Adrian Mailenna is a writer of no particular significance. He has escaped from the state of California, and now lives a short distance from the Gulf Coast of Florida.
November 9th, 2010
YaoiCon 2010 was my first cross-country con, and between the trip, a concert on Thursday, and playing catch-up at work, I’m still trying to get my brain firing on all cylinders. Honestly, I don’t mind, but you’ll have to bear with me a little bit if I’m a bit disjointed.
I cut back my volunteer hours a bit this year, had a wonderful time with most of the friends I went to visit (inexplicably, I missed Barlee), got my copy of Crimson Spell autographed by Yamane Ayano, and put my sleep schedule off-kilter by staying out until 4 AM to dance with a tall, pretty redhead (this is, I admit, one of the best reasons I can imagine to mess up my sleep schedule). I even managed to find my friend Sparky, who has not been able to make a con since 2004, so I don’t think I left any boxes unchecked. Sadly, Café Verführen did not go on this year, though the crew did manage to host a panel, and I will attempt to keep up my tradition of reviewing damn near anything they do.
It was good fun.
I almost didn’t get the autograph; spaces in the line were handed out by drawing, 100 to each of two sessions, and my ticket wasn’t pulled. A friend of mine missed the first session, though, and couldn’t make the second, so she sold me her place in line. I was happy to have it, of course, but a little bit sorry that she couldn’t get to meet her herself. While the ticket system really limited the number of people who could visit the con’s guests, it also allowed each of us to have a few words with them. Back in 2008, I met Nase Yamato, but the line kept me from saying more than a simple thank-you and offering the small gift of coffee I’d brought. That seems better than not meeting anyone at all, but not so good as being able to express myself properly and have a short conversation, as I got to do this year. It’s always impressive to meet creators who can visit hundreds of their fans at once and still be genuinely happy to meet each one of them.
On the complete other side of things, I’m not sure I have hundreds of readers, really. It is an alien idea for me, and I think I enjoy that. I had coffee with Rem over a few hours, and I think that was exactly the right way to get my con rolling. Recognition would be nice, but I like being able to make friends with my readers, to believe that I’m just making pretty bits and baubles for their entertainment. All of my regular readers could probably fit around one dinner table if the opportunity presented itself, and I’m not sure whether that gives me any ideas or not.
Returning from that digression…
YaoiCon was very good to me this year. After the past five months or so (since the week after Fanime, really), life has been complicated, and I think it was exactly what I needed.
You should expect to hear more from me soon.
Sorry for being so scarce.
September 28th, 2010
I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it this year, but Sunday night I booked tickets to YaoiCon. If anyone out there would like to meet there and chat for a while, please leave me a note and let me know!
Also, I am working on another Tybalt story. I hope to have it done by con-time, but I’m not completely sure about that. By the end of the year, for sure. Two Tybalt stories in one year… it can happen.
September 16th, 2010
The Comic Strip Library has high-resolution copies of Little Nemo in Slumberland. Winsor McCay was one of the great founding fathers of modern comics and animation. Seventy-five years after his death, his experiments in animation, entirely hand-drawn, frame by frame, have aged badly, but they still have a particular whimsical charm.
I just felt that this was important enough to share.
September 5th, 2010
Satoshi Kon died last week, a little bit shy of his 47th birthday. He left some parting thoughts on his blog, and, shortly after, Makiko Itoh was kind enough to translate.
I find it hard to explain how much of a loss this is, partly because it’s so hard to explain him as a director. He was one of the few anime directors who can make me sit back and digest his work for a few minutes after seeing it. He had an amazing sense of unity, of visual and narrative composure.
Try Magnetic Rose, for example, part of the Memories collection (someone has also uploaded it on youtube for your sampling pleasure). It’s only about forty minutes long, but he wrung out every second of it, and he left me feeling harder-hit, emotionally, than most directors can after entire two-hour movies. He was a consummate craftsman, always trying to push the bounds of his medium and of his own abilities. Even as he lay dying in a hospital bed, he couldn’t escape that instinct.
While my wife was running around getting things in place for my escape, I was pleading with doctors “If I can go home for even half a day, there are things I can still do!”, then waiting alone in the depressing hospital room for death. I was lonely, but this was what I was thinking.
“Maybe dying won’t be so bad.”
I didn’t have any reasons for it, and perhaps I needed to think like that, but I was surprisingly calm and relaxed.
However, there was just one thought that was gnawing away at me.
“I don’t want to die here…”
As I thought that, something moved out from the calendar on the wall and started to spread around the room.
“Oh dear, a line marching out from the calendar. My hallucinations aren’t at all original.”
Like so much else that he produced, I think that one moment says everything that it needed to say.
August 8th, 2010
For about two months now I’ve been trying to explain something that’s been bothering me about Fanime, but I really can’t find the right words. It makes me very sad to admit this, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Instead I feel lost, in transition maybe, surrounded by people I have come to call my own, but ultimately unable to connect, and sometimes unable even to comprehend.
Over the years I’ve made some wonderful friends, and I don’t regret a minute of the time I got to spend with them. One way or the other I plan to see them all again. In between, though, this year felt empty, with long and silent pauses stretching to fill the space, hours of going through the motions without any feeling. I don’t remember cons ever feeling quite so lonely.
I miss really being able to meet people, to sit down and get to know them. I miss making friends that I get to keep, that I still get to talk with sometimes when the weekend is over. Maybe I’ve grown old and serious.
Sic transit gloria mundi, I guess.
I’ve moved to Florida, despite California’s last, harshest attempts to keep me in the state. I like it, for the most part, though in all the rushing around I’ve neglected this site terribly.
I’ll try to catch up. I need to get back into the habit.
