lydamorehouse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lydamorehouse) wrote2022-09-05 05:41 pm
lydamorehouse) wrote2022-09-05 05:41 pm
Virtual Chicon 8 Con Report (Day 2)
My last day of Virtual Chicon was actually Saturday, which is two days ago now, but I'll my do my best to recap for those that are interested.
I had a great couple of panels on Thursday, despite being ten minutes late to the panel I was most excited about "Satoshi Kon: a Retrospective." The panel moderator was Alina Sidorova and she was very kind in that, despite my late arrival, she gave me an opportunity right away to dig into my theories about the transness of some of the reflective images in Kon's work. This sparked a very lively conversation. I think, generally, this was a really great group of individual fans, each with their own unique perspective. I wish, in fact, we'd had more time to explore Osawa Hirotaka's point that Kon, himself, has said that he was deeply influenced by music, and that there is often a connection between art and music. I know nothing at all about music, since I'm not actually much of a fan (I always dread the classic author interview question which is: What kind of music do you listen to when you create? My answer: none, are you nuts? How can I hear my characters talking over someone else's lyrics??? But NO ONE likes that answer. I'm supposed to have a playlist. I fail playlists.) So, I mean I would like to hear from people for whom music and their art are intrinsically linked, and we ran out of time before we could go deep on that. I was also on that panel with Nick Mamatas, who was also on my later, much more chaotic panel "Noir and SF/F."
The Noir panel was rough for me for a couple of reasons. First, my internet decided to be deeply unstable. Second, while I wrote a noir cyberpunk, I don't actually read or watch a lot of it otherwise. So, every time there was a question like, "What are you reading now in the noir genre that you would recommend?" or "Are there noir SF stories with alien detectives?" I had no clue how to answer. But, luckily, both the moderator T.C. Weber and Nick had a lot to say on pretty much everything (<--I say that with a smile, I really liked the both of them a lot.) Marissa James and I stayed out more often than not, though me more intentionally that she, I think.
Virtual panels seem to come in a lot of varieties. I actually saw at least part of one "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures" that was set up like an Academic presentation, where each expert actually ran a power point presentation. Then, after each person gave their separate speech, they would come together and discuss as a group. I am not a super fan of this? I mean, I feel it can be quite good if it's a survey topic, like "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures," where what the viewer wants at the end is a list of books or materials to consume.
There are others, like the "Noir" panel where everyone talks whenever they feel like it and it's in constant danger of devolving into chaos, albeit a fun chaos.
I actually thought that our "Satoshi Kon" panel was a good hybrid in that, while we didn't have a power point prepared, it was clear that each of us had a THING that we wanted to say about Kon's work. But, instead of waiting until the end to discuss, when ideas might get lost, we would each say our piece, have some excited cross talk, and then it would be the next person's turn. I absolutely credit the moderator for being able to orchestrate this kind of discussion. Alina was really good, too, at making sure everyone had an equal voice and ample time to speak.
It's really hard to make an online panel as fun and informative as an in-person one, but I feel like I had two really decent experiences, even the more chaotic "Noir" one.
I will say that I find that there's something about video conferencing that makes a lot of panelists into expressionless robots. I don't know what causes this, but some people go really flat, like they're staring into a TV screen. I notice that very few people smile or nod along and that brings the energy down. In an effort to counteract that I always make it my habit to smile, nod, and turn off my mic so that I can say the "uh-huh" noises to myself without breaking up their audio. It's an effort to stay engaged, but it's not that much more of an effort than it is in Real Life (tm) in my opinion.
I watched the Hugo Award ceremony on YouTube and I have opinions on that, too, but they're probably not for public consumption. The only thing I can say about it is that I think there's something very insular that happened this year. Same people, different award happened more than once. That being said, I was so happy to see Neil Clarke get a Hugo this year. I also want to be clear that I feel everyone nominated was very deserving, winner or not, it's just that... well, I had to wonder this year how much "ah, I know that name!" went into the voting decisions of WorldCon members. Though who knows what happened given that the Hugo's are decided with the run-off ballot style. Perhaps what I noticed was a matter of people winning a majority in the number 2 ranking. Who knows?
Anyway, it was still lovely to watch. Someone's speech always makes me tear up a little, and this year was no exception.
In other news, I spent far too much time today debating with a reader of my fan work about why I was not writing their favorite character the way they saw them. I tried to answer with the simple, "Because I'm writing my vision of the same character." To which they responded, "But why, though," and then dropped me a (and I kid you not) THREE PAGE GOOGLE DOC letter. The letter might have been more useful to me, but it seemed to mostly be comprised of "Why did you write him this way, when he's obviously this other way?" without any supporting documentation. This is fan fic, show me where you get this idea from canon. I want page number and panel, so I can reconstruct your thought process and reasonably discuss our differing takes on the same moment in canon. I am always, 100% up for that.
Me, discussing Bleach canon:
Image: The red string conspiracy guy from "Sherlock," I believe.
It's that, or accept that you just like Soft!Aizen and there isn't canon support for your preference and you don't care (but then don't argue with people who write Hard!Aizen.)
This person also seemed upset that my story had "an agenda." "You were trying to paint the villain as a good guy!" I had to break it to this fan that every story has an "agenda." It's called a "theme," in your English class. If a writer doesn't have something they're trying to say, they probably will run out of steam before it's finished. But, the theme or agenda it doesn't have to be as big as my exploration of "What if Aizen was evil, but also not wrong about the Soul Society and Ichigo helped him win?" It can be, "What if Ichigo really liked knitting?"
Both of these are "agendas," because the fic writer is probably also saying something about why Ichigo might like knitting or why knitting is cool. In the story, they'll PROBABLY CENTER KNITTING. (This person was really upset that I centered Aizen, and I was like, well, that's because to make the case that Aizen is evil but also not wrong, I have to let him talk about it???) But, the point is, all writing is about SOMETHING. It's also not illegal or wrong for me to want to make a political statement in my fan fic, even if canon doesn't support it. Fic writing, for me at least, is about the exploration. You've got this world you want to play in for some reason, often because you find something gnarly or toothsome in it and you want to chew on it. That, I explained to them, is the point of it all, and what that might end up feeling like is an "agenda."
I have a very bad feeling that I, at 55, might be arguing with someone who is, in point of fact, 12. I am trying to be emphatic, but not rude. Twelve or twenty or two hundred, I felt really compelled to explain that I don't owe anyone their vision of this character we have in common by the happenstance of fandom. This is fan fic.
If I want to write non-canonical, out-of-character stuff in my fan fiction, I'm actually allowed? I actually prefer to write as in character as possible, but that's my preference. It's not a requirement of the format.
I had a great couple of panels on Thursday, despite being ten minutes late to the panel I was most excited about "Satoshi Kon: a Retrospective." The panel moderator was Alina Sidorova and she was very kind in that, despite my late arrival, she gave me an opportunity right away to dig into my theories about the transness of some of the reflective images in Kon's work. This sparked a very lively conversation. I think, generally, this was a really great group of individual fans, each with their own unique perspective. I wish, in fact, we'd had more time to explore Osawa Hirotaka's point that Kon, himself, has said that he was deeply influenced by music, and that there is often a connection between art and music. I know nothing at all about music, since I'm not actually much of a fan (I always dread the classic author interview question which is: What kind of music do you listen to when you create? My answer: none, are you nuts? How can I hear my characters talking over someone else's lyrics??? But NO ONE likes that answer. I'm supposed to have a playlist. I fail playlists.) So, I mean I would like to hear from people for whom music and their art are intrinsically linked, and we ran out of time before we could go deep on that. I was also on that panel with Nick Mamatas, who was also on my later, much more chaotic panel "Noir and SF/F."
The Noir panel was rough for me for a couple of reasons. First, my internet decided to be deeply unstable. Second, while I wrote a noir cyberpunk, I don't actually read or watch a lot of it otherwise. So, every time there was a question like, "What are you reading now in the noir genre that you would recommend?" or "Are there noir SF stories with alien detectives?" I had no clue how to answer. But, luckily, both the moderator T.C. Weber and Nick had a lot to say on pretty much everything (<--I say that with a smile, I really liked the both of them a lot.) Marissa James and I stayed out more often than not, though me more intentionally that she, I think.
Virtual panels seem to come in a lot of varieties. I actually saw at least part of one "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures" that was set up like an Academic presentation, where each expert actually ran a power point presentation. Then, after each person gave their separate speech, they would come together and discuss as a group. I am not a super fan of this? I mean, I feel it can be quite good if it's a survey topic, like "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures," where what the viewer wants at the end is a list of books or materials to consume.
There are others, like the "Noir" panel where everyone talks whenever they feel like it and it's in constant danger of devolving into chaos, albeit a fun chaos.
I actually thought that our "Satoshi Kon" panel was a good hybrid in that, while we didn't have a power point prepared, it was clear that each of us had a THING that we wanted to say about Kon's work. But, instead of waiting until the end to discuss, when ideas might get lost, we would each say our piece, have some excited cross talk, and then it would be the next person's turn. I absolutely credit the moderator for being able to orchestrate this kind of discussion. Alina was really good, too, at making sure everyone had an equal voice and ample time to speak.
It's really hard to make an online panel as fun and informative as an in-person one, but I feel like I had two really decent experiences, even the more chaotic "Noir" one.
I will say that I find that there's something about video conferencing that makes a lot of panelists into expressionless robots. I don't know what causes this, but some people go really flat, like they're staring into a TV screen. I notice that very few people smile or nod along and that brings the energy down. In an effort to counteract that I always make it my habit to smile, nod, and turn off my mic so that I can say the "uh-huh" noises to myself without breaking up their audio. It's an effort to stay engaged, but it's not that much more of an effort than it is in Real Life (tm) in my opinion.
I watched the Hugo Award ceremony on YouTube and I have opinions on that, too, but they're probably not for public consumption. The only thing I can say about it is that I think there's something very insular that happened this year. Same people, different award happened more than once. That being said, I was so happy to see Neil Clarke get a Hugo this year. I also want to be clear that I feel everyone nominated was very deserving, winner or not, it's just that... well, I had to wonder this year how much "ah, I know that name!" went into the voting decisions of WorldCon members. Though who knows what happened given that the Hugo's are decided with the run-off ballot style. Perhaps what I noticed was a matter of people winning a majority in the number 2 ranking. Who knows?
Anyway, it was still lovely to watch. Someone's speech always makes me tear up a little, and this year was no exception.
In other news, I spent far too much time today debating with a reader of my fan work about why I was not writing their favorite character the way they saw them. I tried to answer with the simple, "Because I'm writing my vision of the same character." To which they responded, "But why, though," and then dropped me a (and I kid you not) THREE PAGE GOOGLE DOC letter. The letter might have been more useful to me, but it seemed to mostly be comprised of "Why did you write him this way, when he's obviously this other way?" without any supporting documentation. This is fan fic, show me where you get this idea from canon. I want page number and panel, so I can reconstruct your thought process and reasonably discuss our differing takes on the same moment in canon. I am always, 100% up for that.
Me, discussing Bleach canon:
Image: The red string conspiracy guy from "Sherlock," I believe.
It's that, or accept that you just like Soft!Aizen and there isn't canon support for your preference and you don't care (but then don't argue with people who write Hard!Aizen.)
This person also seemed upset that my story had "an agenda." "You were trying to paint the villain as a good guy!" I had to break it to this fan that every story has an "agenda." It's called a "theme," in your English class. If a writer doesn't have something they're trying to say, they probably will run out of steam before it's finished. But, the theme or agenda it doesn't have to be as big as my exploration of "What if Aizen was evil, but also not wrong about the Soul Society and Ichigo helped him win?" It can be, "What if Ichigo really liked knitting?"
Both of these are "agendas," because the fic writer is probably also saying something about why Ichigo might like knitting or why knitting is cool. In the story, they'll PROBABLY CENTER KNITTING. (This person was really upset that I centered Aizen, and I was like, well, that's because to make the case that Aizen is evil but also not wrong, I have to let him talk about it???) But, the point is, all writing is about SOMETHING. It's also not illegal or wrong for me to want to make a political statement in my fan fic, even if canon doesn't support it. Fic writing, for me at least, is about the exploration. You've got this world you want to play in for some reason, often because you find something gnarly or toothsome in it and you want to chew on it. That, I explained to them, is the point of it all, and what that might end up feeling like is an "agenda."
I have a very bad feeling that I, at 55, might be arguing with someone who is, in point of fact, 12. I am trying to be emphatic, but not rude. Twelve or twenty or two hundred, I felt really compelled to explain that I don't owe anyone their vision of this character we have in common by the happenstance of fandom. This is fan fic.
If I want to write non-canonical, out-of-character stuff in my fan fiction, I'm actually allowed? I actually prefer to write as in character as possible, but that's my preference. It's not a requirement of the format.