{"id":74694,"date":"2026-01-19T10:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=74694"},"modified":"2026-01-19T10:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:15:24","slug":"arisia-2026-in-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=74694","title":{"rendered":"Arisia 2026, In Conclusion…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m occupying some space in a restaurant at the Boston airport, drinking Blue Moon at just after noon local time. This is the start of Operation: Get Drunk Before the Flight, which may not be a great<\/em> plan, but it’s the only plan we’ve got right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, Arisia. It’s not you, it’s me…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I moderated my one (1) panel at this event, and it went fine. There were more people in the audience than on the panel, which is good. I think I did a fine job as moderator. It was fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine, now, thank you. How are you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m pretty sure this is my last Arisia, and it’s not because it’s a bad con. The content is simply not geared towards me, and I don’t really know that many people in attendance. If I had participated in the convention properly in 2024, I might have figured this out way, way sooner and saved myself about $2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Brian,” you ask, “what is wrong with Arisia? And did you just add something to your blog in second person, you absolute mad-lad?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I did. And there’s nothing wrong with Arisia. I’m just not their target audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I first saw that I only had one panel, I thought that was strange, since I had been very thoughtful with my responses to their questionnaire, and I put myself out there as highly available. But then I saw the actual program and it all made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I attend SFF conventions, I’m typically looking for content that is around writing, stories, the business of writing, and other related topics. That is not what Arisia is about, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audience of Arisia are geeks like me, but the focus of the content is stuff in fandom I rarely participate in. For example, they had quite a bit in support of crafting, costuming, and comics. They had 3 panels on polyamory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the last day, first thing in the morning, they scheduled the panel I moderated, which was on the intersectionality of SFF and literary and mainstream stories. If I were still friends with Fuckface, I could have geeked out with him over the topic since that’s his absolute jam. But he’s a Fuckface, now, and can fuck all the way off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Blue Moon is starting to hit. I should wrap this up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arisia and I don’t have that much in common, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again. Again, this is not a slight against Arisia. I’m not her target audience, so let’s just part amicably with our happy memories and see other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You phrased that weird,” you say. “It doesn’t sound like you had a very good weekend.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn’t a bad<\/em> weekend, but it was expensive for what it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went out and talked to people, but not much. I ate and slept at strange hours, because I was alone and in a different time zone. I worked on The Psychic Out of Time<\/em> a little bit, but progress is slow and I’m not feeling particularly inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At my boss’s behest, I brought my work laptop with me, and I used it. My Surface Pro 6 is pretty weak, but our development laptops are gaming computers in disguise, so I installed Kerbal Space Program and played that a little bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t need to come to Boston for what I accomplished this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did Arisia invite me to participate as a panelist in the first place? That’s a real mystery. If I hadn’t been invited, I wouldn’t have come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a little after 1PM. I have almost 4 hours to kill before I board my flight and head home. I’ll nurse this beer and try to Hemmingway my way into the next part of The Psychic Out of Time<\/em>. If I write a bunch of crap, I can edit it later. I just want to make some progress and be done with this story. Maybe I’ll be done with Mel Walker entirely, after that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m occupying some space in a restaurant at the Boston airport, drinking Blue Moon at just after noon local time. This is the start of Operation: Get Drunk Before the Flight, which may not be a great plan, but it’s the only plan we’ve got right now. Ah, Arisia. It’s not you, it’s me… I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74695,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74694\/revisions\/74695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}