Our Lord, 2020, still in the throes of the C19 pandemic, my home convention decided to do the smart thing and instead of canceling outright, decided to go all virtual. And as cons go, it wasn’t bad at all. I got a lot of sleeping done in between panels – something that really doesn’t happen so much at con. I also ate better/healthier and bonus points, it was all me-safe (food allergies make con-going really interesting sometimes)!
I got to talk to the con family on panels and through Discord and Facebook – I dragged my parents onto a panel with me (that was super fun) and got to talk about mythologies and Titans and Westworld and Ladies in SFF and tell fun con stories and while nothing can ever replace being physically at con and I only really got to see a fraction of the people I love there…it was better than not having anything at all. I mostly hung out on the Classics track, the AMSFF track and the High Fantasy track. There were a couple of prerecorded panels that were showing on the main programming channels. I got to do some chatting with friends and also some mini-workshops. In a twist from previous years, I was mostly on Facebook instead of Twitter this year. The signal was better and didn’t drop nearly as often as it does at con itself.
I mean I definitely need to invest in some better equipment but what I had got the job done. I made new friends and got to squee in the comments of posts about stuff coming up and stuff that happened and we added a new cult to the lists of “official” Dragon*Con cults.