A joint post by kitling and bunnikins
I drove Aveline to casualty Thursday morning - before she told me to go to Arcanacon, where I was supposed to be working the rego desk. I went back Thursday afternoon and we talked about World Domination and Revolution. You see - we'd written a game called Children of the Revolution to run at Arcanacon and instead of GMing she was in hospital now. Actually me and teknohippi had agreed to write a game, however given Aveline had been a speech writer for a senator in Canberra, and I figured we needed help both with the revolutionary theory and helping the characters develop political voices in the character sheets. I still have the pile of Marxist, Leninist and other pol sci theory text books in my room she gave me as research material. Like everything else, she didn't just help a bit, but dived in completely, re-wrote most of the character sheets and all the propaganda used as player handouts and shaped the game.
Dividing my time between the ICU and Arcanacon felt weird. Part of me felt guilty spending time doing something I love, while someone I love was in critical condition. But she would have fucking killed me if I didn't run our game and run the best damn game we could. And the players loved it.
Viva La Revolucion!
Sunday morning I spent with a small group of our 'family' saying goodbye.
Sunday afternoon me and Fi went to one of the communities we took so much pride in, and made an announcement at prizing.
Megan came along and put up with the stinky gamers :) And she suggested we post to lj the same thing we annouced during prizing, because she thought there would be a lot of people thinking of Aveline, maybe wanting a way to remember her - and Megan thinks the suggestion we made to our players was an incredibly fitting way to do that.
So here's what we said:
"Our third co-writer for this game was Aveline. All our players are aware that we were very worried over the course of the convention, as she had been hospitalised since Thursday. Unfortunately this game will be the last game Aveline will write, as she passed away peacefully this morning. She would have been proud of the way the game ran, and we hope you enjoyed it. She is a true believer in the revolution.
We are not going to hand out trophies for this game; instead we ask that if you enjoyed the game and there is a cause you believe in - we ask you to do something about it, write a letter to a politician, attend a rally, whatever, just stand up for something you believe in.
We thank you all."
*Please do not take this photo with out asking first.