Event debrief: 14 July 2017

When I wasn’t working at the zipline, getting merchandise and materials ready for an earthskills festival, and taking a three-day Middle-earth trek in Wisconsin, every spare minute of the first half of July 2017 was spent finishing gear for a second survival presentation at the Frazier Museum’s summer camp—after the first session, I had told my facilitator that I had a Rebel militia persona in the works, and couldn’t go back on my word!
Therefore, I spent the entire two full days (July 12&13) before the camp finishing my Pepakura RFT helmet (which, as discussed earlier, came out looking surprisingly decent considering it was my first attempt with fiberglass), converting the last of my green army dress shirts to bib-front RFT-style, and getting my DH-17 retool in mostly-presentable condition.

After staying up til 0100 for multiple nights in a row, I managed to get everything done and was finally ready to debut my Rebel partisan impression, ‘Citizen Olis’, to a group of 10-13 younglings in grades 3 through 6!
What worked:
As with my previous presentation with my AgriCorps persona, having a decided setting (5 ABY) and the ability to stay in-character and keep comments in-universe helped immensely. Thankfully, after spending a year as a professional time-traveler to 1836, “What’s a ‘phone’?” rolls right off my tongue.
Many of the kiddos ate it up with a spoon, and my consistency may have helped sell it to the ones who were on the fence. I was limited on time already (Jennifer Lawrence was due to speak at a gala later that day, so everything at the museum was a hubbub), and having a younger-skewing audience meant that my usual cordage activity would’ve been a headache. As it was, I had exactly enough time to get through my main topics and have Q&A time at the end.
Having a helmet and blaster meant that I had props kids could try on and hold, and many of the younger ones did so.
-At least I wore the right pants this time!

Youngling-Asked Questions (and my responses):
Kid: ‘What do you do for fun?’
Olis: ‘Hmm…go exploring, fix stuff around the homestead, watch holofilms?’
K: ‘What does your house look like?’
Thanks to a recent playthrough of DF2JK, I was able to give a rough sketch of a Sulon farmer’s home, and truthfully explain that I had made a model of it for extra credit in 7^th grade!:

A real stumper!:
K: ‘What kind of food do you eat?’
O: ‘Errrm…milk? Blue milk? Yeah, blue milk!’
Blast!…SW never focuses on real-world issues! Clearly a blind spot I need to focus on.

K: ‘What languages do you speak?”
O: ‘Well, we’re speaking Basic right now, aren’t we? Plus a tiny bit of Huttese. Pushee wumpa, pedunkee!’

K: “Do you know what glitter is?”
O: “You mean glitterstim, like the spice? Or like, how the stars glitter?”

K: “Do you have any pets?”
O: “Not really. I mean, my family has a herd of [gra], but those are livestock.”

What didn’t work:
-I forgot to pack a trashbag for improvised ground insulation demonstration.
-As with last year’s presentation, this younger-skewing audience was much more concerned with Jedi and lightsabers (‘what’s your favorite color?’ ‘Have you seen any colors besides blue, green, red, and purple?’ etc.)… and were determined to warn me of future post-Disney plot points.

Take-aways/what to improve for next time:
-I need a way to explain this persona’s time period to audiences. All the kids have seen Disney sWTFa and Rogue One (and likely every year following’s Disney!SW flick for subsequent events), but I’m focusing on a specific year of the GCW, and the narrative of the conflict as detailed in the EU, which most of my audience will likely not be familiar with.

-someone asked if I had ever killed anybody! I wasn’t expecting that, so I nodded, tersely said, ‘Stormtroopers. In ambush’, and hoped that would be enough. I should probably dig up some historic guerilla stories that I can ‘translate’ into GFFA context…this provided the germ of my how to snag a speeder article from last fall.
-I still need to finish some details on my DH-17 (one kid examined the blaster only to loudly proclaim, “there’s no aimer!”—assuming he meant eyepiece on the scope); a rear lens would greatly help sell the illusion (a detailed reticule would be even better!).