Cons (no pros)

[learnedax]

Ways in which Birka (this past weekend) is unlike Arisia (the previous weekend):

• Birka had an SCA court


• Arisia had a dayboard/consuite

Er, that's pretty much it. They were both largely social mingling occasions featuring live combat, costumes both elegant and painful, an abundance of merchants, an art show (or A&S display), classes or panels, late-night room parties, and a generally overwhelmed hotel. I don't think Birka had a fashion show this year, and it's never been as emphasized as Arisia's masquerade, but it has been there in the past.

For me, they were reasonably different, though. Arisia time was divided between working security (which requires walking around and talking to people, which I'm going to do anyway...) and partying, with a healthy (and pleasantly chaotic) dose of hanging out with marrus tossed in. I ran the Intercon party again Friday night; being up on the 8th floor we were a little more out of the way than last year, but attendance was still reasonably high. I again did not go to any panels, and few planned events. I checked out some of our audio theatre 'competition' doing their live-at-the-mics performance, and a couple of the actors were pretty good (CvJ in particular got the feel of the piece I saw very well), but the work as a whole I found underwhelming. Admittedly, playing an audio-only piece with a watching audience can be tricky, but I really think it was the written material that was the problem, too caught up in meta-self-analysis, too chatty, and with nothing to really engage me as a listener or viewer. Anyway, dancing the night away and schmoozing the day away is still a winning combination.

Birka, on the other hand, was the first time I'd fought since fall Crown, and in light of that and various bits of equipment failure, I didn't do altogether badly, but I am still way out of practice. After that I did a tiny amount of shopping, which I never really enjoy, a large amount of spending time with friends (and cat9, of course), and a thorough quantity of avoiding royal court. We had an early dinner having not really eaten all day, so we missed the en masse escape-the-hotel-in-search-of-food quest, but it's probably just as well since as with Arisia at the end of the day we needed to drive home again, and I suspect the dinner mob got back quite late. And this way we got to spend time with the lovely dreda and rising_moon.

I do feel like I should go to some kind of SCA event again at some point, though...

Comments

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

They did hold the fashion show, though I didn't go. Which makes things about even with Arisia (where I went to the masquerade but not the dancing).

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, they both had balls as well. I completely skipped the one at Birka, so I forgot.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Ways in which Birka (this past weekend) is unlike Arisia: [few]

I have to almost-but-not-quite-completely disagree with you.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Well, it has a different attendance, and for cultural reasons a somewhat different feel, as well as actual but more minor distinctions that I've glossed over.

I look at those as comparable differences to a cover of a song; it's "the same" despite a lot of potential differences in feel and personnel...

[buddhagrrl.livejournal.com]

Was great hanging out with you at Arisia by the way, even if it was more exciting than we were really looking for at the time...

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

It was a funny interjection on life and death, though...