ALEXITHYMIA;

A little context: Saint Paul (and, I believe, Minneapolis) has a robust Community Education program. These are classes for seniors, adults and children that are not for any kind of credit and tend to be fun things like "Drinks and Watercolor!" or for the kids stuff like "Pumpkin Carving!" You sometimes get experts who might have some kind of teaching license, but mostly it's just people who know how to do something. The prices reflect that. These are cheap, often one-time classes. Though you can take things like Japanese or flute lessons that extend for several sessions.

As you may know, my family likes to celebrate birthdays early and often. This year for my birthday, I asked Shawn to sign me up for a bunch of Community Education classes. I went through the catalogue and circled ANYTHING that looked fun (and of course didn't fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, thanks to my stupid job. That cut out a shocking number, actually.) She picked the classes so they'd still be a "surprise" and she sends me emails in advance of the classes. So, last Wednesday night I had my first ever cooking class, "Indian Butter Chicken."

To be perfectly technical, I did previously take a Christmas cookie class several years ago now. I specifically went to learn the tricks for making a good rosette. But, that wasn't like what I normally think of as a cooking class--the kind where you make some fancy entree.

The class was out in Saint Paul's East Side at Harding School and started at 6:00 pm. I don't know if you've ever taken classes through Community Education before, but there's always a little card table set up at the entry to the school building with two women of a certain age sitting there. They check you into the building and tell you where to find your class. My class was up on the second floor and the directions sounded complicated. There was a lot of "up the stairs, turn right, to this place and then the other thing" and that's pretty much how I heard it? But, honestly? I got to the top of the stairs, turned right, and IMMEDIATELY smelled the classroom. I was able to follow my nose directly to the right place (and there were, of course, a few helpful signs posted outside as well.)

The class was run by this middle-aged couple, husband and wife. I can no longer remember their names (so I will have to, unfortunately, refer to them as "husband" and "wife" which I kind of hate--my deepest apologies), but the gender division seemed to go like this: he did all the cooking, she did most of the talking/social interaction.

When I walked in, I was told to sign-in, wash my hands, and take a seat. I did that and picked a table in the middle of the classroom, which was a home ec kind of set-up, with several cooking stations, sinks, etc. At each of our spots, we had a little baggie full of spices (which, later, the husband joked looked like a bag of weed, and, honestly, it kind of did.) Almost everyone was immediately opening up their packet and sticking their noses in. It smelled amazing! It had star anise, cloves, black and green cardamom seeds, fenugreek, and a bay leaf inside. We also had two of those tiny plastic take-out sauce containers full of powders, one was a chili mix and the other garam masala.

There were about seventeen people in the class. Mostly white? Though, this is the Twin Cities, so not entirely so. Most people came in ones or twos, but there also there seemed to be a thruple that was clearly treating class like "date night" for all of them. My tablemates were: Ashley, who was probably in her twenties and had taken this same couple's class on homemade chai; Dan, who was also in his twenties and shared an Eastern European heritage with me, which I learned because we joked about our spice tolerance been on par with boiled cabbage; Karen, who had written on her nametag "one of the good ones," who was closer to my age and was clearly a cooking class veteran.

The class itself was different than I expected. I knew that any class I'd take in Indian cooking was going to involve a lot of spices and some complicated steps, but I had expected to have a bit more hands-on experience. We largely watched the husband make the food and monologue about his process, while we took notes on the barebones recipe sheet they'd given us. We didn't even help peel the garlic or chop onions. People asked questions from their seats, but were, at several points, encouraged to come get a closer look at various processes.

However, I quickly determined that I would never make Indian butter chicken from scratch.

They, of course, made it all look easy. However, some of the ingredients needed to be bought at a specialty store in Woodbury. Which isn't really beyond me? But, how often am I going to make this, I had to ask myself. They also reminded me of the grandma that I "learned" to make injera from because there was a lot of "cooking from the heart" measurements. "Sure, it says, one teaspoon, but follow your heart," was a literal thing the instructor said as we watched him throw in handfuls of this and that. At that point I was like, yeah, okay anything I attempt will never be this good. Plus, at one point when we were making the "gravy" (as they called what I would call a sauce,) the instructor put everything into this giantic blender and I asked him where he bought the blender, like was there a brand we should look for? He laughed and said, "Oh? Um, India." Turns out that if you want to make the really good, aromatic version of Indian Butter Chicken, you need the kind of blender that could grind coffee because the trick is that you actually leave in some of the really hard spices, like the black cardamom in the sauce and pulverize it!! My fifteen year old blender that can barely chop ice is not going to cut it.

I suddenly understood the thruple's strategy. A cooking class like this is an EXCELLENT date night! You're not actually there to learn to make this stuff at home. It's like a live action British Baking Show, only for Indian food (or whatever else), which you get to eat at the end.

I, of course, being a weirdo, had eaten ahead of time, which, for me, was a good thing given that the food was not served until 8:30 pm. I've been able to push my dinner back that far thanks to my Thursday night schedule, but I don't really like it. I much prefer, as you know, to eat at the grandma hours of 4:30-5:00 pm. The wife had gone around ahead of class to ask us our spice level and there were enough people who had asked for "mild" that that's the version they demonstrated. Luckily, they also had "hot" pre-made, so that people could sample that. I had thought I was a "mild" person because, normally, at an Indian restaurant when you ask for "mild," it is still quite hot. But, they were clearly used to Minnesotans because the mild they served us was on par with "ketchup is a spice."

The class description had told us to bring a container for leftovers, so I just took my portion of the food home for my family to taste and for me to have for lunch the next day. It was, I can tell you, divine!

I did learn some "fun facts," however. The couple who taught the class told us that Indian Butter Chicken is not normally served with naan. It's served with a different flatbread known as paratha. I had never had paratha before so, for me, getting to try that was half of the fun.

Anyway, I really liked the instructors. The husband had a very dry sense of humor that I found delightful. So, even though I will probably never attempt this at home, I still had an excellent time.

On Friday, I had not planned to leave for the convention until my panel started at 4 pm.

Some time right around opening, however, the Discord started hopping. I opened it up to see what was going on and it briefly seemed as if one concom member was stranded with no help. This turned out to be due to a couple of extenuating circumstances (and SPOILER: all worked out). Our con chair had run back to his house to pick up some blank badges because we'd runout (a good thing), and tallgeese had to take a day to recover from a cold he'd caught (a bad thing.) I should note, too, that as soon as the stranded concom member sent out her cry for help, several folks immediately lept to the rescue and jumped in their cars. I would have done the same but all I could have done was commisserate. I sat at the registration desk this year, but I'm still not sure how to even do THAT.

Then, ironically, I was almost late to my first panel on Friday. While I left in a decent amount of time--for the first time in my LIFE--I turned down the wrong exit and ended up on 494 going the wrong way. It was a good several miles before I could find a turn around. But, I did manage to come rolling in only five minutes late. As they were hunting for my badge, I assured the people in the room that I'd be in shortly and apologized.

My first panel which I reference above was "Solo RPGs." When we were putting together programming we had a very small pool of folks to pull from, so it was JUST ME. I generally failed preparation this whole convention, but I did bring along an example of a solo game that Mason bought me several birthdays ago. As I was talking to the two people who were there at the start more people filtered in.

As a side note, we apparently crested 90-80 members, which is WAY more than I was expecting in terms of registration. lsanderson pointed out that some of those could be duplicates because Eventbrite counts donations by the same person as a second membership. So, perhaps when the numbers are further crunched down, the result will be much lower. We'll see.

But, being so small a group, we just had a nice conversation. I thought it went pretty well, honestly.

Friday night the only other thing that I had wanted to do was play the game that tallgeese was going to run, but which he had to cancel. So, I actually bailed out of the con fairly early on Friday knowing that Saturday was going to be my big day.

Saturday started at 10 am with a panel about Metro Surge and the connections to the Queer fannish community, specifically. There was a lot of jokes about Grindr--apparently, it also crashed here, too, at the beginning? That I had not heard! John T and I were on this panel together and it was a lot like these panels often are? Which is to say, half history, half group therapy session. We do all still need a chance to acknowledge that it happened? Like one of the new concom members and I ended up talking about it a lot afterwards because I chose to hang out with them at the front registration desk. Andi was saying that it's just so weird to be back at work and have a literal secret identity [Signal Name] who did all these things that you can't talk about to some folks. So, for them, the panel was really important because it was reassuring in a weird way, to know they didn't just dream it all and that the trauma was real and other people feel it too.

That one was really well attended. A lot of folks actually came on Saturday in their various political t-shirts to show Solidarity, too, which just reinforces to me Just How Many of Us not only stood up, but also are in Fandom.

I listened to a couple of panels, wandered the gaming room, bought some stickers for my new computer from Tower Games. I talked to the guy working Tower Games' table and discovered that his name was Mason. I was like, I will NOT forget that name!!

Then I dropped into a game that my friend Samantha spontaneously decided to run. She had backed a KIckstarter and had never GM'd before in her life. She decided that Gaylaxicon was safe place to try it out, which I think is really cool. She only had two other players when I peeked in so I watched for a while and then when they were facing down a bad guy, I asked if I could just join in. In a crazy turn of events I picked a character that one of the other players had started out with, but abandoned. So, we all just joked that that character had been there all along. It was fun to play something new. For her first time GMing, Samantha did a great job.

Then I ran my Thirsty Sword Lesbians game.... oh boy. Where to start!

First of all, as usual, even though the sign-up sheet was filled, some people just showed up to play. The room was FILLED. But, rather than kick anyone out or propose a second session, I just rolled with it. As people were choosing which of the pre-generated characters to play, I gave them the safety talk. I asked if people had played Powered by the Apocalypse games before and I warned them that this game does push players to have flirty interactions and Big Feelings and if they aren't comfortable with that, this probably isn't a good fit, and they should feel free to leave the table at any time, including in the middle of the scene, no need for excuses or explanations. Then I also brought red light/yellow light cards and explained that these work like kink (this is one of the few crowds where I just presume some familiarity with safe words and red/yellow/green light as safety tools.) I said that I didn't suspect anyone would have to need these, but they were there in case something just hit wrong. Yellow means slow it down, and red is a HARD NO and we will pivot immediately or stop the scene.

I also reiterated that it is always okay just to walk away from my table. No hard feelings!

I tell you all this because, despite these warnings, I had a player who was 100% triggered and did not have the wherewithal to deal with it well.

So things got...complicated.

What ended up happening is that this player, we'll call him X (X is he/him). He told me in a hallway conversation during the dinner break that he didn't do well with relationships at all and had some trauma around past relationships. I told X that he did not have to explain anything to me and he should just feel free to go ahead and just leave the game, I will cover for him. No one needs to know. No harm, no foul. But, no, X had a plan. He wanted to provoke the players to KILL HIM IN GAME. I told him that I wasn't sure about this and that I needed to check in with the group to make sure that everyone was okay with player versus player scenarios. So, when people came back I said, "Okay, I've heard from a player that they want to be revealed as a villain, but we'll only proceed with that if everyone is okay with betrayal and any kind of player versus player stuff." Everyone said it was fine, so we proceeded.

At one point, when things were kicking off, X and another player got so into trading insults that I was actually not sure if this was role-play anymore, you know? And then X was so wound up, physically, that he stood up to physically act out a scene and I was like, "Y'all can sit down. This is theater of the mind!" They tried, but X was probably having a full-body reaction to his emotions and just could not. But, the scene ends, X's character is dead, he takes his leave and we finish the game.

It was, I think, fine? I wish I had run into X later in the convention because I didn't get a chance to check-in with him and make sure he was really okay. I do understand how, in the moment, you might think you're dealing with things, but maybe you are not. I also really wish that X felt more comfortable using the yellow/red light system, but I also understand how QUICKLY something can hit and often the moment passes and you're left feeling traumatized and the game has moved on. (This has happened to me in a game and to friends of mine.)

Also, unfortunately, one other player used the safety cards in a joke and I should have not let that happen/said something about it after, because, of course, once someone makes light of "being triggered" no one is feeling like they can use the red light for REAL.

I also wish X felt okay walking away, but there is a school of thought in the safety tools community in RPgs that sometime the injured person doesn't want it to be all about THEM, like they want an opportunity to work it out in game or above table so they can have some agency of their own and leave (or stay) at the table on their own terms. I guess that was where X was at, so I guess I can be happy that I allowed him space to do that.

Afterward, no one said, "What the hell was up with that player??" at least not to me, so I have to assume everyone else just thought it was a high-octane moment and were fine with it. I'm really the only one who knew that X had an underlying trauma. (Now you do, too, but I hope that if X were to come across this, he would understand that I also need to process it in community!)

So, I guess it was fine? To be crystal clear, I do think that X did the right thing coming to me with his issues. I'm glad he felt safe doing that and I am absolutely not judging him for having been taken aback by just how emotionally involved a game that runs on relationships might be.

I just hope that he's okay, honestly. I feel very much like I am still just a baby GM, and y'all I wasn't entirely ready to handle all that.

Speaking of feeling like a baby GM....

Then, Sunday I didn't have any panels scheduled, but Don asked me to sit in on "Ask a GM." That was fun and one of the other panelist, a guy named Pat, who is Don's GM, pulled me aside to tell me he loved my voice? Which was an odd compliment, but I accepted the spirit of it which very much felt like "I think you're probably cool." He then really kind of wanted to play my extremely twee Camp Flying Moose game as a player with me.

For years I've been sitting on another Powered by the Apocalypse (the same general system that Thirsty Sword Lesbians runs on) game that I've wanted an excuse to run. It is loosely based on the Lumberjanes comic books. Did you ever read any of those? Basically you have plucky tween/teen camp-goers of any and all genders who are at a camp where things are weird or out of whack in some--usually supernatural--way. Characters solve problems through skills like "The Power of Friendship!" or "I Have a Badge for That." It is very, very twee. There are literally NO combat rules AT ALL.

I was expecting no one to sign up.

I had not only a full complement (the game suggests no more than 5,) but the room was almost overflowing. I should have remembered that this is the Twin Cities area in 2026. Clearly we could all use some cottagecore twee RPGs where it's literally impossible to do violence.

But, because I wanted Pat to continue to like me, I said it was fine, and we were overfilled? The game even says in its rules that it runs best with 5 or fewer players. But, even so, it mostly went well except I felt very AWARE that I had a much more experienced GM at the table with me?

And at one point (and this is something I fully feel embarrassed about) I wanted to move the plot along faster and so I just told Pat's character that I was going to use their personality trait (clumsiness) to cause a reveal. It was a couple of steps too far? Like the party needed a key and I basically had his character stumble over one! Tt was clear that Pat did not like being railroaded that way. He literally said, "I don't think I see it." And, I fully picked up what he was putting down so I started to try to walk it back, but the other players did not get the tension and were like, "Oh we see the thing that [character] doesn't!"

ARGH.

I am full-body blushing remembering this!!

For real, that is actually the moment that is haunting me the most. The issues with X? Those were just things that can happen when you play with people you don't know and were out of my control. I just had to do my best to deal with in the moment. This?? THIS I could've avoided by not being so hamhanded!!

Plus, afterwards, as I was driving home I realized that there was some threads that I could have tied together to make the story's of Camp Flying Moose's ending more satisfying. Ugh, I hate that, too, but as Shawn pointed out, I was probably the only one who cared about that.

So, both my games were kind of OFF this year!!??

But, I think generaly the convention went well.

How was your weekend?