One of my favourite recent additions to Fantasy Faire has been the literary festival; LitFest and this will be held again this year with a very packed schedule over the 10 days of Fantasy Faire.
LitFest involves talks by authors, creative writing sessions, discussions, performances, open mic sessions, storytelling, poetry, tours, writing challenges and much more.
April 25th will be Tolkien Day, with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien being celebrated. Previous Fantasy Faires have featured Pratchett day, celebrating the work of Terry Pratchett and Shakesepeare day, celebrating the work of Shakespeare, no great mystery there.
The Fairelands of Fantasy Faire 2015 will soon disappear as if by magic. All the events are over, the vendors have been packing up and we’ve all been going home. The event was of course part of the Relay For Life fundraising effort in Second Life, for the American Cancer Society. In terms of that fundraising effort Fantasy Faire 2015 has so far raised L$ 7,627,066, which amounts to a very impressive US$ 30,508. This is a record breaking effort so thank you to everyone who contributed to and promoted this fundraising.
The event overall saw a mixture of the weird and the wonderful. The old and the new. In terms of new events, both the literary festival and dance and particle shows have been hailed as a success and are likely to return for future Fantasy Faires if possible.
A number of traditional events also took place. Roleplaying, which is of course an important element of Fantasy in Second Life was well represented at The Faire as three groups played out storylines, as explained by The Sunday Daily Recap on the Fantasy Faire website :
The roleplay groups have also concluded their storylines: NeoVictorians have safely traveled home, the Trial of Lut challenged the Sanctuary RP Community with a surprise ending and yesterday The Rickety Weasels finally managed to save Poppetsborough after freeing the Paper Wizard and returning light to the beloved popup book world.
On top of that there were more traditional themes such as DJ’s, live acts, Jail and Bail and Auctions.
The current voting statistics for Fantasy Faire’s elections for your favourite fictional character to be King, Queen or Chancellor of this year’s Fantasy Faire are showing a definite Sir Terry Pratchett tinge, as characters from Sir Terry’s work are ahead in all three categories. When it comes to the King we see current scores of :
Havelock Vetinari – 3700
Baron Klaus Wulfenbach – 3152
Tyrion Lannister – 925
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach – 350
Legolas Greenleaf – 260
What we can tell from this is that Lannister Gold is currently no match for Lord Havelock Vetinari’s cunning, when it comes to votes, at least. However there’s still plenty to play for and remember that in this case, the rules of the election do not mean that one man, one vote, means Lord Vetinari being the man and having the vote.
When it comes to the Queen, there’s a witch ahead, but the lead is most definitely slender :
Granny Weatherwax – 4270
Queen Zantabraxus Of Skafander – 4200
Maleficent – 1196
Agatha Heterodyne – 500
Galadriel – 250
This one will definitely lead to a nail biting finish.
Fantasy Faire 2015 will open its doors to everyone within the next hour or so but as well as being a magnificent example of fantasy related themes, creations, storytelling, art, poetry and much more in Second Life, it’s also part of the Relay For Life In Second Life fundraising effort on behalf of The American Cancer Society.
Last year’s event raised 5,955,893 Linden Dollars, that’s 23,824 in US Dollars. So far this year, before the doors have even officially opened, the event has raised 1,643,825 Linden Dollars, that’s 6,575 US Dollars.
Fantasy Faire is of course far from being the only event in Second Life raising money for Relay For Life. The combined total for last year’s fundraising efforts reached a quite staggering $415,000, yes that’s US Dollars.
At Fantasy Faire 2015 they will be holding a literature festival. I’ve talked about this before but more details have been posted about the event on the official Fantasy Faire 2015 blog : Are You Looking Forward To The Literary Festival (LitFest) At Fantasy Faire? By the way, you should be looking forward to it!
As the poster suggests, there will be story telling, poetry, bring your own fantasy tale or poem, discussion workshops, meet the author sessions and more. Whereas some of the storytelling will be from works of popular fiction, such as Caledonia Skytower reading from Lord Of The Rings, in other aspects of LitFest, authors will be reading or discussing their own work, for example :
Freyja Nemeth discusses her book “The World of Ice and Fire”
Freyja Nemeth says as her real life self Linda Antonsson “My partner Elio M. García (Ran Garrigus in SL) and I collaborated with George R.R. Martin on “The World of Ice and Fire”, a book about the history, culture and geography of the world of “A Song of Ice and Fire” (and “Game of Thrones”).”
Interesting? Oh come on, that’s interesting. There will also be interactive sessions such as :
Collaborative fiction game with Taralyn Gravois
In Between – A Magical Story – Tara gives the group the beginning and end of a story. We think of characters to be in the story and use the sim we are on as the scene for the storyline. Then each person adds a line to the story until we get from start to finish.
There’s much more and one of the wonderful thing about all this on a personal level is that it’s introducing me to new storytellers and groups in Second Life, new to me I mean, they aren’t new to Second Life, for example :
Speculative Fiction Saturday
Led by Simeon Beresford
Simeon Beresford leads a regular long running fantasy and science fiction discussion group in this special location for Fantasy Faire.
