Well, that was unexpected.

So yesterday I heard back from the International Gothic Association. I submitted a somewhat hastily written abstract to them back in December, over break, thinking that it was an outside shot and I probably wouldn't get it. It was a fairly small literary group, all things considered, but then I don't know how big any of them actually are. It's also based in the UK. Being a first-year MA student and this being a revision of a senior undergrad honors thesis, I didn't expect a lot of love.

I got accepted.

I now get to make arrangements to go to Germany (the conference is in Heidelberg at the university there) in August to give a 20 minute presentation of my paper. Matt's going to go with me, and he's very excited. We're looking at going to the UK first, the week before, and then making our way over to Germany from there in time for the conference.

I'm excited and overwhelmed and flabbergasted and panicked. I'm not that panicked yet, though -- I have months for paper revision and the appropriate levels of terror to hit me. I'm just... this is incredibly awesome, and I'm so very, very pleased. :)

Character Generation!

It's been a long time since my last chargen episode. This has to do first with graduating, then with moving, then with grad school, and then with combining RPG collections, so that I no longer have any idea, really, whether I'm making characters off my list or his list or both or what. Today, however, innocent_man is home on a snow day, and so we're making Cybergeneration 2nd edition characters together.

I've played Cybergeneration before, but it's been... a long time, and it was only a one-shot even then. Like, "years before my children were born" long time ago, so what I remember is a bit sketchy. The book tells me we're playing the kids of Shadowru--, er, sorry, Edgerunners, who are part of a "yogang." Theirs is a dark future, left by their parents, who rebelled and got squished by the man. They're post-cyberpunk, which should mean postmodern but instead means "oh god this is so 80s." Seriously. "Kids in America" is playing in my head as we speak.

Character! Onward!( Read more... )