I think a good portion of my entertainment this weekend came from getting online last night to see the reaction from people who hadn't read the books to the Game of Thrones episode. There may have been some cackling with amusement. Yes, it was the episode with that incident. See, that's the problem with authors being so prone to kill off or otherwise torture (sometimes literally) their characters. You learn that it's not safe to get emotionally involved with anyone in the series, so you start looking at it all from a very detached place. I have an intellectual curiosity about what will happen next and get some amusement out of seeing how far it will go and how people will react, but I don't really care because it's too dangerous to get invested. I feel like there's a problem when a big chunk of the audience is more focused on watching the Internet go insane than with actually feeling anything about this thing that happened to the characters. Some surprise is good, and not everything has to be happy rainbows and puppies, but when bad things happen to everyone you care about, you tend to stop caring.
In other news, I got an invitation to be on programming at WorldCon late last night, so I guess I was in the next tier (or perhaps there are no tiers and they're just disorganized, or were just dealing with the applications like you'd go through Facebook, working backwards). And now I have some decisions to make. When I had my little "if they don't want me, I'm not going" snit last week, I was surprised by how relieved I was at the idea of not going. Having the convention over Labor Day weekend makes it bump up against a really busy time when all my fall activities are getting started. If I don't go, then I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to make hotel reservations, don't have to decide whether to fly or drive, don't have to plan wardrobe, don't have to deal with crowds, don't have to leave home for a week, don't have to stop the newspaper or worry about getting the plants watered. I made plans to get flowers to put out on the patio. But then I went to the planning meeting for FenCon and they were talking about the parties we'll be hosting or involved with, and I was hearing about my friends who'll be there, and I felt a pang at the loss if I wasn't going to be there. I was feeling left-out. But which is stronger, the relief from not having to deal with it or the loss from not being a part of it? And what impact will either have on my career? I suspect I'll end up going because I do enjoy WorldCons, you never know who you'll meet, and I do need to be better about networking.
Now I have to decide if I want to get flowers for the patio, anyway. I don't know how long the construction work out there will last and if it will preclude my outdoor enjoyment. We happen to be in a phase of weather when I like being outdoors. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon sitting out there reading and drinking tea, and I had breakfast on the patio this morning, and I was thinking about how pleasant it would be to have flowers there. Two days from now, I may be back to cowering indoors under the ceiling fan and forgetting to water the flowers outside.
Finally, I did eventually figure out what to do with my grand romantic scene. My problem was that I was hung up on the servant/princess issue, when the whole point was that neither of them are typical, and that's why they clicked. Whatever they do should be about them and not about their roles. Then I realized it was essentially a Before Sunrise situation, where two people connected but knew they only had a few hours before they'd likely never see each other again. They wouldn't worry so much about doing anything in particular because it's more about spending that time together. I just needed to find a pleasant place for them to hang out. I did make a false start on that scene, but I now know how to correct it.
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