Dragon*Con: The Hero Cycle

The hero cycle begins and ends in the same location, the ordinary world, your safe and happy place. Between the call to adventure and the return with the elixir, the hero is transformed. Are you beginning, ending, or beginning once again? It's hard to say. The same can be said for us at Dragon*Con each year.

For all the hectic drama leading up to it, including the day before we left, our adventure went surprisingly smoothly. No major hiccoughs or disasters, no sickness or disease. Unless you count a minor bout of chronic heat stroke, but more on that in a bit.

Because I know you are all busy people, I'll give you the thumbnail sketch up front. Five days, sixteen panels, five concerts, two concourse performances. One panel cancellation, none we walked out of, only two a little sketchy. My three top panels: The Hero's Journey (Writing), Dungeon Design 101 (complete with dire skunks) (Gaming), and 5 Lies of Creativity and How to Overcome Them (Art). Karen's Best: Live Model 1 & 2 (5 hours of drawing) (Art). The panel with the most surprising tidbit of information: Memory Training (Science) where the clinical psychologist revealed a clinically studied treatment program for memory loss resulting from breast cancer treatment (chemo-brain) that we might look into.

For merch, we walked away with two books (The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Xtreme Dungeon Mastery), five CDs (The Cruxshadows, Ayria, Abney Park, The Julia Dream, Siberia My Sweet), two pieces of custom jewelry (David Cain Jewelry) and an artists' colony magazine (always talk to hippies on the street). Freebies included a Dragon*Con luggage tag, a cool Dragon*Con room key-card and a Pyr Books sampler.

We left out 650 business cards across five hotels, sometimes playing a game of cat and mouse with housekeeping, sometimes on an hourly basis. I figure we had a 10-25% loss rate with the rest taken up. As always, the transparencies went first. We'll see if they generate any traffic to the sites.

Travel was fine, except for having to remove my belt before getting scanned at the airport. Though that did add to the prison-like ambiance of the adventure. We got there before noon on Thursday and stayed late enough on Monday to catch the last panels. The weather in Atlanta on the way out became a concern (tornadoes north of downtown), but for us only resulted in a ten-minute delay and a lot of turbulence on the way home.

Registration was better this year (only two and half hours in line this year, a 40% reduction from the previous two), but not quite a breeze. Had the servers stayed up, it might have only been half an hour. Ah, well, at least we were out in time to get a decent dinner. Which we needed as the hour in line inside was at least as hot, and with less oxygen, than the rest of the bulk in the sun outside.

That set our first impression for the year, hot. And I don't mean just in Hotlanta. The rooms for the Electronic Frontiers Forum, Science and (initially) Gaming tracks had no working A/C. Imagine 100-200 people packed shoulder to shoulder into a conference room (sometimes SRO), complete with assorted A/V equipment, and you get the picture. Needless to say, we didn't hang out to ask a lot of questions afterwards.

We did get to listen to some good music, as always, though several of the concerts had lines. And, as always, most of the mixing was dubious. And one of the bands performed over half her set by flashlight as the stage lights died and had to be reset (the joys of a live performance). But the Cruxshadows concert had the best sound and mixing we've ever heard up there. Plus, we walked right in for the first time in five years. Totally worth staying up until 4 am and dragging the next day. There was still some slap-back in one of the halls, but not as bad as we've heard. We gave all the bands we saw some money to feed the iPod. We got a couple of CDs signed. Ayria seemed pretty jazzed when we told her that we knew and liked her music (and were obviously following her Twitter feed), even though we were, well, outside her core age demographic. Nice woman (but she's Canadian, so what else would I expect?). Key safety tip with most bands: lead singers tend to be focused on women (not the people buying their stuff) where bassists are more than happy to talk. But I knew that from hanging out with a pretty cool bassist in high school.

One thing they did get right this year was security. From 7 pm to 1 am, all entry into the hotels was badge or room key only. It seemed to keep out most of the muggles and local riff-raff. We encountered no floor shutdowns, no flying wedges of cops and hotel security wading through the crowds. The floors were just as frenetic, but there was never any hint of wondering if the bacchanalian revelry might erupt into a riot. Only once did my threat sensor go off, and that was fairly benign. But remember, you can make eye contact with real cops, but with rent-a-cops it might be a problem (they stare back).

What do I love about Dragon*Con? Talking art, perspective, light and shadow, writing, craft... I need to find a yearlong circle to do that with. We were missing several of our must-see speakers. We still had a couple there, but they weren't quite on their games. Generally, the panels were good, a couple with excellent speakers, but none had the inspirational, mind-expanding quality we've encountered in previous years. But we did find some time to hang out with friends which we haven't always had.

Instead of going through panel by panel, I leave you with some random impressions and lessons learned. Scientists and skeptics can be some of the least empathetic people who want to affect societal change. That's hard to do without understanding someone else's point of view. Most scientists are still so focused on their niche of study that they have a hard time applying broad (scientific) lessons to other disciplines, or understanding why certain behaviors might be beneficial from an evolutionary point of view. Modern game designers rely just as much on the hero cycle theory as writers and movie-makers. Storytelling is their primary focus, just through an interactive medium. One rather famous game designer cited Dramatica theory for creating character through-lines. Many of our attempts to boost children's self-esteem in this country have resulted instead in boosting levels of narcissism. The law of unintended consequences. When dealing with either surveillance or the apocalypse, avoid the guys with the Tacti-cool look (I love that word). Sociopathy is a viable survival option. A clipboard and a badge get you in just about anywhere. When coiling wire for making chainmail rings, don't let go of the drill.

I also came away with some good professional advice. To market yourself, become an extrovert, even if you aren't one. And if you weren't born that way, well, that might be a deficiency on your part. Look into YouTube for posting readings. People who read eBooks tend to be more loyal to the publisher than the author. The difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction is that commercial fiction deals with the big questions and gives hope for change. Literary fiction gives an experience by shining a light on a situation without making it transformative. I guess I now know which I tend to lean toward in my writing. Inspiration only comes once. If you don't write it down while it's there, it's gone forever. Just like your creative voice or vision as a writer or an artist when you're gone.

If you want to see all the panels and concerts we attended, you can find the day by day entries either on my Twitter or on my Facebook author's page (for those who haven't liked it yet, hint, hint).

You can find the band links (from this and previous years) at MySpace. Many have songs posted so you can give a listen if you like.

If you have any questions about any of them, just let me know and I'll get back to you. I'd be happy to share my notes.

Bottom line: it was a relaxing, informative and inspiring weekend as always, and much needed getaway.

For us, though, the cycle may be ending. This may have been our last Dragon*Con for a couple years to come. I've found it's always best to walk away from the table a little hungry before you start your next adventure. We'll see when it comes time to make reservations for next year.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III