A bit of a mixed bag on today’s events.

Kids With Jobs, talking about the need to get YA protagonists away from Family & Mentors, unless you want to end up writing a school story.
The panel spent a lot of time talking about the tendency to kill off the parents, as opposed to merely sidelining them.
It reminded me of a book I’d read back in intermediate school, The Xenon File, which may have been a sequel, and which had a teenaged protagonist who’d been the brainwashed lieutenant of the bad guy. Parents were still around, and were aware of the situation, and I seem to recall them not interfering with the events of the story, recognising that their daughter was, in fact, capable of dealing with this.

An introduction to Le Fanu could have been a fascinating look at an Irish Gothic writer.
Sadly, I’ve had more interesting dental surgery; The presenter took his historical narrative & wove a chronological recitation which made no damn sense unless you already knew the basics, starting so far back on the family tree that I’d tuned out before we even got to Le Fanu.
Sadly, I was trapped against a wall & couldn’t get out.

Post-Fanu, I hung out in the lobby for a couple of hours, chatting to people I knew & meeting new folks, one of whom is a keen Gen Con attendee, of the Boardgame Clan, Cataan Tribe.

A panel on Peaceful SF kind of wandered around the topic, and mostly focused on Conflict vs. Violence.
E.T. came up as an example, as did the Inner Light episode of Star Trek: TNG.

There was a screening of the Dr. Who Season 8 Premiere scheduled, but with only 350 seats, there were a number if people planning to camp out in the room by going to the session before it & not moving. Others had bought tickets to see it at a movie theatre.
I realised, embarrassingly late in the piece, that I have a TV in my hotel room, and could simply watch it there. People laughed at me when I worked this out, and they were right to do so.
I did look up the BBC schedule, just to make sure I knew which channel it was on. Got temporarily confused by CBBC, which looks to be a kids channel, showing an animated Dr. Who show at the same time, but eventually figured it out.

John Vaughan’s Vault Of Horror turned out to be Mr. Vaughan commenting on, by which I mean mocking, an Irish Horror Filum (that’s how he pronounced it), Rawhead Rex.
It’s a bit shit as a film.
They apparently had many actors who went on to be very well respected, though watching this you’d wonder why, and the film was written by Clive Barker, though he denies it.
A lot of fun.

I smuggled a pizza back to my room for dinner; The con book says that It is not normally permitted to bring food and drink into the hotel. … If hotel staff discovers you bringing in food or drink, you’re on your own.
Turns out that a quick walk straight across the lobby & up the stairs will do the job nicely, so my guesses are that it’s food & drink in ‘public’ areas of the hotel that they object to, and that it’s hotel management who have a problem, not the day-to-day staff.

I’ll not spoil the episode, so shall just say that it was good, with some rough spots.

There was an International Fandom Party in the late evening.
Loud. Very loud.
Lots of people, talking, loudly.
Did I mention the loudness?
Yeah, I lasted maybe three minutes, despite the free drinks.

I had an early night for once, finished reading Old Man’s War, and started Hull Three Zero.