F.A.C.T.S. 2008

I am a bad blogger. I do a lot of stuff, after which I’m tired, and end up not blogging. When I’m not tired, of course, I usually do not have much to blog about. At least nothing recent. So the post that is about to follow should in fact have been posted (and more importantly, should have been written) about two weeks ago. But let’s disregard that fact for now.

Every now and then I choose to unleash my inner geek. Well, every now and then has become exponentially more often since I met B. We have some sort of mutual geek influence going on. So, once again,‘t was the time of the year to be jolly. Or rather, it was the time that the city of Ghent became geek central again for two days: F.A.C.T.S. 2008.

I have been to F.A.C.T.S. 2006, and quite enjoyed it. It was the closest thing to a convention that I’ve ever been to. Apparently it was famous enough to draw quite a crowd even two years ago – because it drew not just people from neighbouring cities, but people from neighbouring countries.
I sadly missed F.A.C.T.S. 2007, to go to the Mensa weekend in Daverdisse. Going to the weekend does score me geek points on another level, but it’s not quite the same. On the bright side, that is where I met B. However, that is another story.

Now back to the geek stuff. F.A.C.T.S. stands for Fantasy - Anime - Comics - Toys - Science-Fiction. So imagine that crowd. I usually go there because it’s sci-fi and comic book paradise, but there’s something for everyone.

Of course there’s the obligatory Star Wars and Trekkie stuff. There are a lot of statuettes, books, posters and various memorabilia to be grabbed. You have (semi-)celebrities signing pictures - for a fee - but apparently some people are willing to pay for it.
We caught a glimpse of Richard Hatch, better known as Tom Zarek in the new Battlestar Galactica.

There were a bunch of games to be bought there, both second-hand and new. This always interests B., and I must admit I’ve also been getting into gaming again. There were also some games to be tried out, but with a place as crowded as that, we didn’t really get to play. I’m not much of a wait-in-line person anyway.

And then of course there is the cosplayer crowd. For those who don’t know: cosplayers (from: costume players) are people who dress up as (their favourite) characters. From what I understand, it originated in the manga and anime community – but it has spread to (Western) comic book, movie and television characters.

I think some of my friends still silently believe I dress up as an elf or something on weekends. I don’t. However some costumes really are very nice. There was a rather impressive General Grievous costume – a huge contraption with a human being in it. The manga boys and girls (and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which) are generally quite pleasing to the eye. Some have built huge replicas of weapons. By huge I mean they’re sometimes bigger than the person wielding it.
I saw a Mystique walking around, which is impressive, since you have to be, well, all blue. Same for the Aayla Secura I saw.
Anyway, it’s really a feast for your eyes, if you’re into to whole people watching thing. You can bump into life-size remote controlled R2 units, or watch some Jedi knights jump around on a Dance Dance Revolution.
Oh, and did I mention scantily clad barbarians?

I’m still not inclined to dress up though. And If I would – it would have to look impressive.
I did get a handmade neko (cat) skull hat and a kitsune (fox) hat from a Japanese dude from San Francisco. So, I can look like a geeky idiot in wintertime now. A unique geeky idiot even, since the guy doesn’t usually sell his stuff in Belgium.

The rest of my loot was mostly comic books. I haven’t read them all yet. Mostly because I still haven’t finished Persepolis, which I got for my birthday from B., and the copy of Watchmen that I borrowed from him. The only thing that I have read by now is Marvel’s Poptopia, a comic that I might write a few words about on this blog. Hopefully soon!

As for F.A.C.T.S. – two days was not nearly enough time to spend there. I’m planning to go back next year, so that Mensa weekend better not be planned then, you hear?

Oh, and below you can see one of my silly headgear thingies :

Two for the road

I am a notoriously bad reader.

This, actually, is a rather curious thing. I was the first in my class to read and write, in fact it stood out so much that my mom was told I could skip the last year of kindergarten and go straight to first grade. Fortunately, she did ask me my opinion, and I preferred to stay with my friends rather than to read and write more.

While I had acquired the skill early, one could say it never grew on me. One thing remained through elementary school, high school and higher learning : I only ever read stuff if I absolutely had to. One exception on this rule were the one or two books I read during summer break, usually while on a plane, in a car, or near a pool. I usually regretted reading in cars, because it makes me nauseous. The other exception were comic books, or as one should say more respectfully : graphic novels.

I'm not really sure what my problem with reading is. I'm not dyslexic, or so the experts say, even though I do keep switching letters and misreading stuff. Sometimes this leads to humor only I can understand. While other people read an article about sinking stocks, mine is really about stinking socks - which is far more amusing for someone who is as easily amused as myself.
However, this weird switching apparently is not dyslexia, but should be linked to some "mild concentration problem" that they have not really diagnosed yet.
Thing is, large chunks of black text almost frighten me. I notice the parts that are not printed upon just as much, and I'm distracted as they run over the pages like little white rivers. Not to mention that every sound I hear makes me have to go back and reread the last two sentences. And there are a lot of sounds in the world.

This is a problem, because I do rather like fiction. Quite a lot. So my little reading problem has driven me to film, but also to the medium of comic books. The first time I actually really got into them was because of Star Wars. As a young girl, I was completely enamoured with the original trilogy and I jumped on the possibility of reading new stories with my favourite characters.
And thus I stumbled upon a writing form that was a revelation to me. You could read it like a book, it even had that pleasant paper smell - but the illustrations were beautiful, they spoke to me - and they were nowhere near as scary as monumental blocks of black text. So at 13 - an age that most girls give up on comic books - I started reading avidly.

I did so for years, until my mom moaned it was a far too expensive hobby, and I stopped reading. I only really started again once I had a job - and my own money.

When we left for Cyprus this year - we being my parents, my boyfriend and me - I fell back to an old tradition: I brought along some novels. Graphic novels.

Lately I've been experimenting. On of the things I've been reading was American Virgin by Vertigo.. American Virgin was a rather atypical buy for me. I'm usually much more into sci-fi and superheroes. But American Virgin caught my eye, first of all because of the covers (yes, I'm guilty, I like male eye-candy). I asked my comic book salesman about it and he recommended it (thank you, Peter).

The book tells the the story of a young preacher, Adam, who preaches sexual abstinence to young kids. However, his life gets turned upside down when his fiancée is murdered while in Africa.
The search for what really happened to her brings him - literally and figuratively - to places he's never been before. What follows is an exploration of culture, morality, sexuality and the human heart. And while the book may lead you into African bachelor huts, gay bars, and sex parties - it never leads you into vulgarity. That being said, this is not really you want your dad to read (which is why I I quickly muttered something about me not being finished when he asked if he could borrow it).

So far I've read four out of five bundles: Head, Going Down, Wet, and Around the World. I'm yet to get my hands on Sixty-Nine. Yep, I think someone was going for suggestive titles there.







The other title I was reading was Anita Blake : Guilty Pleasures, a Marvel adaptation of one of the novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. I'd noticed the name of Anita Blake before, mostly in the days that I still read and wrote fan fiction.
While the book does have some male eye-candy again (I swear, I do actually read other stuff too!), some of it is mildly disappointing. The plot is not truly thrilling. The atmosphere is good and the darker drawing style is suited to the story. It does draw you in after a while. What bothered me were Anita's "thoughts" that are unfortunately very much splattered all over the pages in little- and not so little- blocks. While I can see the appeal of a film noir-esque narrating style, this is just too much. I like it when a story is told by action, not thought. Sometimes it's just annoying, long-threaded girlie prose. And sentences like "Luther is overweigh,t over fifty, chain smokes and yet he's never sick" would work much better if they where left out altogether, and the book would just show an old, fat, smoking guy. Which it does. Only there's text to boot. And frankly, the whole vampire-slayer-who-digs-a-vampire is so very last century (Buffy, anyone?). I might give it another go though, let's see if anything interesting happens.

Now, in the meantime, I think I'll temporarily steal the boyfriend's copy of Watchmen.