Xena rocks Norwescon 2008

It’s not Lucy Lawless, but she might play her on T.V.

Not only did this Xena look the part from her jet-black bangs to her thigh-high boots, she had the husky voice and in-charge attitude. When I asked if I could take her photo, she said, “Sure. Let’s go find a blank wall,” and lead me around hotel until she found just the one she wanted.

My kinda girl. Er, woman.

Where did I meet this Amazon? Why, at my first-ever speculative fiction & art convention: Norwescon 2008.

Norwescon is a four-day orgy of everything sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Panel discussions, book signings, movies, costume displays, and fine art galleries - it has something for everyone.

I mostly attended the panel discussions for writers which were pretty good, though I had the feeling some of the panelists hadn’t really thought out the topics ahead of time.

For instance, in the discussion on “The Heroine’s Journey” (as opposed to the Hero’s Journey), a member of the audience asked the panel how they dealt with “women’s physical inferiority to men” when writing their action scenes. A panelist¹ answered by lecturing on how a certain type of metal armor can break an opponent’s sword.

Moving right along…

But the discussion on writing effective horror was good. The consensus among presenters and audience is that horror is not blood and guts. The essence of horror is psychological - specifically, dread. And there’s nothing people dread more than the unknown. As Neil Gaiman said on NPR last Halloween: the scariest things are those you cannot see.

In between panel discussions, I went sight-seeing. It’s pretty weird at first, but eventually you do get used to all the costumes.

Many of the costumes were amazing from an artistic perspective. I stalked quite a few of them until I could take their photo. I didn’t get to take as many as I wanted, though, as there was less hobnobbing than was convenient for it. Check them out on my Flickr page.

Besides Xena, this is another one of my favorites. I call it Death goes to lunch.

Technorati Tags: Norwescon, speculative fiction, writing

1. Yes, it was a guy. [↩]

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